EP 7 SARRAOUNIA MANGOU : The African Queen Who DEFIED the French I Women and Resistance 🌍

In this conversation, Adesoji Iginla and Aya Fubara Eneli explore the historical significance of female leadership in Niger, with particular focus on the figure of Sarraounia Mangou.

They discuss the intentional erasure of women's contributions to history, the impact of colonialism on female power, and the current state of women's rights in Niger.

Aya Fubara Eneli emphasises the importance of remembering and reclaiming the narratives of powerful women, advocating for a collective effort to restore female agency and leadership in society.

Takeaways

*Sarraounia represents a powerful agency in history.
*The erasure of women's contributions is intentional.
*Colonialism significantly impacted female leadership.
*Cultural memory is crucial for identity.
*Women played vital roles in resistance movements.
*Education is key to reclaiming history.
*The current state of women in Niger is concerning.
*Reinstating female power is essential for progress.
*Collective action is necessary for change.
*Hope exists in the younger generation's awareness.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sarraounia Mangou
01:48 The Legacy of Women in Resistance
03:39 Historical Context of Female Leadership
05:57 The Impact of Colonialism and Jihadism
08:01 Resistance Against French Colonisation
09:54 The Myth of Sarunia and Female Agency
12:02 The Role of Women in Society
14:03 Contemporary Issues Facing Women
16:06 Cultural Erasure and Memory
18:13 The Importance of Storytelling and Identity
20:13 Preserving Oral Histories
24:14 The Role of Women in Governance
28:50 Community Caretakers and Environmental Stewards
34:17 Education and Knowledge Transmission
39:04 Reclaiming Identity and Unity
42:57 Fighting Colonial Systems

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

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Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:02.316)
Welcome, welcome, and welcome to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am your host, Atesuji Iginla, and with me, Sister Ayafubara Neli Esquire, before she goes into character of the lady we're discussing today. Lady is not, is even an understatement, an enigma, as they would say. The enigma we're looking at is Sarahun Magun.

And for those who are probably hearing the name for the first time, she is out of Niger, a corner often ignored, but has been in the news lately. But here is a story of a woman who resisted what we've come to now live with, but she did lay her mark. And as a sign of respect, we're going to actually retrace her steps and understand what she had to live with and how she came to be known to the world today.

Welcome, sister.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05.107)
Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:08.226)
So for those who probably coming in contact with your name for the very first time, could you give us a short idea of why it is that that's the case?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:41.883)
Why is the name Sarunia Mangu?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:50.991)
A thing of mystery.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:56.135)
not even just across the world but in the very land where I fought and some might say never died.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:19.504)
It is the same reason why so many of the women you have attempted to talk with and talk about.

have mostly been written out of the annals of history.

Aya Fubara Eneli (02:38.692)
It is this violence of forgetting. But it is not a common forgetting. It is not a child forgetting his mother's name or her mother's name.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:00.624)
It is a forgetting that was intentional and willful and continues today.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:12.496)
It is a forgetting that was orchestrated.

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:19.56)
first by those jihadists who would impose their religion on us.

the Azzan people who had our own religion that they now call animist.

It is the intentionality of those colonizers.

who wanted to make sure that most of our acts of resistance

were forgotten or became myths.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:02.578)
so that we can forget that we ever resisted and we can resist and win again.

It is the intentional.

abuse of women under this thing called patriarchy that has forgotten that in the cosmology of my people we understood the importance of male, female and that balance.

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:38.766)
so much forgetting that in our land of Lugu

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:48.83)
present day members can only think back to maybe 10 saronias and I will explain what I mean by that because I'm not the only one. As I sit and talk with you today, I come not as just one but as centuries of women who served in this role.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:20.478)
All these forces converged to make sure that the role of women as powerful entities with agency in every area of life was wiped out.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:45.608)
Saronia in the Hausa language can be interpreted as queen.

or female chief. Again, these are their words because female chief, do we say male chief?

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:09.774)
but in its use, is really a designation of various functions of female leadership among the asna of Lugu and Bagagi and even surrounding house and villages and towns of the Maori ethnic groups.

Perhaps if you have not been in conversation with them, you might have a conversation with Queen Amina.

Adesoji Iginla (06:46.923)
of the other.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:48.688)
And even Zarya is named after a queen.

Adesoji Iginla (06:52.119)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:54.002)
Because before the Islamization of our people, and then you now add these white colonizers, and then you now put on top of it the extent to which you have this Christianity and all of these structures. None of those structures, these foreign structures recognized.

Adesoji Iginla (07:14.51)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:18.418)
the power and the legitimacy of women.

But if we go back to our history and pay closer attention, there are still vestiges of it. When you talk with Queen Amina, she fought, she led armies. Did she not?

Adesoji Iginla (07:38.12)
Yeah, she did. She did.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:42.099)
That is similar to what the Saranuiwa did, even in my area. But we were not just military strategists. We held political office. We were also priests and priestesses. We brought everything together in one leadership head. No division.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:14.62)
That name is for a specific woman selected through a specific ritual called Tarakama.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:27.162)
And when you undergo this ritual, a female leader, a female, again, these are English words, as though leader is always male. So when you talk about a woman, you have to qualify it.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:46.248)
But these women, these leaders, they exercised both non-centralized political power and religious authority.

Adesoji Iginla (08:58.68)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:01.788)
We were the people who...

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:09.106)
for the most part, were able to keep the jihadists at bay. So even when they somehow infiltrated and some started to convert to Islam, we still did not have those calls to prayer because we centered our own form of spirituality.

Adesoji Iginla (09:29.966)
There's relative.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:32.08)
and it was not until the French encroach

that you really begin to see a deeper breakdown. Now had Islam began to erode what we had, were there men who were now breaking apart that leadership and now claiming that they had the political leadership and the Saraniya had just the religious leadership? That was beginning to happen. But until the French, we were not decimated as we are now.

Adesoji Iginla (10:08.141)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:09.532)
before I go any further in this story.

Let me spit.

before I mention the names of two.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:28.506)
In your Christian parlance, you will have to call them devils.

Aya Fubara Eneli (10:39.846)
In our language, we would prefer not to even mention them at all. Have you heard of the Voulet and Shannouin mission? What do you know about it?

Adesoji Iginla (10:56.654)
They were leaders of the Phraegian Dam that went around the Sahel region and basically lay waste to the place, killing incessantly.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:06.654)
yes the language is important. Lay waste. They were sent by their government. When you people talk about reparations today you must remember this.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:25.35)
to colonize, to bring under French rule all of these independent nations and peoples.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:39.59)
Some would say their command was vague and it left them much room to decide how to carry it out.

Adesoji Iginla (11:48.61)
the language.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:51.496)
But let me tell you in very concrete terms what they did.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:02.398)
wholesale shooting down men, women, children, anybody of any age.

raping and burning down entire villages. There was a path of destruction. Wherever they moved, they destroyed in its entirety.

to bring a people under subjugation.

Aya Fubara Eneli (12:39.556)
and my brothers having now wrested political power from the Saronia. They decided that their best course of action

was to go and lay prostrate at the feet of these I cannot even call them human beings.

and to beg their mercy and to do their will.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:12.978)
But the saronguia, that mangoo that you are talking to, the one who is going to talk to you now, I said, and if you are African, you understand this phrase, over my dead body.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:34.642)
we in our region, Lugu, we will still had more of a semblance of that centralized leadership.

And I told my people, we will not be slaughtered, nor will we surrender, for we are human beings, men and women.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:04.048)
And when they arrived at our village, it was empty. Nothing to see, no one to kill.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:18.174)
But we were not done with them.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:26.77)
camped out in the Acacia forest that used to be that no longer are.

Adesoji Iginla (14:33.102)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:34.718)
We went to town as they would say on them since we're using their language.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:44.61)
military strategy. The same strategy that if we had all united, I don't care how well armed they are, we could have resisted.

We stood firm and our little so-called village imposed more casualties on those French troops than any of the other villages that they had conquered combined.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:21.47)
Did they kill some of us? Yes they did. These things happen in war. Did they kill me? No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:34.61)
There are many stories some will call them myths that are told. And one is that I transformed into a jaguar.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:52.078)
And when we could not hold our village anymore, I disappeared.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:01.074)
but they never got.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:08.114)
day.

Adesoji Iginla (16:10.732)
Azure.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:11.56)
They never got that pleasure to say.

that they killed me or any Saranguilla. They could not take our head to France like they did to so many other leaders.

Adesoji Iginla (16:28.792)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:32.86)
And it is for that reason that of all the sanguias that we have had, we remember sanguiamangu because it was in that body, in that flesh that we mounted the most

ardent rebellion resistance against the French.

Adesoji Iginla (17:00.558)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:02.49)
Aha! So think of your patriarchy. Will the French now tell this story?

Adesoji Iginla (17:12.172)
Definitely not.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:14.254)
No. Will the men who cowered tell the story?

Adesoji Iginla (17:24.75)
I can see your point. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:25.369)
No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:31.007)
Today, most people in my area now known as Niger do not know this story. There is a bank named Sarwinia, but it's not really even tied to the actual power that we had. A power not to subjugate, but a power to lead.

Can I tell you that Lugu had a very prosperous market. People were mostly hunters. We lived at peace.

We understood nature and we interacted with and were one with nature.

We did not have prisons.

We did not have rapists. We did not have motherless babies homes. People call it orphanage. We did not have mental institution. We did not have homes where you discard your old people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:54.258)
Who is more civilized? These are the kinds of political organizations we had. This is the kind of governments we had when leaders truly served their people.

Adesoji Iginla (19:11.394)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:14.502)
And here comes Islam. And here comes patriarchy. And here comes colonizers who must find a way to divide and conquer so that one group constantly feels the need to put another group down. We were a proud people. I told you we resisted Islam itself.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:42.992)
And for many reasons, they had to do everything they could to wipe us out of the annals of history.

Aya Fubara Eneli (19:55.337)
but forget them. How about us?

Adesoji Iginla (20:01.143)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:02.076)
Why are we so?

easily lulled to sleep why do we so easily forget

And for those of you to whom I am bringing this to your remembrance today, what now will you do with this information?

Do you know now in Niger?

one of the quote-unquote poorest nations on earth despite all of our resources.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:43.88)
Do you know that women are almost cannot be found in the halls of governance?

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:56.082)
Some of us have even forgotten we have the ability and we join the men in ensuring the inferiority of women.

And yet, in that desert area called the Sahel, we bear the brunt.

of the feelings.

of Islam.

of colonialism, of this patriarchy, of neocolonialism. Do you know that the average Nigerian woman has eight children?

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:46.568)
Do you know that we have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the entire world?

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:00.211)
When you look at the situation of Africa today, even Niger now raising its head again.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:13.574)
We cannot go far.

if we cannot remember and properly reinstall the power of women.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:32.476)
We cannot rise up. We cannot rise up a divided people. We cannot rise up when so much energy by men is used to restrict and oppress women. How can you? How can you expect?

Adesoji Iginla (22:32.546)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (22:49.026)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:54.462)
to excel. How can you expect that?

Adesoji Iginla (22:54.52)
Progress.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:00.176)
Now there are books that have been written, many of them in French. There is a novel that was written and a movie that was made. Of course, in the movie, instead of having us speak Hausa, they had us speak Bambara. It was done in Burkina Faso and so Niger boycotted the movie. Today, that movie, for those of you who are interested, it's by Medhondo.

It's a prize-winning film. It won the award at Fespa Co in 1987. Today, they even have ballets about the Sarah Winnia, but not really getting into...

Adesoji Iginla (23:46.126)
I will now.

Adesoji Iginla (23:50.498)
the rule.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:52.243)
and the importance and the erosion and the need for reinstatement. Today, there is a Sarawinia, an Aljima, who does wear the sandals of the historic female leader. But she does not have any real power.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:23.29)
not in the public sphere, not really in the private sphere, not even traditionally, and certainly not in these modern spheres.

Adesoji Iginla (24:31.904)
Hmm. So basically a caricature.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:36.58)
It took over a hundred years.

of Islamic Jihadism plus colonialism.

to strip us of our memory.

and of who we can and should be today. This Lugu area, which once was a bastion of prosperous female chieftaincy.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:13.82)
Let me tell you a little bit about these people considered animist houser.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:25.914)
When you read, when you listen, ask yourself, where is this word coming from? What are the origins? And what is the purpose?

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:42.17)
What makes our way of worship, our form of interacting with the divine one? What makes it animist?

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:59.953)
as compared to other religions.

Adesoji Iginla (26:03.478)
You're not looking to monetize them.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:06.46)
Did not.

in the bible they say isaac was going to kill his son until he was given a ram am i remembering that correctly did not all through the old testament did they not sacrifice animals

Adesoji Iginla (26:21.9)
It was.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:30.948)
What is it that allows certain labels to be put on one group and one form of living but not on another, even in light of unspeakable atrocities carried out by the so-called preferred group?

What is that?

Adesoji Iginla (26:57.74)
the dominant narrative.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:02.302)
And why then will the people who are being oppressed also embrace that narrative? What is our job in telling our own stories? In remembering who we are, who we were, who we can be again.

Aya Fubara Eneli (27:35.866)
when I think of

My people, not just of Lagoon, because we all had kinship beyond our own areas. When I think of my people, Massacart,

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:00.932)
Their villages homes burned.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:06.514)
terror purposely deployed as a method of conquest.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:17.826)
Even France had to admit that their men had gone too far. For France to admit that, to express any kind of shame, you can imagine the level. Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (28:33.772)
Yeah, the level of depravity. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:39.816)
How is it that we don't talk about it? How is it that we now have taken their tongue?

and we speak.

their language.

Aya Fubara Eneli (28:57.02)
We send our children to their schools.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:12.862)
today as I speak to you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:24.316)
I feel...

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:28.69)
The sorrow.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:33.797)
of a legion of

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:39.134)
Saruunias that came before me.

You know the Baga'ibi people, they will say that they can trace back a hundred. Lugu, we can only now trace back ten. But do you know how many centuries that is?

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:03.068)
I feel the weight of that song.

when we look at where our daughters are today.

when we look at what our sons have become.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:22.578)
Does a child come out of his mother's womb and now kill his mother?

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:31.43)
Is that not an abomination?

Adesoji Iginla (30:33.762)
Yeah, definitely is.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:40.562)
However, or should I say in addition?

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:51.356)
I feel a hope rising.

Aya Fubara Eneli (30:58.28)
that there are some.

who are choosing not to forget. That there are some who are going back and collecting the stories and writing it down. Since with you people, if it's not written down, it didn't happen. It does not exist.

but they are going and talking to those who can still remember.

and they are acknowledging and writing down.

Adesoji Iginla (31:36.898)
voice to you

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:40.6)
Now when we talk about the rule of

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:50.29)
Saruña, as myself and all the other ones who came before me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:58.641)
It is important to notice that.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:06.682)
even as recently as 1963.

When the colonizers were still trying to get everybody to acquiesce and do as they wanted them to do, they still would, they still came to some of the remaining female leaders to pay.

and give some gifts and to get their blessings. There was a time that even after men had usurped a role and had taken on the political headship, if you will, where the princesses had the power, they had the role to enthrone or not enthrone

Adesoji Iginla (32:59.416)
male leader.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:00.37)
the male leader. Let me tell you a story of another Saranwea that existed. She was supposed to be enthroned, but the men were very upset about this possibility.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:19.728)
Now there are different versions of this. Some said she saw it in a spirit. Some said a spy came and told her. But she was told, if you go...

to the place of enthronement and you sit in the chair upon which now they enthrone you. That chair has been placed over a pit and once you sit you shall fall inside the pit. This is what they have planned for you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:58.803)
And to some of our oral traditions say, that sanghwe looked at it and said, this is not a safe place. And left in the middle of the night with her people. And that is how Lugu was founded.

Adesoji Iginla (34:09.038)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:19.142)
Now there are other stories that have now surfaced that give more power to men and something about a woman marrying and then having children and being allowed to be in a certain area. But at all times you must question the sources and you must question.

Adesoji Iginla (34:39.054)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:43.89)
the reconfiguration of our oral traditions, of our stories, of our narratives, and how they have become more gendered, how there is this gendered ideology to it. Because if women and men, if young boys and girls learn that there was a time when we were all equal and lived harmoniously,

Adesoji Iginla (34:48.002)
Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (35:13.443)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:13.636)
if they learned that there was a time when our communities, our societies were matrilineal.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:25.298)
then they might become a threat to the current systems. So we must keep people believing a lie. We must particularly keep women believing that it is the will of Allah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:48.307)
The same Allah that gave them an intellect, the same Allah to whom they pray, the same Allah that chose for them to be the ones that carry and birth future generations, that it is the will of that God.

for them to be completely under the feet and the power of men at all times.

Adesoji Iginla (36:20.302)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:23.772)
Before I go any further, what question do you have for me?

Adesoji Iginla (36:28.246)
Okay, so specifically to the idea of how colonialism has watered down the systems of governorship. Could you explain what the day to day role of a sanguine was?

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:39.187)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:50.258)
This is a very, very important question.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:00.466)
Think of any aspect of your society.

from first providing

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:12.73)
spiritual guidance.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:18.492)
to providing protection spiritually first for your people.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:28.944)
to deciding disputes amongst families and other community members, to figuring out how we take care of our environment.

Adesoji Iginla (37:46.84)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:51.632)
We did not hunt for play.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:00.049)
We understood that we all shared and lived in this world together.

You take what you can eat, but you also replenish.

We provided guidance on how we grew our crops.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:23.464)
We even from season to season with water because we were not too far from the main source of water, even that relationship that we have.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:38.738)
Day to day, we had a relationship with the trees. We understood the importance of their root structure in keeping our land together and keeping us healthy.

Adesoji Iginla (38:54.135)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:00.131)
Now when I told you about the Acacia forest, it does not exist anymore.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:09.608)
human beings who no longer remembered or who were now under this idea of development, aided in their own.

poverty because without the cover of these trees, without the root system holding our soil together, you see how what they're now calling desertification is just spreading through the Sahel. So you ask me what was our role? We were caretakers of our environment, of our people.

Adesoji Iginla (39:40.972)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:52.251)
and we stayed in community with those who had gone before us even as we were stewards of what we had for those who would come after us. We did not personally own anything. Can you, when you die, go with anything?

Adesoji Iginla (40:09.39)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (40:20.566)
No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:21.328)
If you cannot go with anything, help me. This is a serious question I'm posing to you and to your people who are watching. And you said there are people watching. Maybe if they can answer this question. If you cannot take anything when you die, why spend your whole life?

amassing the thing you cannot take with you. Tell me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:52.766)
If there's enough for everybody to eat and nobody go hungry or some people can have the food of 2000 while the other 1,999 have nothing to eat. After you eat all that, will you not die too? Can you take it with you? It's a serious question. Please answer.

Adesoji Iginla (41:23.264)
No, obviously you cannot, but then the way the system has been structured, it's seen as a race to the top. They've created a system where the concept of humanity does not track. There was a recent study that for every millionaire there is, there are half a million paupers. But then again, psychologists will say,

If one animal were to hog 1000 bananas, you will say this animal has lost his marbles. But then yet, to use your example, if one person has 2000 meals and 1099 do not have, you're not calling the same person deranged, but you are also lording them. So again, it's a warp mindset that

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:19.614)
that is the role we played, spiritually staying in balance with the environment in which we lived.

What other role did we play day to day? We were military strategists. Some of you have now said, okay, your daughter, they just stay in the kitchen and be pregnant. And hopefully your son, if he has not decided to be a woman, he can go and learn how to protect.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:02.032)
Let me ask you this question again. Please, the people that are listening, answer too. Have you seen

Which animal can I use? Any animal you can think of. A cat that just had babies. A dog that just had babies. A chicken that just had its chicks hatched. Have you ever seen where that animal, if there is a threat, the animal will leave the children and run to go and find the male version of that animal to come now.

and fight to protect. you seen? If you have seen, please tell me. Have you seen? You haven't seen?

Adesoji Iginla (43:47.682)
No, no, no, no, no. In fact, it's the female versions that are steadfast when it comes to guiding the nest.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:01.63)
So in your in your people's language that they put in our mouth now, they say something called mama bear. What is the what is the implication of that? When you mama bear you are extra strong, are extra vigilant, you are taking care of your children. How is it then that we have now decided

that women are so weak.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:33.832)
they can't do anything. We were military strategists. If the men, not that we couldn't go out hunting, but if the men went hunting and the women and children are in the village, do you not think that the women should know how to protect themselves and their children?

Adesoji Iginla (44:36.248)
Mmm.

Adesoji Iginla (44:58.626)
Yeah, it's yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:59.088)
When the women go to their farms, do you not think that these women know how to protect themselves from wild animals?

Adesoji Iginla (45:07.864)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:11.122)
How is it that with all the education that you people say you have now, very simple things.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:24.432)
are now so complex.

Simple. Have I not asked you some very simple questions now? But when you ask us what was our role, we were the caretakers and we kept the oral traditions alive. We were also the healers.

Adesoji Iginla (45:43.469)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:50.567)
We understood what was in our environment that could hurt us, what was in our environment that could heal us.

Aya Fubara Eneli (46:03.486)
Everybody had a notion of healing. Now for the bigger issues, we had bones setters, we had people who could do greater medical, as you will call it now, we call the healing axe. But in every home, they had medicine at the side of their house.

You go and take this leaf. You know what the leaf does. And where are you now?

You wait for that, what do you people call it? Television, something like that, that box. They put people inside it and you wait for them to tell you what you should know about yourself. You asked what role did we play? We played a role in the proper education day to day of our people. Let me tell you about education.

Adesoji Iginla (47:00.962)
Mm. Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:07.888)
or the acquisition of knowledge. A person who has gotten to puberty and beyond is a person who knows how to live.

That is, they know how to feed themselves. That is, they know how to repair the place where they live. That is, they know how to heal themselves. That is, they know how to commune with their ancestors. That is, they know how to fight and protect themselves when need be. Tell me again.

How many of your people are educated?

For some of you, you're asking me what our role is. If they close those places where people go to buy food that you don't know where the food came from, some of you will starve within maybe three days.

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:18.136)
Some of you can be by water you don't know how to get fish and feed. Some of you don't know how to start fire. A very simple lesson that ancient people knew how to do. Some of you have so many degrees but if I told you today here is a bag of money start a fire.

If you don't have your modern tools, you don't know how to live.

What form of education is that? You don't know how to you don't know what to eat for your body. You don't know how to take care of yourself. What did we do? We kept our communities healthy and whole.

and we taught this information and made sure that it was passed down from generation to generation to generation. We were not a warm-mongering people.

Perhaps that was our downfall.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:34.76)
But I heard that there's this thing you people do, beauty pageants, where the women walk and I heard that they will ask a question, what do you want to see? And that all the time people will say, world peace.

We taught how to live in peace with nature and with one another. Where are you people learning today how to live in peace? Because all I see is war. And that is what you have brought to our lands. Where now, because we have forgotten.

Adesoji Iginla (50:02.028)
with nature.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:23.334)
We are turning those weapons against ourselves. But the biggest weapon that is being used, that we are using against ourselves is that we have forgotten that our minds have been taken over. So I'm very grateful for you. Very grateful to you today. That may be

Not so much my name. My name matters and it does not matter at the same time. Which is why I did not focus on, I came from a royal lineage. Every time we want to say is queen and king. If you're going to be a queen or a king, you serve your people.

But that is not how you people call it. When you say king or queen, you are looking to sit on a throne and somebody else serve you. And then somebody else wants to be the one who is served. And so this is the power struggle. How many people fight to serve? People fight to lord over other people. They don't fight to serve, do they?

Adesoji Iginla (51:15.406)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (51:39.798)
No, no.

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:40.626)
People say, no, no, no, no, I must wash the plate. No, I must be the one who farms the land. No, because we have forgotten what it means to lead. So when you say, who were we? Who am

Adesoji Iginla (52:04.91)
to.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:06.588)
Oui.

speaking quite frankly, were the embodiment of that thing you would call God on earth.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:19.1)
Yes, that is as succinctly as I can put it. Any good that you attribute to God, that is what we embodied in the flesh. And that is why going back to the beginning of our conversation, why I am not a household name, why people in Niger today barely know the name. If they know the name, they don't know the significance.

That is why you talk to the Hausa's, you talk to the Fulanis, we are forgotten. That is why across the continent of Africa, we continue to be at each other's throats, even as others are also killing us. But we can't stop it.

Adesoji Iginla (53:05.6)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:09.874)
Today in my capacity, I say we can stop it. If we remember, if we remember and we go back to those ways, little by little, one step at a time, teaching the next, teaching the next, teaching the next. It does not have to be anything grand. Teaching the next, teaching the next. How are you going to show up today?

Adesoji Iginla (53:26.872)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:41.075)
That is the question. One woman that I will encourage you to look into because she has done some very good research on the essence of me and the lineage of women from whom I come from. Her name is Antoinette Tijani-Alu.

Look at how work and then think where can you do similar work.

What stories?

Adesoji Iginla (54:24.343)
and you bring forth.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:25.008)
In your community, Saronia, is there one in your community maybe called a different name? What happens if the boys and girls remember?

If the boys and girls remember, let me ask you another question. Will we still have this thing you people call...

which is a very funny term now that I think about it. You people call it domestic violence as opposed to

international violence? don't know. But will we have the thing we call domestic violence if men and women remembered that we need that twinness, that we need that equality, that we need that unity? Would there be a need for one

to oppress another if we remember it? Or could we remember how to work together again?

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:41.822)
for the good of humanity.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:50.408)
So today, lugu.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:00.745)
called the village of Lugu. Not the township, not the city, not the metropolis, even though we were a very prosperous people. Today, if you go to my land,

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:27.058)
Waleata life. Just desolation. Just wasteland. The young people fleeing from the area.

Less than 3,000 people might sometimes call that place home. All the young able-bodied men, they going to the coastline.

Maybe they are now joining the military. Maybe they will rise up in the spirit of their foremothers and fight the French. Maybe that is what is going on now. We have hope.

But when I look at that one striving space, I have to shake my head.

But I have to believe. I have to believe.

Adesoji Iginla (57:14.926)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:20.69)
that the blood of African people.

which these colonizers liberally fertilized the soil of Africa with.

that that blood is not only going to cry out, it is rising. It is stirring up the hearts of our young people.

Adesoji Iginla (57:51.448)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:52.454)
and we shall return to our greatness again.

Adesoji Iginla (58:00.201)
Sure.

Adesoji Iginla (58:03.994)
shit.

Adesoji Iginla (58:09.07)
Mm.

Yes, thank you, Saraguna Magoo. It's been a pleasure hearing your take on what was, what could have been, and what should be going forward. And it's also important for us as listeners to also not just listen, but also take forward some of what we've heard today.

in practice, in deed, ensuring that everything around us underscores that point which is we need to center ourselves more. Colonialism did not just violence on the people but also violence on the psychology because once a people's mind has been captured you need not fight for it. They will do the fighting themselves which is where you said

we've now turned the guns on ourselves is because colonialism has done us a number and we're captured. And a captured mind is as good as a planned mind. And that mind can be put to any use whatsoever.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:26.558)
I feel compelled to say this to you. See, when we say colonialism, which I said,

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:36.902)
I will encourage you to study but what are the systems?

within colonialism that they use to impose this on us, that they use to extract our memories.

Look at the systems so that you're not fighting an amorphous ghost called colonialism or neo-colonialism. What are the delivery systems? Can you name some? Anybody that is listening? Education will be a delivery system. There are schools. There are books. Language. Religion. Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:16.738)
Yeah.

Language, language, language, the church, yeah.

trade.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:00:29.234)
these trade, these weapons.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:32.908)
Yeah. Culture.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:00:34.726)
And now culture, I was going to say now for your young people, they don't even have to come and knock on the door or you take your child to the school to hand over your child's mind to them. We are going and buying their, what do people call it, devices and just giving it to our children and saying, hey, let the whole world just...

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:48.77)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:55.49)
devices.

unfiltered.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:02.492)
do anyhow they want to. Yes, we don't even know what our children are listening to. So you must look at the systems.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:02.702)
four into them.

within my.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:13.43)
The delivery systems, yes. Music.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:16.27)
Which one are you going to try and fight? know, everybody I don't think is smart for if you have a town or a house, you have six doors, you have 10 windows. You can't have everybody guarding one door and one window.

Will it work?

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:43.822)
No.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:45.503)
So everybody has some door or window they and some people with them guard and then some people go to another door another window. So some of you might say my own is this education system. Some of you may say we might must make music that feeds our spirit and helps us remember.

Some of you might say we must make fashion the clothes we wear that helps us remember who we are and what we're about and even what we're wearing if you kill all the animals to wear for.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:24.672)
or statement, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:36.346)
then what? What will you eat? Right? Some of you might say my area is agriculture.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:48.492)
Your food.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:50.812)
Some of you will say my area is reclaiming our spirituality. Some of you, your area might be philosophy. Some of you, do you see my point? So there's nobody that can say they don't have a job to do to fight this system. But if you are just sitting down and waiting for somebody else.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:03.501)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:10.364)
Yeah.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:14.924)
that somebody else would do.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:22.298)
You are a very problematic person. We cannot trust you. You might as well just go and live with the other people.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:31.296)
well yeah which underscores the point that if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:40.808)
So thank you again, thank you again.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:41.068)
Yeah, no, no, thank you for coming through. And so with that, we've come to the end of this week's episode of Women and Resistance. Next week, we'll be looking at NSW ProCop. And again, yeah, so we continue to highlight this Women of Resistance. And for everyone in the chat, I give my heart to you. Thank you for coming through. Thank you for supporting.

your commentary has been invaluable to helping keeping this alive and hopefully it grows and grows and grows. And with that said, next week will be the 24th. I'm sure some people will be wrapping their presents. So while you're doing that, you can also listen and watch Women and Resistance and also

The next week, the 26th will be Boxing Day African News Review will still go ahead, which happens to be my birthday, but no presents please, if you want to give presents books. that said,

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:00.979)
So a wonderful present. Did I not hear you say you have a goal for your channel? Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:07.112)
Yes, that will be to achieve 2000 subscribers by the end of December 31st. We're onto it and we need more hands to the pump. yes, we've seen some increase in the numbers, but we need more like Oliver Twist will say. And thank you all for coming through and until next week. See you. It's

Good night and