North's Fatuous Claim of Ownership and Funding Oil Exploration in Nigeria
The uncontrolled provocative statements by Northern politicians seem to add salt to injury in the Niger-Delta militancy imbroglio. Two spurious arguments commonly bandied about by Northern politicians are that by virtue of 72% Nigerian land mass being in the North, the North rightfully owns the oil wells as far as 200 nautical miles off-shore; and that revenue from North's export of groundnut, cotton and other produce funded oil exploration in Nigeria.
Yet the history of oil exploration in Nigeria is well documented and it is unknown that any government, including the Federal government, invested even a kobo in oil exploration. Developments in oil industry in Nigeria from the beginning in 1908, have been well documented as is shown below.
Major Events in the history of the Nigerian Oil and Gas:
1908: Nigerian Bitumen Co. & British Colonial Petroleum commenced operations around Okitipupa in the South-West. This was before the amalgamation of Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914. The British Treasury was still lending money from year-to-year to support feudalism – Native Authority Administration in the North.
1938: Shell D’Arcy was granted Exploration license by the Colonial Administration as full concessionaires to prospect for oil throughout Nigeria and they paid all their bills including licensing fees;
1955: Mobil Oil Corporation joined operations in Nigeria.
1956: First successful well drilled at Oloibiri, in present Bayelsa State by Shell D'Arcy which changed its name to Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited.
1958: First shipment of oil from Nigeria took place.
The Poverty of the North from before Amalgamation:
(a) The above statement of facts shows that the first concession to the Nigerian Bitumen Co. & British Colonial Petroleum was granted by the Colonial authorities of the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria, in 1908 - before the amalgamation in 1914 and the North therefore was not involved.
(b) The main reason the North was amalgamated with the South by the British, was because the North was not viable enough to sustain its governance. Consequently the Colonial Administration, annually, had to borrow from the British treasury to sustain governance of the North, which included the expensive feudalism-based Native Authority with very generous salaries for the Emirs.
(c) Whereas the North could not financially sustain its governance, the South was rich enough to defray its cost of governance and in addition, invest in development projects.
The unviability of the North in relation to the South was aptly captured in the following extract from the British Colonial Report No. 878, Nigeria, 1914 below.
"It (the Northern Protectorate) depended at first on a substantial grant-in-aid from the Imperial Exchequer, averaging about £274,000 per annum, and though this was being rapidly replaced by the product of the direct tax, which yielded in 1913 the large sum of £546,000 – about half of which was paid into revenue, the remainder being assigned to the Native Administration – the essential needs of the country could not be met without a considerable additional revenue. . .
Southern Nigeria, on the other hand, presented a picture which was in almost, all points exact converse of that of the North. Here the material prosperity had been extra-ordinary. The revenue had almost doubled itself in a period of five years. The surplus balances exceeded a million and a half. . . And so while Northern Nigeria was devoting itself to building up a system of Native Administration, and laboriously raising revenue by direct taxation, Southern Nigeria had found itself engrossed in material development."
The British Colonial Secretary, Lord Lewis Vernon Harcourt's pre-amalgamation report on the proposal to the British government, openly affirmed the intendment of the amalgamation and the state of finances of the North and South, in his insulting designation of the South as a rich bride about to be given away in marriage, without her consent and/or consultation, in order to sustain a not so well-to-do groom.
"We have released Northern Nigeria from the lending strings of the treasury. The promising and well conducted youth is now on allowance on his own and is about to affect an alliance with a southern lady of means. I have issued the special license and Sir Fredrick Lugard will perform the ceremony . . ."
(d) The North which was found by the British to be unable to fund its development projects, could therefore not have been able to fund oil exploration by 1938 when Shell D' Arcy was granted its exploration license and concession by Colonial Britain. Oil was struck in commercial quantity in 1956 at Oloibiri in Bayelsa State, South-South of Nigeria; and in 1958, the first shipment of crude by Shell-BP out of Nigeria took place.
(e) The North accepted self-government only in 1959, as against 1957 by the South; and from 1914 to date, has maintained the ranking of the poorest region in Nigeria, largely due to the cost and the policy of maintaining feudalism; and a misconception that wealth is predestined by God, therefore man does not need to fight and defeat poverty. Presently there is an unimaginable war in the North-East, with its consequent devastations to the economy of the region in particular, and the country in general, about Western Education being a sin or not.
On the second claim that their 72% ownership of Nigerian land mass entitles the North to ownership of oil wells 200 nautical miles off-shore, one would like to ask following questions:
• Suppose there was no amalgamation of the two protectorates in 1914, could the North have skipped the Southern land mass, however small, to own oil wells off shore?
• Had the premier of the North pulled out the North as he threatened to do in 1959, after the general elections when Chief Awolowo offered to serve as Finance Minister under Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe as Prime Minister in an alliance government of Azikiwe's party – the National Council of NigerianCitizens (NCNC) and Chief Awolowo's party - the Action Group; and/or as Colonel's Murtala Mohammed and Yakubu Gowon originally planned in their “Araba” counter-coup of 29th July 1966, before the British HighCommissioner and the United States Ambassador intervened to stop them from pulling out and declaring the North an independent Republic, where would the off-shore oil wells have been?
• And finally, if Nigeria disintegrates as predicted and as the North is presently pushing the rest of the country to, would the North over-fly the Southern land mass to own the oil wells beyond 200 nautical miles?
It is important to bear in mind that it is the monopolisation of the oil blocks by Northerners and the judicial murder of Dr. Ken Saro Wiwa, who was, after the civil war, one of the earliest Niger-Deltans to raise a voice of protest against the exploitation of the Niger-Delta by the oligarchy; that stoked the fire of militancy in the Niger-Delta.
Nigeria seems to be conducting its affairs god-like, ignoring all warnings. It was Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, 'The Masque of Pandora' (1875) who initiated the wisecrack -
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
Nigerian leaders have paid no heed to any of the predictions of failure of Nigeria instead, they attack the symptoms of the ailments of the nation with raw brutality, as if brutality would ever heal the contradictions in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious federation, with little or no common shared values. It is sheer commonsense that until the source of an ailment is dealt with, the symptoms are bound to persevere."
Notes:
7 (a) History of Nigerian Petroleum Industry by Garbrich Global Services Ltd, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, May 3, 2015 - www.linkedin.com/.../history-nigerian-petroleum-industry....
7 (b) British Colonial Report no. 878, Wyman and Sons Ltd, London, April 1916, p.38.
7 (c) Harcourt, Lewis Vernon, Lord: Report to the British Parliament on the Amalgamation of Southern and Northern Protectorates of Nigeria, London, 1912.
Culled from:
Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh: TO THE RESCUE – THE RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION, THE PATHWAY TO A GENUINE FEDERATION OF PEOPLES WITH NO SHARED VALUES, BBK Limited, Enugu, Nigeria, 2017, pages 12 to16.
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Monday, March 30, 2020
IGUARO NDIGBO – PROCLAMATION OF THE IGBO LUNAR CALENDAR
IGUARO NDIGBO – PROCLAMATION OF THE IGBO LUNAR CALENDAR
(Igbo 2020 New Year Lecture by Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh at Eze Nrienwelani II Palace at Nri, Anambra State, Nigeria on 15th February 2020)
Preamble - Definitions
1.1. Days of the Igbo Week: Iguaro is the ritual proclamation of Igbo lunar calendar by Eze Nri which Eze Nri performs yearly as the originator of Igbo days of Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo (all Deities) which determine the "Izu" (week) that add up to the "Onwa" (month) that yield the " Aro" (year) , another deity by itself, again controlled by Eze Nri. Aro has a shrine in Nri and it is taken care of my kindred (Ezekanmadu) high priest.
Onwuejeogwu’s “The Principles of Ethnogeneachronology: Dating Nri (Igbo) Oral Tradition,” 1997 in p. 47 and in page 2 of his 1987 Ahiajioku Lecture, “Evolutionary Trends in the History of the Development of the Igbo Civilisation in the Culture Theatre of Igboland in Southern Nigeria,” detailed how the four supernaturals (otherwise deities) of days, were revealed to Eze Nri who now controls them. The Igbo market days and Aro are thus, deities controlled by Eze Nri. Pages 114 & 115 of his 1997 “Afa Symbolism& Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony” contain elaborate details of this fact. Iguaro Eze Nri was the biggest festival in Igbo land performed in the palace of Eze Nri by Eze Nri, dating from 900AD. The Onitsha people in 1750 AD introduced Ofala, (a festival very similar to Nri yam festival of Onwasato), when Onitsha was founded. Fig. 7 in page 88 of “An Igbo Civilization Nri Kingdom and Hegemony” (1981) graphically shows the proclamation of Igbo New Year as one of the ten mystical powers of Eze Nri.
Eze Nri therefore encouraged trade all over Igbo land by establishing the four market days Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo and their “alusi” supernaturals. His Nri agents, serving as priests, travelled all over the length and breadth of Igbo land consecrating the markets and initiating people into Ozo. For example, Nri agents established the famous Nkwo market at Onitsha. They also used to initiate Onitsha people into the Ozo title, which Onitsha treated and continues to treat with utmost dignity.
Trading as an alternative to farming in a difficult ecology was one of the hall marks of the Nri economic system, in its efforts at diversification. Nri insisted on having a well-organized cycle of farming and trading among the Igbo. They created the peace that made these possible among hostile communities and towns.
Igbo people believed that any dead person went to the land of the dead (ani mmuo) through Nri. Thus Nri town became the center of Igbo pilgrimage until the British in 1911, instigated by the Missionaries, destroyed the system, and ordered all Igbo to avoid Nri. According to Northcote Thomas, the British colonial government anthropologist, who witnessed this event in 1911 and wrote in 1913 “He (Eze Nri) is the spiritual potentate over a large extent of the country and so great is the awe which he inspires that recently, when, probably for the first time in history, an Eze Nri entered the native court of Awka while it was sitting, the whole assembly rose and prepared to flee” (Anthropological Report on the Ibo Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood of S. Nigeria, 1913, p.48).
Above demonstrates the awe and respect Ndigbo had for Eze Nri. The early missionaries were solidly behind this colonial government move to destroy the institution to enable both of them achieve their respective missionary and colonial objectives. The destruction was only partially successful, because the Ozo/Eze forms continued all over Igbo land. Eze Nri continued installing leaders who are symbols of truth and peace and continued giving the Ofo Nri, the ritual symbol and staff of authority. Till this day, Ndi-Igbo, love to wear the red cap as the external symbol of the Ozo/Eze title, which they regard with pomp and dignity. Regardless of whether any one knows or accepts it, the red cap the Igbo chiefs wear, is admission of and submission to the supremacy of Nri culture, for EzeNri introduced the Ozo/Eze and the hierarchy of titles before and after Ozo.
1.2. The Concept of the Year deriving from 13 Lunar Months: Before the British liquidation in August 1911, Nri had developed its concept of Aro - the year. First, as already stated, Aro is a supernatural force revealed to Eze Nri in the past; then Nri transformed it into a cycle of one year. Aro is divided into thirteen segments, namely: Onwa Agumaro, fixed around mid February of the Gregorian calendar. This is the month for the proclamation beginning of the Igbo lunar calendar by Eze Nri for all Igbo. It is followed by Onwa Mbu, Onwa Abuo, On wa Ife Eke, Onwa Ano, Onwa Agwu, Onwa Ifejioku, Onwa Eliji, Onwa Ilommuo (Onwasato), Onwa Ana, Onwa Okike, Onwa Ajana na Edeaja, Onwa Uzo Alusi. A study of the year system, the genealogy of Onwa, the age grade, the kinship system resulted in working out Nri system of time, published by Prof. Onwuejeogwu in 1997 already referred to above as “The Principles of Ethnogeneachronology . . . The lunar system of calculating the year with a system of adjustment, were known to the Nri priests of Alusi Aro. Knowledge of the movement of the heavenly bodies was employed. Northcote Thomas (MA, FRAI) the government anthropologist in 1910, reported that he got “names for the following heavenly bodies at Agukwu: “Pleiades, Orion and Great Bera”. Nri elders had clear knowledge of these stars and others, which helped them in calculating the intervals between each lunar period and finding the directions during their sojourn from one Igbo-village to another in both the semi-forest and forest zones.
2. The Proclamation of the Igbo Lunar Calendar - Iguaro (New Year):
As previously stated, the annual proclamation of the Igbo lunar calendar is the exclusive function Eze Nri. Starting from the Igbo native week of four market days to ‘onwa’ made up of seven native weeks which amounts to 28 days and to Aro of 13 Onwa. ‘Onwa’ is a moon cycle tracked by observing the movement of the moon; thirteen of which make one Igbo lunar year. The proclamation is indeed the declaration of Igbo New Year which invariably falls mid-February of every year. This similar to the Chinese lunar/solar calendar for which the Chinese shut down for close to one month Every year. Every Igbo month represents an activity in Igbo life. Eze Nri therefore keeps account of each month by tracking the moon; and pronounces the event for the month. That way he arrives at when to proclaim the end and beginning of Igbo lunar calendar. Thus any Igbo traditional ruler who pretends to proclaim the Igbo Lunar Calendar very early in January is merely repeating or extending the January 1, Gregorian New Year celebrations, and definitely not the Igbo Lunar Calendar. He needs to explain to the Igbo world in which Aro deity shrine the necessary expiations, ablutions and sanctifications are performed before he commenced the process. And some of these pretenders of Iguaro are highly-placed consecrated Christian Church officials. Some even demean Igbo culture and tradition by summon the Igbo year in the altars of Churches. Only them know what tradition they wish to have other Nigerians and world believe Ndigbo came from; and what culture the Igbo had before the emergence of Christianity in the Igbo culture area in 1857.
During the Onwa Agumaro, Igbo representatives from far and wide congregated at Nri for the “announcing of the year.” This is a big ceremony, which all Ndigbo awaited with eagerness because of its ritual, economic and political importance. Till date Iguaro Ndigbo (Proclamation of the Igbo Lunar Calendar) by Eze Nri is still the most culturally significant of all Igbo Traditional Festivals.
First, it gave all those under Eze Nri ritualism protection and the spiritual energy to face the New Year. Secondly, representatives were given the Ogwu ji, the yam medicine, and thirdly, it gave them opportunity to express solidarity and oneness with the Eze Nri and the Levitical and ritual laws which they had willingly obeyed. Nri people developed a body of philosophy based on phenomenology which deals a distinctive African philosophy which seeks a linkage between past and present, and between present and future. The nature of this philosophy is the theme of the Onwuejeogwu’s 1997 book, earlier referred to, captioned “Afa symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony. . .’
The Nri people were great innovators in rituals, diplomacy, economy, administration and the management of a segmented and decentralized system.
2.1The Yam Cult in Igbo Civilisation: Before the coming of the white man, yam used to be a determinant of a man’s success or failure in Igbo land. Everyone lived on the land and farmed. Yam was the lead crop.
Nri Menri, the founder of Nri, the first Son of Eri, was known to have introduced the yam culture in Igbo agricultural cycle. In Professor Elizabeth Isichei’s book, “A History of Nigeria” (1983), page 24, she related what elders told Dr. M. D. W. Jeffreys in the 1930s which Jeffreys published in 1956 titled “The Umundri Tradition of Origin,” in the African Studies Journal XV, pp. 122-3 and his 1934 Divine Umundri King of Igbo Land - his unpublished doctoral dissertation . It is important to note that in the 1930s, unlike now, there was no politicization of Igbo history by the elders. The elders told the truth as it was handed down by their forebears. This is unlike the present times in which people make wild and unsubstantiated claims merely for the convenience of their political goals. Jeffreys wrote:
“. . . while Eri was alive he and his dependants were fed by Chuku [God] and their food was azu igwe [back of the sky]. When Eri died this food supply ceased and Ndri at Aguleri complained to Chuku that there was no food. Chuku replied that if Ndri did as he was told he could obtain food. Ndri asked what it was he had to do and Chuku told him that he had to kill and bury his eldest son and daughter . . . . This killing of the eldest son and daughter was carried out, and the bodies buried in separate graves. Three native weeks later, shoots appeared out of the graves of these children. From the grave of his son, Ndri dug up a yam, cooked and ate it. . . . The next day Ndri dug up koko yams from his daughter’s grave. . . Ndri also had a male and female slave killed and buried and in three weeks there sprang from the grave of the male slave an oil-palm, and from the grave of the female slave, a bread-fruit tree.”
(Prof. Mervyn David Waldegrave (1890-1975), a former District Officer in Nigeria and Cameroon; later a Cambridge scholar and Anthropologist; and finally Professor of Anthropology, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa).
2.1.1. Ifejioku: Prof. Elizabeth Isichei had also related another version of the primacy of Nri among the sons of Eri in page 7 of her 1976, 303-page title “A History of the Igbo People,” the Macmillan Press Ltd, London.
Jeffreys and Isichei further revealed the source of yam reverence among the Igbo – the sacrifice Menri made before yam came into Igbo life. The essence of Ifejioku, Ihejioku or Ahiajoku, as it is variously called, in Igbo life, is explained by the sacrifice. Theft yam is a grievous offence; to uproot growing yam seedling, ranks almost pari passu with murder in original Igbo jurisprudence.
2.1.2.Ofo Nri: In my yet unpublished manuscript, “Dreams of My Ancestors” I defined Ofo as “ an Igbo Ritual Symbol and Staff which epitomizes Truth, Justice, Authority, Wholeness and Moral Innocence which is used by Kings, lineage heads, titled men, diviners and priests of shrines to communicate with God through ancestors in prayers and sacrifices.” Ofo has its origin from the pacifist, and humanistic purity of Nri traditional system of worship and that explains why Igbo political, business and traditional leaders go nowhere else for Ofo Igbo other than to Nri.
Starting from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (premier Eastern Region of Nigeria (1954-1959) to Dr. Michael I. Okpara, Premier Eastern Region 1959-1966), Lt. Col. Odumegwu-Ojukwu (Military governor Eastern Region 1966/67 and Head of state of Biafra 1967-1970, Dr. Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo (Nigerian Senate President 1999-2000) to Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani, Governor of Enugu State (1999-2007) and hundreds of other Igbo political and cultural leaders, all visited and still visit Nri for bestowal of Ofo Nri. In 1996, for example, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Ikemba Nnewi, struggled to visit Nri for another Ofo Nri for the sake of crowning himself, spurious Eze Igbo Gburugburu. He insisted against the explanation that having bestowed Ofo Nri on him as Military Governor in 1966, he cannot be given a fresh one. Instead the former Ofo, lost or not, can be ritually replaced or reactivated, as the priests might deem necessary. Stopped by Nri people, through Anambra government and the Police, from visiting Nri on a date he chose, he preferred to invite a former Eze Nri Palace servant (Adama) to Enugu, to award him a fake Ofo Nri. Ikemba Nnewi (M.A, History, Oxford University, England), after Eze Nri turned him down for a second Ofo, he insisted because he knows as an Oxford trained historian that Nri is the only place in Igbo land to get Ofo.
3. Perceptions of non-Igbo Nigerian Scholars on Kingship in Igbo Land
Other Nigerians, including scholars, for reasons best known to them, had resolved that prior to British colonial governance, the Igbo nation had no centrally organized system of governance. While researching the 300-page manuscript, ‘Dirt on White Spectrum - the Travails of Sacred Throne of Nri - The Custodian of Igbo Culture/Tradition and Nigeria’s oldest Kingship Institution,” (in process of publication) I found that other Nigerians commonly regard the Igbo people as having no form of central coordination of their life. In Professor Akin Mabogunje 1971 book, The History of West Africa Vol.1, “The Land and Peoples of West Africa,” Longman, London, edited by Profs. J.F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder, the three scholars agreed that:
“Of the six important groups mentioned above as occupying the eastern forest area, only the Ibo had no centralized political organisation above the level of the local head man and council of elders. . . . Some form of supra communal religio-political organisation was provided through the agents of the Aro-Chukwu Oracle, which was the final arbiter for all inter-tribal strife.
Mabogunje (88 years old) is a University of Ibadan Professor of Geography and Nigeria’s first Professor of Geography; 1st African president of the International Geographical Union. Prof. Ajayi, Jacob Festus Adeniyi (1929-2014), who edited the work, was a Nigerian historian, Professor of History, of Universities of Ibadan and Lagos with several works on African History. He was Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos 1972-1978. Ajayi was a member of Ibadan School of Historical Research led by late Prof. Kenneth Dike in the 1960s, which introduced African perspectives to African History and caused African history to focus on the internal historical forces that shaped African lives. His co-editor of Mabogunje’s 1971 work, Prof. Michael Crowther, was also a distinguished historian and a foreign associate of Ibadan Historical Research School. Prof. Michael Crowther, (1934-1988), co-editor with Prof. Ajayi of Mabogunje’s work , was a British historian and author, notable for his books on the history of Africa, particularly, West Africa and from 1968-1978, variously Professor of History at Universities of Ife and Lagos, and Ahmadu Bello, University. That means that these were in the Nigerian University system by 1959 when Prof. Shaw, through the University of Ibadan commenced the excavations at Igboukwu and were there in 1966 when the Institute of African Studies of UI commissioned Onwuejeogwu to do the anthropological studies of the Igboukwu excavations whose reports were all deposited in UI. The centrality of Nri to Igbo civilisation was made very clear by those UI projects, in addition to previous works of colonial historians dating from the 19th century.
A 2010 report of a study on traditional rule and the evolution of democratic governance in each of the six geo-political zones of Nigeria since her independence in 1960, funded by the Embassy of The Kingdom of The Netherlands in Abuja, titled, Traditional Rulers in Nigeria, depict the general impression and attitude of Nigerians, even among scholars, on kingship in Igbo land. Led by the historian, Prof. S.J.S. Cookey, the group included Profs Akin Oyebode (International Law, University of Lagos), A.D Yahaya (Political Science, Kano), Etannibi Alemika (Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Jos), Elo Amucheazi is a Professor of Political Science and Pro-Chancellor, Anambra State University. They dismissed the entire South-East as having no king whose influence affected more than a community, in following sweeping statement:
Even though there was ethnic homogeneity, the zone lacked mega states with centralised monarchies. Instead, what prevailed was small scale, village-based polities, anchored on agnatic kingship principles.
It therefore did not surprise informed opinions in Igbo land when in 2008 Otunba Olugbenga Daniel, Governor of Ogun State invited by the chairman of the year’s Igbo Day Celebrations Committee and former Enugu State Governor, Dr. Okwesileze Nwodo, to present a paper as the guest lecturer at Ohanaeze Ndigbo Igbo Day celebrations of 2008, took his time to regurgitate the same opinions of non-Igbo Nigerian scholars. In his lecture of 28th Sept. 2008, titled, Equity, Justice & Fairness as Tool for Political Equilibrium he openly assaulted the sensibilities of Igbo elite gathered to celebrate Igbo greats and mourn those lost in Igbo epic struggle for liberation, by declaring that there were no substantial Igbo oral traditions to account for a history of any Igbo kingship and therefore the Igbo had no central organisation. He therefore declared:
“Unlike the Yoruba, the Edo, the Hausa, Jukun and Kanuri, the Igbo did not develop monarchial forms of government. This is the background to the saying, “Ndi Igbo Echi Eze” (the Igbo make no kings). In addition to this difference in the form of government, the Igbo did not develop large political units as their neighbours did. The nucleus of their political and social unit was the lineage.”
Nothing can be further away from the truth than the above conclusions by non-Igbo scholars on kingship in Igbo land.
The Urgent Need to Restore Focus to Igbo Culture, Tradition and Civilisation
The late Rt. Honorable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, first Premier of Eastern Regional Government of Nigeria, also first President of the Nigerian Senate, first indigenous Governor-General and later, President, was one of the earliest Igbo elites to be convinced about the need to give focus to Igbo Culture, Tradition and Civilization when on Wednesday, 29th March 1956, as the Premier of Eastern Nigeria, he moved the second reading of a Bill titled “The Recognition of Chiefs Law 1957.” Amongst other things he declared as follows:-
“Thirty years ago, Dr. P. Amoury Talbot gave a lot of reliable information about the Aro theocracy and the spiritual potentates of Agukwu Nri whose civil supremacy was acknowledged in Awka and Udi Divisions and which was a holy city that was comparable to Ile-Ife in its hey days.
From this remarkable ethnographer, we gleaned authoritative data about kings and chiefs who exercised spiritual and temporal power throughout the Eastern Nigeria just as their opposite numbers did in the North and West.
..It is remarkable that while the Ooni if Ife was recognized as the spiritual head of the Yoruba-speaking people; and the Sultan of Sokoto was highly respected among Muslims of the North, the role of the Eze Nri was not only minimized but was officially ignored.
…Therefore, the present government cannot be blamed for snubbing the chiefs of the East...”
‘'…The saving grace is that we are now engaged in the Herculean task of restoring the prestige and dignity of our chiefs, wherever such tradition exists, and we hope that we shall be given a fair chance to find a satisfactory solution.”1
Zik was an anthropologist by training and knew the implications of every word he spoke on this matter of chiefs and kings of the East.
In supporting Dr. P. Amoury Talbot, Zik was trying to give cultural focus to Ndigbo. Dr. Talbot was a learned scholar of Igbo culture who wrote several remarkable books on Igbo in the twenties: The peoples of Southern Nigeria, Volumes 1 & V. In his books he emphasized on what he saw, heard and read about the centrality of Igbo culture located at Nri town before the British and Missionaries from August 1911 deployed massive resources in an effort to destroy it.
Certainly Ndigbo require a reconstruction of their past to move forward. But that reconstruction must be based on solid facts derived from sustainable research and not mere conjecture or various bogus claims by charlatans in Igbo history who now seem dominate the newspaper and air space.
If Zik in 1956-57 was unable to restore the Igbo focus/center, if Professor Afigbo’s committee in 1976 was unable to do so too, Ndigbo in 2019 have no excuse to fail having gone through the harrowing experiences of lack of cultural center/focus imposed on the Igbo by the British and Christian Missionaries since 1911 and thereafter by Igbo politicians like Dr.Azikiwe; making it difficult for Ndigbo to have a clearing house for conflicts and their resolutions, on account of the devaluation of Igbo value system by modern forces and factors. The classification of Obi of Onitsha as first class chief whilst Eze Nri was ranked below him or not ranked at all, in 1957 by the Azikiwe’s regional government in Enugu, even after the above quote, which helped in no small way in convincing the Eastern Regional Colonial Governor, Clement J. Pleas, to establish the Eastern House of Chiefs, was a devastating blow on the effort to refocus the Igbo.
The need to write this plea might not have arisen if Dr. Azikiwe had not succumbed to primordial pressures of nepotism; and implemented the noble intentions of that 29th March 1956 address to the Eastern House of Assembly.
The compelling evidence derived from research on the Igbo is that Nri and Eze Nri historically and unchallengeably constitute the centre/citadel of Igbo culture, history and civilization; the destruction done by British imperialism and Christian Missionaries from August 1911, and the benign neglect and parochialism of Igbo politicians since 1957, notwithstanding.
The Legacies of Nri Civilization
Twelve legacies of Nri Civilisation speak for themselves and even before Nri mortal enemies, convincingly place Nri and Eze Nri, both in the Agukwu location, before any other community and kingship in Igbo land south-East, South-South and North-Central as the centre/citadel on which Igbo culture, history and civilization revolve. From the works of renowned scholars in cultural history including Prof. Onwuejeogwu, it has been distilled that the following legacies were bequeathed by Eze Nri/Nri civilization to the Igbo nation.
(i)The Igbo Market Days – Eke, Oye, Afo, and Nkwo; (ii) Igbo Lunar Calendar - 13 lunar months under the deity Aro; (iii) Agricultural cycle and crops – the yam culture (Ifejioku) and other food crops; (iv) Title taking – Ozo and Eze; (v) Pacifist Traditional Worship in Monotheism; (vi) Human Rights -upholding and protecting the Sanctity of human life and the Dignity of the Human Person; (vii) Unification of most of Igbo land under a Hegemony; (viii) The Concept of All-Kind and Merciful God; (ix) Unified Age-grade System for community development; (x) Democratized Monarchial System of Governance – rare in the world; (xi) Non-violence/peace philosophy in governance and (xii) Eze Nri kingship is the oldest kingship tradition in Nigeria – Details in APPENDIX II, titled “Placing Nri Kingship in a Dating Comparative Analysis with 14 Other Major Kingship Institutions in Nigeria.”
These bequeathals are what entitle Nri to the appellation: Isi Omenani Igbo - Custodians of Igbo Culture and tradition. More Details on these 12 bequests are available as APPENDIX I.
APPENDIX I
The Legacies of Nri Civilization
1. The Igbo Market Days: The present day commercial and ritual activity of the four market days- Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo. Nri priests established the shrines in most parts of Igbo land. The Bini market days of Aho (Agbado), Eken, Orrie (Edekioba), and Okuo (Eken’aka) are probable diffusions of the Igbo market days, the Benin kingship and civilisation having been established as dating 250 years after Nri, probably under Nri influence. Igala market days of Eke, Ede, Afor, and Ukwo probably emerged from the same Igbo source since Igala kingship (Atta) started only some 500 years after Eze Nri. Onoja Nwoboli, a son of the same father Nri (Eri), is known to have brought a lot of influence to bear on the founding of the Igala kingdom.
2. The Igbo Lunar Calendar - the concept of Aro (year) was introduced to Igbo life by Eze Nri who till date, proclaims, from year to year, the Igbo Lunar Calendar. The annual proclamation of the Igbo lunar calendar is the exclusive function Eze Nri. Starting from the Igbo native week of four market days of Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo to ‘onwa’ (month) made up of seven native weeks which amounts to 28 days. ‘Onwa’ is a moon cycle tracked by observing the movement of the moon. Thirteen moon cycles make one Igbo lunar year. The proclamation invariably falls into mid-February of every year in the Gregorian calendar, just like the Chinese lunar calendar for which the Chinese shut down for close to one month. Aro has a shrine in Nri. Every month represents an activity in Igbo life. Eze therefore keeps account of each month by tracking the moon; and pronounces the event for the month. That way he arrives at when to proclaim the end and beginning of Igbo lunar calendar.
Before the British attempted liquidation of Nri in August 1911, Nri had developed its concept of “aro”- the year. First, “aro” is a supernatural force revealed to Eze Nri in the past; then Nri transformed it into a cycle of one year. Divided into thirteen segments, namely: Onwa Agumaro(new year proclamation month), fixed around mid February, this is the month for announcing the year by Eze Nri for all Igbo. It is followed by Onwa Mbu (1st month), Onwa Abuo (2nd month), Onwa Ife Eke (Eke Market month), Onwa Ano (4th month), Onwa Agwu(month of Agwu {melancholy} month), Onwa Ifejioku (yam cult month),Onwa Eliji(New Yam month), Onwa Ilommuo(Thanks Giving Month), Onwa Ana(Land Deity Month, Onwa Okike(Okike Deity month), Onwa Ajana na Edeaja(Ajana Deity month), Onwa Uzo Alusi (All other Deity month).A study of the year system, the genealogy of Onwa, the age grade, the kinship system resulted in working out Nri system of time, published as The Principles of Ethnogeneachronology: Dating of Nri (Igbo) Oral Tradition by Prof. M.A. Onwuejeogwu, Ethiope Publishing Corporation, Benin, 1997. The lunar system of calculating the year with a system of adjustment, were known to the priests of Alusi Aro. Knowledge of the movement of the heavenly bodies was employed. Northcote Thomas (MA, FRAI) the government anthropologist in 1910, reported that he got “names for the following heavenly bodies at Agukwu (Nri): “Pleiades, Orion and Great Bera”. Nri elders had clear knowledge of these stars and others, which helped them in calculating the intervals between each lunar period and finding the directions during their sojourn from one Igbo-village to another in both the semi-forest and forest zones. Nri astronomical and psychological knowledge were researched and published later the same year by Ethiope Publishing Corporation, Benin, Nigeria, titled "Afa symbolism and Phenomenology In Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action."
During the Onwa Agumaro, Igbo representatives from far and wide congregated at Nri for the “announcing of the year “. This is a big ceremony, which all Ndigbo awaited with eagerness because of its ritual, economic and political importance. Till date Iguaro Ndigbo ((Proclamation of the Igbo Lunar Calendar) by Eze Nri is still the most culturally significant of all Igbo Traditional Festivals.
First, it gave all those under Eze Nri ritualism protection and the spiritual energy to face the New Year. Secondly, representatives were given the Ogwu ji (yam medicine), the yam medicine, and thirdly, it gave them opportunity to express solidarity and oneness with the Eze Nri and the levitical and ritual laws which they had willingly obeyed. Nri people developed a body of philosophy based on phenomenology which deals a distinctive African philosophy which seeks a linkage between past and present, and between present and future. The nature of this philosophy is the theme of Onwuejeogwu’s 1997, Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony . . .
The annual proclamation of the Igbo lunar calendar is the exclusive function Eze Nri. Starting from the Igbo native week of four market days of Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo to ‘onwa’ (month) made up of seven native weeks which amounts to 28 days. ‘Onwa’ is a moon cycle tracked by observing the movement of the moon. Thirteen moon cycles make one Igbo lunar year. The proclamation invariably falls into mid-February of every year in the Gregorian calendar, just like the Chinese lunar calendar for which the Chinese shut down for close to one month. ‘Aro’ (year), the supernatural has a shrine in Nri, incidentally looked after by my kindred. Every month represents an activity in Igbo life. Eze Nri therefore keeps account for the Igbo nation, of each month by tracking the moon; and pronounces the event for the month. That way he arrives at when to proclaim the end and beginning of Igbo lunar calendar. Thus any Igbo traditional ruler who pretends to proclaim the Igbo Lunar Calendar early in January is merely repeating or extending the January 1, Gregorian New Year celebrations and not the Igbo Lunar Calendar. He needs to explain to the Igbo world in which Aro deity shrine the necessary expiations, ablutions and sanctifications are performed before he commenced the process.
The Nri were great innovators in rituals, diplomacy, economy, administration and the management of a segmented and decentralized system.
3. The Igbo Agricultural Cycle- Eze Nri introduced new varieties of yam, coco-yam and other food crops into Igbo agricultural cycle and spread the use of iron technology. It is significant to note that the much-celebrated Ifejioku is a symbolization of the supreme sacrifice Eze Nri made with his first son which initiated the yam culture in Igbo land. Imo State Government knowingly celebrates this sacrifice in its annual Ahiajioku lecture series. Unfortunately it is not on any record that Imo State Government has ever invited formally invited Eze Nri to this lecture series in recognition of this sacrifice which is being memorialized by this worthy lecture series. I have twice on my own attended two of the lecture and was duly recognized as a Prince of Nri;
4. Title taking - “Ozo” tile and kingship were brought into Igbo life by Eze Nri. His agents travelled all over Igbo land initiating people into ozo and kingship. The ubiquitous red cap of all Igbo titled personalities wear since after the Civil War (1967-70) emblemizes ‘Ozo,' introduced into Igbo life by Eze Nri. As one moves East, West, North or South of Nri ramifications of Ozo are encountered under different names like Okonko.
5. Pacifist Traditional Worship in a Monotheistic System: Eze Nri through his agents- Nri priests – brought into Igbo life a pacifist traditional worship system of one Supreme Being that places the utmost premium on the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person. Nri priests travelled all over Igbo land and beyond, proclaiming taboos and cleansing abominations – nso n’alu. The Churches branded it ancestral and deity worship and could not understand that the ancestors/deities represent in the Nri system what the Saints and Angels represent in Christianity. Acting with the Colonial powers from 1911 they descended on Eze Nri and Nri to extinguish what they termed they termed “the citadel of Satan and the headquarters of juju and voodoo and pagan priesthood for the whole Igbo tribe” (Father Duhaze 1906).
6. Sanctity of human life and Respect for the Dignity of the Human Person: Nri condemned all forms of human sacrifice, the slave trade and all inhuman treatment of any human. Killing or throwing away of twins, babies that cut the upper teeth first, those from bridged birth, dwarfs all ill- treatment of any human were forbidden by Nri. Those encountered alive, were indeed rescued and given full citizenship by Nri. The concept of Fundamental Human Rights was introduced into the affairs of men by Eze Nri, as early as 1043 A.D, long before the UN 10th of October 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
7. Unification of Igbo land under Hegemony: Nri attempted to unify the Igbo in a hegemony, which the slave trade, imperialism and colonialism eroded. But the core values of the hegemony still exist, hence most Nri legacies to Ndigbo survived even when the origin is little known and most Igbos and other Nigerians have not given thought as to how, when and why these bequeathals are pervasive.
8. The Concept of All-Kind and Merciful God: Nri developed the concept of Chukwu Okike(God), kind, just and peaceful as against the concept of a violent Chukwu that encouraged wars, slave-trade, blood-shed and human suffering in some Igbo areas under other influence.
9. Unified Age-grade System: Nri introduced and unified the age - grade system among the Igbo and it became a political and economic structure for a more effective social organization.
10. Democratized Monarchial System of Governance: Nri introduced the concept of democratized monarchial system of rulership in Igbo culture. The representatives of the twelve families of Agukwu Nri in the Eze Nri cabinet (Nzemabua) who, most of the time, took decisions for Eze Nri in meetings, were chosen independently by each kindred according to established hierarchy of titles.
11. Non-Violence and Peace as Mantra in Governance and Justice to Society
Eze Nri institution has survived as the oldest kingship institution in Igboland and, indeed Nigeria, without no army and any record of fighting any war. Long before the non-violence as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi of India and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of USA, all of the 20th Century Eze Nri from 10th Century AD, has kept a record of non-violence in governance, relying solely on myth, divination, piety and spirituality as means of keeping society in balance, whilst dispensing justice to all members of society regardless of rank. This poses a challenge to 21st century peace studies.
A very bold statement of Nri as non-violent peace-maker is the case of Awka and Ugwuoba – two brothers who were killing themselves in battle until Nri intervened to separate them. Nri, otherwise originally pronounced and known as “Nshi” those days, intervened by settling between the two communities after settling their issues in dispute. The Nri settlers became known as Ama Nshi (community of Nshi). The English have no consonant diagraph in their alphabets and worst of all, found it a bit difficult to pronounce. They easily simplified the writing and pronunciation to Amansea. Itinerant Nri priests have a not-so-good record of getting back home once they find a comfortable settlement far or near the home, base unlike the Aro. Today UmuNri communities as far away as in Kogi, Delta and Edo states, even Ife in Osun State, are virtually lost to the Igbo nation. They got so completely assimilated that their Igbo language either became extinct for lack of use, or got so polluted that central Igbo people of today are unable to understand such hybrid Igbo language.
12. Nri Kingship is the oldest Kingship Institution in Nigeria
From a dating comparative analysis of the oldest known kingships in Nigeria, the Eze Nri kingship institution is the oldest kingship institution in Nigeria, probably of the same age with Kanuri kingdom whose age is merely estimated, and therefore could be merely second to Nri. The details are annexed as APPENDIX II.
APPENDIX II
PLACING NRI KINGSHIP IN A DATING COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH 14 OTHER MAJORKINGSHIP INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA
The distribution of 15 kingdoms chosen for the dating comparative study, are as follows: Seven Igbo kingdoms; one Igala kingdom on account of the confession of Igbo/Igala relationship in terms of antecedents, Bini for similar reasons as Igala, and three Yoruba kingdoms selected in terms of age - the oldest and the newest; then two Hausa kingdoms - the first and the most famous. The last and not the least, is the only Kanuri kingdom. These kingdoms/kingships are presented hereunder in a chronological order of age from 900AD to date, along with authorities who studied them, have been fairly studied and recorded by various writers of some maturity whose works are easily verifiable.
1st Nri kingdom 900AD (date established by carbon 14) by Northcote Thomas (1913), MDW Jeffrey (1934) and Prof. M.A. Onwuejeogwu (1974 and 1981).
2nd Kanuri Kingdom: about 900AD (estimate) by Abdullahi Smith (1971), Smith (1971) and Onwuejeogwu (2000).
3rd Kano kingdom 950AD by J. Hunwick (1971), R.A. Adeleye (1971); and Onwuejeogwu (2000).
4th Agbor Kingship 950AD by Chief Iduwe (1985).
5th Daura Kingdom 950AD by J. Hunwick (1971), Dr. R.A. Adeleye (1971), and Onwuejeogwu (2000).
6th Ife Kingdom (Yoruba) 1045AD by Dr. R. Smith (1969), F. Willet (1960), and Johnson (1921).
7th Ijebu Ode Kingdom 1080AD by Dr. R. Smith 1969, Prof. E.A. Ayandele (1992) and Johnson (1921).
8th Old Oyo Kingdom 1145AD by Dr. R. Smith (1969) Dr. P.M Williams (1967) Johnson (1921).
9th Benin Kingdom 1140AD by Chief Egharevba (1934 and (1968) and Dr. R.E. Bradbury (1957).
10th Ubulu-Ukwu Kingship 1280AD by Mr. E.A. Ikemefuna and Obi Anene (1985).
11th Owa Kingship (Off-shoot of Nri) 1280AD by Obi E. Efeizomor II (1994).
12th Igala Kingdom 1450AD by Dr. J.S. Boston (1962).
13th Ogwashi-uku Kingship (Offshoot of Nri) 1500AD by Mr. Ben Nwabua (1998).
14th Aro Kingdom 1650AD by Prof. Kenneth Dike and Prof. J. Ekejiuba (1990).
15th Onitsha Kingship 1750AD by R.N. Henderson (1972) Prof Ikenna Nzimiro (1972).
Sokoto Sultanate was established barely 349 years ago, about 1670AD. It came into prominence with the successful over-running of Hausa kingdoms by the Fulanis in the Othman Dan Fodio’s successful Jihad of 1804-1808.
Above comparative analysis confirms a hidden fact that kingship was firmly established in Igbo life long before most of the much-talked of kingdoms in Nigeria.
All Rights to this document is hereby reserved to the writer Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh
NRI, Anambra State, Nigeria.
15th February, 2020
(Igbo 2020 New Year Lecture by Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh at Eze Nrienwelani II Palace at Nri, Anambra State, Nigeria on 15th February 2020)
Preamble - Definitions
1.1. Days of the Igbo Week: Iguaro is the ritual proclamation of Igbo lunar calendar by Eze Nri which Eze Nri performs yearly as the originator of Igbo days of Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo (all Deities) which determine the "Izu" (week) that add up to the "Onwa" (month) that yield the " Aro" (year) , another deity by itself, again controlled by Eze Nri. Aro has a shrine in Nri and it is taken care of my kindred (Ezekanmadu) high priest.
Onwuejeogwu’s “The Principles of Ethnogeneachronology: Dating Nri (Igbo) Oral Tradition,” 1997 in p. 47 and in page 2 of his 1987 Ahiajioku Lecture, “Evolutionary Trends in the History of the Development of the Igbo Civilisation in the Culture Theatre of Igboland in Southern Nigeria,” detailed how the four supernaturals (otherwise deities) of days, were revealed to Eze Nri who now controls them. The Igbo market days and Aro are thus, deities controlled by Eze Nri. Pages 114 & 115 of his 1997 “Afa Symbolism& Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony” contain elaborate details of this fact. Iguaro Eze Nri was the biggest festival in Igbo land performed in the palace of Eze Nri by Eze Nri, dating from 900AD. The Onitsha people in 1750 AD introduced Ofala, (a festival very similar to Nri yam festival of Onwasato), when Onitsha was founded. Fig. 7 in page 88 of “An Igbo Civilization Nri Kingdom and Hegemony” (1981) graphically shows the proclamation of Igbo New Year as one of the ten mystical powers of Eze Nri.
Eze Nri therefore encouraged trade all over Igbo land by establishing the four market days Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo and their “alusi” supernaturals. His Nri agents, serving as priests, travelled all over the length and breadth of Igbo land consecrating the markets and initiating people into Ozo. For example, Nri agents established the famous Nkwo market at Onitsha. They also used to initiate Onitsha people into the Ozo title, which Onitsha treated and continues to treat with utmost dignity.
Trading as an alternative to farming in a difficult ecology was one of the hall marks of the Nri economic system, in its efforts at diversification. Nri insisted on having a well-organized cycle of farming and trading among the Igbo. They created the peace that made these possible among hostile communities and towns.
Igbo people believed that any dead person went to the land of the dead (ani mmuo) through Nri. Thus Nri town became the center of Igbo pilgrimage until the British in 1911, instigated by the Missionaries, destroyed the system, and ordered all Igbo to avoid Nri. According to Northcote Thomas, the British colonial government anthropologist, who witnessed this event in 1911 and wrote in 1913 “He (Eze Nri) is the spiritual potentate over a large extent of the country and so great is the awe which he inspires that recently, when, probably for the first time in history, an Eze Nri entered the native court of Awka while it was sitting, the whole assembly rose and prepared to flee” (Anthropological Report on the Ibo Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood of S. Nigeria, 1913, p.48).
Above demonstrates the awe and respect Ndigbo had for Eze Nri. The early missionaries were solidly behind this colonial government move to destroy the institution to enable both of them achieve their respective missionary and colonial objectives. The destruction was only partially successful, because the Ozo/Eze forms continued all over Igbo land. Eze Nri continued installing leaders who are symbols of truth and peace and continued giving the Ofo Nri, the ritual symbol and staff of authority. Till this day, Ndi-Igbo, love to wear the red cap as the external symbol of the Ozo/Eze title, which they regard with pomp and dignity. Regardless of whether any one knows or accepts it, the red cap the Igbo chiefs wear, is admission of and submission to the supremacy of Nri culture, for EzeNri introduced the Ozo/Eze and the hierarchy of titles before and after Ozo.
1.2. The Concept of the Year deriving from 13 Lunar Months: Before the British liquidation in August 1911, Nri had developed its concept of Aro - the year. First, as already stated, Aro is a supernatural force revealed to Eze Nri in the past; then Nri transformed it into a cycle of one year. Aro is divided into thirteen segments, namely: Onwa Agumaro, fixed around mid February of the Gregorian calendar. This is the month for the proclamation beginning of the Igbo lunar calendar by Eze Nri for all Igbo. It is followed by Onwa Mbu, Onwa Abuo, On wa Ife Eke, Onwa Ano, Onwa Agwu, Onwa Ifejioku, Onwa Eliji, Onwa Ilommuo (Onwasato), Onwa Ana, Onwa Okike, Onwa Ajana na Edeaja, Onwa Uzo Alusi. A study of the year system, the genealogy of Onwa, the age grade, the kinship system resulted in working out Nri system of time, published by Prof. Onwuejeogwu in 1997 already referred to above as “The Principles of Ethnogeneachronology . . . The lunar system of calculating the year with a system of adjustment, were known to the Nri priests of Alusi Aro. Knowledge of the movement of the heavenly bodies was employed. Northcote Thomas (MA, FRAI) the government anthropologist in 1910, reported that he got “names for the following heavenly bodies at Agukwu: “Pleiades, Orion and Great Bera”. Nri elders had clear knowledge of these stars and others, which helped them in calculating the intervals between each lunar period and finding the directions during their sojourn from one Igbo-village to another in both the semi-forest and forest zones.
2. The Proclamation of the Igbo Lunar Calendar - Iguaro (New Year):
As previously stated, the annual proclamation of the Igbo lunar calendar is the exclusive function Eze Nri. Starting from the Igbo native week of four market days to ‘onwa’ made up of seven native weeks which amounts to 28 days and to Aro of 13 Onwa. ‘Onwa’ is a moon cycle tracked by observing the movement of the moon; thirteen of which make one Igbo lunar year. The proclamation is indeed the declaration of Igbo New Year which invariably falls mid-February of every year. This similar to the Chinese lunar/solar calendar for which the Chinese shut down for close to one month Every year. Every Igbo month represents an activity in Igbo life. Eze Nri therefore keeps account of each month by tracking the moon; and pronounces the event for the month. That way he arrives at when to proclaim the end and beginning of Igbo lunar calendar. Thus any Igbo traditional ruler who pretends to proclaim the Igbo Lunar Calendar very early in January is merely repeating or extending the January 1, Gregorian New Year celebrations, and definitely not the Igbo Lunar Calendar. He needs to explain to the Igbo world in which Aro deity shrine the necessary expiations, ablutions and sanctifications are performed before he commenced the process. And some of these pretenders of Iguaro are highly-placed consecrated Christian Church officials. Some even demean Igbo culture and tradition by summon the Igbo year in the altars of Churches. Only them know what tradition they wish to have other Nigerians and world believe Ndigbo came from; and what culture the Igbo had before the emergence of Christianity in the Igbo culture area in 1857.
During the Onwa Agumaro, Igbo representatives from far and wide congregated at Nri for the “announcing of the year.” This is a big ceremony, which all Ndigbo awaited with eagerness because of its ritual, economic and political importance. Till date Iguaro Ndigbo (Proclamation of the Igbo Lunar Calendar) by Eze Nri is still the most culturally significant of all Igbo Traditional Festivals.
First, it gave all those under Eze Nri ritualism protection and the spiritual energy to face the New Year. Secondly, representatives were given the Ogwu ji, the yam medicine, and thirdly, it gave them opportunity to express solidarity and oneness with the Eze Nri and the Levitical and ritual laws which they had willingly obeyed. Nri people developed a body of philosophy based on phenomenology which deals a distinctive African philosophy which seeks a linkage between past and present, and between present and future. The nature of this philosophy is the theme of the Onwuejeogwu’s 1997 book, earlier referred to, captioned “Afa symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony. . .’
The Nri people were great innovators in rituals, diplomacy, economy, administration and the management of a segmented and decentralized system.
2.1The Yam Cult in Igbo Civilisation: Before the coming of the white man, yam used to be a determinant of a man’s success or failure in Igbo land. Everyone lived on the land and farmed. Yam was the lead crop.
Nri Menri, the founder of Nri, the first Son of Eri, was known to have introduced the yam culture in Igbo agricultural cycle. In Professor Elizabeth Isichei’s book, “A History of Nigeria” (1983), page 24, she related what elders told Dr. M. D. W. Jeffreys in the 1930s which Jeffreys published in 1956 titled “The Umundri Tradition of Origin,” in the African Studies Journal XV, pp. 122-3 and his 1934 Divine Umundri King of Igbo Land - his unpublished doctoral dissertation . It is important to note that in the 1930s, unlike now, there was no politicization of Igbo history by the elders. The elders told the truth as it was handed down by their forebears. This is unlike the present times in which people make wild and unsubstantiated claims merely for the convenience of their political goals. Jeffreys wrote:
“. . . while Eri was alive he and his dependants were fed by Chuku [God] and their food was azu igwe [back of the sky]. When Eri died this food supply ceased and Ndri at Aguleri complained to Chuku that there was no food. Chuku replied that if Ndri did as he was told he could obtain food. Ndri asked what it was he had to do and Chuku told him that he had to kill and bury his eldest son and daughter . . . . This killing of the eldest son and daughter was carried out, and the bodies buried in separate graves. Three native weeks later, shoots appeared out of the graves of these children. From the grave of his son, Ndri dug up a yam, cooked and ate it. . . . The next day Ndri dug up koko yams from his daughter’s grave. . . Ndri also had a male and female slave killed and buried and in three weeks there sprang from the grave of the male slave an oil-palm, and from the grave of the female slave, a bread-fruit tree.”
(Prof. Mervyn David Waldegrave (1890-1975), a former District Officer in Nigeria and Cameroon; later a Cambridge scholar and Anthropologist; and finally Professor of Anthropology, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa).
2.1.1. Ifejioku: Prof. Elizabeth Isichei had also related another version of the primacy of Nri among the sons of Eri in page 7 of her 1976, 303-page title “A History of the Igbo People,” the Macmillan Press Ltd, London.
Jeffreys and Isichei further revealed the source of yam reverence among the Igbo – the sacrifice Menri made before yam came into Igbo life. The essence of Ifejioku, Ihejioku or Ahiajoku, as it is variously called, in Igbo life, is explained by the sacrifice. Theft yam is a grievous offence; to uproot growing yam seedling, ranks almost pari passu with murder in original Igbo jurisprudence.
2.1.2.Ofo Nri: In my yet unpublished manuscript, “Dreams of My Ancestors” I defined Ofo as “ an Igbo Ritual Symbol and Staff which epitomizes Truth, Justice, Authority, Wholeness and Moral Innocence which is used by Kings, lineage heads, titled men, diviners and priests of shrines to communicate with God through ancestors in prayers and sacrifices.” Ofo has its origin from the pacifist, and humanistic purity of Nri traditional system of worship and that explains why Igbo political, business and traditional leaders go nowhere else for Ofo Igbo other than to Nri.
Starting from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (premier Eastern Region of Nigeria (1954-1959) to Dr. Michael I. Okpara, Premier Eastern Region 1959-1966), Lt. Col. Odumegwu-Ojukwu (Military governor Eastern Region 1966/67 and Head of state of Biafra 1967-1970, Dr. Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo (Nigerian Senate President 1999-2000) to Dr. Chimaroke Nnamani, Governor of Enugu State (1999-2007) and hundreds of other Igbo political and cultural leaders, all visited and still visit Nri for bestowal of Ofo Nri. In 1996, for example, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Ikemba Nnewi, struggled to visit Nri for another Ofo Nri for the sake of crowning himself, spurious Eze Igbo Gburugburu. He insisted against the explanation that having bestowed Ofo Nri on him as Military Governor in 1966, he cannot be given a fresh one. Instead the former Ofo, lost or not, can be ritually replaced or reactivated, as the priests might deem necessary. Stopped by Nri people, through Anambra government and the Police, from visiting Nri on a date he chose, he preferred to invite a former Eze Nri Palace servant (Adama) to Enugu, to award him a fake Ofo Nri. Ikemba Nnewi (M.A, History, Oxford University, England), after Eze Nri turned him down for a second Ofo, he insisted because he knows as an Oxford trained historian that Nri is the only place in Igbo land to get Ofo.
3. Perceptions of non-Igbo Nigerian Scholars on Kingship in Igbo Land
Other Nigerians, including scholars, for reasons best known to them, had resolved that prior to British colonial governance, the Igbo nation had no centrally organized system of governance. While researching the 300-page manuscript, ‘Dirt on White Spectrum - the Travails of Sacred Throne of Nri - The Custodian of Igbo Culture/Tradition and Nigeria’s oldest Kingship Institution,” (in process of publication) I found that other Nigerians commonly regard the Igbo people as having no form of central coordination of their life. In Professor Akin Mabogunje 1971 book, The History of West Africa Vol.1, “The Land and Peoples of West Africa,” Longman, London, edited by Profs. J.F. Ade Ajayi and Michael Crowder, the three scholars agreed that:
“Of the six important groups mentioned above as occupying the eastern forest area, only the Ibo had no centralized political organisation above the level of the local head man and council of elders. . . . Some form of supra communal religio-political organisation was provided through the agents of the Aro-Chukwu Oracle, which was the final arbiter for all inter-tribal strife.
Mabogunje (88 years old) is a University of Ibadan Professor of Geography and Nigeria’s first Professor of Geography; 1st African president of the International Geographical Union. Prof. Ajayi, Jacob Festus Adeniyi (1929-2014), who edited the work, was a Nigerian historian, Professor of History, of Universities of Ibadan and Lagos with several works on African History. He was Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos 1972-1978. Ajayi was a member of Ibadan School of Historical Research led by late Prof. Kenneth Dike in the 1960s, which introduced African perspectives to African History and caused African history to focus on the internal historical forces that shaped African lives. His co-editor of Mabogunje’s 1971 work, Prof. Michael Crowther, was also a distinguished historian and a foreign associate of Ibadan Historical Research School. Prof. Michael Crowther, (1934-1988), co-editor with Prof. Ajayi of Mabogunje’s work , was a British historian and author, notable for his books on the history of Africa, particularly, West Africa and from 1968-1978, variously Professor of History at Universities of Ife and Lagos, and Ahmadu Bello, University. That means that these were in the Nigerian University system by 1959 when Prof. Shaw, through the University of Ibadan commenced the excavations at Igboukwu and were there in 1966 when the Institute of African Studies of UI commissioned Onwuejeogwu to do the anthropological studies of the Igboukwu excavations whose reports were all deposited in UI. The centrality of Nri to Igbo civilisation was made very clear by those UI projects, in addition to previous works of colonial historians dating from the 19th century.
A 2010 report of a study on traditional rule and the evolution of democratic governance in each of the six geo-political zones of Nigeria since her independence in 1960, funded by the Embassy of The Kingdom of The Netherlands in Abuja, titled, Traditional Rulers in Nigeria, depict the general impression and attitude of Nigerians, even among scholars, on kingship in Igbo land. Led by the historian, Prof. S.J.S. Cookey, the group included Profs Akin Oyebode (International Law, University of Lagos), A.D Yahaya (Political Science, Kano), Etannibi Alemika (Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Jos), Elo Amucheazi is a Professor of Political Science and Pro-Chancellor, Anambra State University. They dismissed the entire South-East as having no king whose influence affected more than a community, in following sweeping statement:
Even though there was ethnic homogeneity, the zone lacked mega states with centralised monarchies. Instead, what prevailed was small scale, village-based polities, anchored on agnatic kingship principles.
It therefore did not surprise informed opinions in Igbo land when in 2008 Otunba Olugbenga Daniel, Governor of Ogun State invited by the chairman of the year’s Igbo Day Celebrations Committee and former Enugu State Governor, Dr. Okwesileze Nwodo, to present a paper as the guest lecturer at Ohanaeze Ndigbo Igbo Day celebrations of 2008, took his time to regurgitate the same opinions of non-Igbo Nigerian scholars. In his lecture of 28th Sept. 2008, titled, Equity, Justice & Fairness as Tool for Political Equilibrium he openly assaulted the sensibilities of Igbo elite gathered to celebrate Igbo greats and mourn those lost in Igbo epic struggle for liberation, by declaring that there were no substantial Igbo oral traditions to account for a history of any Igbo kingship and therefore the Igbo had no central organisation. He therefore declared:
“Unlike the Yoruba, the Edo, the Hausa, Jukun and Kanuri, the Igbo did not develop monarchial forms of government. This is the background to the saying, “Ndi Igbo Echi Eze” (the Igbo make no kings). In addition to this difference in the form of government, the Igbo did not develop large political units as their neighbours did. The nucleus of their political and social unit was the lineage.”
Nothing can be further away from the truth than the above conclusions by non-Igbo scholars on kingship in Igbo land.
The Urgent Need to Restore Focus to Igbo Culture, Tradition and Civilisation
The late Rt. Honorable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, first Premier of Eastern Regional Government of Nigeria, also first President of the Nigerian Senate, first indigenous Governor-General and later, President, was one of the earliest Igbo elites to be convinced about the need to give focus to Igbo Culture, Tradition and Civilization when on Wednesday, 29th March 1956, as the Premier of Eastern Nigeria, he moved the second reading of a Bill titled “The Recognition of Chiefs Law 1957.” Amongst other things he declared as follows:-
“Thirty years ago, Dr. P. Amoury Talbot gave a lot of reliable information about the Aro theocracy and the spiritual potentates of Agukwu Nri whose civil supremacy was acknowledged in Awka and Udi Divisions and which was a holy city that was comparable to Ile-Ife in its hey days.
From this remarkable ethnographer, we gleaned authoritative data about kings and chiefs who exercised spiritual and temporal power throughout the Eastern Nigeria just as their opposite numbers did in the North and West.
..It is remarkable that while the Ooni if Ife was recognized as the spiritual head of the Yoruba-speaking people; and the Sultan of Sokoto was highly respected among Muslims of the North, the role of the Eze Nri was not only minimized but was officially ignored.
…Therefore, the present government cannot be blamed for snubbing the chiefs of the East...”
‘'…The saving grace is that we are now engaged in the Herculean task of restoring the prestige and dignity of our chiefs, wherever such tradition exists, and we hope that we shall be given a fair chance to find a satisfactory solution.”1
Zik was an anthropologist by training and knew the implications of every word he spoke on this matter of chiefs and kings of the East.
In supporting Dr. P. Amoury Talbot, Zik was trying to give cultural focus to Ndigbo. Dr. Talbot was a learned scholar of Igbo culture who wrote several remarkable books on Igbo in the twenties: The peoples of Southern Nigeria, Volumes 1 & V. In his books he emphasized on what he saw, heard and read about the centrality of Igbo culture located at Nri town before the British and Missionaries from August 1911 deployed massive resources in an effort to destroy it.
Certainly Ndigbo require a reconstruction of their past to move forward. But that reconstruction must be based on solid facts derived from sustainable research and not mere conjecture or various bogus claims by charlatans in Igbo history who now seem dominate the newspaper and air space.
If Zik in 1956-57 was unable to restore the Igbo focus/center, if Professor Afigbo’s committee in 1976 was unable to do so too, Ndigbo in 2019 have no excuse to fail having gone through the harrowing experiences of lack of cultural center/focus imposed on the Igbo by the British and Christian Missionaries since 1911 and thereafter by Igbo politicians like Dr.Azikiwe; making it difficult for Ndigbo to have a clearing house for conflicts and their resolutions, on account of the devaluation of Igbo value system by modern forces and factors. The classification of Obi of Onitsha as first class chief whilst Eze Nri was ranked below him or not ranked at all, in 1957 by the Azikiwe’s regional government in Enugu, even after the above quote, which helped in no small way in convincing the Eastern Regional Colonial Governor, Clement J. Pleas, to establish the Eastern House of Chiefs, was a devastating blow on the effort to refocus the Igbo.
The need to write this plea might not have arisen if Dr. Azikiwe had not succumbed to primordial pressures of nepotism; and implemented the noble intentions of that 29th March 1956 address to the Eastern House of Assembly.
The compelling evidence derived from research on the Igbo is that Nri and Eze Nri historically and unchallengeably constitute the centre/citadel of Igbo culture, history and civilization; the destruction done by British imperialism and Christian Missionaries from August 1911, and the benign neglect and parochialism of Igbo politicians since 1957, notwithstanding.
The Legacies of Nri Civilization
Twelve legacies of Nri Civilisation speak for themselves and even before Nri mortal enemies, convincingly place Nri and Eze Nri, both in the Agukwu location, before any other community and kingship in Igbo land south-East, South-South and North-Central as the centre/citadel on which Igbo culture, history and civilization revolve. From the works of renowned scholars in cultural history including Prof. Onwuejeogwu, it has been distilled that the following legacies were bequeathed by Eze Nri/Nri civilization to the Igbo nation.
(i)The Igbo Market Days – Eke, Oye, Afo, and Nkwo; (ii) Igbo Lunar Calendar - 13 lunar months under the deity Aro; (iii) Agricultural cycle and crops – the yam culture (Ifejioku) and other food crops; (iv) Title taking – Ozo and Eze; (v) Pacifist Traditional Worship in Monotheism; (vi) Human Rights -upholding and protecting the Sanctity of human life and the Dignity of the Human Person; (vii) Unification of most of Igbo land under a Hegemony; (viii) The Concept of All-Kind and Merciful God; (ix) Unified Age-grade System for community development; (x) Democratized Monarchial System of Governance – rare in the world; (xi) Non-violence/peace philosophy in governance and (xii) Eze Nri kingship is the oldest kingship tradition in Nigeria – Details in APPENDIX II, titled “Placing Nri Kingship in a Dating Comparative Analysis with 14 Other Major Kingship Institutions in Nigeria.”
These bequeathals are what entitle Nri to the appellation: Isi Omenani Igbo - Custodians of Igbo Culture and tradition. More Details on these 12 bequests are available as APPENDIX I.
APPENDIX I
The Legacies of Nri Civilization
1. The Igbo Market Days: The present day commercial and ritual activity of the four market days- Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo. Nri priests established the shrines in most parts of Igbo land. The Bini market days of Aho (Agbado), Eken, Orrie (Edekioba), and Okuo (Eken’aka) are probable diffusions of the Igbo market days, the Benin kingship and civilisation having been established as dating 250 years after Nri, probably under Nri influence. Igala market days of Eke, Ede, Afor, and Ukwo probably emerged from the same Igbo source since Igala kingship (Atta) started only some 500 years after Eze Nri. Onoja Nwoboli, a son of the same father Nri (Eri), is known to have brought a lot of influence to bear on the founding of the Igala kingdom.
2. The Igbo Lunar Calendar - the concept of Aro (year) was introduced to Igbo life by Eze Nri who till date, proclaims, from year to year, the Igbo Lunar Calendar. The annual proclamation of the Igbo lunar calendar is the exclusive function Eze Nri. Starting from the Igbo native week of four market days of Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo to ‘onwa’ (month) made up of seven native weeks which amounts to 28 days. ‘Onwa’ is a moon cycle tracked by observing the movement of the moon. Thirteen moon cycles make one Igbo lunar year. The proclamation invariably falls into mid-February of every year in the Gregorian calendar, just like the Chinese lunar calendar for which the Chinese shut down for close to one month. Aro has a shrine in Nri. Every month represents an activity in Igbo life. Eze therefore keeps account of each month by tracking the moon; and pronounces the event for the month. That way he arrives at when to proclaim the end and beginning of Igbo lunar calendar.
Before the British attempted liquidation of Nri in August 1911, Nri had developed its concept of “aro”- the year. First, “aro” is a supernatural force revealed to Eze Nri in the past; then Nri transformed it into a cycle of one year. Divided into thirteen segments, namely: Onwa Agumaro(new year proclamation month), fixed around mid February, this is the month for announcing the year by Eze Nri for all Igbo. It is followed by Onwa Mbu (1st month), Onwa Abuo (2nd month), Onwa Ife Eke (Eke Market month), Onwa Ano (4th month), Onwa Agwu(month of Agwu {melancholy} month), Onwa Ifejioku (yam cult month),Onwa Eliji(New Yam month), Onwa Ilommuo(Thanks Giving Month), Onwa Ana(Land Deity Month, Onwa Okike(Okike Deity month), Onwa Ajana na Edeaja(Ajana Deity month), Onwa Uzo Alusi (All other Deity month).A study of the year system, the genealogy of Onwa, the age grade, the kinship system resulted in working out Nri system of time, published as The Principles of Ethnogeneachronology: Dating of Nri (Igbo) Oral Tradition by Prof. M.A. Onwuejeogwu, Ethiope Publishing Corporation, Benin, 1997. The lunar system of calculating the year with a system of adjustment, were known to the priests of Alusi Aro. Knowledge of the movement of the heavenly bodies was employed. Northcote Thomas (MA, FRAI) the government anthropologist in 1910, reported that he got “names for the following heavenly bodies at Agukwu (Nri): “Pleiades, Orion and Great Bera”. Nri elders had clear knowledge of these stars and others, which helped them in calculating the intervals between each lunar period and finding the directions during their sojourn from one Igbo-village to another in both the semi-forest and forest zones. Nri astronomical and psychological knowledge were researched and published later the same year by Ethiope Publishing Corporation, Benin, Nigeria, titled "Afa symbolism and Phenomenology In Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action."
During the Onwa Agumaro, Igbo representatives from far and wide congregated at Nri for the “announcing of the year “. This is a big ceremony, which all Ndigbo awaited with eagerness because of its ritual, economic and political importance. Till date Iguaro Ndigbo ((Proclamation of the Igbo Lunar Calendar) by Eze Nri is still the most culturally significant of all Igbo Traditional Festivals.
First, it gave all those under Eze Nri ritualism protection and the spiritual energy to face the New Year. Secondly, representatives were given the Ogwu ji (yam medicine), the yam medicine, and thirdly, it gave them opportunity to express solidarity and oneness with the Eze Nri and the levitical and ritual laws which they had willingly obeyed. Nri people developed a body of philosophy based on phenomenology which deals a distinctive African philosophy which seeks a linkage between past and present, and between present and future. The nature of this philosophy is the theme of Onwuejeogwu’s 1997, Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony . . .
The annual proclamation of the Igbo lunar calendar is the exclusive function Eze Nri. Starting from the Igbo native week of four market days of Eke, Oye, Afo and Nkwo to ‘onwa’ (month) made up of seven native weeks which amounts to 28 days. ‘Onwa’ is a moon cycle tracked by observing the movement of the moon. Thirteen moon cycles make one Igbo lunar year. The proclamation invariably falls into mid-February of every year in the Gregorian calendar, just like the Chinese lunar calendar for which the Chinese shut down for close to one month. ‘Aro’ (year), the supernatural has a shrine in Nri, incidentally looked after by my kindred. Every month represents an activity in Igbo life. Eze Nri therefore keeps account for the Igbo nation, of each month by tracking the moon; and pronounces the event for the month. That way he arrives at when to proclaim the end and beginning of Igbo lunar calendar. Thus any Igbo traditional ruler who pretends to proclaim the Igbo Lunar Calendar early in January is merely repeating or extending the January 1, Gregorian New Year celebrations and not the Igbo Lunar Calendar. He needs to explain to the Igbo world in which Aro deity shrine the necessary expiations, ablutions and sanctifications are performed before he commenced the process.
The Nri were great innovators in rituals, diplomacy, economy, administration and the management of a segmented and decentralized system.
3. The Igbo Agricultural Cycle- Eze Nri introduced new varieties of yam, coco-yam and other food crops into Igbo agricultural cycle and spread the use of iron technology. It is significant to note that the much-celebrated Ifejioku is a symbolization of the supreme sacrifice Eze Nri made with his first son which initiated the yam culture in Igbo land. Imo State Government knowingly celebrates this sacrifice in its annual Ahiajioku lecture series. Unfortunately it is not on any record that Imo State Government has ever invited formally invited Eze Nri to this lecture series in recognition of this sacrifice which is being memorialized by this worthy lecture series. I have twice on my own attended two of the lecture and was duly recognized as a Prince of Nri;
4. Title taking - “Ozo” tile and kingship were brought into Igbo life by Eze Nri. His agents travelled all over Igbo land initiating people into ozo and kingship. The ubiquitous red cap of all Igbo titled personalities wear since after the Civil War (1967-70) emblemizes ‘Ozo,' introduced into Igbo life by Eze Nri. As one moves East, West, North or South of Nri ramifications of Ozo are encountered under different names like Okonko.
5. Pacifist Traditional Worship in a Monotheistic System: Eze Nri through his agents- Nri priests – brought into Igbo life a pacifist traditional worship system of one Supreme Being that places the utmost premium on the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person. Nri priests travelled all over Igbo land and beyond, proclaiming taboos and cleansing abominations – nso n’alu. The Churches branded it ancestral and deity worship and could not understand that the ancestors/deities represent in the Nri system what the Saints and Angels represent in Christianity. Acting with the Colonial powers from 1911 they descended on Eze Nri and Nri to extinguish what they termed they termed “the citadel of Satan and the headquarters of juju and voodoo and pagan priesthood for the whole Igbo tribe” (Father Duhaze 1906).
6. Sanctity of human life and Respect for the Dignity of the Human Person: Nri condemned all forms of human sacrifice, the slave trade and all inhuman treatment of any human. Killing or throwing away of twins, babies that cut the upper teeth first, those from bridged birth, dwarfs all ill- treatment of any human were forbidden by Nri. Those encountered alive, were indeed rescued and given full citizenship by Nri. The concept of Fundamental Human Rights was introduced into the affairs of men by Eze Nri, as early as 1043 A.D, long before the UN 10th of October 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
7. Unification of Igbo land under Hegemony: Nri attempted to unify the Igbo in a hegemony, which the slave trade, imperialism and colonialism eroded. But the core values of the hegemony still exist, hence most Nri legacies to Ndigbo survived even when the origin is little known and most Igbos and other Nigerians have not given thought as to how, when and why these bequeathals are pervasive.
8. The Concept of All-Kind and Merciful God: Nri developed the concept of Chukwu Okike(God), kind, just and peaceful as against the concept of a violent Chukwu that encouraged wars, slave-trade, blood-shed and human suffering in some Igbo areas under other influence.
9. Unified Age-grade System: Nri introduced and unified the age - grade system among the Igbo and it became a political and economic structure for a more effective social organization.
10. Democratized Monarchial System of Governance: Nri introduced the concept of democratized monarchial system of rulership in Igbo culture. The representatives of the twelve families of Agukwu Nri in the Eze Nri cabinet (Nzemabua) who, most of the time, took decisions for Eze Nri in meetings, were chosen independently by each kindred according to established hierarchy of titles.
11. Non-Violence and Peace as Mantra in Governance and Justice to Society
Eze Nri institution has survived as the oldest kingship institution in Igboland and, indeed Nigeria, without no army and any record of fighting any war. Long before the non-violence as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi of India and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of USA, all of the 20th Century Eze Nri from 10th Century AD, has kept a record of non-violence in governance, relying solely on myth, divination, piety and spirituality as means of keeping society in balance, whilst dispensing justice to all members of society regardless of rank. This poses a challenge to 21st century peace studies.
A very bold statement of Nri as non-violent peace-maker is the case of Awka and Ugwuoba – two brothers who were killing themselves in battle until Nri intervened to separate them. Nri, otherwise originally pronounced and known as “Nshi” those days, intervened by settling between the two communities after settling their issues in dispute. The Nri settlers became known as Ama Nshi (community of Nshi). The English have no consonant diagraph in their alphabets and worst of all, found it a bit difficult to pronounce. They easily simplified the writing and pronunciation to Amansea. Itinerant Nri priests have a not-so-good record of getting back home once they find a comfortable settlement far or near the home, base unlike the Aro. Today UmuNri communities as far away as in Kogi, Delta and Edo states, even Ife in Osun State, are virtually lost to the Igbo nation. They got so completely assimilated that their Igbo language either became extinct for lack of use, or got so polluted that central Igbo people of today are unable to understand such hybrid Igbo language.
12. Nri Kingship is the oldest Kingship Institution in Nigeria
From a dating comparative analysis of the oldest known kingships in Nigeria, the Eze Nri kingship institution is the oldest kingship institution in Nigeria, probably of the same age with Kanuri kingdom whose age is merely estimated, and therefore could be merely second to Nri. The details are annexed as APPENDIX II.
APPENDIX II
PLACING NRI KINGSHIP IN A DATING COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH 14 OTHER MAJORKINGSHIP INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA
The distribution of 15 kingdoms chosen for the dating comparative study, are as follows: Seven Igbo kingdoms; one Igala kingdom on account of the confession of Igbo/Igala relationship in terms of antecedents, Bini for similar reasons as Igala, and three Yoruba kingdoms selected in terms of age - the oldest and the newest; then two Hausa kingdoms - the first and the most famous. The last and not the least, is the only Kanuri kingdom. These kingdoms/kingships are presented hereunder in a chronological order of age from 900AD to date, along with authorities who studied them, have been fairly studied and recorded by various writers of some maturity whose works are easily verifiable.
1st Nri kingdom 900AD (date established by carbon 14) by Northcote Thomas (1913), MDW Jeffrey (1934) and Prof. M.A. Onwuejeogwu (1974 and 1981).
2nd Kanuri Kingdom: about 900AD (estimate) by Abdullahi Smith (1971), Smith (1971) and Onwuejeogwu (2000).
3rd Kano kingdom 950AD by J. Hunwick (1971), R.A. Adeleye (1971); and Onwuejeogwu (2000).
4th Agbor Kingship 950AD by Chief Iduwe (1985).
5th Daura Kingdom 950AD by J. Hunwick (1971), Dr. R.A. Adeleye (1971), and Onwuejeogwu (2000).
6th Ife Kingdom (Yoruba) 1045AD by Dr. R. Smith (1969), F. Willet (1960), and Johnson (1921).
7th Ijebu Ode Kingdom 1080AD by Dr. R. Smith 1969, Prof. E.A. Ayandele (1992) and Johnson (1921).
8th Old Oyo Kingdom 1145AD by Dr. R. Smith (1969) Dr. P.M Williams (1967) Johnson (1921).
9th Benin Kingdom 1140AD by Chief Egharevba (1934 and (1968) and Dr. R.E. Bradbury (1957).
10th Ubulu-Ukwu Kingship 1280AD by Mr. E.A. Ikemefuna and Obi Anene (1985).
11th Owa Kingship (Off-shoot of Nri) 1280AD by Obi E. Efeizomor II (1994).
12th Igala Kingdom 1450AD by Dr. J.S. Boston (1962).
13th Ogwashi-uku Kingship (Offshoot of Nri) 1500AD by Mr. Ben Nwabua (1998).
14th Aro Kingdom 1650AD by Prof. Kenneth Dike and Prof. J. Ekejiuba (1990).
15th Onitsha Kingship 1750AD by R.N. Henderson (1972) Prof Ikenna Nzimiro (1972).
Sokoto Sultanate was established barely 349 years ago, about 1670AD. It came into prominence with the successful over-running of Hausa kingdoms by the Fulanis in the Othman Dan Fodio’s successful Jihad of 1804-1808.
Above comparative analysis confirms a hidden fact that kingship was firmly established in Igbo life long before most of the much-talked of kingdoms in Nigeria.
All Rights to this document is hereby reserved to the writer Prince Chukwuemeka I. Onyesoh
NRI, Anambra State, Nigeria.
15th February, 2020
Monday, July 8, 2019
LESSONS OF PAST FAILURES OF GRAZING RESERVES
Past Failures of Grazing Reserves (RUGA) in Nigeria Left the Host Communities Overwhelmed with Unprecedented Growth of Fulani Population Now Contesting Superior Citizenship Rhights
In Nigeria, past efforts to get the Fulanis breed their cattle in state-provided grazing reserves have resulted in colossal failures with consequent overwhelming Fulani population.
Formal grazing reserves in Nigeria started accidentally in the 1950s when Hamisu Kano, working with pastoralists on livestock vaccination, foresaw the shortages of grazing land in Northern Nigeria. Supported by the government, he initiated the grazing reserve scheme from the abandoned government resettlement schemes (Fulani Settlement Scheme). The resettlement schemes collapsed because the government had neither the financial nor the managerial ability to continue with the financially burdensome scheme, and the best alternative use of the land, the government thought, was to convert it into grazing reserves that were less financially committed. Grazing reserve hatched in 1954 after a study of the Fulani production system contained in the "Fulani Amenities Proposal." The proposal suggested the creation of grazing reserves, the improvement of Fulani welfare, and the transformation of the herd management system. By 1964, the government had gazetted about 6.4 million hectares of the forest reserve, ninety-eight percent in the savanna. Sokoto Province had twenty-one percent of the land, followed by Kabba, Bauchi, Zaria, Ilorin, and Katsina, with 11-15 percent each (Awogbade 1982). The Wase, Zamfara, and Udubo reserves followed in succession.
In 1965, the Northern Nigerian Government incorporated the Fulani Amenities Proposal into the Grazing Reserve Law. Before the enactment of the Grazing Reserve Law of the Northern Nigeria, the pastoral Fulani relied on the goodwill of the farmers, who conferred upon themselves the lordliness of occupied and unoccupied land. The Fulanis resented that.
In 1976, the Survey Department finished the survey for most of the land earmarked for grazing. The United States Agency for International Development gave the technical assistance. By 1980, Nigeria had established 2.3 million hectares of grazing reserves, although this figure represented only eleven percent of the planned size (Omaliko and others 1984; and Bako and Ingawa 1988). The government acquired less than five percent of the ten million hectares proposed as grazing land (N.L.P.D. record 1992). Of the forty-five planned dams, twenty-four have been completed. Five borehole had been sunk. Of the expected 722 roads, 150 had been built, showing a huge deficit.
At the close of 1992, the government had identified over 300 areas with twenty-eight million hectares for grazing reserve development. About forty-five of these areas, covering some 600,000 hectares, had been gazetted. Eight of these reserves, totaling 225,000 hectares, were fully established. Already, 350 of the projected 950 pastoral families and 11,600 of the planned 46,000 cattle were using these reserves (N.L.P.D. record 1992). Apart from acquiring the land, the government regulated how the Fulani should use the grazing reserves.
All of the above failed and folded up, because (1) the Fulani herdsmen, besides their proclivity for violence, have an in-built resistance to any order outside their roaming in the wild culture as it pleases them and (2) the incompetence and the fraudulent nature of government managers plus the attitude of that government business is nobody's business.
Wase Grazing Reserve
The story of Wase Grazing Reserve, located in Wase Local Government in Plateau state, which had one of the most successful and hopeful start, is lesson enough against any state-funded grazing reserve, cow colony or RUGA, call it whatever deceptive name. Built on a forested areas south-west of Jos plateau, the reserve had an excellent 74,000 hectares and abundant rivers, streams, and pasturage. Sparsely populated and tsetse fly-free, it rested mostly on flat land. Thus, the reserve was selected as a perfect grazing land. With the financial and technical aids from the U.S.A.I.D. In tens of Millions of USDollars, the reserve took off in 1965. By 1973, the construction phase that included numerous dams, roads, and fire breaks had been completed. It then attracted many pastoral Fulani, leading to overcrowding and strain on the reserve's infrastructure. Animals that charged into the reserve literally drank up the water in the dams and outgrew pasture resources.
Then the U.S.A.I.D. aids terminated without establishing stocking rates, rotational grazing schemes, and a Reserve management committee. Overgrazing and burning became widespread, while the structures on the reserve deteriorated.
By the time the U.S.A.I.D. involvement stopped in 1975, almost every aspect of the reserve had collapsed. The dams and fences were broken. Implements rusted. Roads were washed away. The school that was opened for the pastoralists in 1975 was closed. The pastoralists on the reserve had reverted to their seasonal search for livestock feed (Ezeomah 1978).
The Proposed 2019 Plan is Another Plot to Steal Government Funds, Resettle and Enable Wandering Fulanis From All Over West Africa to Take Over Nigeria:
The Nigerian Government January 2019 Plan branded National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) plans about N91billion in investments in grazing reserves for a projected profit of N2trillion over the 10-year period is therefore a hoax or indeed Jihad of deception.
The first phase of the plan is expected to take care of grazing reserves in each of the seven pilot states of Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba, and Zamfara with four ranches (small, intermediate, medium and large) in each grazing reserve.
Ranchers and rearers will be encouraged to bring their cattle to a fattening site wherein the cattle will be fed so as to boost average weight from 200-250 kg to 450-500kg.
The question is: If N91 Billion would yield N2 Trillion in 10 years, why are the billionaires/trilionnaires who own the cattle, the oil wells in Niger/Delta and gold mines in Zamfara not. investing in the ranches. Why should the Federal Government invest rrecoverable N91Billion? If the motive is not land grabbing and invasion of Nigeria by West African Fulanis and Fulanisation/Islamisation of Nigeria as is already happening in Southern Kaduna and Plateau state, why not start the pilot scheme in core Fulani North-West states? Why Middle Belt states of Benue, S. Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba? Zamfara is probably the only exception. Adamawa is a major Cattle state too.
THE BITTER TRUTH is that Fulani herdsmen are forest dwellers and more comfortable in the wild. Their proclivity for violence is a very grave threat to national security. The Federal Government apparent connivance with them on their security siege on Nigeria since 2000, has resulted in present proliferation of kidnapping, indiscriminate killings, rapes and banditry all over Nigeria. The government and Nigerians are naive to expect that other criminal-minded Nigerians would not join their Fulani colleagues in those criminal activities since the Fulanis are never arrested and prosecuted.
The Kantagora Sample of RUGA in Niger State
The Land size of the first of first RUGA, Grazing Land, or Cattle Colony in Kantagora is 31,000 hectares or 310 sq. kilometers, the size of many LGAs in Nigeria - average in the SE 331sq. Km. RUGA amounts therefore to an exclusive Fulani LGA, planned to be six exclusive Fulani colonies in each state of the Federation. By the completion schedule there would be 216 of them. The average population of a local government in Nigeria is about 260,000 and given that Fulanis apply no birth control and President Buhari's government plans no such control; instead it is in a hurry for Fulanis to overwhelm the indigenous population, a Fulani LGA could be more than 400,000. Their effective population in a State where there are six Fulani LGAs would amount to 1.5 to 2.4 million! Imagine the impact on the state of such population of a people who have no regard for right to life and/or the right to decency of fellow human beings. If there are 13 million Fulanis in present Nigeria's 200 million population, imagine the impact of over 60 million in projected over 250 million in 10 years' time?
Even if the grazing reserves or RUGA or Fulani Cattle colonies fail, as they are planned to, given the stark fact that the governments of Nigeria has never succeeded in managing any business venture, the real intension of RUGA would remain a political/religious success as we would have overwhelming populations of Fulanis intimidating the whole country with violence as they have successfully done to Hausas since after the 1804-10 AD Jihad.
RUGA is therefore JIHAD OF DECEPTION, JIHAD OF POLYGAMY/POPULATION, JIHAD OF FINANCE AND JIHAD OF THE SWORD (VIOLENCE) BEING OPENLY INITIATED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA. IT MUST THEREFORE BE LIMITED TO NORTHWEST AND NORTHEAST STATES THAT HAVE THE LAND MASS. FOREIGN FULANIS MUST BE EXCLUDED.
Emeka Onyesoh
8th July, 2019.
In Nigeria, past efforts to get the Fulanis breed their cattle in state-provided grazing reserves have resulted in colossal failures with consequent overwhelming Fulani population.
Formal grazing reserves in Nigeria started accidentally in the 1950s when Hamisu Kano, working with pastoralists on livestock vaccination, foresaw the shortages of grazing land in Northern Nigeria. Supported by the government, he initiated the grazing reserve scheme from the abandoned government resettlement schemes (Fulani Settlement Scheme). The resettlement schemes collapsed because the government had neither the financial nor the managerial ability to continue with the financially burdensome scheme, and the best alternative use of the land, the government thought, was to convert it into grazing reserves that were less financially committed. Grazing reserve hatched in 1954 after a study of the Fulani production system contained in the "Fulani Amenities Proposal." The proposal suggested the creation of grazing reserves, the improvement of Fulani welfare, and the transformation of the herd management system. By 1964, the government had gazetted about 6.4 million hectares of the forest reserve, ninety-eight percent in the savanna. Sokoto Province had twenty-one percent of the land, followed by Kabba, Bauchi, Zaria, Ilorin, and Katsina, with 11-15 percent each (Awogbade 1982). The Wase, Zamfara, and Udubo reserves followed in succession.
In 1965, the Northern Nigerian Government incorporated the Fulani Amenities Proposal into the Grazing Reserve Law. Before the enactment of the Grazing Reserve Law of the Northern Nigeria, the pastoral Fulani relied on the goodwill of the farmers, who conferred upon themselves the lordliness of occupied and unoccupied land. The Fulanis resented that.
In 1976, the Survey Department finished the survey for most of the land earmarked for grazing. The United States Agency for International Development gave the technical assistance. By 1980, Nigeria had established 2.3 million hectares of grazing reserves, although this figure represented only eleven percent of the planned size (Omaliko and others 1984; and Bako and Ingawa 1988). The government acquired less than five percent of the ten million hectares proposed as grazing land (N.L.P.D. record 1992). Of the forty-five planned dams, twenty-four have been completed. Five borehole had been sunk. Of the expected 722 roads, 150 had been built, showing a huge deficit.
At the close of 1992, the government had identified over 300 areas with twenty-eight million hectares for grazing reserve development. About forty-five of these areas, covering some 600,000 hectares, had been gazetted. Eight of these reserves, totaling 225,000 hectares, were fully established. Already, 350 of the projected 950 pastoral families and 11,600 of the planned 46,000 cattle were using these reserves (N.L.P.D. record 1992). Apart from acquiring the land, the government regulated how the Fulani should use the grazing reserves.
All of the above failed and folded up, because (1) the Fulani herdsmen, besides their proclivity for violence, have an in-built resistance to any order outside their roaming in the wild culture as it pleases them and (2) the incompetence and the fraudulent nature of government managers plus the attitude of that government business is nobody's business.
Wase Grazing Reserve
The story of Wase Grazing Reserve, located in Wase Local Government in Plateau state, which had one of the most successful and hopeful start, is lesson enough against any state-funded grazing reserve, cow colony or RUGA, call it whatever deceptive name. Built on a forested areas south-west of Jos plateau, the reserve had an excellent 74,000 hectares and abundant rivers, streams, and pasturage. Sparsely populated and tsetse fly-free, it rested mostly on flat land. Thus, the reserve was selected as a perfect grazing land. With the financial and technical aids from the U.S.A.I.D. In tens of Millions of USDollars, the reserve took off in 1965. By 1973, the construction phase that included numerous dams, roads, and fire breaks had been completed. It then attracted many pastoral Fulani, leading to overcrowding and strain on the reserve's infrastructure. Animals that charged into the reserve literally drank up the water in the dams and outgrew pasture resources.
Then the U.S.A.I.D. aids terminated without establishing stocking rates, rotational grazing schemes, and a Reserve management committee. Overgrazing and burning became widespread, while the structures on the reserve deteriorated.
By the time the U.S.A.I.D. involvement stopped in 1975, almost every aspect of the reserve had collapsed. The dams and fences were broken. Implements rusted. Roads were washed away. The school that was opened for the pastoralists in 1975 was closed. The pastoralists on the reserve had reverted to their seasonal search for livestock feed (Ezeomah 1978).
The Proposed 2019 Plan is Another Plot to Steal Government Funds, Resettle and Enable Wandering Fulanis From All Over West Africa to Take Over Nigeria:
The Nigerian Government January 2019 Plan branded National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) plans about N91billion in investments in grazing reserves for a projected profit of N2trillion over the 10-year period is therefore a hoax or indeed Jihad of deception.
The first phase of the plan is expected to take care of grazing reserves in each of the seven pilot states of Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba, and Zamfara with four ranches (small, intermediate, medium and large) in each grazing reserve.
Ranchers and rearers will be encouraged to bring their cattle to a fattening site wherein the cattle will be fed so as to boost average weight from 200-250 kg to 450-500kg.
The question is: If N91 Billion would yield N2 Trillion in 10 years, why are the billionaires/trilionnaires who own the cattle, the oil wells in Niger/Delta and gold mines in Zamfara not. investing in the ranches. Why should the Federal Government invest rrecoverable N91Billion? If the motive is not land grabbing and invasion of Nigeria by West African Fulanis and Fulanisation/Islamisation of Nigeria as is already happening in Southern Kaduna and Plateau state, why not start the pilot scheme in core Fulani North-West states? Why Middle Belt states of Benue, S. Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba? Zamfara is probably the only exception. Adamawa is a major Cattle state too.
THE BITTER TRUTH is that Fulani herdsmen are forest dwellers and more comfortable in the wild. Their proclivity for violence is a very grave threat to national security. The Federal Government apparent connivance with them on their security siege on Nigeria since 2000, has resulted in present proliferation of kidnapping, indiscriminate killings, rapes and banditry all over Nigeria. The government and Nigerians are naive to expect that other criminal-minded Nigerians would not join their Fulani colleagues in those criminal activities since the Fulanis are never arrested and prosecuted.
The Kantagora Sample of RUGA in Niger State
The Land size of the first of first RUGA, Grazing Land, or Cattle Colony in Kantagora is 31,000 hectares or 310 sq. kilometers, the size of many LGAs in Nigeria - average in the SE 331sq. Km. RUGA amounts therefore to an exclusive Fulani LGA, planned to be six exclusive Fulani colonies in each state of the Federation. By the completion schedule there would be 216 of them. The average population of a local government in Nigeria is about 260,000 and given that Fulanis apply no birth control and President Buhari's government plans no such control; instead it is in a hurry for Fulanis to overwhelm the indigenous population, a Fulani LGA could be more than 400,000. Their effective population in a State where there are six Fulani LGAs would amount to 1.5 to 2.4 million! Imagine the impact on the state of such population of a people who have no regard for right to life and/or the right to decency of fellow human beings. If there are 13 million Fulanis in present Nigeria's 200 million population, imagine the impact of over 60 million in projected over 250 million in 10 years' time?
Even if the grazing reserves or RUGA or Fulani Cattle colonies fail, as they are planned to, given the stark fact that the governments of Nigeria has never succeeded in managing any business venture, the real intension of RUGA would remain a political/religious success as we would have overwhelming populations of Fulanis intimidating the whole country with violence as they have successfully done to Hausas since after the 1804-10 AD Jihad.
RUGA is therefore JIHAD OF DECEPTION, JIHAD OF POLYGAMY/POPULATION, JIHAD OF FINANCE AND JIHAD OF THE SWORD (VIOLENCE) BEING OPENLY INITIATED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA. IT MUST THEREFORE BE LIMITED TO NORTHWEST AND NORTHEAST STATES THAT HAVE THE LAND MASS. FOREIGN FULANIS MUST BE EXCLUDED.
Emeka Onyesoh
8th July, 2019.
Friday, September 21, 2018
OSU CAST SYSTEM - AN UGLY RELIC OF IGBO PAST
OSU CAST SYSTEM - AN UGLY RELIC OF IGBO PAST THAT NEEDS BE PUT TO AWAY TO PERMANENT REST
(Presentation of OkpalaEzeNri Chukwuemeka Onyesoh (Oba Agbalanze) on the Occasion of His Majesty EZE Nri Obidegwu Onyesoh, Nrienwelani II 1019th Onwasato Festival (Iliji) at Eze Nrienwelani Palace, Nri, Anaocha LGA, ANAMBRA State on Friday, 21st Sept. 2018)
1. Definition
Osu in Igbo land is simply a traditional and religious belief system, which includes that certain people should be discriminated from others. OSU by definition, is a name given to people sacrificed to the gods of Igbo community as slaves, outcasts and untouchables. And they assist the high priest of tradition of the deities they are dedicated to, in serving the deities or gods in their shrines. Prof. Michael A. Onwuejeogwu, the late Nigerian foremost anthropologist and virtually the ultimate authority on Nri cultural history, summarizes Osu as "ritual slaves." Others variously define it as 'cult slave,' 'a living sacrifice,' 'untouchable,' 'outcast,' 'owner's cult,'a slave of the deity,' and a 'sacred and holy being.'
Osus variously named in Igbo communities: Adu-EBONYI ; Oruma in Nsukka; Nwani or Ohualusi in Augwu and Ume, Ohu, Omoni or Okpu-Aja in various other communities.
On the other side of the divide, are the Nwamu, Diala, etc i.e. the free borns who are not so encumbered.
In some special circumstances among the traditional believers/worshippers, a Diala (non-Osu) who committed certain atrocities against the land could transform into Osu through a process of intricate rituals ( offering of libations and sacrificing animals to the earth god/goddess). One also inherited this dehumanizing social status through marriage to an Osu.
2. Limitations of the System
Osu cast system has many societal implications and is largely rooted in societal discrimination. It violates most fundamental human, civic and political rights and can be summed up as internal apartheid in Igbo land. For example marriage into the caste is forbidden. The penalty for the violation is that the non-OSU would inherit the caste status and transmit same permanently to his lineage.
The discrimination also I included celebration of birth, title-taking and burial and funeral of the dead. Even showing, presentation and sharing of kola nut ( both ways) in various localities, are also segregated.
3. Illegality of OSU Cast system
Osu Cast system has existed in Igbo society through the ages regardless of its non- acceptance by the NRI religious/ traditional leadership of the Igbo.The British Slave Trade Act of 1807 which became effective in 1841, was the catalyst that caused the pace of the movement for the abolishment of slavery and other forms of social segregation in Nigeria and West Africa and could be regarded as the first official Act against Osu Cast System. Archdeacon Basden's letter of 1933 to the Legislative Council of Southern Nigeria requesting the government to take steps to investigate the Osu system for great bitterness of feelings it was causing in certain parts of Owerri province, was the first direct action on the system. This was later followed by the Balonwu's Commission report on bride price which rekindled the desire to get the species of slavery like Osu Cast System in Igbo Land abolished.
3.1. The 1956 Law abolishing Osu Cast System in Eastern Nigeria: Consequent upon Balonwu's report and under the leadership the Eastern Nigeria Premier, Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, the Eastern House of Assembly, passed a resolution abolishing Osu, Ohu and Ume practices throughout Eastern Nigeria, relying on the Sections 20(1) and 23(1) of the Constitution of Eastern Nigeria which stated that "no person shall be held in slavery or servitude ; and that every person shall be entitled to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence respectively." The law became effective on 10th of May 1956 and from then it became illegal to refer to anybody as Osu. The Law was also intended to help prevent anybody from molesting, injuring, annoying, obstructing or attempting to cause any obstruction to anybody or boycotting any body in any attempt to exercise his/her right (Laws of Eastern Nigeria 1963 volume 1). A fine or imprisonment of less than 6 months was provided for those convicted for violation.
3.2. Constitutional Protections of Fundamental Human Rights & Osu Cast System
However, all Constitutions of Nigeria dating from 1914 to 1999 provided for fundamental rights and the sections guaranteed and protected the right to life, the dignity of the human person, personal liberty, private and family life, freedom from discrimination, freedom of moment, assembly and such other fundamental freedoms. These Constitutional provisions in sane climes are enough to put an end to such discriminatory systems as Osu.
3.3. International Declarations, Covenants, Conventions and Resolutions against Denigration and/or Derogation of Human Rights
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and its accompanying covenants led by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which was adopted in 1966 but came into force in 1976, and other multi- lateral treaties of the UN, brought fundamental human rights firmly into international Law and made them justiciable. The African Union's (AU) African Charter on Human and Political Rights (ACHPR) drove home the entrenchment of these rights and filled the gaps in the UN treaties referred to above. Nigeria ratified all these treaties and in the case of ACHPR, also domesticated it, thereby compelling the Nigerian courts to enforce them.
4. Absence of Will to Enforce of Laws
I have enumerated the plethora of laws, local, national and international, with which desirous person can fight the practice of Osu cast system, to show that it is not the absence of laws that that has sustained the cast system. It is the absence of the will power on the part of the government and the people including the so designated, to pursue enforcement.
There is a saying that in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve. Gullible Nigerians lack the will and tenacity to insist, pursue and assert their rights. For example, the citizens of poor Chad Republic, in Nigeria's northeast, a country with more than one and half times land space of Nigeria, mostly in the Sahara desert, with only 3.9% arable land and a population of barely 13.6 million people, mainly nomads (2015 est.), mustered the world, and pursued their former ruler, President Hissen Habre, until ICC (International Criminal Court) jailed him for life, 20 years after he left office, for human rights violations no more than what Gowon, Babangida, Obasanjo and Buhari have been doing to Nigeria, yet none has been as much as prosecuted at the ICC.
God would not come down to fight our battles for us. One unpunished immunity yields many.
4.1. The Nigerian Judicial System
The Nigerian judicial system, like almost everything in Nigeria is corrupt, expensive, tenuous and laborious; and therefore a very large cog in the wheel of human rights improvement. But as they say, only those who dare, win. Organization, patience, tenacity and persistence deflect most evil systems and quite often win in the very end.
5. The Osu Caste System is Losing the Battle
Right from the emergence of the Colonial Administration, which brought organized society under the Rule of Law, followed by Christianity, the Osu caste system has been in the decline. First, it was the children of this system that went to school before the free borns. They thereafter found themselves early in government and power. Can you imagine an Osu as Governor and how that breaks down all the walls. Secondly Christianity, which has swept of traditional worship under in most of Igbo land, has broken down the cast system. Do not mind the criss-crossers - Christians in the day, traditional worshippers by night. What however is left is the vestiges of the practice. There has been an Osu Governor in Anambra State, a citadel of traditional worship and I do not remember anybody denied him any of his rights as a citizen and Governor. Men & Women jostled for his attention and favor.
Vestiges of resistance however, are more prevalent in Imo state and communities in Enugu state (Umuode people in Oruku community in Nkanu East LGA, Enugu state for example), but the present emergence of organizations against, like Celibacy International (the sponsors of this colloquium) the Osu caste system is destined for the dustbin of history.
6. The Cultural Roots of the System
Those insisting on continuation of this evil system are as parochial as the Islamists who wish to impose Sharia on all of Nigeria. Ostracism, which is the stealth approach of the adherents, requires a multi- dimensional approach to dismantle it.
Traditional re-enactment of abolishment of the system by the Chief Priests of Igbo traditional worship who have the right of cleansing abominations, as already scheduled for Dec. 2018, enlightenment, publicity and re-enactment of the 1956 Eastern Nigeria Osu Caste System Law in the five states of the South-East.
7. EZE NRI IS THE APPROPRIATE AUTHORITY TO REPEAT THE ABROGATION OF OSU CASTE SYSTEM IN IGBO LAND
Nri town gave refuge to run-away slaves, those oppressed and those who committed abomination and their lives were endangered. Any one of this category of persons who set his or her feet in the palace of Eze Nri, gained freedom. Hence the palace of Eze Nri typically had no walls. His palace is accessible at any time. (Rising insecurity from increased unemployment of youths and poverty compelled the walling of this Palace and the relevant ablutions were due to have been undertaken before the walls were erected.
7.1.The Right to Perform Cleansing rites and Abrogate anti-People Practices are the Exclusive rights of Eze Nri as the Chief Priest of Igbo Traditional Worship:
From time immemorial all dwarfs and deformed children in Igbo land destined to be thrown away, were brought to Nri town. These included twins, children who first cut the upper teeth or bridged birth. They were all accepted as human beings; thus their fundamental human rights denied them by other Igbo communities where they were born, were restored. Some were trained to become medicine men and women and royal messengers. The dwarfs were called aka Nri if a man, or ada Nri, if a woman. Humanitarianism was a primary feature of Nri civilization. It was a culture that did not accept slavery or slave trade or the caste system called osu, found in most Igbo towns. In 1823, Captain John Adam, a British Slaver, reported how Nri slaves caused revolt among the captured Igbo slaves on the coast. The slavers did not wish to buy them. To the Nri, slave trade was abomination and degradation of human personality. Eze Nri was one of the few African kings to ban and pronounced anathema on slave trade and slavers, like Okoli Ijeoma of Ndikelionwu, in the 19th century. EzeNri proclamation saved Oko community which would have been enslaved and colonized by Okoli Ijeoma. Ekwulobia and all communities around that axis, benefitted from this Eze Nri pronouncement of ANATHEMA.
The Nri culture, though well represented in hundreds of archaeological finds of bronze and other objects, dated before AD 900, and well documented from the time of Equiano, a liberated Igbo slave in 1775 to now, is still confused and under- played by some Igbo, because the British did not exalt it as they did exalt war-mongering Ife or Sokoto kingships The British were looking for a system that unified the Igbo with violence and pageantry of despotic monarchy like their European types, and failed to see it in Nri. What they found was a democratic monarchy using religious sanctions to bring the Igbo together. At first, they did not see sense in it but by 1931, the British saw sense in Nri system but it was too late. The British colonial government and the missionaries had stifled the system by 1911. Hence in 1931, the Government anthropologist M.K. Meek mourned that a system abandoned twenty years ago would be difficult to re-instate.
Nri system was like the system now employed by the United Nations in seeking for peace. But it is more morally advanced than the United Nations system because in its levitical rules, it abhors violence and killing, even in self-dense.
The system needs to be studied more. We hereby draw the attention of Nigeria, the O.A.U. and UN to have a look into a system that tried to achieve in small scale for up to a millennium what they now are trying to achieve in a large scale since 1945 in UN in a more complex world. They might have a lesson to learn from a peace mechanism which dates back to 1045 AD, long before the United Nations which emerged on the world scene only in 1945. This is why some Igbo are proud to be associated with Nri and this is why some still associate themselves with Nri.
Nri is the glory of Igbo past and present. It is not romanticization. It is solid, and verifiable, historical and sociological facts of the past and present. A past that is still relevant to Igbo ethical personality of today and hence relevant to the future in building the concepts of peace-culture and a political moral-culture which are today additional pre-occupations. Nri peace-culture had been established and it has flourished in Nri for over a millennium. The modern global peace-culture cannot be understood if few societies with peace-cultures are not understood. This will be the importance of Nri in the present dispensation that has projected the ideology of a peace-culture. This is a summary of some of the things taught and written on Nri (Igbo) culture and civilization.
Nri civilization and culture have provided ancient and durable foundations for modernization of Igbo people. There is cohesion through the ozo/eze title system, there is cohesion through the yam culture, the peace culture, the moral culture, the humanitarian culture, the philosophy, the traditional religion centered around Chukwu Okike, the iron culture, the age-grade culture and the Igu-aro ceremonial.
It is the responsibility of the present administrations in the South-Eastern States, to devise ways and means to generate cohesion in the area. Since cohesion is manifested in group-oriented activities such as participation and sharing in group undertakings; expressions of loyalty, adherence to and active support for established institutions, healthy customs and mores; and similar kinds of socializations. We have mentioned that one of the ancient gifts which the Nri civilization bequeathed to the Anambra area and other Igbo, is the three-year-interval age grade system. The Nri type age-grade system is for peaceful mass participation and sharing in group undertakings; it is for the expression of loyalty, it is for moral enlightenment and rebirth. The British used the age-grade system of towns to build the old Enugu-Onitsha-Owerri road in the twenties. Many Igbo towns used it for town development until recently. The present administration can resuscitate and modernize the age-grade system of each town and direct its potentials towards meaningful grass root development.
Nri civilization and culture have provided the basis of cohesion for lasting development. It is important that there must be a change of attitude to the cultural history of the Igbo. Ndigbo must not continue to abandon the foundations established in the above legacies like the British Colonial Administrations did and like all administrations in the Eastern Region and most South-Eastern States'administration have done and are doing. This is the importance of this presentation if it succeeds, to recognize the hard facts of culture-history and its use in reconstructing the present. Nri ideology is based on peace and when comprehended, it will install peace and tranquility all over Igbo land.
This is why I appeal to some upstarts who have been hired to destroy the Nri system operating through the Nri Town Union President, Oba Kelvin Obiegbunam, to save himself from hell fire which is the destination of all who wrestle their fathers for no reason other than they are hired for a fee. He should, like Judas Iscariot return whatever he was paid before he meets the fate of Judas.
Nwata kpuolu Nna ya okani, uyolokoto ayochie ya anya.
We cannot submit to those who half know and half don't now. It is a truism that the world is in danger, not so much from those who don't know or know too much, but those who half-know and half-don't know.
8. CONCLUSION
Igbo Land Must be United in Peace to Fight the Current Existential Scourge in Nigeria:
Growth, development and peace follow a trend that is culture-based. This is the first lesson social scientists of development, learn following what happened in Europe, USA, Japan, China, and the countries of Southeast Asia. A group of people living in a geo-political area, cannot develop self-reliance if they have no common values and norms that give them some cohesion. Group cohesion refers to the observable facts that certain persons form a unit of a sort that hold them together. Cohesion is “the interchange of ideas and feelings from all to each and from each to all” (Durkheim)), “the active interchange of views and impressions” the expressions of “love for the group (patriotism)”;“Participation in a common cause,” "the constant surveillance of all over each.”are values that make the difference. A group that has cohesion can develop through the flow of knowledge and idea, innovations and circulation of its elite.
Osu caste system needs to be put to rest for Ndigbo to match shoulder-to-shoulder, as brothers, in order to unshackle the fetters which have limited us; and emerge as indeed free citizens of the world, which has left Nigeria behind as the world's capital of poverty and one of the most.
Bibliography:
1. Onwubuariri Francis: Appraising the Osu CasteSystem in Igboland within the Context of Complimentary Reflection, Nov.14, 2007. (www.frasouzu.com>Onwubuariri Franci...).
2. Dike Victor E: Osu Caste System in Igboland Diiscrimination Based on Descent. August 2007 (www.dalits.nl>pdf>OsuCasteSystem.
3. Onwuejeogwu M.A. and Onyesoh Chukwuemeka: Nri is the Focus of Igbo Civilisation, (www.emekaonyesoh.blogspot.com.ng).
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