LOOKING AT YORUBA LOOK AT IGBO AND JEWISH HISTORY

By

Remy Ilona

I woke up to see that a colleague tagged my name to a matter that I had addressed definitively.

Ooni of Ife, one of the premier kings of the great Yoruba people, one of the gods of Yorubaland by Yoruba beliefs, had noted in a video which went viral, that the Jews are descendants of the Igbos. He also noted that Igbos had lived in Ife, Yorubaland.

What his majesty said caused a furor in Nigeria when he made the statement. It did because it went against many things that many people assumed. Also many people including Ooni himself did not fully understand everything that he said.

Yorubas, the people that Ooni is one of their deities have a religious belief that all life, all humans, began at Ile Ife, Yorubaland. Ooni, a believer in this Yoruba myth of origins simply assumed that as all humans, i.e., all Europeans, Asians and Africans "came from Ile Ife", that Igbos must have come from Ile Ife too. And how did he arrive at the conclusion that Jews are descendants of Igbos? I can only guess that he like many people must have thought that as Africa is believed to be the oldest habitat of humans, and Africans the oldest humans, that Igbos as Africans would be the fathers and mothers of Jews whom he must have assumed to be 'whites', i.e., Europeans. As you can see many of the assumptions are not based on serious studies of any kind.

I'll reiterate for clarity sake the relationship between the Igbos and the Jews. Igbos are the Hebrews. The Hebrews became the Israelites. Jews are descendants of Israelites. The term Igbo which has been written as Ibo, Ebo, etc., at different times, is simply a variant of the terms that Hebrew which btw is English, has been, over millenniums.

I'll write more on this, especially on the need for Igbos and Jews to find ways to begin to work together. They can begin from harmonizing their history, and from there skip to other things. As they dilly dally, outsiders are telling or mis-telling their story.