Who is Afra? - Onyeji Nnaji

You have been deceived by the claim that Frank Opigo, an Ijaw king was the the man who gave our nation the name Biafra; but that is a very big lie. Before the father of Ijaw nation was brought to Anioma to serve his lord and master, Ezechime, the land Biafra had lasted for over 1000,000 years before Christ. 

What would you say then, hearing that as far back as 1472, when Ijaw was not yet been pushed to the waterfront, a Portuguese navigator and explora, Fernão do Pó, visited this part of the world and gave an exact description of Biafra in his document. According to him, "It was a town identified as Biafra or Biafara on the river in the area east of the Benin empire". This was the part of the land which was later marked as 'Bight of Biafra'. Bioko Island was later named after him, Fernão do Pó. It has nothing to do with Ijaw people because it metamorphosed from someone's name. The person was Afra.   

See also: The Origin and Meaning of Biafra

In the view of Late Prof. Catherine Acholonu, Afra was a god-man. But that is not clearly true. Afra was not a god-man. God-men existed before the flood. In the era when Umudiala Peopled Okigwe civilization, the ancestors were no longer gods; the gods via marriage with the daughters of mortal men became defiled and changed to flesh, Genesis 6: 3-5 made this clear. What was left of them was the spirituality gained through ingratiation with nature and gods. The Umudiala were generation or race of pygmies; and so also was Afra.

Afra was a self-made legend with descendants who could not succeed him in his abode. He inhabited the part of the Niger coastal corners presently marked by the name. There he lived as a king, guarding the entire village solely like the legendary Nimrod chanted in the biblical story. People of old went to the Afa land where Afra lived to consult him mostly in times of different natural occurrences and nature ailments. Legend reveals that Afra was a healer and a nature scientist who was gifted to the ominous wonders of Stella powers. He lived and watched over his territory alone. 

Afra's mastery of cosmic sciences popularized the Okigwe civilization of old and helped to make the era's fame spread like fire. As Idu was popular due to the traditional position he occupied in the lost civilization of Eridu, the same was how great Afra was in the Okigwe civilization. That was why, even at his death, he was still sung as song among the old Umudiala. When Afra died, his children and members of his community could not sustain his solitarily designed self-made lifestyle. They moved to the upland of the delta and reunited with the populous society, while many others went to unidentified places. The deserted the Afa. The reserve of Afra are found in a very little population of people with such denotation in their names as Afa... and Afara.

Also Read: Okigwe Civilization (1.6m - 500,000BC)

With the fall of Okiwe civilization due to the rapid uprising in the metallic explosion in Nsukka, the Afa dwellers, who hardly had found compatible habitations among their Umudiala mainland, moved to the new empire. Around that same time/period some of them went beyond via the sahara plain. Those who travelled farther landed first in the present day Ethiopia. There they also called their new home after their original home, "Afa". They are known in Ethiopia as the Kambata. Ethiopia history documented them as the oldest clan in Ethiopia. They  were the populous walker-travellers who carried the Umudiala culture and language to Egypt. Mentionable among those in the train who founded Egypt was Tera Nata. History revealed that he was a Lord leading the group of the founding fathers; all were pygmies and were explained to have belonged to the race of Ani which in the Egyptian Book of the Dead were addressed in either ways: Ani or Anu. Their mystic knowledge of the cosmos and Stella courses was later masterminded by Osiri Ani. See details in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, page 120.

Egyptian words of Igbo origin

Isn't the Portuguese knowledge of the word "Biafra" during their adventure to this part of the world in the early 15th century AD striking? The reason they called the crescent watertight delta biafra was that they had had knowledge of the word earlier before they got there. Read the account of voyage kept by Mungo Park to notice that, even before he came to Africa, he had had knowledge of the course of the river. How did he get that? He read it from the account of the early Africans kept in England. See your surprise on page 162 of his travel account. The knowledge of Afra in them before traveling gave them the impetus to call that part of the world Bight of Biafra. The Ijaw living in the area wrongly called the place "Biaflo", but the Portuguese refused because they had known about that part of the African land beforehand. You can see it on the 1644 map of Africa shown below.