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

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More from @RealOlaudah

Jun 2
What hunters see in the forest is enough to make children of men without balls blind. An ethnographic study of hunters in a wild called Ìgbẹ Alágogo conducted by a scholar at the University of Ibadan, Ayo Adeduntan, gave birth to the narrative. Ọláníyì Ọládèj̣ọ Yáwóọ̣ré had gone hunting one day and came face to face with a deer breastfeeding her young. Stupefied by this weird sight, an unusual dizziness pounced upon the hunter. But "an animal is pursuing me" is a disgraceful song that must never be sung by a man born to hunt. Yáwóọ̣ré quickly picked himself up and fought back with a dose of potent Ọfọ (incantation), one of the priceless assets he inherited from his father: “The ladybird beetle does not suffer from sight impairment…"
Hunter dipped his hand into his cloak and brought out a phial, the content of which he then used to wipe his face. Now he can see! Now that he could see, he had very little difficulty making sumptuous meat of the deer. At home, hunter skinned his game and hung its hide to dry in the open. This is where the story starts to be sweet like a soup of deer meat.

The second day, a mysterious woman visited Yáwóọ̣ré and a conversation ensued. The mysterious woman then told the hunter: “I know you killed a deer. But you did because we wanted you to. Now, why do you show off with its skin? Why did you spread it out, pegged to the ground outside? You sure want to show the whole world that you it was that killed the animal. Were you the one who actually killed the animal or we gave it to you? Don’t you know spreading out the hide in the open that way is exposing our clothing to the mundane world?” Yawoore got the message. He made amends.
At the APC Renewed Hope Agenda Summit held at the State House last Thursday, Tinubu was Yáwóọ̣ré, the ostentatious hunter. The sniper had just killed a sacred deer with a marksman’s dexterity. Like the hunter, it was time for Tinubu to gloat. Trust our president, he was at his best turf. Armed with his ancient Cockney, the president, who had just killed an elephantine game, said “nothing (is) wrong with a one party state.” He asked his people to "wipe them clean." You would think he was talking about a bowl of pounded yam accompanied by a plate of ram meat.

I looked at his face. The whole world was like a colony of ants before the president. APC, he boasted, was “one party ruling and carrying on with the aspirations of Nigerians,” in what actually came in an incoherent waffle. “You don’t expect people to remain in a sinking ship without a life jacket. I am happy with what we have accomplished and expecting more people to come; that’s the game.”
Read 15 tweets
May 31
IF YOU ARE A NIGERIAN, WAKE UP FROM YOUR SLEEP AND READ THIS DISTURBING PIECE WRITTEN BY:

While the Igbo, Yoruba, and Fulani continue to quarrel over political crumbs and tribal pride, a far more dangerous and silent conquest is taking place across Nigeria. It’s not waged with guns or tanks—but with pen strokes, bank loans, and real estate acquisitions. If nothing changes, in fifteen years, the real landlords of Nigeria may not be Nigerians—they’ll be Chinese.

Across the South-West, Chinese nationals are purchasing land at an alarming rate. In cities and towns, Chinese investors are sealing land deals with little to no resistance. The very soil our ancestors fought to defend is being traded in quiet transactions, buried in legal paperwork and political indifference. At this rate, the day is coming when our children will be forced to rent their futures from foreign landlords.
The Abuja-Kaduna railway gleams like a badge of progress, but few Nigerians know what lies beneath the steel and cement—a spider web of hidden loan agreements, sovereignty waivers, and debt traps. What was presented as development is looking more like a masterclass in quiet colonisation. China has made itself indispensable to Nigeria’s infrastructure: roads, railways, power plants, airport terminals—all courtesy of Chinese financing. But what are we mortgaging in return?

Investigations by The Streetjournal reveal alarming clauses tucked inside loan agreements—clauses that allow China to take over key national assets in the event of default. One such clause, signed under the Jonathan administration, practically waives Nigeria’s sovereign immunity. In other words, if we default, China has legal grounds to claim what it finances.
The major problem with our indebtedness to the Chinese government is that most of the loans collected on behalf of Nigerians ended up in private pockets. Let me stir your thoughts with a particular contract that was bid for at the NNPC during the tenure of a former Group Managing Director. I remember clearly that the company that won the contract proposed $1.4 billion, yet, surprisingly, the same contract was awarded to the second bidder, who proposed a lesser-quality solution. Even more shockingly, the contract was awarded at a cost of $2.9 billion. An additional $400,000 was paid as a consultancy fee to a non-existent consultant.

Most of the contracts awarded in Nigeria were given to companies operated by the directors and permanent secretaries in those same ministries. They opened many company offices all over Nigeria and awarded contracts to themselves by proxy.

These were loans borrowed in the name of Nigerian citizens from China. And we must repay them—both capital and interest—for the next 35 years. This is evil perpetrated by a few wicked public servants against their fellow citizens.
Read 6 tweets
May 16
Nigeria is radicalizing the Igbo, one injustice at a time.

There’s something about persecution that does two things to a people: it either breaks them, or it makes them beasts of survival.

Ask the Jews.

For centuries, they were hunted, hated, and humiliated by empires. But they didn’t vanish. They evolved. They adapted. And today, the Jews are arguably the most powerful tribe in the world economically, intellectually, and politically. Ruthless when necessary.
They are unapologetic about their survival.
Now, look at the Igbo.

A tribe known for industry, resilience, and brilliance. A people who just want to live, do business, and thrive. But Nigeria doesn’t want that. Nigeria wants control.
Nigeria wants submission. And the one thing the Igbo have never known how to do is bow.

And that’s the real issue.
So what does Nigeria do? It sidelines them. Isolates them. Provokes them. Bombs their villages under the guise of security.

Locks up their agitators. Shuts down their businesses. Mocks their pain. Ignores their history. Prevent them from voting. Playing politics with their education. Sponsored bigotry on them.

And then Nigeria pretends to be surprised that there’s growing radicalization in the East?
Read 9 tweets
May 15
Anambra North senatorial constituency comprises seven Local Government Areas (LGAs). These are: Anambra East, Anambra West, Anyamelum, Ogbaru, Onitsha North, Onitsha South, and Oyi. The contest to represent it in the election to the Senate in 2007 turned out to be memorable for all the wrong reasons. Voting in the election occurred on 28 April 2007. At the end of the contest, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), returned Joy Emordi, the incumbent senator and candidate of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), as the winner.
In the race for the party ticket which preceded the election, Senator Emordi beat out the challenge of a little-known member of the House of Representatives, Ubanese Alphonsus Igbeke. Having lost the contest for the party ticket, however, Ubanese promptly defected to the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), which granted him the ticket to fly its flag in the contest for the election to the senate in Anambra North.
Following the announcement of the election results by the INEC, five of the losing candidates headed to the election petition tribunal to challenge the announcement of Senator Emordi as winner. They included Jessie Balonwu of the Labour Party, and Ubanese of the ANPP. An essential complaint was that there was no lawful voting in Anyamelum and Onitsha South LGAs. If their complaint was upheld, the logic would have necessitated a re-run.
Read 13 tweets
May 6
The Numerous Dark Worlds Controlling Nigeria

Nigeria is the only OPEC nation where individuals, not the state, own oilfields. Nowhere else do national assets transition so seamlessly into private hands under the pretense of legality. But who are these individuals? And why is their ownership never questioned in court?
Road contracts are inflated by as much as 5000%—a scale of fraud that should provoke outrage. Yet, no investigations follow. Who is orchestrating these crimes? Why are there no legal consequences for looting on this scale?
The banking sector is an extension of this racket. CEOs with questionable credentials wield unchecked power, siphoning wealth greater than that of entire states. Banks openly exploit depositors, manipulate currency policies, and facilitate money laundering—yet no regulator dares to intervene.
Read 12 tweets
May 1
I offer my opinion on the coalition against President Tinubu's second term.

In 2027, Tinubu Won’t Win; The Opposition Will Lose

🧵
If economic health, social vitality, and the raw pulse of public opinion were the only indicators relied upon to prognosticate the chances of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reelection in 2027, I would say with cocksure certitude that he is condemned to be a one-term president.

Not even the most hopelessly unthinking defenders of the Tinubu presidency can deny that his reign so far has been defined by unrelieved economic hardship, staggering inflation, a collapsing naira, and a deepening sense of despair among Nigerians. In other words, the objective conditions for his political repudiation are overripe.

Nonetheless, elections, especially in Nigeria, are not won on the basis of public frustration alone. They are won — or lost — on the strength of political organization, elite consensus, strategic emotional manipulation, and the ability to convert popular anger into electoral mathematics. Call those the subjective conditions of electoral triumph, if you like. And this is where the tragedy of the opposition begins.
The opposition is undisciplined, hopelessly spineless, irredeemably fragmented, strategically bankrupt, and is falling cheaply into the trap set for it by Tinubu.

First, the opposition is shaping up to be disappointingly provincial. It is dominated by elements from a slice of the North that seems to be suffering from withdrawal symptoms from loss of political power.

This is reminiscent of the narrow-minded opposition to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term, which helped him to create a coalition of southern Nigerian, Christian northerners, along with portions of the North that felt excluded from the regional mainstream.
Read 12 tweets

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