MUST READ: First Tiv Father Was Never Muhammed Alla Neither Was Any LG Named After Him ..- Benue Activist Replies Prof. Umar Labdo

Earlier today, Professor Umar Muhammed Labdo whose recent  article claiming Benue belonged to the Fulani's by conquest went viral for both the right and wrong reason has come back with yet another explosive reply.

He insist,  ''The First Father Of Tiv People Was Mohammed Alla, who mgrated from Katsina. He also said  Katsina Ala Local government in Benue State was named after the fist Tiv father.

Well, a Benue Born social media activist,Comrade Gurgur Japheth has replied the Prof in an article he titled, 

Our Ancestors Were Never British Stooges.

Read it below..

I have written on Professor Labdo recently on this platform about Tiv. The thread is still accessible on my timeline available on google search engine.

The etymology of Katsina Ala is traceable and connected to the Royal Niger Company which was a mercantile company chartered by the British government in the nineteenth century. It was formed in 1879 as the United African Company and operated along the Benue Banks as they were interested in Sesame, Soyabeans and Groundnuts from the trough. And the River Benue was the greatest natural source of transportation. The badges they used are still there as colonial artifacts or monuments.

As mercantilists who had factored under the colonial leadership with its indirect system of divide and rule, they found bases in Katsina Ala and Makurdi and because of the egalitarian and highly republican nature of the Tiv, the vassal chief were found more comforting from other tribesmen who lived friendly with the Tiv though those tribes were minorities as they remain up to this moment like the Nifons and Abakpas, etc.

Makurdi was named after Makyur ADI but for colonial exigency, it was misspelled Makurdi and some instances referred to as "Mai Kudi". 

Not until, the great grand son of ADI by name Mtswenem Swande ADI who was the first Tiv Teacher and 1st Tiv man to build a zink house, and most importantly, 1st Tiv to be appointed as Manager of the Royal Niger Company. According to Oral Tradition as researched by Shima Ayati (2014), Mtwenem upon realization of the colonial injustice against his people by the British System, resigned from the Royal Niger a Company and embarked on sensitization of his people which led to the ouster of Chief Audu from Makurdi back to Kabbah where he migrated from. Chief ADI Mtswenem Swande was supposed to be the 1st Tor Tiv but because of his radicalism was denied. I do not want to mention the names of the tribes that were involved because it was the British that were in charge indeed.

To suggest that because some vassal chiefs were appointed from other tribes who were stooges to Lord Lugard and co and therefore they are their forefathers is same as suggesting that our ancestors as Nigerians were British.

May be the ancestry of the Professor is linked to Sir Arthur Richards who was a Governor-General of Nigeria in 1946 when Tiv people said enough was enough to the nonsense that was going on when they were being ruled by vassal chief  appointed from other tribes. Otherwise, Katsina Ala was just a market where the British Merchants exploited the people using stooges and surrogate tribes who had migrated from a River Katsina in Northern Nigeria unlike Makurdi which was named after Makyur ADI - the father of Mtswenem Swande ADI.

Another activist and writer from Benue,Josephine Akioyamen also asked the Prof. some pertinent questions.
She said;

If as late as 1854  when Dr Baikie visited Tiv land and met its border closed against Fulani and other strangers in clear exercise of its sovereignty, then when then did Tiv had a filial relationship with the Fulani? Did it begin with the made up history of the Fulani cattle owner and Tiv cattle custodian who ate up the cows he was given to hold in trust for Fulani? What is the linguistic relationship between the Tiv and Fulani? What are the similarities between the Tiv culture and those of the Fulbe? What was the connective factor between Tiv republicanism and the Fulani theocracy? I very much doubt this ahistorical revisionism of the Peuhr from Futo Toro as a foundation for their desired revanchism. Hitler too engaged in revisionism as justification for revanchism. He claimed the Germanic Tribes were the true Romans even though it was clear to all they were not. This gave birth to the third Reich. The First was the Roman Republic. The Second was the Roman Empire both of which lasted a thousand year each. The Third was to be Germania. Just as Hitler was defeated with his false foundational history, so would the Fulbe will be defeated and sent back licking their wounds or reeling to Futa Toro.