Oromo wiki | By Abishe Gerba
Towns all around Oromia, specially those larger and brighter once, in one way or another, were established as garrison stations. Then their Oromo indigenous population cleared of to make space for new migrants settlers. Finfinnee or Addis Ababa was also established first to host Menelik’s advancing army further to the south and western Ethiopia. There are number of oral and written evidences of how Menelik and his wife Tayitu were so pleased with Finfinnee that they decided to make it their station to command their force to invade and occupy the south and west.
In a book entitled ‘Oromia yedebekew tarik‘, the extent of excitement about the local landscape of Finfinnee by Menelik and his wife is an evidence to the fact that the Naftenga system had in mind to take Finfinnee out of Oromos’ hand that early. As he sits on a rock and takes a hot spring bath, as written on the book, Menelik says to his wife ‘Now Galas have filled this place; however, in the future, my grandsons will build houses and make this place their city‘.
As he wished, his grandsons have filled
Finfinnee and are finishing the job their forefathers have started. During all this time, the Oromos are the prime target of ethnic cleansing. During the
Menelik’s time, it is well documented truth that Gullale and Galan tribes were massacred and driven out of their homeland. As an evidence, those who fled
Menelik’s
army attack still live in places such as
Arsii and
Baale. What is most shocking is that
Menelik’s statue that stands in the centre of
Finfinnee is build by clearing a sacred
Odaa tree where the General Assmbly of Gullalle Oromos were held.
Today, the issue of
Finfinnee is more of a strategic dispossession of land. Over the last 10 years, the
federal government have played nasty games on the
Oromo people regarding
Finfinnee, its special interest on the city as stipulated on Article 49 of the FDRE constitution. The sudden move of
Oromia region government seat to
Adama and back to
Finfinnee is one of such incidents to demonstrate. It is very alarming if one sees how farmers have been and are being dispossessed from their land for as low as 5 birr per hectare and no compensations at times. But what is more important to closely look is that
Menelik’s plan of making
Finfinnee his grandsons’ home by pushing Oromos further away in to the wild is pursued aggressively and nobody seems to check that.
The recent
master plan to ‘integrate’ towns with
Finfinnee is a strategic and systematic implementation of
Menelik’s wish. What is different might be who settles now might be a bit different. During
Menelik, the Amharas where the favourite to be given priority while now the Tigrays are those who are buying large swath of land with their close brothers, the Amharas next in line.
Every
Oromo should know that the
master plan is part of a well thought
TPLF plan since 10 years to take the entire region of about 100km in diameter of
Finfinnee out of
Oromia’s hand and redistribute it to
Abyssinians. It is an instrument to bypass the regional and
federal law that prohibits any
federal or city administration of
Addis Ababa to annex any land from
Oromia. It is a tool kit to destroy
Oromo values, its language, culture and its identity and replace it with
Abyssinian state sponsored identity.
