LAGOS BELONGS TO YORUBAS
Ozodiobi Osuji
Igbos should stop irritating Yorubas by seeming to dispute who owns Lagos. Lagos belongs to Yorubas.
I have read that Edo kings once ruled Eko but that merely meant that an invading foreign army temporarily occupied a part of Yoruba land.
Lagos belongs to Yorubas. It does not belong to new comers who came to live there.
I was born at Lagos and grew up at Lagos, I mean inside real Lagos, in Isale Eko, near what was called Sandgross market, on Lewis Street. I am as Lagosian as they come. Indeed, I do not speak Igbo well.
Yet, I know that Lagos is not my home. My home is Owerri. I am from Owerri and that is all there is to it.
I live in the USA; I do not assume that the country belongs to me. It belongs to Indians (who came from Asia) and to the British and their African slaves who developed it. I am just a temporary sojourner in the USA; my folks did not build up the country.
I live at Anchorage, Alaska. Pause and examine those names. Anchorage is English; Alaska is Aleutian Eskimo (it means the great land). The two names symbolize that the English and native Alaskans own Alaska. Alaska does not belong to some god damned, economic refugees from Africa…folks fleeing from their continent that for some reason(s) they cannot govern well and always have to go to other people’s lands to go benefit from their good governance of their lands.
Igbos should stay in Alaigbo and transform one of its cities, say, their heartland, Owerri, to a world class metropolis; they do not always have to abandon their land and run to other people’s land to go benefit from its economic opportunities.
Igbos should stop the nonsense of making it seem like the ownership of Lagos is in question. Actually, if I am Yoruba and you are Igbo and dispute ownership of Lagos I would ask you to leave the freaking place, just as I would ask other Nigerians at Owerri who claim to own Owerri to leave the place.
The British voted to leave the EU, Brexit, largely to prevent Eastern Europeans from coming to live in their land (do the British want to go live in primitive Russia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and other Slavic lands?). England belongs to the English, not to the god dammed foreigners they allowed to come live with them; those foreigners now pretending that England belongs to them. Did their fathers fight and die for the glory of John Bull? If not how is England their land?
Leave Lagos to Yorubas and stop making them angry by claiming that just because they allowed you to come live with them that it belongs to you.
As Fela Kuti sang: Trouble de sleep iyanga de wakeam. Igbos should not go seeking trouble that eventually would bit them in the ass by claiming that what does not belong to them belongs to them.
Yorubas can organize and start killing Igbos and those not killed run back to Alaigbo. Live in peace with your hosts; do not annoy them with your infantile claims that what is theirs is yours.
Ozodiobi Osuji
March 3, 2019