Oduu Haaraya

The Fictitious Professor Feqadu Lemessa (Tolessa Gurmessa)

By Tolessa Gurmessa

If you are an Oromo, you probably heard about the fictitious professor who started writing Oromo’s history over the internet. If you are an Oromo scholar, you probably were pulling your notebooks out to see if you have his name on your peers’ list. Or you might have called friends back home to find out if a person by this name existed.

We couldn’t match the infamous internet professor to a real life person–breathing, talking or perhaps writing history. The only close match we found was the Academic Vice President of Dire Dawa University, Dr. Fekadu Lemessa. Pay attention here. The internet historian’s name is spelled “Feqadu,” and he is a former Adama University professor and writer. You would think you would know someone like professor Feqadu Lemessa. Right? He writes about stuff (I have no idea what it is about but it could be history.) If you were once Adama University student, you should remember him well, because he taught you–probably shared his writing skills and tips with you too. Never mind, there were no students when professor Feqadu Lemessa was teaching at Adama University. Nobody remembers him. The staff of Adama University doesn’t remember him either.

Adama University1

Adama University

 

Do you want to punch me yet? Okay okay, calm down! I will get to the point. The former professor from Adama University does not exist. But you are in luck. I tried to dig some information up for you. Since we could not meet a person who has met professor Feqadu Lemessa, we were left with speculation. I am going to mention a name not as a confirmed but as a suspect who might have been posing as the fictitious professor.

As most of you, writers probably know, it is not an easy feat to publish articles on authority websites. I am not saying salem-news dot com is an authority website, but they probably want to be recognized as such. This website’s editors probably did not do their readers a justice. They did not confirm the identity of the author who claimed to be a historian–refuting other historians’ perspective. The author biography states that he is a former professor at Adama University. Nothing was mentioned about his current whereabouts. They did not do an internet search to see if a person by this name existed. My conclusion, salem-news dot com is not a credible website.

Then how did this fictitious professor get on that site? Think. Does he work for the “news” site? Ahhh…why didn’t I think of that? No worries. Now you are thinking about it. Let’s go to the said website and try to spot a suspect. Do you think you will find an Ethiopian staff on there? Yes. Yes, you do. His name is Kiflu Hussain. Darn! You are in luck again. I would guess you can take the investigation from here.

On July 20, 2013, Kiflu Hussain wrote about Jawarism (I’m an Oromo first) on ECAD Forum, where ‘ethiopianism’ is preached. He shared his take on an article written by Awoll Allo. He cited from Merera Gudina’s book to refute some of the assertions made by Mr. Allo. He also complained about one-sided stories. I guess he didn’t realize he was giving the other side of the stories. Or, maybe he did not think he was that credible. Do you see anything wrong here? I don’t. Just like any other Ethiopianist, Mr. Hussain has a right to share his opinion.

Fast forward to July 28, 2013. Viola! An article titled “History 101: Fiction and Facts on Oromos of Ethiopia,” appears on salem-news dot com at 19:21 hours. This article complains heavily about the story told on Al Jazeera being one-sided story. One hour later (My Twitter time stamp shows 11:31 PM EST), Kiflu Hussain posted a link to the article on his Twitter feed.

This does not say Mr. Kiflu Hussain himself wrote the article. But he might have had a role in publishing the distorted article, from a fake professor. Did he write to the editors about the article being from a credible author? Did salem-news dot com allow a pseudonym? We will see. But Mr. Kiflu Hussain has got some explaining to do. Don’t forget he also agreed with the fictitious professor on Press TV article.

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5 comments

  1. To :debtera Fekadu Lamessa professor of ignorance
    The current storm of Oromo identity movement ignited unexpected pros and cons from all sides.The young dynamic Oromo intellectuals shocked the Habeshans(Abssinians) .As an academician you tried to defend the Habeshan century old history of lies.You tried to lie people but you cant lie the information and communication ages.We are in the 21 first century.Your 101 history guidline are simply fabrication of lies to confuse the international media,by doing that abused academic ethics.The Habeshans (Abbisinians) still try to resist to recognize OROMUMMA;OROMOO;OROMIYAA.The more you and your collaborators attempt to resist the better the sleeping Oromo mass awake to challenge you.If the Eriterean case is not a lesson for you what lesson is left for you and your collaborators??yes another round of bloodshed, unnecessary waste of material and human resources for your endless vain nonsense Amhara nationalism in the shadow of Ethiopian nationalism.No more fake unity,no more fake Ethiopia at the sacrifice Oromo and other nations and nationalities.Kediro elemo the young researcher had enlisted the materials as evidence to read and understand mass killings and the the genocide that took place from 19860 _1900 in the country of Oromos(Oromia) by your rabed kings thirsty of human blood and flesh.You may ask for evidences how many of them were killed and survived and who counted them.The reality on the ground is that each inch of oromian land stamped by those beasts( Habeshan invading army) can witness what happened on the routes from Finfinne towards southern and eastern Oromia:Most of us talking about chalanqoo baattles but what about massacre took place on the routes to Calanqoo,(Aanole, Didaa,Azule;Haliila,Maanya,Gololcha). Immagine, from my tribal family only my grand father was survived the whole tribe was exterminated.you tried to tell us the oromos killed each other after sending them with machine guns and force them to fight.Dear professor of ignorance!when will you stop braying like jack ass from every corner of the world.?? we have graves not to forget, we have injuries not to forget. You want us to remember more and more.The more debteras and their collaboraters try to be fanatic and rigid the stronger we are to shape our future and destiny in unity to challenge you.Ethiopian leaders acted/act like prostitute.They depends on outsiders to run the country, shameful leaders who rule by fear and suspicion.Almost all outsiders who were behind you changed their mind unless other wise you and your collaboraters change them selves, the time Machine will swallow you and your rotten system.
    another issue you raised was whether Oromia was colonized or not.With certainty and surety Oromia was/is colonized.The decolonization started many years ago what left to us is to end successfully.All colonizations are the same.what differentiate the Habeshan colonizers and the European Colonizers is that a matter of civility and barbarism.They are whites and civilized you are black , backward beasts and barbaric that receives order from them to extend their indirect colonization.The collaboration of colonizers darkened our destiny,no matter how they are collaborated we are sure one day the sun of liberty will shine over Oromia.
    Your professorship tried to tell us that the Ethiopian kings were Oromo. yes some of them are Oromo by blood but brain washed to be more than Habeshans.they are more Amharas than Amharas.They are more Tigre than Tigreans:loose one`s identity and took others is the worst identity crisis of humanity.You have no pity for others, you act just like those dog brought up by animal farm pig leader.may be that is the reason why you abused your academic title ??dog behaviorism is the typical identity crises syndrome.
    You know that Greecs and Romans were once the master of the world.They used to call the people they colonized backward and barbaric.they gave them diffrent names. It is doubtful that the term you used to insult us as GALLA is African .The Greecs used to call those people whose skin is as white as milk they call galla.The Romans used to rule almost all European countries dividing them into provinces from the modern France to Germany as GALLIA .The people are the gallic people.Your brothers in faith specially the priests imported this derogatory word with them.The notorius Qesis as usual to pretend that they are civlized to call us Galla.It is doubtful that it is arabic or somalic orgin as you tried to assert.
    finally,we oromos tolerated all brutality,sufferings,killings,hatreds and humillations until now.The time is expired to those silences,calms,sleeps.The young dynamic educated generation command you”debteras and professor of ignorance get out of our way”

  2. correction Read from 1860 _1900

  3. A Response to Prof. Feqadu’s “Guideline for History of Oromo and Ethiopia’

    From: Dhugaa Waaqaa, Professor of ethnology at Oromo-Cush University of Ancient Africa, Department of Deconstruction of Habashean Falsities and Reconstruction of Cushite Plausibility Structure

    Fiction #1
    “…reporting inaccurate or biased information”
    Fact #1
    Prof. Feqadu Lamessa, which no doubt is a pseudonym of an EPRDF-Woyane ‘professor’, wrote what he calls “a guide for foreign journalists on Oromos and Ethiopian history”. In this article, where he tried to teach us not just his own but also of his kindred ‘history’ of “our people” and “Ethiopia”. He began by accusing Al Jazeera for “reporting inaccurate or biased information”, but praising this amazing-lifeline, voice-of-the-voiceless, without which I personally can neither sleep nor feel full-humanness, viz., Al Jazeera, the antidote of Prof. Feqadu’s ETV, which is the mouthpiece, basket-of-lies, with which his tyrannical state not only ‘rape’ the voice of Ethiopian peoples but also prostitute ‘democracy’. Although I cannot speak for any media, as addict to international news channels, I can guess that when Al Jazeera invited the Oromo scholars, what it did was carried out its usual universally noble task—empowering humanity, giving voice to the voiceless Man, pulsating more the pulse to freedom, disclosing the mystified truth. Fiqadu accuses Al Jazeera of transmitting “inaccurate”, “biased” based on “ members or supporters of Oromo groups outside of Ethiopia”, but those young, brilliant scholars like Jawwar Mohammed were but thrown out by Prof. Fiqadu’s Wayane gov’t—relatively luckier than those thousands of university and high school youths whose corpse were fed to hyenas by the same human evils. In other words, they narrated to Al Jazeera, real lived experience of suffer, slavery, torture, etc., in the hands of bloodthirsty, savage Abyssinanist hooligans. What exactly is accurate, non-biased information to you? Prof. Fiqadu’s accusation must remind us the insults Habasheans puked to Jonathan Dimbleby of the BBC and Sorious Samura of the CNN for their “crime” of unveiling the secrete veils of the Habashas—starving millions of children and mothers to death, a grandiose project in the eyes of the evil Habashean mentality. Of course Fiqaadu Lamessa might be a white pharaoh—especially Abyssinico-Semitist–in disguising himself in the name of Oromo.
    Fiction #2
    “…our people…” and “…our cause”
    Fact #2
    Prof. Fiqadu, we do not need to buy a history ticket from “European authors” to write a piece of article about “our people”, a history of events that happened in the 1880s and early 1900s. Either you simply talk to your grandfather—if at all you have—or as usual try to extract from your dabtras—Orthodox Church sorceress ‘writing’ for us Abyssinian chronicles or, rather, “history of the future,” to use the pejorative term of Prof. Asmarom Legesse, the genius of African historical anthropology. Needless to remind, the Oromo has, as the great scholars like Paul Baxter and Eike Haberland confirm, very advanced, ancient and complex techniques of recording, storing, and transmitting historical, epistemological, cosmogonal, genealogical, astronomical, calendarial….you name it….knowledge not over centuries but across millennia. Still your effort to tell us what happened about “our people” just ‘a minute ago’ is appreciable!! By the way the Habashean mentality of “our people” is totally different from the rest of the world; it is objectificating humanity—meaning equivalent to saying ‘our lap top’, ‘our slaves’, etc. Never can a Habasha admit the transformative power of humanity, never does he give value to human being but the abstract God and gods like the abstract Abune Gebre Menfes Qudus!!!!!Virgin Merry!!!!
    What is Prof. Fiqadu’s “cause”?? Simply, rule-by-falsity-and-gun. This is what only the most stupid Oromo can do, but is real and day-to-day profession of the Habasha.

    Fiction #3
    “the total Ethiopian population was much less than 5 million in the late 1800s”
    Fact #3
    Prof. Fiqadu, although hard to know which Ethiopia you are speaking about, in this statiscs you are gonna tell us that by 12th century Ethiopian population was a few hundreds while during the erecting the Axumite Stela, they were 10 people, if not negative 10?

    Fiction #4
    “Oromo migration”
    Fact #4
    The most recurrent term in Prof. Fiqadu’s “guideline for Oromo History” is ‘Oromo migration.’ By reading this, one can easily understand the social origin as well as the value of the Prof. simply, he is either one of the last vestiges of Ullendorff’s or Marcus’s “miseducated Ethiopians” or the bankrupt white pharaoh, a little brother of the latter partimers in “Emperor” Haile Sillassie’s College—the British Museum guards that turned out to “professors” of Abyssinian History, aided by the sorcerers of the Orthodox monasteries like Tekle Tsadik Mekuria, Hable Sillasie, Tadesse Tamirat, to mention a few of the beggared ‘historians’.

    Prof., from where to where did Oromos migrate? Have you ever read Chiekh Anta Diop? Martin Bernal? James George? Drussila Dundee Houston?Christopher Ehret? Ayele Bekerie? Or you only red Fikarie Mariam? Or, The Organ of the Virgin (see Monroe)? Most probably only the last two. If you read the former, you could have gotten the clue to the fact that the Black African Oromo-Nilo-Cushites ruled over the three Old Continents of Africa, Asia and Europe before your Son of God was born out of Virgin Mary!!

    Prof., do you know that it was the Amhara-Tigre Semite that migrated from, according to the White Abyssinianists’ conjure-ups (read your Ullendorff, Harold Marcus, etc.) that migrated from “Babylon” downwards to South Arabia, then cruised over the Red Sea (by American Aircraft Carrier??) passing into Africaland in the 4rth century AD??? Do you know these wandering, landless wanderers?? Never did Oromo migrate, great African historians mentioned earlier can assure you!!!! The Abyssinico-semi-white ‘jistorians’ like Tadesse Tamirat, Makuria, Alaqa ???, the embarrassment to African history—forget them!!. Yours is by far better!!!Indeed, you are moderate historian, but a little bit naïve.

    Fiction #5
    “all historians agree” that… “a united one Oromo nation did not exist at those times(1880s)”

    Fact #5
    This needs no response but it is sufficient to guide the grat Prof. Fiqadu to reading—if you can—the amazing complex, advanced and ancient socio-philosophico-political traditions of Gada System and Gada Calendar (Cerulli, Asmarom Legesse, Haberland). Popular discourse in the contemporary Habashean mentality is, as also reflected in Fiqadu’s, retroductive population-size-reduction for the “migration” and “nomadic” discourse ascribed to the Oromos, the Somali, the Afar and other Cushites has irrevocably lost credibility for, as it was, it is empty-balloon word display first drummed by the dogmatic Orthodox slave sorcerers serving their European white colonial masters.

    Fiction #6
    “Oromo clans were also in fierce battles amongst each other”
    Fact #6
    Prof., here you might be right, but tell us your time frame. If you are speaking of Oromo before 19th century, you’re wrong. Oromos have had Gada philosophies of conflict resolution since time immemorial. In the first place, Oromo does not have “clan” or you define it. Oromos have had (1) super-moieties or Badd’aa (nation states under common nation, you can take the Ancient Black Cushite States called Badd’a Sadeen ‘the Three Fertile Nation-Lands’, if you like, take Ancients Ethiopia+Nubia+Egypt), (2) moieties or Oda (=confederal), (3) sub-moeities or Qaallu (=federal states), (4) semi-federal sub-states (Warra), etc. until the nuclear family of again Badd’a ‘Husband+Wife+Chil’.

    Let me congratulate you that, indeed, since Habashean interference of 18th/19thcc and up until now we are killing one another—‘a Sacred Oda tree doomed to growing beside a cactus tree ‘weeps’ (=bleeds) for life’, says an Oromo epistemic adage.

    Fiction #7
    ““Galla” was first used by Arab and muslim Somalis”
    Fact #7
    Here, you are muddying up some truths. In the first place, there is no difference between Somali ‘gal’ and Oromo ‘gal’ in semantic, since we are friends of common root by genealogy, too. All the Cushite family refer by Gal-tu (deformed systematically to gult (system) in Abyssinianist history) apropriately referring to ‘adoptees (societal)’ allowed to settle for they’ landless-penniless’ (=tenants) through Guddifacha System, but historically known to have turned to intruders and looters. Before Minilik, this word referred to different groups—no surprise, with shift of power structure, semantic structure also shifts. Oromos are compassionate people—but it is unfortunate that that excellent, humane quality backlashed them—what an ugly dialectic of reality!

    When it comes to “Arabic”, I don’t know what source you and your kindred rely on. Both of you since you suck up to Arabs or Europeans, you ascribe everything to them. How can we believe you?

    Prof. Dhugaa Waaqaa, currently professor of ethnology at Oromo-Cush University of Ancient Africa, Department of Deconstruction of Habashean Falsities and Reconstruction of Cushite Plausibility Structure

  4. what are you talking about man?? professor feqadu was a history teacher in adama university before he was fired by woyane agents in AU for political reasons. just because you disagree with the professor, don’t attack him, attack his ideas only

    • You separate ‘a man’ from ‘his ideas’?–i.e., his mind/consciousness/brain from his body/physiology/anatomy/heart/kidney??? What do you mean? To me, I agree with the Prof.