Oba Alaiyeuwa Ademola 11
King Oba Alaiyeuwa Ademola II. is the natural ruler of the Egbas in Nigeria in West Africa. These people are well known for their home industries, cocoa growing and other valuable commodities. They are very industrious. King Ademola has great power, wisdom and a keen sense of justice. He, like many other African Kings, fought hard to retain the liberty and independence of his subjects. When the world war broke out black men from all corners of Africa and other parts of the world, including the Egbas and Yurubas, were invited by the Great Powers to assist in fighting the enemy and thus make the world safe for democracy, and for the protection of small nations. Africans answered the call by the thousands and died by the hundreds on the battlefields and the seas. The war is over; the enemy is beaten, but the promise was never fulfilled-the Egbas suffered the same fate as their brothers in other parts of Africa-they lost their independence, at precisely the same time (1914) as their sons were dying in Flanders and other war zones to make the world free.
Treaties made by European Powers with the West Africans, like those made with South Africans, were not honoured. The only difference between the lot of the Africans in the West and those in the South, is that the Africans in the West have not as yet been restricted in the same degree as those in the South from acquiring land.
This glaring injustice; this breach of faith is allowed, no doubt, because the natives are helpless, and because they are helpless they must be a child race, who must be treated, without consent, as somebody else thinks fit whether right or wrong. Indeed, others contend that even our mental capacity is inferior to that of the European, yet the facts are:-When Alexander the Great was adding victory upon victory, and sweeping through Babylon, Cabul, Chaeronia and Gaza, and learning the rudiments of government at the feet of Aristotle the philosopher; when the western world was only beginning to find its feet and commencing to mould a civilisation for the first time, Ethiopia was in its glory, and had reached such perfection in its civilisation that its culture flourished and dominated the world four hundred and fifty years before. The question is, is Ethiopia or Africa of .to-day mentally inferior than the Ethopia of yesterday? Is it not rather just the same old story of-Empires come, and Empires go. At any rate the Egbas of Nigeria, like other races, have proved themselves on the battlefields of Europe; and with other tribes of Africa they have distinguished themselves in the leading universities of Europe and graduated in arts and sciences with honours. The question of inferiority of the Africans therefore is to be doubted.