No Man’s Land Complex: Ipinle Eko (Lagos) Down The History

Eko (Lagos) is not a no man’s land. Insert is Ahmodu Tijani above, a direct descendant of the founder of Lagos and Oluwo of Eko (Lagos) in the 1920s. He took the British to court in the early 1900s to protest the 1861 treaty of the British with Dosumu, arguing that the representative of the Oba of Benin at no time had rights to the Lands of Eko and it was not his to give away. A case he won based on historical evidence showing that the Idejo chiefs of Yoruba descent had always been the landowners of Eko (Lagos).

There is one reason why Oduduwa (Yoruba) people don’t gloat over lands they held historical stakes in but not their ancestral lands. This is because we are blessed with an expanse of lands that are very fertile and a large seacoast. Even when some of our lands were taken and annexed into other regions, we were still ok with it but if we were to talk historically as is being said about Eko (Lagos), then Benin and Onitsha both belong to Oduduwa (Yoruba) people.

Complex of the people

The prince that founded Benin was called Eweka, he was the son of Oranmiyan who once ruled the people of the region. he founded this city because the most important nobility at Igodomigodo was hostile to the new alien dynasty from Ife and refused for him to rule from the main capital. He had to pay them for the right to lease the territory he ruled from. from this new capital, he built a kingdom designed along Yoruba spirituality like Tegbessou of Dahomey did. for many centuries, Benin paid homage to Ife as its source of leadership and spirituality until the arrival of the British.

This is a known fact of history before the many interesting revisionist stories natives of Benin engage in today to hide a terrible complex that has about how much they owe the Yoruba people for the advancement as a nation starting from the second dynasty. Very much like the complex Igbos have at the mention of Ajayi Crowther as the man who brought Christianity and exposure to Igbo land. historically, in Ajayi Crowther’s journal, he expressed that before his arrival, Igbos lived in hunger and his expedition had the credit of teaching them how to farm and providing them with seeds. It was also Ajayi Crowther who built the first school in Igbo land as well as the first church, having brought Christianity to Igbo land… same Ajayi Crowther as linguistics wrote the first Igbo alphabets and gave them the gift of putting the Igbo language into words. His grandson (Hubert Macaulay) was also the man that would groom Nnamdi Azikiwe from an activist into a politician and hand over the NCNC party to him.

The strong complex of the people of the East makes them struggle so much with Yoruba benevolence to both Benin and Igbo people that they have given many recent revisionist stories about the true ancestry of heroes from the Yoruba nation that played important roles in their emergence from a nation of backward people to one of a people with exposure and knowledge,

No Man’s Land

Onitsha did not exist until the mid-1500s, the people who call Eko (Lagos) no man’s land and the estate of Benin also try to hide the true history of one of the most important Eastern cities. The foundation of Onitsha was laid by Benin nobles and the existence of the city was as a remote satellite extension of Benin, every new Obi must seek legitimacy by receiving a sword of authority from the Oba of Benin and it paid annual tributes to Benin… the most important Igbo figure of all times. Nnamdi Azikiwe confirmed in his book that Onitsha was founded by Benin and he was a direct descendant of his migrant founder from Benin. This means Benin has rights to Onitsha and by extension, Yoruba has rights to Onitsha, since its nobility and spirituality founded Benin. Irrespective, Yoruba people do not care for their stake in these lands. We are blessed with all we need in our ancestral lands.

We don’t need stakes in your land and we don’t argue for rights to it. Don’t argue for our rights to ours. buying lands and building homes in the Southwest does not automatically give you ancestral rights. They are two different issues. Eko (Lagos) was founded by Oduduwa (Yoruba) nobility from Ife. The 12 Idejo chiefs that originally owned the lands of Eko (Lagos) since its founding are Oduduwa (Yoruba) and sons of one father. The OBA that launched a campaign to the western coastline was Oba Orogbhua. He was not interested in the lands of Eko (Lagos), what he wanted was rights to the coast to monopolize trades by the sea.

This was why negotiations were easy between the Idejo chiefs and the Oba, the treaty they signed gave the 12 chiefs rights to their lands while the king appointed by the Oba from Benin, was to regulate commerce and receive royalties. This was why the Idejo chiefs took the British to court when Dosumu ceded Eko (Lagos) to the British crown in 1861, claiming that the Oba of Eko (Lagos) does not have such rights to the lands and could not sign it away. The appellate court ruled in favor of the Idejo chiefs and told the colonial government that they must always compensate the real owners of the land which is the Idejo chiefs anytime they needed land for colonial use in Lagos.

Eko (Lagos) is the land of Aworis and the land owners are the Idejo chiefs. to continue to insult these people by calling their lands no man’s land is a direct insult to their ancestral heritage. If You can’t call Benin and Onitsha a no man’s land, respect Eko (Lagos) and its ancestral owners. Even among us Oodua (Yoruba) people, we respect the right of the ancestral owners of Eko (Lagos). How much more migrants did not know a place called Eko (Lagos) existed before the amalgamation