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The Age
of Innocence: by A. E. Afigbo Professor of History, Ọha
n’eze Onye na nke
ya, onye na nke ya Ihe ọma
mee, nke ọjọọ emela Egbe bere,
ugo bere Nke sị
ibe ya ebela Nku kwaa
ya Ntigbu
ntigbu nzọgbu nzọgbu Ya n'agụ
zutekwa It is, perhaps necessary, to remind ourselves that
we have gathered But what is more important, the concepts planting and harvesting have a wider application, whether for the individual or
the group, than materialists think. In the cosmic context in which the human
drama unfolds, they provide part of the light which enables us to understand
the human condition at any time in history. This is so in the sense that the
nature and quality of the harvest is logically deter-mined by the kind of seed
we sowed, on what kind of soil we sowed it and how painstakingly we manured and
tended it. Thus Ahiajoku is a time
when we harvest not only plump and sweet fruits, but 'also shriveled up and
bitter fruits depending on how we sowed and tended our seeds the previous
season. With respect to ordinary crops, there is a planting season and there is
a harvesting season. But in the cosmic context in which men live their lives
and sow their seeds in thought, word and deed, as in the social institutions
and inter-group and inter-personal relations which they establish, every moment
of history is a time of reaping as well as a time of sowing. Though not
disposed to preach, I thus feel constrained to remind ourselves that as we of
this generation reap the fruits of the labours of our revered ancestors,
whatever they happen to be, we should remember to plant what our successors
will reap. As my people would say it: Nwa na-eri
akụ nna ya kpara Ya
kpatakwa nke ụmụ ya ga-eri And
in doing so we should be very mindful of what kinds of seeds we sow, on what
kinds of soil we sow them and how we manure and tend them. Thus, any limited and narrow conception of Ahiajoku, of harvest as a time of festivities, is likely to expose us to the
danger of every year at this time losing ourselves in rounds of winning and
dinning and mutual congratulations. On the other hand a broader conception of
it, will help to remind us that even at the materialistic level a time of
harvest is also a time of reappraisal, of stock-taking. For serious farmers the
New Yam Harvest Festival is also a time of serious reappraisal – reappraisal of
the performance during the previous agricultural year of Njọku (the yam force), of Ala
(the earth force) of Igwe (the
sky force which sends rain and sunshine), of man as di ji or eze ji (farmer).
It is also a time when, in the comfort provided by relative plenty, plans are
made, at least mentally, for the next season. In keeping with this tried and
tested tradition the present lecturer is going to seize this opportunity of a
lifetime to try and examine critically and soberly (which also means
appreciatively and, if necessary, deprecatingly) the achievements of the Igbo
in that sensitive area of group endeavour which required and still requires
them to work out a modus vivendi with
their neighbours. My topic rises in ones mind two
preliminary questions which must be touched upon here rather than answered in
full. The first is “who are the Igbo?’ and the second “who are their
neighbours?” On the surface these are straightforward questions that should
evoke simple answers. But in fact they are not easy to answer as will become
clear presently. The term Igbo has shown itself to be rather chameleonic,
changing its meaning according to time and political climate. And unless we can
be certain who the Igbo are, we cannot say who their neighbours are. During the
century that came after 1850 or so, some European publicists, especially some
missionaries and anthropologists, had no difficulty in delimiting who the Igbo
were. To these men most of the people east of the These conclusions were based on
contemporary analysis of linguistic relationships and on oral traditions
collected from certain Ijọ and Efik-Ibibio communities. If we dismiss the
linguistic studies of the period as unreliable, we must concede that these men
did not fabricate the claims to Igbo origin which they encountered among the Ijọ
and the Efik-Ibibio. In other words at that time, and indeed until three or
four decades ago, there were many Ijọ and Efik-Ibibio communities which
proudly laid claim to Igbo origin but today would treat such a suggestion as an
affront. Here we find a classic example of the trick which time and political
consciousness play on historical writing. However, just as there were, during
the colonial period, people who were prepared to give such a wide ethnological
meaning to the term “Igbo”, there were others who gave it a more restricted
reading. To this latter group the Arọ were not Igbo because their oracle
organization and their extensive trading “empire” showed them up as too
“intelligent” and “intellectual” to be Igbo. They were believed to be either a
colony of ancient Egyptians, or Phonecians, or Jukuns or Portuguese, or Jews or
some other “Semito-Hamitic” group. By the same token the highly evolved
priestly monarchy of the Ụmụnri around which the people built up a
ritual hegemony covering Northern
and At one point it was thought that physical
anthropology which is concerned with the study of bone structure and blood
groups would settle all questions such as this with a finality. But this does
not now appear to be the case especially as physical type is a function of
environment and nutritional habits, while blood group is affected by.
inter-breeding. Anthropometric studies of A common sense approach would ignore all this
dispute amongst the egg-heads, placing greater reliance on language and a
number of cultural traits. We do not need, it can be argued, an academic
head-measurer going about with calipers or an oracle to tell us when we meet an
Igbo or enter an Igbo compound. The language, the mode of dress, social
institutions like Ọzọ titles,
Ọfọ, Njọku, Nmanwụ
masquerade, marriage practices, burial rites, settlement patterns, etc.,
speak louder and clearer than the abstruse research findings and analyses of
bespectacled professors. But to adopt this common sense approach is to close
ones eyes to the fact that it is not possible to pick out any of these traits
and assert that it exists in all Igbo communities and that it is not found in
any other community lying beyond whatever may be the accepted Igbo frontier, or
that it is accepted by all those who manifest it as the indisputable mark of Igboness. Of all the traits which it is
possible to single out as marking out the Igbo as a distinct group, the Igbo language
is probably the most important, the one that can lay claim to the epithet
“pan-Igbo”. But as we have already shown, in the nineteenth century, and in the
early part of this century many Efik-Ibibio and Ijọ communities were
classified as Igbo on the basis of language. Because the Igbanị, that is
Bonny, Opobo and their satellite communities were considered to be Igbo, they
were represented in the group of five local linguists who, with Archdeacon
Dennis sat at Egbu Owerri and translated the Holy Bible into Union Igbo. Though
the With these problems it is not surprising that
delimiting Igbo-land on the ground or on the map has not been easy at all. In
the days before politics bedeviled the issue of ethnic identity in Using the common sense approach therefore who are
the Igbo? Is it those who call themselves Igbo, that is those who are prepared
to take upon themselves the odium which this two-syllable word evokes in
Nigerian politics today? Or is it those who are called Igbo by their neighbours
who want to brand them in order to put them at a disadvantage either as
political or economic rivals? If the latter, and depending on the political
climate, the “Igbo” would include all the people of south-eastern Nigeria, as
it did during the pogroms of 1966 thus making possible the killing of Ogoja, Ijọ
and Efik-Ibibio high-ranking army officers along with those of their colleagues
who were “Igbo proper”. It would also include, from time to time, the Ijebu of
Yorubaland whose business practices are often considered sharp and un - Yoruba.
It would also include, the christianized peoples of The common sense approach to the problem of
defining who are the Igbo is thus riddled with problems. Yet for lack of a more
functional definition we shall adopt it here and regard as Igbo all those who
live within Professor Onwuejeogwu’s imaginary line traced above which, as we
said, coincides with the delimitation worked out by other anthropologists of a
less political age. With this we are able to attempt a definition of who are
the neighbours of the Igbo. For the greater part of their history, that is from
the earliest times to the period of British conquest, the Igbo had as their
neighbours the ethnic nationalities who lived along their borders. These were
the Igala, the Idọma, the Ogoja, the Efik-Ibibio the Ijọ and the Until the colonial period the Igbo had sustained
and meaningful, that is direct, contact only with these ethnic nationalities
living immediately around them. There is probably no doubt that some Igbo trade
items, especially slaves, found their way through the hands of middlemen, to
the central The Igbo on their own did not range much further
than the territories of their immediate neighbours. Chief K. O. K. Onyioha in
his researches uncovered some oral tradition suggestive of the fact that the
famed “Abam” warriors of the Cross River Igbo were at times hired during this
period to fight for and against certain The relatively narrow range of Igbo external
contact was deter-mined above all by one factor, the fact that the Igbo were
first and foremost an agricultural people bound to their land by traditions and
taboos nearly as strong as hoops of steel. Nowhere in, the world, are farming
communities noted for long range travel. Only a tiny fraction of the total Igbo
population felt the urge to travel. And that fraction was made up of those who
had detached themselves partially or completely from the land in order to
supply either a more generally-felt need or the more exotic needs of a narrow
elite class who had developed appetites that could no longer be fully or
satisfactorily met from the productive resources of their local communities. There is also another important consequence of the
fact that the Igbo are an agricultural people. As peasant farmers their needs
were limited, for the most part, to the basic requirements for existence. Very
rarely did demands for luxuries develop to any great extent. In terms of these
basic needs the Igbo and their neighbours were fairly richly blessed. A survey
of the natural resources of south-eastern Indeed inter-group relationship during this period
derived, to a greater extent than has so far been realized, from the dominance
of the economy by agriculture. The factors of contact which included migration,
war, trade and marriage can, to a great extent, be explained in agricultural
terms. Four types of migration in the period brought the Igbo into, and kept
them in contact with their neighbours. The first was the primary migration
which produced the basic demographic spread of the Igbo over the territory they
have occupied since historic times and the pattern of which is deducible from
the legends of migration of the clans and sub-cultural groups. The second is
the secondary migration which filled in the spaces more or less existing
between the sub-cultural groups after the emergence of the basic demographic
frame of Igboland referred to above. These secondary migrants were made up, for
the most part, of minorities, lineages or other groups whose fortunes within
the primary settlements had collapsed as a result of which they were compelled
to seek safer and may be richer, havens in the “no-man’s land” then still
existing between major population centres. The third type of migration was that
of slaves (victims of aggression, or criminals or plain no-gooders) sold to
provide domestic hands or farm labour or victims of sacrifice in communities
generally outside their clans. The fourth type was that of men and women of
free status who moved out of their home communities temporarily or permanently
in search of gainful employment as farm hands, carriers, oracle agents,
diviners or craftsmen. Whereas the major role of primary and secondary
migrations was to bring the Igbo into contact with their neighbours all along
the border, the third and fourth types of migrations helped to link Igboland
intimately with the heartlands of their neighbours. The role of war as a factor of contact in this
region and during this period has usually been misunderstood. It is common to
assume that wars were more or less endemic not only amongst the Igbo, but also
between them and their neighbours, and that these ways usually created serious
discontinuities in inter-group relations. But not only were the wars not as
endemic as is popularly believed, but they did not necessarily create the
degree of discontinuity in inter-group relations usually credited to them. As
in other societies, so also here, war was the continuation of' relations by
other than diplomatic means. In other words wars here were usually waged by
communities whose lives and livelihoods were interlocked to an almost
inextricable degree. And they went to war simply because these interlocked
interests could not be sorted out to the satisfaction of all concerned by other
means. Nor did war usually succeed in sorting them out. The result was that the
relationship which preceded the wars, and which continued in one form or
another during wars, survived each war. The point being made here is that no village group
in the Okigwe or Orlu area, for instance, could go to war or ever went to war
with an Ibibio or Ijọ or Igala or Important as wars and rumours of wars were in the
relationship which built up between the Igbo village-groups on the periphery of
the Igbo culture area and their neighbours across the frontier, we must not
fall for the easy hut incorrect assumption that warfare was the normal state of
relationship here. Frictions, wars and war alarums there were in plenty along
the frontiers. But this was no less the case in the inter-group relations of
those village-states located in the heartlands of the ethnic nationalities
concerned where there was no question of contact with "strange” ethnic
groups. While no attempt is being made here to paint an
idyllic picture of Arcadian peace and tranquility, it must be pressed that the
dominant tone of inter-group relationship along the frontiers where Igbo met
and interacted with these other ethnic groups was peace. None of these ethnic
nationalities was internally self-conscious as a group during this period. Nor
was any one ever mobilized in totality against its neighbours. Such cleavages
or dichotomies as Igbo/Ibibio, Ijọ /Ibibio, Ibibio/Ogoja, Igbo/Igala or
Igbo/Edo which mean so much to certain persons today would have meant nothing
to the peoples of south-eastern Nigeria in the period before 1900. It was local
rather than global issues that conditioned peoples perception of the world and
their reactions to those they met either in the farm-lands or in the markets or
along the trade routes. The dominant mood was one of robust parochialism which
most times made states-men and leaders criminally blind to the implications of
new and wider developments. Thus long after the British had smashed all
resistances to their advance between the coast and Abakaliki, the Ezza remained
unaware of the gravity of the danger that contact with the colonial
administration posed to any south-eastern Nigerian group. As late as 1905 they
felt able to tell an emissary of the colonial government that the Ezza
recognized no superior authority except the Heavens above and the Earth
beneath. Between these two awe-inspiring super human potentates the Ezza said
they alone existed as a third force. In. the same manner and in a similar
circumstance my people of Ihube, continued to boast, rather anachronistically,
that they are Ihuwe hukidere mba that
is Ihuwe the unrestrained tyrant and
bully of all village-groups. These two boasts, and many others like them,
knew no distinction between Igbo and If divisions and confrontations in south-eastern And now we come to the importance of trade –
whether in the form of the sale of material wares or of cure by medicine men or
of occult advice by oracle agents and native doctors – in inter-group relations
in this zone and during this period. This has been more accurately and
extensively investigated. Indeed for this zone and era the term inter-group
relations is usually understood to mean the exchange of goods and services
subsumed under the term trade and commerce. Trade as a factor of contact arose
from the fact that different communities within this area were differently
endowed with resources. Communities were thus compelled to engage in local and
long range exchange by the need to transcend their limitations and maximize
their advantages. Contact between the Igbo and their neighbours generated by
trade during this period can best be under-stood in terms of response to four
main regional pulls. First there was the northward pull which was
two-pronged, with one prong going in the north-west direction towards Igala and
the other in the north-east direction towards Idọma. The Igbo response to
this pull was provided by the Awka, Nri, the Arọ and the border-land
Nsukka people. From this direction the Igbo obtained the horses which played
such an important part in their ritual life especially in title-taking and the
burial of their ogaranya. From this
region also came certain highly valued glass beads known to some Northern Igbo
as olomgbo. The Igbo Ukwu hoard
excavated by Professor T. Shaw suggests that these two items were already
important in Igbo social and cultural life by about the ninth century A.D. With
the rise of the Igala monarchy from about the 13th century this region also became
important for the supply of a number of other insignia, such as caps and
certain bodily apparel so much valued by the titled elite of Northern Igboland,
especially by those of them inhabiting the Nsukka, Otuọcha and Awka
areas. In exchange for these luxury items the Igbo supplied metal implements
made by Awka smiths, medicine and ritual advice from the Nri and Agụleri
areas, and slaves collected in an assortment of ways by the Arọ and the
Awka who, unlike the Nri, had no moral or ritual compunction about selling
human beings or shedding blood in the process. Second, there was a Niger-ward pull which spilled
across the Third, there was an eastward pull towards the Finally there was the southward pull towards the
coast. This pull was probably as ancient as the settlement of the Igbo, the
Efik and the Ijọ in south-eastern All these factors can, as already
mentioned, be explained in terms of the success or failure of agriculture.
Major migrations, especially primary and secondary migrations, can be described
as a search for agricultural land or a flight from regions whose productivity
had declined either from natural causes or from man-made causes like incessant
wars and invasions denying the peasants the reward of their labour. Many wars
can be explained in terms of contest between neighbouring agricultural
communities for farm land. Many conflicts in this period originated as land
disputes though as time went on the real causes were forgotten as plain pride,
arrogance or even misapprehe4ion and psychological instability became more
important. Trade, as we saw, arose either in order to supply the luxury needs
of a small aristocracy who had made their wealth and status from agriculture
and thus taken titles, or in order to supplement the resources of a
predominantly agricultural region with the products of a manufacturing or
trading area. It can be shown that most of the commercial or manufacturing
communities of Igboland – the Awka, Nkwerre, Arọ, Abiriba and Nri – are
situated on the northern Igbo plateau and its south-eastward extension to Arọchukwu
through Bende. From all accounts this ridge saw the earliest settlements of the
Igbo. Not surprisingly owing to intensive exploitation over an extended period
the fertility of the ridge had started to decline by the onset of historic
times thus compelling the Igbo sub-groups "trapped” there to turn their
attention from agriculture to the crafts, commerce and the exploitation of
oracles and occult cosmology. The dynamics of this intricate
mechanism of contact and inter-action between the Igbo and their neighbours calls
for a brief comment if our exposition is to achieve its objective of informing,
educating and entertaining. First we should note that the range of contact
which obtained amongst the peoples of south-eastern Geography, it may be conceded, was not
a barrier to inter-group relations but what of man-made obstacles like language
and political frontiers. There were in south-eastern Furthermore those Igbo persons or
communities which took upon themselves or were compelled to take upon
themselves the business of establishing and maintaining vital links between
Igbo land and its neighbours found no difficulty in scaling the language
problem. Thus we find that those Awka, Nkwerre, Nri, Arọ and Abiriba who
conducted their business outside of Igboland were bilingual or at times even
multi-lingual – speaking Igbo, and the language(s) of the place(s) in which
they did business. This linguistic issue is perhaps the one explanation for the
rise of what is known amongst our people as ala
mbịa or ala ije, that is
“sphere of influence”. Different wards of each of these communities specialized
in making their occupational wonderings in specific zones and directions. In
1927 the anthropologist, H. F. Mathews mapped out in detail the spheres of
influence of different Arọ families. Recently Dr. Nancy Neaher has done
the same for the Awka. The fact was that having mastered the language and the
cultural usages of one or two zones, say the Igala area, an Awka smithing ward,
for instance, would find it easier and more profitable to concentrate on the
exploitation of the resources of that zone rather than engaging in hazardous
adventures in new regions each time its members undertook business travels. In
this way it would build up on exclusive sphere of influence respected by its
business rivals and in which it enjoyed special privileges. On the political plane we find there were even many
more independent units than there were languages or even dialects in the broad
sense of the latter term. Each of these political units was jealous of its
independence and thus usually suspicious of strangers especially with the rise
of the slave trade which tended to take a heavy toll on defenseless women and
children. The result was that using its young men who were usually organized
into age grades or secret societies (such as ọkọnkọ, ekpe, akang and nmanwụ) or both, each state constantly patrolled its borders,
the major roads within its area of jurisdiction and also the markets. But the
purpose of these patrols was not to disrupt traffic or trade but to ensure that
people were not interfered with in the legitimate pursuit of their business and
that the village-group or state was not taken unawares by its enemies or plain
marauders. This fact was never appreciated by the British when they entered
these parts from the later part of the nineteenth century. This is part of the
explanation for the distorted picture of these secret societies and the age
grades which dominate the records of the colonial period. There were rules which guided and protected long
distance travelers and business men, and these were as well known as today are the
rules which any international traveler has to abide by if he wishes to travel
in peace. Knowledge of these rules and ability to abide by them distinguished bona fide business men and professionals
from trouble makers and plain pirates. These included, traveling in groups or
in caravans and being armed in case of attack by pirates, the purchase of the
protection of local patrons known for their wide ranging influence and
contacts, familiarity with the pass-words of the secret societies which
operated along ones routes, payment of tolls which went into the maintenance of
the young men who cleared the routes and patrolled them. That this system was justified within the
socio-cultural context of the people and their times appears to be beyond the
understanding of our white colleagues. Dr. David Northrup entitled his recent
study of the pre-colonial trade of this zone as Trade Without Rulers. This startling title is neither elegant nor
without ambiguity. It also seems fully loaded with the prejudices of the colonial
period which assumed that where there is no potentate ruling over a large area
there are no rulers. As already shown, this region did not lack rulers. On the
contrary it had too many of them. It is, indeed, a strange historical and
sociological logic which assumes that because there is too much of anything,
therefore there is nothing of it. It is not only that the region was not
without “rulers” that is people who dominated it and its trade dictated terms.
The researches of scholars before Northrup and his own researches also, show
clearly that the trade of the region during the period was “ruled” by the Arọ,
the Igala, the Awka, the Nkwerre, the Abiriba, the Abọ, the Bonny, Opobo
(after 1873) the Nembe-Brass and the Efik. And they did so as effectively as
the British, the French, the Dutch and the Portuguese “ruled” the
trans-Atlantic trade during the same period. Maybe, before laying on, we should attempt an
assessment of the above system of inter-group relations which the Igbo were
able to build up with their immediate neighbours during our period. The very
earliest attempts at such an assessment were made during the early years of
British colonial rule by men whose job it was to sustain and revamp what they
found useful in this system and to supplant what they found or thought less so.
The result was totally misleading partly because of the ignorance of the
assessors and partly because of their prejudice both of which distorted what
little information they uncovered by research. These men were, for the most part, fanatical
worshippers at the altar of that heroic genre of history which sees the past
mainly in terms of what empires and potentates said or did. Societies like
those then found in south-eastern In the first place attention was focused on contact
between the Igbo and such of their neighbours who were known to have evolved
fairly large-scale empires or even kingdoms or at least centralized city-states
that kept some form of court. Thus we find that while the surviving records and
the published works are replete with information and hypotheses seeking to
explain contacts between the Igbo on the one hand and the Igala kingdom, the The only exception to this tendency to neglect the
study of inter-group relations on the eastern Igbo frontier was provided by the
great attention paid to the Arọ and their activities in this zone. This
was possible because at the time most people talked in terms of an Arọ
political and economic empire that ruled south-eastern One other result of this prejudiced approach to the
history of inter-group relations in this region during the early colonial
period was that it was assumed the Igbo were inert in their relationship with
the Elsewhere I have subjected the above view to
critical examination and found it to have been based on rather very slender
evidence. Those who are interested in this review are invited to pursue it in
my other writings. Here we shall merely attempt such an assessment of our
subject a.¿ we consider fair and objective in the light of the available
evidence and of prevailing attitudes in Africanistics today. The first point that should be made here is that
the most viable model for understanding the inter-group relationship that built
up between the Igbo and their neighbours is one that postulates mutual
dependence in harmony and equality rather than one that postulates the
subordination of one group to the other. In this model the motive force of
inter-group relations is free exchange – of ideas, institutions and usages, of
goods and services, of populations through migration and marriages. Here exchange
implies that one gives what one has in plenty and receives what one lacks. In
short people involved in inter-group relationship along the lines of this model
do for, or give to, one another what each cannot either do for, or give to
himself. This is the case at least for as long as those concerned want
cordiality to be the dominant tone of such inter-group or inter-personal
contact. If, however, they want to change the tone to one of envy, hatred,
bitterness or even open conflict, then they must try to do for, or to give one
another what each can do for or give to himself. Through-out the period covered
in this lecture supply and demand in south-eastern In fact all considered the Igbo could be said to
have been more favoured by nature when compared with their immediate
neighbours. First, they had the advantage of population. This meant for the
most part that migrations were from Igbo land outwards. The Ijọ felt in a
special way the full force of this population pressure as free and un-free Igbo
poured into the delta in consequence of the rise of the Atlantic trade. A misreading
of the meaning and impact of this trend led some historians to account for Ijọ
origin in terms of Igbo migrations. To prevent their language and culture being
completely swamped by the Igbo, the Ijọ went out consciously to emphasize
the adoption by immigrants of Ijọ language and culture as a condition for
admission into full Ijọ status. Similar pressure was felt by the other
neighbours especially to the north and north-east. The Ezza, Ikwo and Izzi in
particular were engaged in a headless policy of territorial expansion
exploiting to the fullest the numerical disadvantages of their neighbours in
the Ogoja and Idọma areas. Rosemary Harris has documented for us the
development of this pressure in the region of the Second, and bearing in mind the technological level
of these peoples at the time, Igbo land was more richly endowed with minerals
than the areas around her. The central Igbo plateau running north-south from
Nsukka is rich in iron ore which was exploited all the way and thus formed the
basis for the technological ascendancy of the Awka, Nkwerre and Abiriba during
the period. It is now known that the Awka ranged as far afield as the eastern
frontiers of Yoruba-land. The only other alternative source of iron for
south-eastern Third, Igboland had rich arable land along the Finally there was the area of oracles where
Igboland enjoyed an unchallenged ascendancy. There was the Ibini Ụkpabị of the Arọ whose influence stretched
to the western delta among the Isoko-Urhobo, to Idah and Idọma and to the
Upper reaches of the But being realists the Igbo did not see the
situation in that light. Those of them who were in the forefront of these
contacts were satisfied to emphasize their oneness with their neighbours across
the frontier. To this end they built up mythical charters making them the
kinsmen of some of those non-Igbo peoples with whom they had long-standing
contact. Thus the official charter of Arọchukwu links that community in
an organic manner with a non-Igbo In the same manner many of the communities on the
other side of the Igbo border conceptualized the above relationship in kinship
terms. The Bonny say they are blood relations of the Ndọki, the Efik that
they are the descendants of a marriage between an Ibibio woman and an Igbo man,
the Benin that Arọchukwu arose from a Benin military outpost, the Igala
that they are linked by blood with both Nri and Onitsha, the Idọma that
the Arọ arose from a group of Idọma adventurers who left their
homeland in search of business and adventure some time in the 18th century or
so. These legends establish beyond doubt that, as
observed above, the dominant character of this relationship was peaceful. It
was only in an atmosphere of peace that dealings between these various groups
could have matured to the point where they came to be transmuted in popular
belief into blood relationship. The point is that those south-eastern
Nigerians, especially the Igbo who, in this period, adventured beyond the
frontiers of their ethnic groups for business were much smarter and much more
cautious than those who succeeded them with the dawn of the colonial era. They
gave their clients goods and services which were solely needed and could not
easily obtain otherwise. They thus remained welcome guests for millennia. But
their twentieth century successors would appear to be thrusting upon their
clients goods and services which these clients think they can provide for
themselves. The pre-colonial business adventurers were also less demonstrative
and pompous in the way they enjoyed the wealth they made from the lands of
their neighbours. They went home with it to buy titles, membership of secret
societies and to perform expensive funeral rites for their prominent dead.
Their twentieth century successors invest their own wealth where they make it
in imposing motels and residential buildings, thus arousing the envy and
hostility of their hosts who remember only too clearly when the first of them
arrived with nothing more than a raffia bag under his armpit. It is this
difference which helps to explain why the pre-colonial adventurers were not
considered imperialists while their modern counterparts are widely regarded as
imperialist exploiters and suckers and thus used periodically to test the
cutting edge of newly acquired daggers. On this point this should be enough for
now and for here. As our elders say: Ụka
Dimkpa Bụ Nrụtụ
Aka, Nrụtụ Aka Nihi Na Ma
Okenye Asụgh Nsụ Ya Agbaa
Ama. In other words history is not on the side of the
ethnic chauvinists of today who appear to think that friction and mutual
suspicion should be the normal tone of relationship between the Igbo and their
neighbours in the south-eastern Nigeria region. The dawn of this new "Age
of Vehemence” we cannot go into here for lack of time though I have
investigated it in some detail. One thing is certain, however, it is an
adventitious outgrowth of the structure and practice of that ghoulish monster
known as modern Nigerian politics which eats its children. Ọha
N’Eze, maybe l should stop here
even though I am tempted to continue by exploring the rise of this monster. But
before I stop, I should like to mention that for a proper understanding of this
lecture, it should be taken along with the first one in the series. It is again
“A Matter of Identity”. The question “Who Are The Igbo?” is a very large one as
I showed earlier on today. Approaching it from the standpoint of a particular
discipline one can only hope to lift a very small portion of the large dark
veil that covers the answer. One angle from which it is possible to see the
Igbo as they are is that of a people in dynamic interaction with their
environment and their neighbours. After all the problem of who you are arises
when identities are in confrontation. In other words the Igbo are what they are
because their environment and their neighbours are what they are. If this
conclusion is flayed for lacking m profundity, I would take solace in the fact
that it is true. It remains for me to thank His Excellency the
Governor, Chief S, O. Mbakwe, his Government and the Ahiajoku Lecture Committee for the honour they did me in inviting
me to give this lecture. T can only hope that I have not fallen far short of
their expectations and of the very high standards set by my distinguished
predecessors in the series. In matters of this nature, it is always gracious to
bear in mind that: Otu ụkwụ nwanyị ha Ka ọna-atụkwasi ya di ya. Egwu bụ onye n’ukwu ya Onye n’ukwu ya. Ọha n'eze ekele m ụnụ Lakwuru nụ ji, lakwuru nụ
Lakwuru nụ Akụ na ụba. FOREWORD One of the ways the Imo' State Government has
articulated and projected Igbo language and culture is through the Annual
Ahiajoku Lecture Series. The Ahiajoku Lecture was inaugurated on November 30,
1979 with Professor M. J. C. Echeruo’s lecture: A matter of identity – Ahamefule The following year, Professor Bede Okigbo’s
contribution Plants and food in Igbo
Culture and Civilization was no less impressive. This year, 1981, another
renowned Igbo scholar, Professor Adiele Afigbo, takes the floor. The title of
his lecture alone makes your mouth water: “THE AGE OF INNOCENCE”. When was it
among the Igbo? Professor Afigbo most ingeniously maps it out is
that epoch when the Igbo lived “innocently” with their neighbours – the Edo,
the Igala, the Idọma, the Ogoja, the Efik-Ibibio and the Ijọ.
Trade, inter-marriage, and cultural exchanges provided the vital links which
were only occasionally punctuated by sporadic wars that were quickly followed
by peace. Professor Afigbo’s unrivalled analysis in “The Age
of Innocence” bears very good import in today’s relationship between the Igbo
and her neighbours, fires the imagination on some aspects of current political
trends – formation of groupings and talk of regroupings – in our quest for
national unity and lasting peace in Nigeria. One only needs to read a work so
well done. Dr.
C. A. Duruji Honourable Commissioner for
Information, Culture, Youth and Sports Imo State THE BIG DRUM FOR A WARRIOR Being a citation on Professor Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo B.A. Hons (Lond.), Ph.D. (London) Professor of History, University of Nigeria, Nsukka Mr. Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen,
my task should be a brief one because it should not require a long speech to
introduce a man who has been honoured with prizes, burdened with State and
National duties, listed in various biographical dictionaries and honoured with
the vice-presidency of the academic association to which he belongs. Please accept my apologies because I do not intend
to be very brief. Surely, it will not be fair to expect a man to travel all the
way from Nsukka to Owerri only to refer you to the relevant page numbers of
Professor Afigbo’s listings in various 0%o's 8%ol. Besides, one’s training
forbids brief speeches. An engineer – friend of mine seems to know better: when
I introduced him to a fellow historian, he blurted out, to my utter
embarrassment, “Oh, you belong to the Oji-onu
discipline”. Indeed, one of those Faculty Deans who makes it a point to
ensure that junior colleagues know their lowly estate, once flipped through a
paper which I submitted for assessment and assured me that it could not pass
muster, His reason?; that the paper was not long enough as befits those in my
discipline. So, Mr. Chairman, I swore that day never to be brief
again. But perhaps more important, when warriors return and the big drum sounds
the celebration of achievements, the occasion is never brief. The only promise
I could make is that I will not take the analogy too literally and continue to
the next market day. In fact, I feel rather humbled by this opportunity
to sound the drum to a man of such academic stature. I will tell you why: a
couple of years ago, I had a very interesting dialogue with some colleagues and
as I took leave of them, I overheard an incautious remark that I was beginning
to sound like my academic adviser, Professor Afigbo! He has truly served as a
mentor who would deftly tease out the best in one rather than impose his views
or beliefs. Mr. Chairman, Professor Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo
is essentially a very quiet, self-effacing, industrious person who showed
promise quite early in academics. I am sure that few people took much notice of
a secondary school student who won the first prize in an Igbo Essay Competition
set by the Society for Promoting Igbo Language and Culture in 1955. But he was
in this feat signaling a deep interest in the culture of his race. Critiques often seek to understand a
man by studying the environment of his childhood. It would appear a plausible method
in this case. Adiele was born in the central zone of Igbo heartland, at Ihube
in Okigwe. In spite of the fact that Ihube received much attention from
Europeans, especially Methodist missionaries, when the colonial government
established an administrative seat in Okigwe, Ihube did not bloom into a town
but remained a typical Igbo group of villages endowed with physical beauty,
farmlands and tall grasses! Obviously, the railroad project enticed the
attention of the Methodist missionaries to villages on the proposed route. But
one could imagine the impact of the two elements in the mind of a young man:
the predominant Igbo culture in Ihube and the colonial officers across the
hills in Okigwe. If these did not influence Professor Afigbo’s choice of history
as a field of study, they formed the themes of his research in later years. He
knows his homeland very well and has benefited from the Okigwe Native
Administration Scholarship and the Eastern Nigeria Government Scholarship. With the latter he completed a B.A.
Honours in History at the Anyone who accomplished so much in
such a prestigious institution and at that time, deserves a celebration in
which goat meat and palm wine should be very plentiful. But this part of his
career was only a prelude. The measure of the man is in what he
did with the training. He taught History in various Universities (Zaria, Ibadan
and Nsukka), he wrote articles and books; in fact, he has written so many
articles and books in History that there is no African Historian among his
colleagues who could pretend to have written as much. He has served this State
of his origin in various capacities. For instance, he served as Chairmen,
East-Central State Committee on Chieftaincy Matters, Chairman, Imo State
Sub-Committee on FESTAC 1977 and Member, Imo State University Planning Council.
He has served the nation of his birth, Nigeria. He has just completed a stint
as Director for Research, National Institute for Strategic Studies and as a
member of the Panel of the Open University. This last bit was a major undertaking but I believe
that the most crucial job which he is performing for the nation is his
member-ship of the Nigerian National Archives Committee. Earlier on, he served
in the National Antiquities Commission. I regard these two jobs as the most essential
because they relate to the roots of our identity and there are few historians
and scholars generally who know the inside of the archives as well as Professor
Afigbo does. Those who are familiar with his work are usually astounded at the
freshness of the evidence, or as scientists would say, data, in every new
article. He has devoted some studies on the history and role of institutions
like the museum. The task of preserving and nurturing our cultural heritage
requires the assiduous collection of the fragments of oral, archaeological and
documentary evidence. Professor Afigbo has distinguished himself in this task. It would appear that the extensive research, field
work and archival, has made it possible for Professor Afigbo to give immense
academic leadership, not only in teaching but in mapping out programmes for
graduate students and assisting colleagues. He obliges anyone who needs his
critique of a manuscript. Almost invariably, he will devote time to write out
his views (as an aside, there is an anecdote that Professor Afigbo once wrote a
sixty-nine page reaction to a manuscript). The exercise is often an informed
blunt-talk, hardly rude but graded; the adult-dose is reserved for the review
of senior colleagues’ works. See, for instance, "History for Amateurs by
Amateurs”, a combative (purgative) dose is often served to social scientists
while the milder dose is for students often garnished with a wealth of
bibliographical information. The man has been unstinting in his keen desire that
people should pursue the academic enterprise with rigour and should study
history with imagination and intensive research. He has therefore prodded young
people to do research. In. the university, he has served in the most important
committees related to research and publishing. He has also served as Head of
Department of History and Dean of Arts and has devoted a number of articles and
a book to the problem of teaching of History in Nigeria. The Africanist
ideology which suffuses the new syllabus on history at Nsukka is owed to his
leadership. Professor Afigbo’s major contribution in academics
is however, in the field of Igbo history. Perhaps when his Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture, appears in
December this year by the grace of the publishers who have unduly delayed it,
this claim will be further substantiated. Almost one half of his eighty works
are devoted to his niece. He has studied Igboland through time perspective; her
basic cultures, textiles, trade routes, population structure, migration, myths
and patterns, indigenous political structures, prominent men (as Chief Igwebe
Odum, Omenuko of History) and women, and her oral traditions. He has, moved on
to examine the colonial fact from the pacification expeditions to consolidation
through the warrant chiefs. He has delineated the history of instruments of
government as the taxation system, education codes as well as the agents of
change, namely, missionaries, traders and administrators. Quite revealing of
the ideological underpinnings of his studies are the articles on the reaction
of our people to the colonial fact and the impact of foreign rule. With a
nationalist urge, Professor Afigbo has argued the ingenuous reactions of our
people to the varied and harried attempts by the British to implant their rule.
Yet he eschews a romantic attitude towards our past. Of course, he is a scholar whose
bounds are beyond Igboland. He has studied the Ibibios to the point of
provoking a debate in Calabar Historical
Journal. At the University of Benin, he put the vaunted history of Benin in
a broader perspective (see, “The Bini
Mirage and the History of South Central Nigeria”). He is an authority on the
colonial administration throughout Nigeria: the men who ruled, their policies,
their historians/anthropologists, pitfalls and demise. Unlike many colleagues, he has delved
into the field of historiography and has become the historian’s historian. The
vigour of African History can only be renewed by this constant reflection and
reappraisal of methodology and conceptual schemes. Ladies and Gentlemen, I beat the big
drum for a man whose curious mind has grappled with the many problems facing
our race as Igbos and facing our nation. In fact, in recent times, Professor
Afigbo who leaves the impression of being apolitical, looked into ; horoscope
of Nigerian politics in the 1980s and got his audience spellbound. I beat the drum for the quiet,
industrious scholar. A man whose inner peace, transparent honesty,
self-effacing demeanour yet joyous sense of humour has fascinated colleagues. May I add that this industrious
academic bee is married and t must call Ezihe Afigbo to share in the
salutation. I realize that some men believe that behind every successful man is
a woman pulling him back; if she failed, she would run in front of him and block
him. This is rabid male chauvinism and, perhaps, men could only say such things
without realizing that after the year of the child and the year of the
disabled, next year will be for women and such talks would be banned for a
year! Professor Afigbo has been rightly blessed with a
woman of identical character. They are like siblings. Ezihe is a highly
respected University Administrator of a Deputy Registrar rank. No wonder the
house is managed so efficiently that Professor Afigbo could do research and
write so profusely and with such flair. Finally, I beat the big drum for a man whose achievements in Igbo history is
pre-eminent and the prospects even
more. In doing so, I recognize his perfectionist assumption that the Igbo
people deserve the best. He has shied away from a general history of the Igbo
until more research has been done. But the wisdom of the fathers draw our
attention to the caprices of time. I call on you to give us a general history
of the Igbo people and our culture. Let future scholars use this as the
foundation to build upon. You may pardon this departure if you recall that
often as a warrior drops a gift to the man in the drum-house, the drummer would
beat his thanks for what he has received as well as for what he expects as the
celebrations move towards the next market day. Professor Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo, the big drum
welcomes you to the centre of the attention of your own people both for your
past achievements and for the prospects of the future. Do a dance for us to the
tune of your professional training. And
now the drummer takes a break for a gulp of palm wine. Ogbu
Uke Kalu Professor of Church History Dean, Faculty of the Social Sciences University of Nigeria, Nsukka |
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Igbo Foundation | Igbo Heritage Foundation | Ikenga Think Tank |
