Some Aspects of the Otu System of the Isa Sub-tribes of the Edo People of Southern Nigeria

Africa ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
H. L. M. Butcher

Opening ParagraphThe Isa people are a sub-tribe of the Edo or Bini tribe, who inhabit a large area to the East of Benin City—their parent town—called ‘Esan’ or Ishan, which is bordered on the East by the River Niger. The language spoken is a dialect of Edo, and their customs are a development of those found in Benin. The people are organized into a large number of independent communities, some of which are true clans (according to the definition given in Notes and Queries on Anthropology), and others which can only be described as ‘Village Groups’. Each of these clans or groups has at its head a hereditary chief called Onogie (pl. Enogie), who traces his descent to the original founder from Benin or elsewhere, who was given the land by the Oba of Benin. The title of Onogie was also given by the Oba to recognize his right to rule over the community which was composed of his descendants and immigrants from other districts.

Africa ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 106-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. K. Meek

Opening ParagraphMost people are aware that Nigeria is named after the river Niger, but many may be surprised to hear that the word Niger is not derived from the Latin adjective niger meaning ‘black’, but from a Libyan and Sudanic root, meaning ‘water“or ‘river’. This word was used by the geographer Ptolemy some 1,800 years ago in the Greek form of ‘Niγɛιρ’, and it is used to-day by the tribes of lake Chad in the form of njer. But Pliny employed the form Nigris, and from very early times the land of the Niger was called Nigritia. The modern name of Nigeria was only invented forty-six years ago by Miss Flora Shaw, who became, quite appropriately, the wife of Lord Lugard, the master-builder of Nigeria. In a letter to The Times, written in 1897, Miss Shaw said, ‘It may be permissible to coin a shorter title for the agglomeration of pagan and Mahomedan States which have been brought, by the exertion of the Royal Niger Company, within the confines of a British Protectorate.’ Her suggestion that the new title should be Nigeria was at once accepted. But it did not receive official recognition until the territories of the Royal Niger Company were formally taken over by the Imperial Government in 1900, and were formed into the two administrations known as Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria. Fourteen years later these two administrations were amalgamated into a single Nigeria, which then became, next to India, the most populous dependency in the British Empire.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-123
Author(s):  
Ida Bagus Brata ◽  
A.A. Gde Putra Pemayun

This study examines "Interpersonal Society between offspring of satria dalem with the community in Tohpati Village Klungkung Bali. Interpersonal Society Skill is a skill that individuals must take in interacting with individuals in interacting with other individuals or groups of individuals. Interpersonal skills are what one uses when communicating and dealing with others face to face. Society implies that society is essential for building self-concept, for survival, self-actualization, to gain happiness, avoiding stress and dependence, among others through entertaining society, and fostering relationships. Through social society can work together with community members (families, study groups, universities, village environment, city, and the country as a whole) to achieve common goals. Problems in this research: how to implement interpersonal society between offspring satria dalem with society in Tohpati Village Klungkung Bali. The purpose of this research is to know and describe interpersonal society within the community in Tohpati Village Klungkung Bali. This research uses the descriptive qualitative method, by using proportional sampling technique consisting of the family head of satria dalem with the society in Tohpati Village Klungkung Bali. The results of this study show that the people of satria dalem descent and the people who live in Tohpati Village have implemented good interpersonal society implementation including: openness, mutual support, positive behavior, empathy and equality, it is proven that all citizens are united in advancing Tohpati Village Klungkung Bali, proven human development index is increasing due to mutual trust, there is togetherness, warmth, comfort feel valued in doing their respective tasks to build the forward Tohpati Village Klungkung.


2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Sofie Henricson

Urban linguistic landscapes consist of various kinds of signs in different languages, together transmitting a myriad of messages to the people living in, visiting or passing through the city. Official authorities are the authors of some signs, e.g. street names and tourist information, while businesses operating on a local or global level are the authors of other signs, e.g. advertisements and information about opening hours. In addition, individual persons or groups of people give their input to the urban linguistic landscapes, e.g. by attaching a sticker to a bus stop or writing a slogan on a park bench. The current article explores this third, unofficial layer of the urban linguistic landscape, and the topics, discourses and ideologies it encompasses. Through a pilot study of the activist linguistic landscapes at two railway stations in Helsinki, the article discusses the methodological underpinnings of this kind of linguistic landscape research.


Africa ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Mansell Prothero

Opening ParagraphReaders of Africa will be well aware of population migration as a characteristic feature of a continent where movement between one part and another is largely unrestricted as compared with the more settled parts of the world. There is much evidence of large-scale tribal migrations in the past, of the age-old seasonal wanderings of herders, and of recent labour migration to centres of mineral and industrial production, the last particularly in Central and South Africa. Information is more limited concerning the features of labour migration in West Africa at the present day. In general it is thought that migrants leave their home areas, after the harvest at the commencement of the dry season, to seek work elsewhere for a period of from three to six months and then return to take up farming with the commencement of the next rains. The major source area for these migrants is to the north of the tenth parallel where the wet season is concentrated into a period of about four months, thus severely restricting agricultural activity. Cultivation during the dry season is possible only on a very limited scale. There is thus a considerable period of the year when the primary economic activity of the people is not possible. It is logical that they should seek work elsewhere.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Deborah Alaigba ◽  

Gully erosion remains a major threat to the people of Benin City. This study applies Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and geospatial techniques to evaluate vulnerability to gully erosion in Benin City, Nigeria. Five essential criteria were identified based on literature, and evaluation by experts. Pairwise Comparison Matrix (PCM) was obtained and weights for each of the PCM were determined using AHP. The consistency of generated weights obtained is not above 0.07. The method resulted in a gully erosion vulnerability model. Analysis of the model revealed that 52.1% (488.69Km2) of the area is vulnerable to gully erosion, while 3.4% (32.37 Km2) was found to be highly vulnerable to gully erosion. Fieldwork was conducted to establish the people’s perception and identify the causes and control measures for the gully erosion problem in the area. Findings on the major contributing factor that leads to the gully erosion formation showed that lack of drainage system accounts for 56.25%, improper land use practice account for 25%, and bad road construction (18.75%). About 50% of the respondents are of the view that an adequate drainage system would go a long way to mitigate the gully erosion. This present study has provided information on the state of gully erosion vulnerability in Benin City through mapping of vulnerable areas.


2015 ◽  
pp. 555-576
Author(s):  
Sylvain Lavelle

The elaboration of some paradigms of governance lies upon the opposition between the democratic and the non-democratic, namely, as will be shown and defined, the technocratic (skilled-based power), the ethocratic (virtue-based power), and the epistocratic (wisdom-based power). The point in this opposition is that, contrary to the democratic paradigm, the non-democratic ones assume that the condition for social rules or decisions to be valid is their reflecting, discussing and making by an elite of experts, virtuous or wise individuals or groups. There is no doubt in these paradigms a basic distrust as to the ability of the people to take in charge the public affairs and then to elaborate the appropriate standards and norms accounting for the regulation of actions and conducts. The re-construction of these four paradigms (the democratic and the non-democratic) can be illuminating as regards the interpretation of the actual expert and law-driven trends in the ethical governance of technology. It appears, indeed, that the paradigms of technocracy as well as that of ethocracy still operate in the design of governance settings aimed at regulating research and innovation projects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-182
Author(s):  
Gideon I. OGU ◽  
Faith I. AKINNIBOSUN

Salmonella species is one of the most significant food-related pathogens of public health concern, whose leading vehicles of transmission to humans are chicken products. Hence, this study investigated the occurrence of Salmonella in chicken meat in correlation to their retailing equipment/environments of open markets located in Warri, Benin City, Akure and Ado-Ekiti metropolis (Southern Nigeria).  A total of 680 samples comprising raw chicken carcass (n = 240 muscle tissues), rinsing water (n = 60), hovering houseflies (n = 200) and swabs from retailing table (n = 60), cutting knives (n = 60) and meat storage containers (n = 60) were collected and analysed using standard techniques. Salmonella was recovered in 105 samples, presenting a prevalence rate of 15.4% (105/680). Rinsing water (40.0%) had the highest rate, followed by chicken carcass and retailing table (16.7%), storage containers (18.3%), hovering flies (9.0%), and then cutting knives (3.3%). The prevalence of Salmonella was highest in Benin City samples (24.7%; P<0.05), followed by Warri samples (15.9%), Ado-Ekiti (11.9%) and Akure (9.4%) being the least. The mean Salmonella counts (CFU/mL) per sample revealed that Benin City (0.09 × 102 - 5.49 × 106) yielded the highest Salmonella load, followed by Warri (0.00 - 6.11 × 105), Ado-Ekiti (0.00 - 5.49 × 104) and Akure (0.00 - 3.02 × 104). These findings suggest that the occurrence of Salmonella in commercial chicken meat is still high in most of the study locations and the rinsing water, tables and storage containers could be potential transmission routes. Adequate thermal treatment measures are recommended before consummation of commercial chicken meat within the regions.


Africa ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diedrich Westermann

Opening ParagraphThe following remarks are not addressed to specialists, but to those Europeans and Africans working in Africa who have for professional reasons an interest in getting to know the native better and, if possible, in making this knowledge available to a wider circle. This applies pre-eminently to missionaries. They, more than any other body of men, have an interest in studying the people among whom they work. It is their aim to transform the inner life of the tribe and of the individual. They are co-operating in creating a new religious, moral, and often social order. Only those who know the traditional environment of the native have the opportunity and the right of effecting such a transformation, as they are thus in a position to forge links between the old and the new, and in consequence will make the new ideas develop naturally from the old ways of thought. Old traditions must not be pushed on one side and ignored, on the contrary they should be carefully studied to see if there is not embedded in them something that can be incorporated in the new order, or something that has to be transformed.


Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Berntsen

Opening ParagraphIn their initial interaction with the Colonial powers, several East African peoples such as the Maasai, the Turkana, the Sebei, the Karamojong, and the Nandi—all organized through some type of age-based institution—united around prophetic leaders, diviners, or ritual experts who mobilized men from several territorial sections to confront the intruders. This ad hoc military unity was necessarily short-lived, usually ending with the defeat of the people by the colonial power and see the imprisonment or death of the prophetic leader involved. (See Fosbrooke 1948: 12-19; Merker 1910: 67-105; Jacobs 1965: 20-108; Dyson-Hudson 1966: 15-16; Gulliver 1950: 229, 240; Meinertzhagen 1956: 222 ff; Weatherby 1962: 200-12; 1967: 133-44; Lamphear 1976: 225-43.) While ethnological studies of various age-organizations often mention that diviners or prophets provided professional services for the members of an age-group at their ceremonies, no one has examined the process by which a prophetic leader or diviner established his legitimacy during periods of peace so that he might lead the people during times of crisis. An examination of the prophetic institution among the Maasai and the relationship between the prophets and the members of the age-sets may provide some insight into the process, especially the manner in which prophets emerged as leaders of the people during two major crises in the history of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai: the Ilaikipiak war and the rinderpest pan-zootic.


Africa ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Gutmann

Opening ParagraphThe State in its essential nature is power. Its character is determined by the force with which it asserts its distinction from neighbouring states, by its dealing with the organic bonds in which the life of the people finds expression, and by its success in absorbing into and developing within its own structure the underlying spirit of those bonds. The origin of the State's consciousness of power lies at the point in the interlacing roots of tribal organization where the tension between associations based on kinship and those based on age brings about a change of balance, and leadership begins to pass to the latter, the age-class becoming a warrior class which outgrows the clan and subjects kinship-groupings to its own leaders. Once this change in leadership has taken place, that is to say, when no longer the spirit of the clan but the spirit of the age-class becomes dominant, then, by reason of the resulting tightening-up of the forces of war and of expansion, it is only a question of time before the age-class associations pass into a system of vassalage, with leaders who emerge from the age-grade system and acquire an authority more or less political in character. With the individualization of the leadership goes the differentiation of function in the State, which is first required in the organization of the army. Henceforward the tasks in the service of the State are no longer dependent on a man's place in the tribal organization, but upon accomplishments which can be learned. To acquire these forms of skill, to become proficient in their use and to obtain the advantages secured by them becomes an absorbing task which is pursued in common and given stability by associations for the purpose. This is the birth of organization. Without such organizations the State cannot take form, for they alone ensure to it the concentration of the primitive forces of the tribe for the accomplishment of the aims of the State. Thus these organized associations become agencies to develop and foster the consciousness of statehood. The tribal community consciousness which still persists in the organic tribal relationships and in their leadership systems is gradually, under the absorptive power of the new state-consciousness, forced back into the realm of mere emotion and habit and finally deprived entirely of its spiritual leadership. So that what is in reality the starting-point of man's spiritual existence, namely, his membership of an organic and tribal order of society, comes to be regarded as something purely natural and as the sphere of the instinctive preservation of the species.


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