Edo Civilization: Christianity In Africa Cultural Colonization

 

*Edo Civilization: Christianity In Africa Cultural Colonization*

According to wikipedia, Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion and directed research. education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, however learners can also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.

"civilization" refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure. Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labour, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming and expansionism.

Many Black African Christians assume or atribute Christianity as the reason why Nigeria and most Black world, especially in Africa was and are educated and civilized, but critically looking at the definition of Education and civilization this assumption seems to be false. Education, science and civility were already part of the Great Benin society before Europeans came to the shore of Nigeria through the bight of Benin. Of course Europeans and missionaries who brought Christianity to Nigeria came with their religion, education and culture that have also positively influence their subject to gain assess better living and carriers to improve their lives. Its true most formal schools and colleges in Nigeria today owes their origin to the missionaries. These they mostly take along colonizing every part of the world they went to explore and have dominance. However, it should be noted that Christian religion in the first place was introduce as indoctrinating tool for better slaves and conditioning of the mind than making the slave a better evolution of his self knowledge and actualization. Religious indoctrination was to compliment the economic expliotation and political dominance of the negro world. Christianity was fuse and institutionalized with education of the negro for following reasons.

1. For cultural change (Language, ethics, moral values, etc)

2. Religious indoctrination

3. Mis Education of the Negro self knowledge

4. Political and economic control of the negro world

5. To formulate the negro for better slave and dependency

The Europeans before bringing Christianity to Nigeria and many other Black Africa countries have already experiment it for centuries. They knew what they were doing and why it was a priority evangelizing the Negro. They knew this was the best way to condition their slave, control their sub-conscious minds and emotions. The concept of a Jesus Christ (the white guy) as saviour, reward of heaven, forgiving and loving your enemy, Being born again, choosing of baptism names, praying eyes close to same white guy and mary as your ancestral mother God, etc was to condition the people of a mistaken identity, spiritual self and wrong impression of the real enemy itself. The spreading of Christianity in black Africa was same time or along European exploitation of Africa, large enslavement of Black Africa and massive land grab and colonization.

Since Black Africa fell to this massive evangelism of Christianity the long term effect what they experiencing in their various societies today. The institutionalization of this christian faith is making it almost impossible today to deal with the fraudulent and devastating religion in many African societies.

Today, almost only Blacks go to church, Whites have gone spiritual, with cultism in ascent. The modern Italian, Spanish and most latin Europe countries today, does not go to church; each has his or her personal patron (ancestor) saint for private spiritual comfort. The few odd Whites you find in churches these days are the old school conservatives, stooping over walking sticks with age, and accompanied by teenage grand children.

George Gallup once described America “as a nation of biblical illiterates.” His poll found that less than 50% of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis); three-quarters say Billy Graham delivered the sermon on the Mount; a quarter do not know what is celebrated at Easter (resurrection, Christianity’s foundational plank); 60% cannot name half the ten commandments; 12% think Noah was married to Joan of Arc. The rest of Christendom is not much different.

In 1900, 80% of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and the US. Today, 80% live in the developing world, particularly in Africa. More Presbyterians go to church in Ghana and Nigeria today than in Scotland. In fact, sub-Sahara Africa, (or what they describe as the 10/40 window – the vast swathe of land that lies between the latitudes 10 and 40 north of the equator), is the principal area of battle to capture souls or soul winning today between Islam and Christianity. Religion thrives on emotions and abhours intellectualism. So, for Africans, it is purely emotional, they hardly read, think and research.

The notion of their possible acceptance by the White God and son Jesus Christ is all that matters. The Africans are exercising their hearts all right, through love and sacrifice by devotion to an exteriorized Christ or Muhammad. but exteriorized Christ or Muhammad that do not look anything like yourself, and the Christ that evaporates in three years into thin air, have nothing to offer, and worshipping these alien images, is an insult to intelligence, and a degradation of the African soul. In any case, the heart does not contain all of man’s potential for spiritual growth, life and intellectualism, are the material platforms for evolutionary development in wisdom

*Benin Socio Structure And Civility Before The Coming Of Europeans And Christianity*

(Extract from Naiwu Osahon “How The Benin Empire And Civilization Was Structured And Organised. Edited by Uwagboe Ogieva )

The success of Great Benin society before Christianity or European religion and education was due in part to their belief that the survival of one of their family member is a collective responsibility of every one else in the society. They looked out for the welfare of the others and so created a large family of achievers and an extended family that worked like one mind. To the Great Benin people, Obo (hand) is human’s principal means of fulfillment, achievement and power. It symbolizes his ability and willingness to tame his environment, and supports the notion of recipro city.

A clenched fist, the Benin say, cannot take more than it is holding. To reap profit and abundance, one must be prepared to give or let go. They believed that events on earth move in cycles and that one should live for the benefit of other things.

These are the critical concepts that helped Great Benin society to achieve the tremendous level of social sophistication, civilization and excellence in the arts, administration, conquests and social engineering envied today by modern society.

Man in Great Benin society was not perceived as a loner but as a member of a vibrant group with his or her individual uniqueness in skills and expertise recognized and encouraged to flourish. The Great Benin person was expected to contribute his or her individual uniqueness in talents, knowledge and skills to help build, sustain, and enhance the quality of life of the family, community and society. Obligations and activities were performed generally through age grade groups and guilds. Solidarity to the whole was emphasized above individual rights and loyalties, thereby encouraging the individual involved to develop a sense of duty and obligation to live, work, and if necessary die for the group or community. Broadly, while the junior age grades performed basic or elementary tasks such as clearing paths, caring for public buildings, middle grades adult males handled the more difficult tasks of roofing houses and administrative and executive functions for the community councils.

Even the Great Benin nuclear family was not restricted to the husband, wife and child notion. It embraced an expanding cycle of cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, grand parents, grand uncles, grand aunts and so on. There was usually a head or father figure or ultimate authority known as Okaegbee, recognized by all, and whose words were final in family matters. He was not a dictator, but arrived at decisions through exhaustive consultation, counseling and when necessary, divination. Most times, he was the oldest on the extended family tree and old age was generally considered to be synonymous with wisdom.


In the same way that each extended family had an Okaegbee, or leader, each ward community, village, town, dukedom, had an Odionwere, who more often than not was the oldest person in the society. The community, village, town, or dukedom, organized itself into Otu (age) groups and guilds. Each Otu had seven divisions. The idea of seven started when a group of seven, known as the ‘Ominigie,’ was set up during the Ogiso era. Ominigie was a militant or warrior group that went to war for the society. According to myths, the group accompanied their war activities with music and dance and when they were eventually vanquished, it was said that they danced their way to heaven. Another group of seven was promptly set up after their demise and the rhythm of seven has prevailed since.

Each of the seven divisions of the Otu (age groups) represents special ethos translating roughly as follows:
(a) Vigilance
(b) Oba’s tax collectors
(c) Community publicity officers
(d) Task masters or enforcers
(e) Self help gurus
(f) Pacifiers/judges
(g) Enforcers of loyalty and patriotism to the land and kingdom.

Otu age groups divide as follows: 5 – 15 (Emwin-rhoba-evbo); 16 – 30 (Eroghae); 30 – 50 (Eghele); 50+ (Odion). The oldest male in the community was on his own and was known as the Odionwere. Membership of each group was for life and group members moved into new age groups together. Elevation into the 50+ age group was only by merit, based on a measurable quality of character, achievement, and demonstrable level of wisdom. Therefore, a child who is hard working and precautious could move through the ranks to meet his father. Only one person moves from Odion to Odionwere (leader of the society or community), when the Odionwere’s position is vacant.

Such newly promoted Odionwere, who usually is the oldest person in the community, appoints two new Odions on merit to do the administration and running around for him because of his old age. The same scenario is repeated in the Otu groups that bring neighbouring villages, towns, dukedoms and communities together. Their special responsibilities at the inter community level include military and security services, administering spiritual needs, serving as think tanks and as apex groups known as the Elders Council. Beyond the Elders council is the Enogie, who principally is the head Chief of the group of communities, and is appointed by the Oba who he represents. The title of Enogie entitles the holder to wear coral beads.

Parallel with the Otu groups, which are largely concerned with administrative and security matters, are the guilds. The guilds are set up around professions, and are more or less like modern day trade unions, with a leader or head who is a chief and is appointed by the Oba. The guilds represent all facets of human endeavours. The Iwowa guild, for instance, is led by Chief Ogua and is responsible specifically for the digging of the underground burial chambers of a transited Oba. The Iwowa group is a branch of the Ihogbe, the monarch’s family group that takes care of his ancestral shrine, which includes the original Great Benin deity, and represents the ancestors of the kings.

Other guilds included the goldsmiths, brass smiths and black smiths; olopa (police); public health workers (including medical personnel, and nurses); warriors and peace maintenance or security; market men and women; sewers (fashion designers/producers, weavers); variety of sporting and games groups (such as wrestlers, chess players); farmers; wood carvers, ivory carvers; town criers; barbers; spiritual leaders (such as ‘Obo,’ oguega, (diviners); artistes (drummers, theatrical groups, singers, dancers, clowns, jesters, story tellers); builders, interior decorators etc; Each group lived largely in a specially designated section of town and had its own chiefs appointed by the Oba, and its festivals.

Great Benin people had days for work, play and rest. They observed a four day week, the fourth day, called ‘eken,’ was the rest day, and was reserved for sporting activities, games and all sorts of community programmes. They adopted the lunar calendar of 13 months in a year and 28 days in the month. The thirteenth month of every year was reserved for rest of humans and tools of work. Festivals and ceremonies were devoted to the period to propitiate and bless the tools and workers, and prepare them for another year. There were festivals such as Igue and Ague to celebrate the blessings of the out going year and to usher in the New Year. Other festivals included ones for elders, ancestors, facilities of trade or market days, single deities (such as Eho, Enorho) and Ikpoleki, for sweeping the market, which was more regular. Their primary food stuff consists of yam, cocoyam, plantain, cassava, corn, beans, peppers, okro, mellon tomatoes and other vegetables. Fish and rice came from neighbouring communities. Hunting bush meat is an industry, so they have panty of antelopes, foxes, hares and snails. They rare cows, goats, sheep, fowls….

Industry thrived and involved brass casting, wood carving, leather working, cloth weaving, including ceremonial ones and traditional craft. Great Benin civilization was involved in the smelting of iron, or what is today known as metallurgy, hundreds of years before the advent of whites in their midst. The Great Benin guild of iron-workers got their raw materials from Ineme territory in Akoko Edo, an iron bearing area extending to Itakpa hills in Kogi state from where the modern Ajaokuta steel complex is expecting to get a portion of its raw materials. Great Benin people called the raw steel from Ineme, Akpadan urigho, meaning two hundred cowries worth of precious metal. This was to emphasize the value Great Benin people attached to the material which they melted by separating the pure metal from the slag to produce works of art, jewelry, ornaments, pots and pans, knives, cutlasses, blades, hoes, chains, hundreds of years before they began receiving 100% pure metal from Europe some 500 years ago.

While Portugal and England traded largely in tinsel with Benin as recently as some 500 years ago, Holland brought in large quantities of iron bars, flint-lock guns, dane guns and ovbiosegba (or pistols). The Great Benin guild of iron-workers copied and produced the guns, and this industry is still very strong today in Benin. But Great Benin (Benin) people could not make gun powder, which in the end contributed to their conquest by the British. Benin people relied on the West for their supply of gun powder. The West only needed to dry the source and the guns became useless.

Great Benin people weaved their clothes, created world class masterpieces in art; built beautiful homes with intricately decorated red mud, eighteen inches or more thick, finished with neat thatched roofs. The palaces of the monarchs, nobles and chiefs, consisted of a series of atriums (ikuns), linked internally by corridors, with rooms surrounding each of the trapped rectangular space (oteghodo or impluvium), open to the sky. Their streets in the capital were wide, straight, with the principal ones radiating from a circular or ring road around the Oba’s palace, like a spider’s web. The streets were swept daily, as was every compound in the city. Every citizen who could work, had a job, there was no room for unemployment.

Great Benin people have some of the most engaging, elaborate, colourful, exciting, ennobling, courtship, engagement, wedding, pregnancy, successful delivery, naming the child, burial, memorial or anniversary, honouring etc, ceremonies in the world, incorporating singing, dancing, feasting, and lavishly making merry. They wean a child for two to three years and insist on breast-feeding to bond the child to the mother and ensure discipline and good behaviour in the child.

Their mode of salutation in the early morning hours, is based on traditions of family trees. Although marriages across family groups have broadened the family tree structure, every Great Benin person can generally use their family mode of salutation or greetings in the morning to trace their family trees, hundreds if not thousands of years back. This author’s family, for instance, principally came from the lagiesa, lamogun and lavhieze family trees. Great Benin inheritance laws favour the oldest son, unless there is a will.

Myths put the number of dances by the Great Benin people at 201. There is a special dance, at least, for every occasion and dances range from ligho, ileghe, edakpaese, ohogho (for second burial), ugba (religious), izabede, (man and woman dance), oyingin (social dance), eghughu agba (no rhythm, every one dances as he or she likes), ekpo (masquerade) dance, olude and so on. The olude dance, came about when Omo N’ Oba Ehengbuda, the greatest mystic of all Benin Oba’s, thought he could still walk into heaven as it was in the beginning of time in Great Benin history.

He was very old and senile but death was refusing to relieve him of his discomfort. One day, he assembled members of the palace society and led them to Ughoton, hoping to find the way to heaven there. Waddling, rather than swim, mid way into the Imimikpo River from the shallow side with members of his group in toe, a voice told him it was no longer possible to walk straight from earth to heaven. Disappointed, he returned to the palace where the palace ‘Iwebo society’ developed the waddling dance with raised hands above the head to mimic the monarch and his group’s efforts to engage death through River Imimikpo. The palace house keepers, known as the ‘Iweguae society,’ learnt the dance to rejoice that the monarch came back. Olude dance is performed in memory of that event yearly.

The Great Benin people evolved a very complex, elaborate, detailed and efficient machinery of government based upon a monarchical type of administration with spiritual and temporal authority. The head of government, who is like a modern day prime minister, is Chief Iyase, a hereditary title passed from father to the eldest son. To speak for the king or on behalf of the people to the king, are the Ekhaemwen. Each Ekhaemwen is like a modern day minister of government with specifically assigned duties in the palace and the land.

Benin chiefs are distinctly decked out in rich flowing white garbs with precious (ivie) coral beads around the necks and wrists; special hair cut that stands them out uniquely and with dignity, and are heralded always with their sword of honour. In fact, the hair style of Benin chiefs is similar to Pharaoh Ramses II’s famous helmet, while the small circles on the helmet appear also on many Benin bronzes. Benin Queens wear the world famous ‘okuku’ hairstyle resembling a packed high Afro, embellished with expensive (ivie) coral beads. Benin Queens’ hairstyles are identical to that of Pharaoh Mycerinus (Fourth-Dynasty), and Pharaoh Sesostris I (Twelfth Dynasty).

Benin kings had immense political powers, as ultimate judges in court matters, the deliverers of death penalty, the receivers of taxes and tributes, the regulators of trade, the nominal owners of the land of the kingdom, chief executives and lawmakers, and principal custodians of customs and traditions. Their powers were, however, hedged with checks and balances to prevent excesses. A retinue of advisers, Elders’ councils and taboos guide their utterances and actions. Their powers are held in trust for the entire community and cannot be exercised without consultation with other levels of authority, such as the kingmakers.

Great Benin society had science of craft and art works, medicine, architecture, hygiene, diet, develop science of constructive language, symbols, built great Benin moat, walls, streets, roads and all that gave them comfortable society. They developed own deities and spiritual consciouness that identified with nature and their enviroment.

*All these cultural heritage, moral values and socio engineering that made the Great Benin Empire to live great and attain her glorious height are gradually fading away if not almost wipe out for Europains Christian religious cultures and values as people go deeper and deeper into obsesion for foreign religion*

*Uwagboe Ogieva is an author, freelance writer, Licensed and certified IT Professional. Web & App expert. Initiator Of Great Benin Origins Diaspora Organisation, Leader and founder of Oseghe Edo Association. CEO Of Otedo Web, App And Graphics Professional Nig. Ltd. Director of Media (MD) National Youth Council Of Nigeria Europe Chapter.

Source: https://edonationsatelite.blogspot.com/2024/07/edo-civilization-christianity-in-africa.html