Ibo Made by Pius Adesanmi PHD
“ Ibo Made” By Pius Adesanmi Growing up in the 70s or 80s in a little Yagba town in the old Kwara state,your first real contact with the “outside world” – besides European and Canadian Catholic priests and social studies in primary school – came in the form of settlerist migrancy. There was the sabo area of town, ceded by Kabiyesi to Hausa/Fulani settlers. That was where you bought suya and fura da nono on your way to and from school. There was Kwaku or Mensah, the ambulant Ghanaian shoemaker (sobata) who roamed the village with his woodenbox containing assorted tools of his trade held around his waist by a rope slung across his shoulders. Akosua, his wife, sold rice and beans during break at school. Then there was Okoro from Igboland. He’d been part of the village for as long as everyone remembered. He spoke the local Yagba dialect and its parent Yoruba: he was a quintessence of national integration other Nigerians hardly ever achieve. Most importantly, Okoro owned the only trading st