{"id":280,"date":"2017-05-15T19:02:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T19:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madhousenaija.com\/?p=280"},"modified":"2017-05-15T19:02:08","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T19:02:08","slug":"lagos-okunnu-rubbishes-no-mans-land-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=280","title":{"rendered":"Lagos: Okunnu Rubbishes No Man&#8217;s Land Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"auto\">Former Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing and a true-blood Lagosian,Alhaji Femi Okunnu, 84, rubbished the claims that Lagos State is a no man&#8217;s land.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Okunnu who\u00a0goes down memory lane on events that led to the creation of the state,<strong><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>said,&#8221;There is no no-man\u2019s land. There are always some people who are original settlers. In the case of Lagos, it\u2019s a misnomer to say Lagos is a no-man\u2019s land. It\u2019s rubbish. Absolute rubbish! Lagos was peopled by the Aworis and Awori land spread from Badagry through to Ota. They settled mostly in Ikeja, a division of Lagos. The Idejo chiefs, the white cap chiefs, who are the land owning chiefs, are basically Aworis and some of them are now Obas.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8221;I\u2019m talking about the Oniru, The Olumegbon, Aromire, Oluwa, Ojora, Oloto and a couple others. After them, waves of immigrants, from today\u2019s Niger State, started trooping in. I\u2019m talking of the Tapas, the Nupes. I have Nupe blood. My father\u2019s mother was a daughter of a Nupe man, Umoru from Idunsagbe in Lagos Island. Mind you, I\u2019m talking of my great, great, grand-father; so you can imagine how long we\u2019re talking about and how far our history dates back in Lagos. The Oshodi family of Lagos were originally Tapa. My wife is an Oshodi; Oyekan Oshodi. The Chief Imam of Lagos and all his great grand fathers were Tapa, owing to their vast knowledge in the Quran. Now, you would not say they are not original Lagosians because we\u2019re talking of a history that dates back well over three hundred years.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8221;Later we had another batch of immi grants over a period of time \u2013 those who had been taken into slavery in the North and South America and the West Indies but who had been freed following the abolition of slave trade about 170 years ago. Some of them also came in from Freetown, Sierra Leone. That\u2019s where we have the Saro, Eko connection. They settled in the Olowogbowo area.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8221;Then we had the Binis from Benin (present Edo State). They invaded Lagos and settled in the best part of what we now call Isale-Eko. Oba Ado and all successive kings of Lagos are of Benin. You won\u2019t say they are not Lagosians because we are talking of hundreds of years ago.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8221;Yes, I was coming there. The Brazilian Quarters were made up of another set of returnees: the Agustos, the Dasilva, Marinho, Pereira and their descendants, who returned from Brazil and other parts of South America. So when you talk of indigenes of Lagos. These are the people who arrived Lagos Island and environment over two hundred years ago. So there is no controversy over the indigenes of Lagos. It is complete ignorance.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">&#8221;The Binis took over the reign of Lagos by conquest. The Aworis were there before them. They were the original settlers. Iga Idunganran itself was a gift to Oba Ado by Oloye Aromire, a white cap chief. He owned the land that the palace occupies till today. That is why till today, we have sections of Isale-Eko with Bini connections. When you hear of Idumota, Idunsagbe, Idunmaigbo, Idun-tafa; the word idun had bini origin. And then we had some chiefs who came with King Ado. That is another wide area. But suffice to say that Obanikoro, was a medicine chief who came with King Ado; so is Ashogbon. In Bini, it is Asogbon. There is also Bajulaye, who originally was Bazuaye. So the Bini connection is very deep. As a matter of fact, the corpses of all the obas, from King Ado through to Oba Adele I, who died at about 1834, were all taken to Benin for burial,&#8221; he said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Federal Commissioner for Works and Housing and a true-blood Lagosian,Alhaji Femi Okunnu, 84, rubbished the claims that Lagos State is a no man&#8217;s land. Okunnu who\u00a0goes down memory lane on events that led to the creation of the state,\u00a0said,&#8221;There is no no-man\u2019s land. There are always some people who are original settlers. In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[328,138,329],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-femi-okunnu","tag-lagos","tag-zik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}