Oduduwa Was Nupe If Oranmiyan was Nupe then Oduduwa, his father, was Nupe too. In fact the Yoruba legends themselves, collected by no other mean authority than Reverend Samuel Johnson himself, decidedly animadvert out that Oduduwa was not a Yoruba man. And many authorities, including most prominently Professor David D. Laitin, evinced that Oduduwa was in fact a Nupe man. The documentary evidences that Oduduwa was Nupe are just so many and actually overwhelming. But this is not where to discuss the actuality that Oduduwa was Nupe. Please read my book titled ‘Oduduwa Is Nupe: How the Yoruba People Originate from Nupe’ for all the exhaustive details you may need on that interesting topic. For now we are parenthetically adducin that since Oranmiyan was a Nupe man then his father must have also been a Nupe man. That is if Oduduwa was truly the father of Oranmiyan since there are countless other Yoruba narratives clearly showing that Oduduwa and Oranmiyan have nothing to do with one another. Oduduwa was the founder of Ile Ife and Oranmiyan was the founder of Oyo and these two kingdoms, Ile Ife and Oyo, were completely different and mutually exclusive entities in the past. It is only modern Yoruba people that came to controvertibly merged both Ile Ife and Oyo into a single Yoruba race. But that is a discussion for another day. Shango was a Nupe man because his father, Oranmiyan or Aganju, was a full- blooded Nupe man and his mother, Yemaja, was also a full- blooded Nupe man. Shango was not a Yoruba man. Shango was a Nupe man who was born, lived, flourished, ruled and died here in KinNupe. It is possible that Shango never ever lived in, or even visited, Yorubaland. And the whole story is that in the days of the historical Shango there was not a Yoruba race separate from the Nupe people. In other words in the days of Shango there were no Yoruba people. It was only in latter times that the Yoruba people descended or separated out of the Nupe. In the days of Shango the people in south-western Nigeria, that is today’s Yorubaland, were a pure-blooded Nupe people. In those days Yorubaland was one and the same with KinNupe and it was the same Nupe people that we see from the northernmost boundaries of ancient KinNupe to the southernmost boundaries of modern Yorubaland. In those days KinNupe was one vast empire that extended from the reaches of the Sahara desert in what we call the Republic of Niger and Chad Republic in the north to the coast of the Atlantic ocean in the south in what we call Lagos and the Bight of Biafra today. The works of Sultan Bello and Captain Hugh Clapperton in the first half of the 19th century confirms this. Sultan Bello, albeit, pointed out that this gigantic Nupe Nation was in reality a federation of not less than twenty states much the same way that we have the Federal Republic of Nigeria with thirty-six states today. It was over this vast and superpower Nupe Nation of ancient times, constituted of both modern KinNupe and modern Yorubaland, among many other ancient nations and states, that Shango, among many other Nupe rulers, ruled over. In fact Professor Leo Frobenius decisively imported that Shango was a Nupe emperor whose rulership and territory extended from KinNupe to Yorubaland. Shango was a Nupe emperor known to Nupe historians as Etsu Shango. That is what Professor Leo Frobenius garnered from his informants during his sojourn in KinNupe in 1911. They told him that Etsu Shango was more popularly known as ‘Akpara’. The truth is that Akpara was Shango’s real or personal name as ‘Shango’ is, from all indications, and as we shall discuss in some details later, the name of a dynasty and an empire and not the name of any particular or single ruler. Isako Nupe Empire Shango was the Nupe emperor of a superpower empire known as Isako. This Isako was a united kingdom of the ancient Nupe people of Isa or Kisra Nupe people with the Koro or Gara Nupe. So, Isa and Koro became Isakoro or Isako. Professor Alan Ryder did discussed this in some details. Isako was also known with an endless variety of synonymous names some of which have survived unto historical times. Isako was also variously known as Saiko or Saikoro, Zugur or Zugurma, Zungeru, Zakzak or Zaria, Asokoro, Etsako of the Afenmai, and so on and on. As late as the middle of the 17th century the Dutch physician and writer, Olfert Dapper, located Isako as a powerful kingdom in Central KinNupe. Professor Alan Ryder also talked about this Isako as a powerful Nupe kingdom. But by the 17th century Isako was already a fallen and fast declining kingdom that was once upon a time an almighty and superpower Nupe empire which ruled over virtually the whole of ancient Nigeria and even beyond. In the remote past Isako was a superpower Nupe empire that was instrumental in the founding and establishment of its daughter kingdoms including the Songhai Empire of the Askias, the Zazak or Zaria kingdom of Queen Amina of Zaria, the Kebbi kingdom of the Kanta, the Hausa city states of Bayajida, and many others. It was the almighty and superpower empire of Isako that gave birth and rise to most of the prehistoric and historic kingdoms of ancient Nigeria including the once we have listed above. Zakzak or Zaria was one of these Isako kingdoms and Queen Amina of Zaria was evidently an Isako Nupe queen. The Kano Chronicle certainly wrote that Queen Amina died in Central KinNupe around the very place that Bida is located today. Isako was known to latter Nupe chroniclers as Zugurma. This Zugurma was a superpower empire that ruled over virtually the whole of ancient Nigeria. And right unto historical times, up to the time of the arrival of the Fulani Jihadists in KinNupe at the beginning of the 19th century, the western half of the Nupe Nation was headquartered at the regional headquarters of Zugurma. The rulers of Isako were also called Isako and it is this term that have been dialectally pronounced by the modern Yoruba tongue as Sango or Shango. The particular Shango we have been discussing is evidently just one of the many Shangos. In fact the Nupe oral literatures narrate that his real or personal name was Akpara. But this Akpara must have been one of the most, if not the most, famous of the Shangos. Otherwise his story would not have survived so intact among both the Yoruba and Nupe people – and, according to Professor Dierk Lange, even among other ancient Nigerian peoples including the Kebbi people who call him Janga Huga, and among the Hausa people who call him Jangare, and among the Jukun who call him Kenjo. For so many other Nigerian peoples to have known this particular Shango Akpara means that he must have been a famous and popular Shango who ruled over many ancient Nigerian peoples in his days. Professor Leo Frobenius have already informed us that ancient Yorubaland was under the sovereignty of this Etsu Shango Akpara whom the Yorubas referred to as Shango Tapa. He was definitely one of the Shangos who established Isako or Zugurma or Saiko – whatever you call it – into an almighty empire. That is why nobody forgot him. And even after the fall and collapse of the Isako super empire and the subsequent survival of many of its dismembered daughter and satellite kingdoms in different parts of ancient Nigeria the story of ‘Shango’ continued to be cherished and narrated by these different people who were originally a Nupe people. That was how the Yoruba people, who were in the beginning a Nupe people, got the story of Shango. They forgot his personal name, which the Nupe people still remembered as Akpara, and instead simply referred to him, according to Professor Leo Frobenius, as Shango Tapa or Shango the Nupe. Oyo the Nupe Kingdom The people we call the Yoruba today were originally the Nupe people who were citizens of one of the daughter kingdoms resulting from the shattering of the Isako empire into various daughter kingdoms upon its collapse. This particular daughter kingdom of the Nupe people that were to be later known as the Yoruba was known with an endless variety of names in the past. Sultan Bello and Captain Hugh Clapperton referred to it as Katunga. Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther said it was known as the Biniya, that is Bini-Eya, in reference to the fact that it was a kingdom of the Nupe people located on the River Niger. In those days it was the Nupe people who were known as the Bini and the River Niger was known as Eya hence the term ‘Bini Eya’ or the ‘Nupe (Bini) of the River Niger (Eya)’. The Nupe people referred to this daughter kingdom as Eyagi and it is this Eyagi that became shortened into simply ‘Eya’. This Eya was also pronounced as Eyeo or Eyo on the authority of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. And finally the White colonial scribes came and, in their characteristic manner of slaughtering native African words when transcribing them, wrote it as Oyo which is how we write, and even pronounce it, to this very day. Professor Judith Gleason intimated that it was actually, and originally, known as Eya-Yasan, that is, in reference to its Yisa or Isa Isako origins. This Biniya, Eya, Eyeo or Oyo daughter kingdom was originally located on the very banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe probably somewhere we have the towns of Nku or Nupeko today. E.M. Lijadu, a Yoruba historian, expounded that this Oyo Kingdom was founded by a Nupe man from the Nupe town of Gudu here in KinNupe. And Professor Leo Frobenius did corroborate that the first rulers of the Oyo Kingdom were a Nupe people through and through. Professor Toyin Falola and Professor Michael Adeyemi also confirmed that the Oyo kingdom was founded, established and populated by the Nupe people at the beginning of its history. Even Professor R.C.C. Law, a formidable authority on Yoruba history, explicated that in the beginning Oyo was a Nupe kingdom, peopled by Nupe people, and founded and established by Nupe people. In any case the fall of the mother empire of Isako and the rise of the kingdom of AtaGara both in Central KinNupe led to the gradual migration of the daughter kingdoms of Isako out of Central KinNupe as they were pushed away by the rising AtaGara. One of these daughter kingdoms of Isako was, of course, the Oyo Kingdom. So, that is how Oyo gradually migrated out of KinNupe southward. From being a kingdom located on the banks of the River Niger here in the heart of KinNupe, the Oyo kingdom gradually moved southwards until it crossed the River Niger and still continued with its southward journey towards today’s Yorubaland. That was how the first Europeans to come to KinNupe saw it located at Old Oyo. The Lander brothers visited it as Old Oyo. But Old Oyo is today in ruins and we have Oyo city located far away in the south in today’s Oyo State. Of course the modern city of Oyo in Oyo State is not the original Oyo of the Yoruba traditions; even the Yoruba folk tales themselves, as confirmed by Professor R.C.C. law, Professor Robert Smith, Professor Morton-Williams, Professor David Aremu, Professor Agbaje Williams, and many others, pointed out that the present city of Oyo in today’s Oyo State is the sixteenth Oyo from the Original Oyo which was a Nupe kingdom located on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. It was in the course of the Oyo kingdom’s migration out of KinNupe that the Nupe language of its citizens gradually differentiated from the original Old Nupe language that it used to be and gradually became what we call the Yoruba language today. That is how the Yoruba language originated from Nupe. Interestingly Yoruba might be a more pristine but archaic form of the Nupe language than even the Nupe language that is spoken in KinNupe today. But that is a discussion for another day. In any case these now Yoruba people retained with them the stories of Etsu Shango that they have had with them ever since those days when they were a pure Nupe people resident in Central KinNupe in the days of the Nupe super empire of Isako or Zugurma. But they lost his personal name which we got from the Nupe people as Akpara. The Religion of Shango Akpara was his name. They said he was a deep initiate and a high priest of the ancient Nupe spiritualism of Eba, the same that is known among the Yorubas today as Ifa. Shango was brought up by Elemkpe who, according to Reverend Samuel Johnson, was the greatest prophet of Ifa or Eba spiritualism known in historic times. Elemkpe was the godfather to Shango and it is not surprising that Elemkpe taught Shango the secrets of the ancient Nupe spiritualism of Eba or Ifa. Shango became such a practiced high priest of Eba the Nupe spiritualism that he was able to perform wonders and miracles that no Nupe or Yoruba god or king have been credited with to this very day. Shango was said to be able to strike his enemies down, and any object for that matter, with thunderbolt much the same way that we see Thor, the Norse thunder and lightning god, striking down his enemies with a bolt of thunder. Shango was said to defeat whole battalion of armies by striking them down with thunderbolts. And his name, Akpara, became synonymous with thunderbolt and lightning such that to this very day the Nupe people refer to thunderbolt, gunfire and lightning as ‘Akpara’. In any case it was not just thunderbolts and lightning that Shango was famous for as a high initiate spiritualist of Ifa. Shango communicated with and commanded the jinns and the animal kingdom much the same way that the Qur’anic Prophet Sulaiman, the Biblical King Solomon, communicated with and commanded the Jinns and animal kingdom. Shango built and expanded Isako into one of the greatest empires the African continent have ever witnessed. And so on and on. Shango was actually a priest-ruler, that is, he was both a high priest spiritualist and a political ruler at the same time. It is in this context that Shango reformed and expanded the spiritualism of Ifa that he was taught by his godfather, Elemkpe, into a complex and established spiritualism that grew into an enduring mass movement even after his own death. By the way, the Yoruba traditions admit that Shango was born, died and was buried right here in KinNupe. In fact Ifa became the established spiritualism of the Nupe, and Yoruba, people several centuries after his death. Shango himself became deified as a Nusa god. It is the Nupe term Nusa that the Yorubas corrupt into Orisha, their name for the gods. Eba or Ifa, the spiritualism established by Shango, became the national spiritualism of the Nupe people. And to this very day, several centuries after the demise of Shango, it is still widely practised among Nupe people as Eba or Ebasan and as Ifa among Yoruba people. In fact this Shango spiritualism of Eba or Ifa actually got transported through the Middle Passage, during the Trans- Atlantic Slave Era, to the Americas where, over the centuries, it has grown into the largest spiritualism system in the Americas today. The cult of Shango has survived in...
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:35:23 +0000
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