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Endurance Edafewotu and the return to the Isoko root ~ Truth Reporters


                                                         Endurance Edafewotu

Endurance Edafewotu and the return to the Isoko root ~ Truth Reporters 


By Palmer Nathaniel

Over the years, there has been a raging battle between literary scholars and historians over whose discipline is superior.  This intellectual inferno has lingered for ages without any of the parties kowtowing to the other. While literary scholars have held that history would have been long dead if literature wasn't there to record and probe the past, set the conversation for the present and an agenda for the future, scholars of history especially those of the anthropology genre have held that without a touch of history, literature may even be oblivious of itself. Aside the expostulatory crave for superiority; it is a fact beyond all contestations that these two disciplines are germane to the preservation of the very fulcrum of education and scholarship. That is why multidisciplinary scholars in these fields like Author Schlesinger, Barrett Wendell, John Erskine, etc. are likened to intellectual warehouses and walking encyclopedias.



History is life and its preservation is an inexcusable debt we owe posterity. Our shared history, tradition and customs are intangible artifacts whose preservation is better described as sacred. One of Jamaican's greatest Journalists, author and thinker, Marcus Garvey, once said that "a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots". This is where Comrade (Prince) Endurance Onojakaroma Edafewotu is stepping in for the Isoko people, through his rave-making literally masterpiece titled: THE ISOKO ETHNIC NATIONALITY: IN TIME PERSPECTIVE.



Although several scholars including the legendary Prof. Obaro Ikime, Prof. Pius Sada , and  others have done their bits in documenting the history of one of the most resourceful and bountifully endowed ethnic nationalities in Africa – Isoko Nation- the Isoko story is obviously too multi-dimensional to be told from one perspective. Edafewotu, a trained Political scientist, photo-historian and passionate artifacts collector, with much love for - antiquity whose painstaking journey of academic fortification spiraled from the prestigious University of Bénin through the University of Port Harcourt down to highly rated institutions in Scotland and the United Kingdom and Wales, have dissected in simplistic terms every components of the history of the Isoko people using Oral Tradition, holistic research and historically validated works of ancient folklorists.

                                                           Palmer Nathaniel

The book published by the University of Press, Ibadan and with forward written by no small personality than Prof. Samuel Aghalino FHSN the Vice President of Historical Society of Nigeria, a renowned professor of history who recently pulled hundreds of History scholars and enthusiasts across the Country to Asaba in an audacious move to revive History subject in elementary schools, your guess is as good as mine, it is a new clisic on the bloc.

This book covers all of the 19 clans in Isoko including Isoko-Ame, à hitherto forgotten aspect of the Isoko nation. The book also systematically connects one community to the other in a manner that re-vibrates the ancestral bonds of Isoko clans. There is also a narrator's review after each clan history. This will in no small measure help in a detailed explanation and summarization of grey areas in the semblance of an epilogue. The newspaper serialization of each chapter of the book by a body of media reviewers begins next week. Edafewotu's THE ISOKO ETHNIC NATIONALITY: IN TIME PERSPECTIVE, will surely open another vista of debate on the profound richness of Isoko history.

Palmer, a Newspaper Editor, Literally Enthusiast and Thinker lives in Asaba

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