The Yorubas and other Canaanite/Israelites of Nigeria
By Jide Uwechia
Ancient Canaanite King
Yorubas and the neighbouring nationalities located in Nigeria have this oral tradition of an origin extraneous to West Africa.
Hugh Clapperton in 1820s reported a work by Sultan Bello, the Caliph of the Sokoto Caliphate, where he asserted that the Yorubas were descended from Canaanite tribe from Palestine.
Around the 1880s Samuel Johnson a Yoruba christian also wrote a book that made similar claims for Yoruba origins as Sultan Bello’s. In 1880, Johson naively sent this work to the Church Missionary Society in England for review and publication.
The Church Missionary Society suppressed the manuscript upon realizing the explosive information it contained. The Society declared the book lost. It was not until 1923 that Johson’s brother was able to publish an edited copy of this work. Johnson’s thesis was that the Yorubas were descended from Lamurudu (Nimrod) the first King of Mesopotamia. Johnson died in 1901.
1955 S.O. Obiaku, a Nigerian historian and scholar claimed a Meroite origin (Sudan/ancient Ethiopia-Kush) for the Yorubas. Emmanuel Uguhulu another respected Nigerian scholar claimed a Hebrew origin for the Esan tribe. Esan is part of the greater Edo nation, which is related to the Yoruba nation of Nigeria.
Efik traditions claim that the Efiks originated in Palestine, crossed the Sahara and arrived Nigeria via Sudan. The Efiks are located in the south-eastern corner of Nigeria.
Iberian Jews of Yoruba Nationality
The Bnai Ephraim (“Children of Ephraim”) from Nigeria, live among the Yoruba nationalities. Their oral history tells that the Bnai Ephraim people came from Morocco after the Jews were banished from the Iberian Pennisula sometime after 1492.
They speak a dialect that is a mixture of Moroccan Arabic, Yoruba, and Aramaic. They are known by the Yoruba people as the “Emo Yo Quaim”, or “strange people”. Unlike other African Israelite communities in Nigeria, the Bnai Ephraim have the Torah, portions of which they keep in their sanctuaries.
The name Lagos borne by the former capital of Nigeria is a Portugese/Iberian name meaning the lake. Lagos is an Island carved up by lagoons, swamps and lakes. Its traditional Nigerian name is Eko.
Thousands of black refugee Jews of Iberia re-settled in the environs of Lagos and Porto Novo (as well as in Cape Verde, Guinea Buissa, and in Sao Tome either as slaves or outlaws). Some groups eventually made it deeper inland and became assimilated into one nationality or the other.
The Bnai Ephraim provides a living and irrefutable proof of this barely known history of mass Jewish re-settlement in West Africa, between 1492 and 1692, a 200 year non-stop return of Jews to Africa. This set of Moorish refugees are not to be confused with more ancient Hebrew and Canaanite tribes that had been living in Nigeria and other African countries for thousands of years. The Black Jew series on Rasta Livewire deals with the relatively more ancient Hebrews of Africa.
The Bnai Ephraim did not settle with the Yorubas by accident or chance. They recalled that a body of their people had depart Canaan in the ancient times and had settled in the present day Yoruba areas of Nigeria, just like their own group – Bnai Ephraim – had settled in Iberia (Spain and Portugal).
So, when it happened they had to leave Iberia in a hurry to protect their lives and freedom, those Moorish Iberian Jews sailed on their network of ships to Nigeria Africa, near Lagos amongst the Yorubas, their relation by blood, their greater nationality.
Other series on this website will continue to explore the foot-tracks of the Hebrew Israelites of Africa whose stories barely get told. Now, they shall not only be heard, they shall also be seen.
Awake ye ancient Moorish Hebrews of Africa, awake! You have nothing to lose but your ignorance and weakness. The earth is your inheritance and rightful legacy. The truth lies in your history, hidden until these times…
Jide Uwechia
September 1, 2009
Source
Tudor Parfitt: “The Construction of Jewish Identities in Africa” in the book “Jews of Ethiopia” Edited by Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan Semi. Routledge.
Abderrahman ben-Abdall es-Sadi, “Tarikh es Soudan, Paris, 1900,” (trad. O. Houdas)
Rick Gold , “The Jews of Timbuktu,” Washington Jewish Week, December 30, 1999,
Joseph J. Williams S.J., “Hebrewism of West Africa: From Nile to the Niger with the Jews”
Remy Ilona, “Igbos, Jews in Africa?,” (Volume 1), Mega Press Limited, Abuja, Nigeria, 2004,
Northern Tribes of Nigeria, Volume 1, Oxford, page 66, by C.K. Meek
My dear that issue concerning the people who reeled from Spain will have problem meeting the current academic weight of the world, but when we link that up with Nigerian Igbos and the quasi traditional Yoruba/igbos of Ile-ife, then the picture emerges without problems. I know and have heard of some ‘clan-ish’ claim among the Igbos of Anambra that they descended from Eri, but nothing has change from that except that years we find in the soughting out of the claim, sort of quarrels with other scholars of the bible has said. I can stand as the cheif proponent that Igbos came to Nigeria from Spain and the very Igbo language which we speak, tell of such similarity. Check me out at… Iroabuchi.blogspot.com and you can write me at sunsetstudios@hotmail.com
Fascinating. Wow.
The Yorubas are the best people to give you the facts about their origin. Let me try and help you here-.The Yoruba are Caananites descended from Caanan’s third son whose name was Ijebu-hence the Jebusites.They are the brothers to the Hivites who goes by the name Housas and they lived in the North of Nigeria-{Niger Area}.Back in the latter part of the twentieth Century-around 1979-80 an African wrote to the united Nation asking the United Nation to give them back the lands which Joshua and the people of Israel took from their fathers.Who could that African be ???Who once lived in Caanan???
the yoruba cannot be of canaanite origin because the ethiopians, lybians ,egyptians and somalians are all related to the canaanites they share similar dna markers and the yoruba do not share any of those dna markers, it is more than likely that the yorubas are the descendant of hebrews that fled palestine in 700 ad before the babylonians destroyed jerusalem and sacked the temple and took the remnant that was left into slavery.
You think you you got it figured out – the igbos descended from Hebrews and Yorubas from Canaanites which reinforces the superiority of the former to the later in your warped mind.
You are very far from the truth and you are relying on fables and not facts.
Sentimental!!
Even I can tell that Igbo have a lot in common with Canaanite ways. Just open your eye and consider the ways of your people today.
if u like come from d ijebusite or ajegulesite all iknow is we are one.
but wait-wait ——-were u there
WOW….YAH KHAI
Tell me more, this is my first time of hearing this. Are the Yoruba’s trying to change their history???
My family comes from the tribe of Yoruba. So we are a descendent of the Jews?