Olaudah Equiano® Profile picture
Sep 24, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read Read on X
“She was called Phillis, because that was the name of the ship that brought her, and Wheatley, which was the name of the merchant who bought her. She was born in Senegal. In Boston, the slave traders put her up for sale:
-she's seven years old! She will be a good mare! Image
She was felt, naked, by many hands.
At thirteen, she was already writing poems in a language that was not her own. No one believed that she was the author. At the age of twenty, Phillis was questioned by a court of eighteen enlightened men in robes and wigs.
She had to recite texts from Virgil and Milton and some messages from the Bible, and she also had to swear that the poems she had written were not plagiarized. From a chair, she gave her long examination, until the court accepted her:
She was a woman, she was black, she was a slave, but she was a poet. "
Phillis Wheatley., was the first African-American writer to publish a book in the United States.
#BlackHistory
#TransAtlanticSlavery
#BlackLivesMatter
#History

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Olaudah Equiano®

Olaudah Equiano® Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @RealOlaudah

Mar 28
I am writing to bring to the attention of the public a grave issue that is plaguing the telecoms industry in Nigeria, and we seek your urgent intervention in addressing this matter.

A Chinese foreign entity that we all know has been exerting undue influence and engaging in malicious activities to dominate the telecoms space in Nigeria. This entity has been systematically discrediting local companies and sabotaging their contracts with major Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in the country.
These malicious actions include deliberate and coordinated attacks on the network infrastructure to degrade performance, giving them an unfair edge to reclaim contracts. Such attacks not only undermine the quality of service but also pose a significant threat to our national critical infrastructure. How could any country allow this? @PoliceNG and @OfficialDSSNG, should please look into this.
Furthermore, it has come to light that this Chinese company, which was once a direct contractor to the MNOs, lost contracts to local companies but is now resorting to bribery and sabotage to regain control. This is a blatant disregard for fair competition and local content regulations. We call on our regulators (@NgComCommission) and reference that presidential order on local content be adhered to.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 21
THE ODI MASSACRE:

On November 4th, 1999

An armed gang killed 7 policemen in the community of Odi, Bayelsa State. A few days later, they killed 5 more policemen.

President Obasanjo immediately wrote the excerpt below to the Governor of Bayelsa state, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, giving him 2 weeks to fish out the members of the gang & arraign them in a criminal court.

Many may not know, but the gang that killed those policemen was used by the governor & his party (PDP) during democratic elections in February 1999 to commit illegalities, and Obasanjo already knew this

The problem was that Alamieyeseigha and the powers that be left them to run riot in various villages, towns, and communities in Bayelsa.
After the two week ultimatum, the governor couldn’t seem to arrest a known criminal & political thug who he used during his elections in February 1999.

So Obasanjo sent the minister of Police Affairs, Major-General David Jemibewon (rtd.) and Senate President, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo to speak to Gov Alamieyeseigha.

He kept telling the same story, but as they pressed the governor harder, he gave up one name…

Ken Niweigha aka Daddy Ken

Ken Niweigha was said to be many things

- a gang leader
- a career militant
- a highway robber
- a renowned cultist
- a kidnapper
- a sea pirate on Nigerian waters.

Some say Ken was part of The Supreme Egbesu, aka Egbesu Boys & and the Asawana Boys, both affiliated with the IYC - The Ijaw Youth Council.

Here -

Ken was also said to be the son of a Police Officer who chased away his father’s wives & used their house as a commander for his criminal activities.
For his role in the election rigging, Ken Niweigha was to be compensated, but he got used and dumped. With the guns and reputation he had, he began his reign of terror on Yenagoa and other communities.

Obasanjo knew all of these.

Ken’s reign lasted from the elections in February 1999 until September 1999 when a Police Area Commander in Yenagoa, Mr. Thomas Jokotola, CSP, led an operation to dislodge Ken and his gang from their ‘Command Center’ and put an end to his reign of terror.

Jokotola succeeded in killing & arresting many of Ken’s associates, especially in the ‘Black Market’ area of Yenagoa, but as Ken’s gang escaped, they met soldiers at Habour Road, Yenegoa & killed all the soldiers.

Two months after that, on November 4th, 1999, CSP Thomas Jokotola entered Odi with 6 other policemen on a special operation.

Ken and his Gang ambushed CSP Jokotola and his men.

In the end, all 7 policemen were murdered in Odi by Ken and his Asawana boys.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 20
On October 29, 1974, the Nigerian Ministry of Defence, through the Ministry of External Affairs, wrote to Nigerian missions and embassies abroad that it wanted to buy tonnes of cement to build barracks for its post-civil war armed forces of 200,000 officers and men. The Nigerian Army had just about 8,000 personnel before the war. The ministry not only made that open call for supply of cement, it avoided competitive bidding; it fixed the price at $60/per ton. Analysts noted that that offer price was five dollars more than the prevailing world market price. But, no wahala. Price and pricing have never been a problem for Nigeria. In fact, at that point in our growth (or decadence), the problem we had wasn't money, it was what to spend it on.

So, between December 1974 and June 1975, our Ministry of Defence, which needed just 6 (six) million metric tonnes of cement, awarded 69 contracts for 16.23 million metric tonnes valued at almost $1billion. Other agencies and departments of government soon got on board the cement armada. History says half of the world's cement was diverted to Nigeria. One researcher (Fabian Ihekweme, 2000) found that "approximately half the merchant ships in the world which were suitable for carrying cement became involved in supplying Nigeria." An American newspaper reported that "the massive orders led to an armada of ships anchored off the Lagos coastline...stretching as far as the eye could see. Many were decrepit hulks manned by skeleton crews dispatched by ship owners to collect demurrage costs..."
The end was the famous cement scandal of 1974/75 which The New York Times of June 28, 1976 described as "a web of kickbacks and bribes involving government officials, foreign ship owners, corrupt purchasing agents, unscrupulous middlemen, phony corporations, dubious letters of credit and Swiss bank accounts."

The scandal was not just about us biting more than our mouths could contain. We not only allowed and accepted substandard cement from suppliers, concessions were granted by Nigeria approving extension of expiry dates for expired products. Hanaan Marwah, an African infrastructure historian formerly with the London School of Economics, did a major work on this in 2020 for Business History. She places the scandal "in the context of debates about corruption, organizational failure and a 'resource curse' in Nigeria." We had a ports congestion of over 400 ships queuing to offload cement. To compensate for the delay at the ports, we offered generous demurrage. We increased payable demurrage from the standard $3,500 per day to $4,100/ per ship per day. Some ships came carrying nothing; some did not come near our ports at all; some never existed. Yet they all claimed demurrage. And we paid. An account says Nigeria ultimately paid an estimated $240 million in real and phony demurrage costs.
In instances when deals were too criminally stark to click, Nigeria demurred in payment of costs for delays. And some audacious fake suppliers went to court to demand payment for their ashy goods. For this, Nigeria had a harvest of court cases, home and abroad. The very interesting UK Supreme Court appeal case number (1978) EWCA Civ J1219-3 appeals to me here. That case was between a company, Etablissement Esefka International Anstalt (Plaintiffs/Respondents) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (Defendants/Appellants).

Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, who presided over the appeal, tells the story of the case better in elegance of language and in ghastly details - and copiously I am quoting him:

"This is another case involving what has been called in the papers 'the cement scandal' in regard to Nigeria. It so happened a few years ago that the Ministry of Defence in Nigeria ordered vast quantities of cement from all over the world. The Central Bank of Nigeria issued letters of credit to pay for all the cement which was coming in, and a good deal of it was payable through London banks.
Read 11 tweets
Mar 19
Dear Nigerians, do you know Houthi rebels are the reason you had a poor internet network yesterday?

Walk with me as I explain.

Before now, a lot of Nigerians probably might not have heard about the Houthi rebels, a ragtag militia, and a religious terrorist group from Yemen.

Even though the majority of Nigerians have not heard of these guys before, this ragtag militia is the reason why poor internet connection crippled the whole country today, which also affected the banking network as well.
Houthi is an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Yemen.

They are in the same WhatsApp group with Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen.

Even though they are fighting in the name of Islam, the global headquarters of Islam, Saudi Arabia, hates them with passion because they are Shia by faith, which is from Iran.

Iran practices what is known as the Shia brand of Islam.

Saudi Arabia's brand of Islam is Sunni.

This is akin to Christianity, where you have Anglicans, Catholics, and Pentecostals, even though we worship the same God.
The only difference between Houthi, Boko Haram, and ISIS is that while Boko Haram and ISIS practice the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam, Houthi are Shia, but their ideologies are the same.

These Houthi guys once fought a guerrilla war with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia received significant support from the US, but they were unable to defeat this Rag militia team from Yemen.

This time around, Houthi rebels are on the Red Sea, waging war against global commerce by attacking ships and vessels carrying containers and goods from the far east, disrupting the global supply chain.
Read 8 tweets
Mar 18
Our marriage is only nine months old. We dated for four years before we finally got married. Within the four years that we dated, he was all about shuperu and more. He wanted it and I had no reason to keep it from him so I gave it to him whenever he wanted it. I won’t say it’s the shuperu that kept us glued together but its contribution can’t overemphasize. We could fight for days and it would the only thing that would bring us together. It was always different after a fight.

The way he gives his all and the way I put my all into it makes it look like it was the only thing we needed in our lives. We had a very good time while dating so my thinking was that it was going to get better when we get married.
On our honeymoon, it was a disaster. I was too tired to care and he was too tired to want it. But we tried anyway. We were able to get some lousy rounds just to keep us going.

We returned from our honeymoon on Thursday. Everything was new. We couldn’t live in the house each of us was living in because they were too small to contain us. We had a new room that came with a new fragrance. We had new bedsheets that spiced our sleep. We slept with the music on just to musk up the noise that both of us produced during the action. Everything was stacked in our favor and everything around us screamed, “Get to it already, we can’t wait to see some action.”
But my husband will lay flat on the bed and begin to snore away. Nothing I do gets his attention. I’m a woman with loud hormones. They never keep quiet so I want it often, especially now that we are married and have no reason to be careful. I will tap him; “Bernard, get up.

The way you’ve been treating me these days, I don’t see top at all. What happened to you? Have you been stung by a bee? It doesn’t even get up when I play with it? What’s happening to you?” He’ll talk through his sleep and say a lot of things that don’t make sense. The bottom line of his explanation had always been, ”I’m tired. Let’s sleep for a while. Wake me up at dawn.”I will wake him up at dawn and he’ll postpone the match to early morning. Immediately after his alarm goes off, he will rush to the bathroom as if someone is after him.
Read 12 tweets
Mar 16
WILLINK REPORT 1958 THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM A THE REPORT OF THE COMMISSION APPOINTED TO “ENQUIRE INTO THE FEARS OF MINORITIES AND THE MEANS OF ALLAYING THEM”, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “THE WILLINK COMMISSION REPORT OF JULY 1958”
THE HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND.

A short thread
1. “More than 98% of people who inhabit this area (the ‘Ibo Plateau’ of the Eastern region) are Ibo and speak one language, though of course with certain differences of dialect. There are nearly five million of them and they are too many for the soil to support: they are vigorous and intelligent and have pushed outward in every direction, seeking a livelihood by trade or in service in the surrounding areas of the Eastern Region, in the Western Region, in the North and outside Nigeria. They are no more popular with their neighbours than is usual in the case of an energetic and expanding people whose neighbours have a more leisurely outlook on life.”
2. “Though there has been no great kingdom or indigenous culture in the Eastern Region, the coastal chiefs grew on their trade with the (European merchant) ships and they adopted customs, clothing and housing more advanced than those of the peoples of the interior on whom they had at first preyed for slaves. They came during the 19th Century to regard the people of the interior as backward and ignorant, and it was therefore a blow to their pride, as well as to their pockets, when the Ibos began to push outwards into the surrounding fringe of the country and particularly into the Calabar area, to take up land, to grow rich, to own houses and lorries and occupy posts in public services and in the services of large trading firms.”

“It was among the Ibos, formerly despised by the people of Calabar as source of slaves and as a backward people of the interior, now feared and disliked as energetic and educated, that the first political party formed.”
Read 21 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(