How revisionists seek to destroy Lagos History as Yoruba civilisation
By Ogboni High Chief Priest Dr Oladoyin Odebowale
Here Odewale replies Engr Joe Igbokwe’s treatise in Lagos
Joe Igbokwe , it has never ceased to amaze me reading revisionism being presented as historical facts. The Lagos that was designated as the Federal Capital Territory was Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lagos Island, Ebute Meta, Surulere and Yaba. The defunct Western Region started from Jibowu. Mushin, Agege, Maryland, Onigbongbo, Apapa, Badagry, Isolo and Amuwo Odofin all belonged to the old Western Region. Ikeja was the acronym for Ikorodu-Epe Joint Administration. Ikorodu, Epe, Ibefun, Igbogbo, Simawa, Imota, Agbowa, Ikosi, Ketu, Alapere all belong to the people of Remo. Mushin, Agege, Alimosho and Abule Egba belong to the Egba people. Isolo, Badagry(Agbadarigi), Ijegun, Ijora, Amukoko, Badia, Isale Eko, among others, belong to the Awori. They are all parts of Lagos State now.
General Gowon created the confusion to weaken the agitation for an independent State of Biafra in May, 1967. Major General Aguiyi Ironsi had promulgated Decree No 34 of 1966, the Unification Decree, to abolish the Regions. He was also advised to harmonise the civil service, thus destroying the Western Region’s civil service that was reputed as the best.
Those decisions killed him and led to the civil war. Gowon, working for Murtala Mohammed and the Fulani oligarchy, consolidated on the treason committed by Ironsi and his cohorts against Nigeria. The commanding heights of our economy in the Western Region were appropriated in the name of the fraudulent One Nigeria. Our farm settlements were disabled. Our textile industries were sold to cement merchants by the military leadership acting as proxies for the Fulani expansionists. Our people became emasculated.
Lokoja had once served as the seat of the colonial government. Calabar also played that role. Why is it Lagos that should lose her indigenous identity on account of her former status?
Ibadan was the political capital of the old Western Region. The plan was solid. We had our industrial estates for real development scattered all over the space. Most of the industries in Ikeja, Oregun, Ilupeju and Apapa had the imprimatur of reasoned governance. We did not allow indiscriminate dumping of refuse on us under the guise of importation.
We had our housing estates. Bodija Housing Estate was the first in Nigeria. We had our Cocoa House, the tallest in West Africa at that time. It was our money. No Igbo had any investment there. Adeola Odutola and Jimoh Odutola were real industrialists. They produced tyres locally at Oke Ado in Ibadan. We had our paper mill. We had plantations. There was Igbeti marble industry in Oyo.
There was Wires and Cables industry in Ikeja. Red Brick industry was at Oregun. We had huge investments in Solel Boneh and Taylor Woodrow for construction. We used them to build University of Ife, the most beautiful campus on the African Continent, and Liberty Stadium, the best in Africa, where Dick Tiger fought for a World Boxing title. It was our Cocoa money. We had the WNTV, the first television station on the Continent of Africa. It was established with our Cocoa revenue too. Obasanjo and his cohorts turned it to NTA.
There was the WNBC which became Radio Nigeria due to the brazen conversion of our patrimony. University of Ife was also stolen from us by the military. We had hope. Oluwalogbon Motors, Doyin Motors, among others, operated on our land. Ladipo used to be our Palm Avenue. It was in Western Region. Alaba was in Western Region. Ajegunle was in Western Region. We did not invite anyone from his village to settle among us. We embraced them still, when they came. Our economy did not depend on proceeds from drugs, human trafficking, armed robbery, kidnapping, politics and the exploitation of the peoples of the South South.
The fraud introduced by Ironsi and Ojukwu, and adopted by Gowon, ensured that development is now measured in terms of the quantum of proceeds from oil, narcotics and politics laundered to purchase the properties of a people laid prostrate by the combined onslaught from the Sahel and the forests.
Juli Pharmacy became a Plc. It is struggling to survive now due to the criminal activities of fake drug merchants in the South West. Alabukun was produced by Chief Odulate, the father of the first female SAN in Nigeria, Chief Folake Solanke. Importers of tramadol and other substances from Asia have pushed Alabukun out of the markets on our lands. They are killing our people in a manner akin to genocide through fake drugs and beverages. They use the blood money to buy up the places rendered desolate with the support of the fraudulent 1999 Constitution, as amended, an offshoot of Ironsi’s Decree 34. Hypocrites continue to concentrate on the murderous activities of the so called Fulani herdsmen, who have been less pretentious.
We must be able to differentiate the Lagos Colony of 1851 from the Lagos of 1900 and 1914. The Lagos of 1951 is also different from the Lagos State, one of the contraptions created by fiat in 1967.
It disingenuous to pretend not to know some of these facts. It is this terrible mindset which predisposes some ungrateful denizens of the forests to designate our ancestral lands as belonging to no one. We have never coveted what belongs to others. No property belonging to the Igbo was seized by us during the civil war. Those who returned received all that was due to them. Ojukwu’s father had properties in Lagos.
The Federal Government confiscated them for obvious reasons. He later took them to court and won. The Igbo people lost, immensely, in the South South due to their hostility against those people.
We are not aware of any compensation paid to the Awori, Remo, Ijebu and Egba owners of the space delineated and decreed to be Lagos State after the forceful take over. The industry of real merchants, industrialists and farmers built the old Western Region. It was the sweat of our fathers that others wanted to steal from us. They planned a coup after they lost the 1965 general elections and became the minority in the Parliament.
The alliance, which Zik and others refused in 1959, became important to them after they had put Awo in prison successfully. The coup failed and the war began. Ojukwu wanted Lagos. We were the focus of attack, not the North. They came as close as Ore before they were routed. They dropped a bomb at Casino afterwards.
Nobody is apologising for the incessant insults heaped on our people daily by uncouth, ill-mannered criminals who have failed to develop their backward villages.
The latest, after the invasion of our land, is the aggressive attempt to impose on us political leadership through sheer mischief and arrogance, depending on our hospitable disposition which has allowed uncontrolled influx of oriental rustics. This same attitude is replicated in all our states but not the Northern parts of the country. It is an insult to suggest, even remotely, that economic refugees, supported by the fraudulent political structure designed to expropriate our patrimony, came to invest on lands. It smacks of either “arrogance of ignorance” or deliberate mischief masked as fair-mindedness, for those, whose unfolding agenda point at a pernicious scheme to dispossess us of our patrimony, while presenting themselves as the victims. There will be a backlash very soon. Odewale is a senior lecture at the University of Ibadan
Below is the Essay by Engr Joe Igbokwe which prompted the above response
What I am reading here frightens me. May be we did not know that Lagos was the capital of Nigeria for 86 yrs and Nigerians invested here before the capital was moved to Abuja in 1990. All the federal assets were left here . No buildings , roads , bridges, markets, offices etc were moved to Abuja. I have been here for more than 40 yrs and I once sited some documents on how those properties were shared and some sold.
Today Lagos growth in infrastructure, economy, real estate, commerce, industry, transport, internal revenue can be attributed to the obvious and painful truth that Lagos was the capital of Nigeria for 86 years and every Nigerian East , West , North or South invested her. Let me ask this question: why is Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti, Osun not like Lagos? Today the growth of Lagos is filtering into Ogun, Oyo and even Ondo. Drive from Kara bridge Lagos to Shagamu interchange, look left and right and see what is happening there in terms investments. Ka fi suru na!!!
Today Nigerians are investing heavily in the FCT and if tomorrow the capital is moved to any other part of Nigeria FCT citizens that were paid heavy compensations and relocated by the late Justice Akinola Aguda will come and be claiming FCT. Make we de fear God now!
Today in Nigeria Igbo people do not have a quarter of what they have in Lagos and Abuja in Igboland and yet they do no care because we believe in the proverb: Ebe Onye bi ka Ona Awachi( wherever you leave take it as your home)
All these nonsensical effusions I see everyday especially in Lagos frighten me to the marrows, it is
Kindergarten, childish and at best potentially dangerous. Igbo investment in Lagos cannot be physically moved to South East Nigeria.
During the civil war from 1967 to 1970 Port harcourt people who are our brothers stole Igbo property and called it abandoned property. May it never happen again in Nigeria.
