Nsibidi is Older than the English Language

Nsibidi is Older than the English Language

Nsibidi existed from the 3rd century before the metamorphosis of the English language from the West Germanic languages in the 5th century.

Nsibidi used on an Efik tray made in the 19th century. A mermaid encircled with diagrams including Nsibidi ideogram.

Nsibidi has been described as a Semasiographic script comprised of ideograms and pictograms that were used in southeastern Nigeria among the Ejagham (Ekoid people), Efik, Igbo, and Ibibio societies.

The Ejagham originally came from Northeast Africa which supports my analogy of the origins of Igbo Ukwu art of the ancient Igbo Ukwu Kingdom with the ancient Indus Valley Civilization of the 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.

Igbos believe that they are descendants of one of the Sons of God who descended from heaven and had a relationship with one of the daughters of Eve. 

(Genesis 6, Holy Bible)

Lucy (Australopithecus) the oldest

fossilized bone comprising 40 percent of the skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia, at Hadar, a site in the Awash Valley of the Afar Triangle, by Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Insibidi is the secret language of the Ekpe Leopard Secret Society of the Efik, Ibibio and Igbo societies.

Nsibidi means The Beginning in my mother tongue of the Igbos  sharing borders and ethnic similarities with the Efik and Ibibio tribes.

Nsibidi is more than a written language.

It is also a sign language of the Ekpe Leopard Secret Society and unknown to the various Nigerian artists who have been doing nothing more than to copy and paste Insibidi for drawings, paintings, sculptures, prints and potteries and posing and posturing as experts, Nsibidi is also expressed choreographically in a movement of hands and footsteps of secret language communication by members of the Ekpe Leopard Secret Society and used by the dreaded Ekpe masquerades.

I once confronted an Ekpe masquerade decades ago in the early 1990s on the popular Fola Agoro Road leading to the University of Lagos on my way to visit a beautiful girlfriend, Naomi, the Joy of my heart.

As others were either avoiding or running away from the scary looking Ekpe masquerade holding a machete and bell and a chain was tied to the waist held by his guides, I stood face-to-face with him. He was growling and snorting angrily. I was not afraid, because I have also met original Ekpe masquerades during festivities in my mother's hometown of Umuda Nsigwu in the Umuahia North Local Government area of Abia State of southern eastern Nigeria.

Two weeks ago, whilst waiting for a tailor in front of his residence in the Ekpri Nsukarra village in Uyo, a friendly discussion with one of his young neighbours drifted off to Nsibidi and the Ekpe masquerades and he demonstrated one of the movements of their secret language. 

- Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima

#God

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#uyo

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IEC Applications Can End Extreme Poverty in the World

IEC Applications Can End Extreme Poverty in the World

I am one of those involved in the concerted efforts for the eradication of extreme poverty in the world. And I have reached the advanced final stage in the development of the applications that can reduce poverty by 80 percent with IEC, Information, Education and Communication methods which I have seen during my years of working as an IEC field officer for the Center for Education, Population, AIDS and Drug Abuse (CEPADA), an NGO founded by Mrs. Hadiyat O. Shitta-Bey, a former award winning Program Specialist in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) when I did Market Based Distribution (MBD) surveys of the largest markets in Lagos, the most populous state in Nigeria and the largest megacity in Africa and when I was contracted as a public health illustrator and translator for the production and publication of family planning methods booklets in Pidgin English, Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa for semi literates distributed by the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN) and as a national Program Consultant for the Child Survival and Development (CSD) projects of the UNICEF in Nigeria.

The first mobile app for all the users to GSM phones has been in development since 2014 and I have also completed the layout for a SaaS e-commerce and fintech app for interactive IEC through social network for wealth creation and distribution among all the users of mobile phones in Nigeria and other countries.

Imagine an app with X Amazon and Paypal combined.

My advocacy for the education of the millions of girls out of school in Nigeria is fundamental in the eradication of extreme poverty in developing countries, because surveys have shown that majority of the people living in poverty come from families with mothers who did not go to school or dropped out of school.

In Nigeria, we found out that almost 90 percent of the bandits and terrorists on rampage in northern Nigeria were born by mothers who did not go to school and without any formal education and thousands of their children were destitutes. Their rebellion against law and order was caused by lack of parenting and poverty with uneducated parents who did not have the information on family planning and family welfare. 

They continue to breed children they cannot feed and they cannot afford to send to school. 

Extreme poverty is largely due to ignorance and illiteracy.

With the use of IEC applications through mobile phones, millions of the people in poverty will be taken out of poverty.

The first MVP of the mobile app was among the top finalists for tech innovation awards in Africa in 2014 and the pitch for the SaaS e-commerce and fintech app was shortlisted for the a tech startups hackathon in Africa in 2022.

Both mobile apps will advance the decentralization of e-commerce and fintech platforms in all communities in Nigeria and other countries and downloaded without any payment by all those who can use mobile phones and the IEC applications will be in their own languages. 

- by Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,

The CEO, 

International Digital Post Network Limited

Corruption in Nolllywood: The Diversions and Misappropriations of Grants and Loans in the Nigerian Film Industry

 

Corruption in Nolllywood: 

The Diversions and Misappropriations of Grants and Loans in the Nigerian Film Industry

The socioeconomic, sociocultural and political institutionalization of corruption in Nigeria has done collateral damage to the Nigerian society with widespread administrative incompetence in public service and political corruption is the cause of the maladministration in the Nigerian government.

Political corruption is the anathema of democracy and good governance in Nigeria with brazen corrupt practices from the local government to the Office of the President; from Alausa to Abuja. Every workplace is infected of the virus of the epidemic of corruption with corrupt and incompetent public officials posing and posturing as Smart Alecs, but they disregard the values and virtues of dignity, integrity and nobility.
There is widespread culture of conceit and deceit in the Nigerian society. Being fraudulent is no longer shocking!

Corruption is now widely reported in the Nigerian entertainment industry with several cases of unprofessional sharp practices during film and TV productions.
The entertainment industry has become a conduit for money laundering in the camouflage of international events and productions used for illicit transfers of funds and tax evasions.
We should not sweep the corruption in the entertainment industry under the red carpet.
Fraudulent activities should be exposed and reported no matter the rank and file of the entertainers and their sponsors.

The Diversions and Misappropriations of Grants and Loans in Nolllywood and the Nigerian Film Industry by  filmmakers with questionable integrity.

The recent statement by popular Nigerian comedian and film/TV producer, Bright Okpocha popularly known as "Basketmouth" that several millions of dollars given to some of the selected Nigerian filmmakers by Netflix for film productions were diverted and misappropriated (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2024/12/netflix-they-spend-10-on-movie-use-others-to-buy-cars-houses-basketmouth-slams-nollywood-producers) did not surprise me, because there have been previous reports on corrupt practices of filmmakers in Nigeria.
I have been informed about diversions and misappropriations of grants and loans for film and TV productions by the beneficiaries since 2001 to date.
The funds provided as soft loans with low interest rates by the Ecobank were misappropriated. The AccessNolly Fund of the Access Bank and NollyFund of the Bank of Industry (BoI) of Nigeria were diverted and misappropriated and the grants from the Project ACT Nollywood were also misappropriated by some of the beneficiaries. The film productions were compromised, badly done or abandoned.

A former Regional Audio-visual Attache at the French Embassy in Nigeria knew that some of the funds from the Fonds Images Afrique grants given for a short documentary film on Lagos and two other productions were diverted and misappropriated
See Nollywood and the French Connection on
https://nigeriansreportng.blogspot.com/2022/06/nollywood-and-french-connection.html

He gave me the details and I watched the documentary film.
"This is not Lagos", I said and smirked. But I did not report the disclosures. The same Regional Audio-visual Attache later told the director of the documentary film that he suspected me of being an American spy. I was amused.
I laughed and dismissed the suspicion. I have been identified sitting with certain Americans and a prominent Ghanaian politician on exile in Nigeria during an official meeting for a family planning project in Nigeria at the Eko Hotel and Suites on Victoria Island in Lagos, Nigeria. One of the Americans who was my namesake then was later accused of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Ghana by the military regime of Jerry Rawlings in the 1980s. I was only contracted as a public health illustrator through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
I have stopped communication with this French Regional Audio-Visual Attache who was later transferred to Burundi.
He told me that a particular young filmmaker misappropriated the funds given to him and used only the remainder to produce a feature that they rejected. But his colleague who did not misappropriate funds produced a good mystical romantic drama that was accepted by Canal France International in 2009 and broadcast to all television channels in French-speaking Africa under the title "La Métamorphose".

The details of the cases of the diversions and misappropriations, including the filmmakers involved are available.

- - by Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
The Publisher/Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series,
First book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry.
Distributed by Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers.

#corruption
#nollywood
#filmmaking
#filmmakers
#movies
#documentary
#netflix
#entertainment
#filmindustry
#profuction
#moneylaundering
#tax
#canalplus
#nigeria
#images
#banks
#loans
#grants
#funds
#america
#french