'Jews got their enterprise from Ndigbo-Acholonu

Nigerians, greatest people on earth - Acholonu

'Jews got their enterprise from Ndigbo'

Writer Cathrine Acholonu is a professor of History. She has writen several seminal books and executed some landmark scholarly researches, among them her studious trace of the ancestral root of the historic Black American slave, Oladah Equiano, to a kindred in Isseke town, Ihiala, Anambra state. On the contrary, The one time senior special adviser on Culture to former President Olusegun Obasanjo has also worked extensively, on the history of Igbo people and the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade routes. Her most recent book, They Lived Before Adam, digs the veracity  of the notion held in some quarters that the Igbo people hail from the Hebrew race. In the book which won two major awards (the Phillis Wheatley Award for Work that Transcends Culture, Boundary and the Perception and the Flora Nwapa Award for Literary Excellence) at the just ended Harlem Book Fair, held at Schomburg Center, New York, Acholonu advances that Igbo culture actually, gave rise to the Jewish one. She discusses the issue, the book and other issues with EMMANUEL AGOZINO. Excerpts:

In your new book, They Lived Before Adam, you posited that the Jews borrowed from Igbo culture. That sounds interesting. How did you arrive at that position?

Well, Abraham’s story is only 4000 years old. So the only way to explain all the countless cultural and language similarities between the Jews and the Igbos is that the older culture influenced the younger one. Besides Abraham was a Sumerian and our findings were that Sumerians were a Kwa stock to which the Igbo belong. The first inhabitants of Sumer (Mesopotamia) shared every item of culture with our ancestors, as we detailed in our book, so much so that if you found yourself as a Nigerian in ancient Sumer, you would think you were in your native village. You would even drink palm wine and wash you cloth with dudu Osun.

You argument that the Jews may have encountered the Igbos on their arrival at Canaan is intriguing, can you explain?

Canaanites, who were living in Palestine before Abraham came there from Sumer were also a branch of the West African Kwa stock, to which belong the Yoruba, Benin, Igbo, Igala, Ashanti, Akan and many others. When Ham, the ancestor of the Kwa was coming to Africa as directed by Noah, a branch of his Canaanite grand children stayed back in Palestine. Abraham met them there and wanted to exterminate them, but without success. He acquired their mystical culture and language. The language they spoke is very similar to Anambra Igbo dialect because Anambra people were mostly Hamite migrants who together with the Iduu/Oduduwa group came down from the Middle East after a long sojourn in the Nok city that Ham founded in ancient Nigerian Middle Belt. That language is still preserved in Hebrew and in Egyptian native language. In fact all Nigerians are children of Ham. The Northerners are Cushites while the Southerners are mostly Canaanites. And they all mingled together. The only people outside this group are the Forest-dwelling natives who descended from the first people. These were direct descendants of the ancestors of Adam. But they too are related to the rest because the reason Ham came to West Africa to settle was because Adam prophesied (as narrated in The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Gospel) to his son Seth that his descendants will return to Africa, to dwell with the children of his (Adam’s) original ancestors.

The leaders of the Israeli state, the Knesset has never made any official statement on the said Igbo-Jews stuff as it has done with the Ethiopian Jews for instance. How you do see that?

 That’s because they know that there’s no  “Igbo Jewish stuff.” Why would an Igbo want to be a Jew? Is he not content to be Igbo? The Jews are very intelligent people. They got that from the Igbos, and they know it. They will be finding it funny that Igbo people want to be Jews. It is the Jews who should be looking for their ancestry in Igbo land, not vice versa, because they got their enterprise, flay for technological innovations, sharpness of the intellect from their Igbo/Nri/ Nok ancestors.

I tell you, every set of people are gifted in different ways. A country should maximize the gains of each tribe’s capabilities. It is tribalism and Nepotism in high places in Nigeria that is making Igbo people not be ‘the Jews of Nigeria’ – I mean in terms of Science and Technology. Our culture is older than that of the Jews, because historians and linguists say we have been here for at least 6,000 years, while the Jewish genealogy is only 4,000 years old. Our research, however, says we have been here from the very beginning of time.

Nigerians have not forgotten the debate that followed your book, Olaudah Equiano why did you write it?

It was a result of two and half years of field work and library research, which no one has disproved to this day. Of course some people just argue with my findings for argument sake. But no research has proved me wrong till today. Olaudah Equiano, Black Africa’s first autobiographer/historian in English and hero of the Abolition was an indigene of Isseke in Ihiala, local government of Anambra state, Nigeria.

Your other book, The Gram Code of African Adam (2005) also suggests that the biblical Adam may have been an African. This also keeps many wondering how you arrive at your conclusions.

There are ancient stone inscriptions in the forests and farmlands of Cross River State, Nigeria, which have been there thousands of years before any white man came to these lands. We transcribed some of the inscriptions on the stones and found that some of the letters are Egyptian, Some Sumerian, others Indian. This is not possible unless these other writings originated from the Nigerian environment and were dispersed from here to other continents. One of the inscriptions we transcribed gave the Hebrew name of Eve, spoken (according to the Bible) by Adam at the moment Eve was created. That word is Ish-she. We were shocked to hear the Ikom villagers telling us that their ancestors told them that the first mother of mankind lived in their area and that her name was Shi-she. They pointed to the same  monolith with the Ish-she inscription as the monolith dedicated to her. More than that, they told us that she was the first woman to bear a child by pregnancy (just like Eve) and that her first son Mbom, was the being through whom sin and death came into the world (just like Cain)! That was for us the Catch 22.

Do you arrive at this conclusion by oral tradition, archaeological method or how

We employed oral/written traditions of Africa and other continents, linguistic analysis, archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, analysis of symbols and art forms, ancient and lost writings, esoteric literatures of the world, et cetera.

Some people say you are a radical academic, others have one or two issues with you, especially as result of the kind of positions you take in your books. So, who is Catherine Acholonu?

A restless searcher after the hidden truths about ancient Africa. And I dare say, a researcher who is not afraid to reveal her findings no matter how unpopular or controversial. It is the truth that drives us. We have had too much falsehood being bandied-about, concerning Africans and their contributions to human civilizations. I don’t want my children imbibing the mumbo-jumbo stuff I was made to believe in school.

As a scholar of African Studies with deep inquest into Igbo history, what do you think is Igbo problem in Nigeria

 The problem is that too many people are demonizing the Igbo in this country, and that is not good for progress either for the Igbo or of the country. He who holds another down, holds himself down. A jailer is always in jail longer than his inmates, because he has made a job of being in jail. As a matter of fact the Igbo, like all the other tribes, have, each a role that only they can play. If you light a lamp and put it under the bed it will soon burn the bed. If any tribe –Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Efik – is prevented from playing their god-given role, the country will continue to wallow.

Secondly, most leaders of this nation have not been fair to the Igbo. Many of them prefer to do business with the misfits of Igbo society as a means of impoverishing the Igbo leadership.

Thirdly, loses of the Civil War have not been in any way rectified. For example, the Abandoned Property issue which wiped out the fortunes of many leading families in Igbo land was never resolved. The loses incurred in the war was unquantifiable, and people just trudge along trying to make a living in spite of having been utterly devastated by the war. The center has not been holding and no one is doing anything about it. Then, on the spiritual angle, the millions who lost their lives in the war are not being remembered by our leaders in this country or in Igbo land proper. So their souls are still wandering and they are accusing us (Nigerians) before God, crying for vengeance. If we remember them and offer prayers for their forgiveness and their repose, they will allow us to move on. If they don’t move on, we can’t move on. It is not a matter of being in power. There is power that passes power, as we all know. And we all know in this country that if we don’t give honour to the dead, they won't let us rest. So, when shall we give honour to our Civil War Dead?

 Every January 14 (Armed Forces And Remembrance Day) our country remembers the unknown soldiers who died in the war, and church services and prayers are offered for them. When shall we remember the War Victims on the Biafra side, known and unknown? Are they any less human because they fought or died on the losing side?

What happened during your recent visit to the United States where your book was well received?

Our book won two major awards at the Harlem Book Fair, which took place at Schomburg Center, New York: The Phillis Wheatley Award for Work that Transcends Culture, Boundary and Perception and the Flora Nwapa Award for Literary Excellence. We were given a 30-minute slot to talk live, on C-Span Book TV about our findings as published in They Lived Before Adam.

What is your view on Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and other notable Nigerian writers of early generation?

Without doubt those two, with Chris Okigbo, are some of the greatest writers on the planet. Yet, interestingly, as I had said years ago, the greatest Nigerian writer is yet to be published. I am being proved right with the Chimamanda phenomenon. It shows that Nigeria has so much to offer, yet, when you consider the odds a Nigerian has to contend with to be human, you can believe me that Chimamanda is still not our best. Someone said that if she was not living in USA, no matter what she wrote, no one would know. That is very true. So, then, you know what I am talking about. So many Achebes, Soyinkas and Chimamandas have died, unread, unpublished. Nigerians must be the greatest people in the world, and the most enterprising, so then you can imagine the quantum amount of wastage of human resources that our leaders indulge in by giving us directionless leadership. You don’t believe me? God willing, one day I shall demonstrate it to you.