Ala, Obodo, and Emigration Among the Igboid: Reflections on the Mass Self Deportation of a Great People
Posted by Factnews | 7 years ago | 2,571 times
In this fifth in the series of my short essays on the existential crises confronting the Igboid vis-a-vis the angry demands for a Biafran homeland, I examine the mass emigration of the Igboid, the emptying of the homeland and its implications on the political, economic, cultural and industrial viability of the Igboid land space. It must first be noted that the Igboid are no strangers to itinerancy, travels, and emigration.
Indeed, nearly lost in the histories of the origins of the Igboid are oral traditions of the Igboid forebears alighting from a rectangular spacecraft. This tradition of celestial origins partly account for the rectangular shape of Igbo houses. Of course, it can be argued that the distinctive rectangular shape of all traditional Igboid houses are climatically-induced---there are few storms in Igboid areas unlike in the arid savannah where round or ovoid shaped houses are much suitable in windy areas. Be that as it may, the point is that the Igbos are travelers and have been doing so for millennia. However, the Igboid were deeply rooted in their families, lineages, villages, clans, and proto-states.
The festivals of Otite/ Njenje/ Ndi Ije and its various iterations traditionally held once every 7 years were all designed to remind the Igbo sojourner that he must take respite from his sojourns, come home, and felicitate with his kinsmen/women. So rooted were the Igboid in their geographical space that upon the birth of any baby, especially sons, when the umbilical cord fell off, it was sacrilegious to throw it away as if it was nothing. No. The Igboid performed a small but significant ceremony in which the father of the child would choose the healthiest seedling of a tree, usually a palm tree, select a preferred location in the compound, make a hole, place the shriveled umbilical cord in the hole and plant the tree on top of the cord.
The tree, called osisi alo/nkwu alo--did not only speak to the nativity and placement of the child in the community, but was a profound iteration that the child was a fixture in the community no matter how branched s/he may be in future. Thus, the presence and occupation of the Igboid areas by Igbos was not at the expense of itinerancy or emigration. Great mean and great women live with their people and among their people. Recent mass migration of the Igbos, or as Mitt Romney would characterize it, "self-deportation" raise serious questions about the viability and health of the Igboid society, especially, amidst the agitation for Biafra.
No ethnic group in Africa has engaged in such mass self deportation as the Igbo. More than 45% of the real estate in Lagos have Igboid ownership. More than 70% of the real estate in Abuja have Igboid ownership. If the Igbos residing outside Igboid territories were assembled in one place today, the population would be more than enough to create at least 2 new states. The self deportation of the Igboid is not only a matter of demographic analysis. Far from that. There are are political, economic, cultural and industrial implications.
No prominent Yoruba politician resides in Enugu, or in Asaba, or in Aba or in Umuahia. No promiment northern Nigerian politician resides in Aba, Enugu, Onitsha, or Owerri. It is only among the Igboid that you find their prominent and opinion-leaders residing in huge numbers in Lagos, Abuja, or New York. The elite perform many social and symbolic functions by their mere presence. They mentor, inspire, stabilize society.
If 80% or more of the Igbo political reside outside Igboland, is anyone surprised that the Igboid areas are the most politically unstable and naive part of Nigeria. Is anyone surprised that the vacuum created by the mass self deportation of the Igbo intelligentsia has been filled by charlatans, loud-mouthed and uncouth impostors, 419 practitioners, fake-certificate holders, and all manners of characters, some not even fit to open the gates for the cream of Igbo elite? So parlous is this situation that there are traditional rulers who reside in American cities, or in Lagos, or in Europe while pretending to be Ndi Eze/Igwe? If the political class in Igboid areas were to be compared with football teams in England, what we have in the Igboid areas today would be the Accringtons, Gillinghams, Yeovil, or Leyton Orient.
A roll call of the political leadership of the Igbos throws up some characters that would make sane Igbos exhaust their cringe reflexes. And some of buffoons are the quickest to mouth their ignorance before a bemused Nigerian audience. Meanwhile, the majority of the cream of the Igboid culture areas are in their air-conditioned homes in Victoria Island, Ikeja GRA, Lekki axis, New York, Houston, et cetera, But the tragedy extends to the economies of the Igboid areas...
(To be continued) -Ikechi Mgbeoji
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