Ministerial Nomination: Keyamo Is Urhobo

By Moses Darah

The propaganda by the faceless bush radio that an illustrious son of Uvwie-Urhobo and Nigeria’s Minister Nominee, Festus Keyamo, SAN is not a Nigerian, but Kenyan is ridiculous and laughable.

In the Urhobo orthography, every noun begins with a vowel while verbs begin with consonant sounds. However, the practice of the naming system in Urhobo varies across the 24 kingdoms. In most cases, the Udu, Ughievwen and Uvwie dialects omit the initial vowel sound. For example, names like Umukoro becomes Mukoro, Okoro becomes Koro, Otiti becomes Titi, etc. Thus Keyamo fits into, and is an Urhobo name.

There is also no basis to attribute the name Keyamo based on its mere phonological resemblance with Kenyan names to mean Keyamo is from Kenya.

The name Keyamo in Urhobo can be glossed thus: Eka (corn) ya (when) mo (bears), meaning when corn bears or Ke (you) ya (go) mo (bear) go and bear as in fruit. In the Agbarho and Agbon dialects, it will be eka da mo, why the Uvwie version is ke si ena (it is now).

This simple analogy only points to the fact that Keyamo has no need to convince anyone that he is a true son of Urhobo. Anybody with a contrary view should first of all tell us the meaning of his/her family name and stop wishing our best products away.