The Positions of the elder and priest in Igbo culture

In my part, that 'governing council' was made up of the males who have started to pay utu umunna. And the first among them is the onye ihi (okenye). The chief priest, and men of high title are not as important as him, because in Ozubulu, its our custom that okenye ka nze (the oldest man is more important than the wealthiest, strongest, most powerful and influential person). The eze Mmuo commands respect as the priest that he is, but he stands up, like we all do, when okenye anyi enters. Never seen a better or richer culture than Omenana.

Discussions on Igbo Religion and culture

Wonderful work nwanne m Alfred! This work of yours should be read and re-read by every Igbo. So much to gain from it. I agree with many of your positions, but I also have a few points that I have questions on. In pure Omenana does ani or ana as we would say in Ozubulu mean the 'earth', or the 'land'? When the late Sir Warrior sang 'ala Owerri...' he clearly meant the land/country/territory of Owerri. Nso ana in my locality means what the land, country, people forbid. If I say ana Ozubulu I may mean the earth of Ozubulu. I may also mean the land, country or territory of Ozubulu. I'm trying to discover when some Igbos deified the 'earth', and today in the Igbo religion ana is believed to be a deity. What's happening now helps me to understand how ana became an Igbo deity. What I'm still trying to figure out is when this happened, and where it began. An Igbo began a year or so ago to say that the Eri whom the Igbos that live in Aguleri, Umuleri, etc, have always recognized as one of their ancestors, was a god, a spirit being. This claim was made to back up another claim, and posted on the Internet. In time a person who wants to form a religion may read this, set up a shrine for Eri, forge and concoct some stories, even fabricate 'miracles', draw followers and adherents, and in the future Eri would be described as a deity of the Igbos. I have also seen Igbos claiming that the sky is an Igbo deity, and that the earth, another Igbo deity is his wife. I mentioned recently, how an Igbo added that Amadioha is the son of Chukwu. In my research I saw only one Deity among the Igbos. That Deity is Chukwu.

Examining wrong conclusions on Igbo Studies with Emeka Maduewesi

Its up to us to correct a lot of wrong conclusions reached by 'authorities' who were not really qualified to be authorities on the Igbo. He was hinting that the character was a mixture of Negros and North Africans, because of the lightness of his complexion. To him because the man was light complexioned, he must be a cross-breed-a mixture of Moors and Negros. But not only has evidence been found that Negroes once lived in even places as northerly as present day Iraq (alongside other groups/ peoples of other colors), but also that no group has just one color. Caucasians or Europeans have different colors. The differences may not be as clear as the differences between the colors of the Negroid (sub Saharan Africans), but still the blond, and the brunette have different colors. Nwanne Emeka Maduewesi thanks for bringing this up.

Religion on Igbo Culture 2

And in Ozubulu, if one saw exposed faeces, Omenana demands that one has to perform a minor purification-by breaking an egg, smearing the egg on the eyes, and exclaiming-'anya afuo m aru'. You can see again, how religion came in to enforce hygiene and decent sanitary conditions.

Religion in Igbo Culture, Hygiene and Disease Control

Nwanne Alfred I do not know why every or many aspect[s] of our culture have 'religion' in it. But my observation is that it is so. I had a talk about typhoid and other disease control, water supply in Igbo culture, and the Ogwui River in Amakwa, Ozubulu, 'ikwu nne m'; with nwanne Moore Black Chi Mmadike recently. Moore suggested that typhoid was not very common when we were growing up in Igboland. It occurred to me, and I mentioned that probably our ancestors, who received and handed over Omenana to us knew about disease control better than we do-I then recalled that in my locality, that folks were barred from fishing in many of the rivers, and streams that the people got their drinking water from. Till today people do not fish in Ogwui uno-I presume to keep the stream/river clean, and free from diseases. And how did our culture ensure that the stricture should be obeyed? Religion came in. Our ancestors said that the Mmuo that own the river would be angry with anyone who fished in Ogwui. You can see how religion came into something as secular as ensuring that the water supply of the community is clean.

Ruminations by Hebrews

  Remy Ilona

Ndi Igbo (Hebrews), I'm penning down the following with all sense of responsibility, with the hope that many will read between the lines, and get the real import of my words. I'm doing so to let everybody know my opinion, and how I see things about the parlous conditio

Most times its easier for a group to loose their freedom than to regain it. We lost our freedom when the British subdued us, and imposed a foreign way of life on us,(which a few Igbos at the time accepted as better). They also brought foreign institutions, and imposed them on us. Did we resist these? There is historical evidence that there was resistance; but the resistance was puny. In a few short years; actually less than 60 years majority of Ndi Igbo had accepted the foreign way of life as better than ours which had sustained us for thousands of years. Many did not just stop at declaring that ofe onye ozo ka nke nne ha tere uto, but progressed; I'd say retrogressed to doing everything possible to make sure that ofe nne ha should not be seen anywhere among the Igbos. We abandoned our culture and became enslaved. A people that still have their culture are free. If you don't wipe out a people's culture, but destroy all their physical structures, and even kill off most of their population, you've not dealt a mortal blow to the people. The people can be relied on to rise. Japan was on its knees after World War11. Today we know what Japan is, and its not because of American aid. A people without a way of life, goals and objectives would have received even greater aid, and mismanaged it. A few fellow benei Yisrael from Europe, who survived the Holocaust repossessed the land of Israel, and managed to set up a viable state in the ancient homeland of Israel. Not well informed people like to claim that Israel is strong because of American support. My counter is that the Jews did/do 99% of the work, and used the received support well, because those Jews who reconstituted Israel have a program. And they have a program because they have a way of life which gives Jews an objective to work for. I do not see us (Ndi Igbo) as having a well thought out program. What do we as a people want? Where do we want to go? What do we want to achieve and show to the world? We have a 'homeland' (Igboland), (my elder brother Reuven Kossover, says its rather a way station, and I know why he says so), but today what are the feeling, emotions and nexuses between even that land and the Igbo? Truthfully, many Igbos feel less secure in that land, than in non Igbo parts of Nigeria. Why???????????? Why are we simply incapable of making Igboland attractive to at least Ndi Igbo? Are we holding ourselves down, or are there external forces holding us down? I want to believe that we are holding ourselves down. When we agreed that our way of life was bad, and agreed that a foreign one which made Ndi Igbo slaves was better, we began what has led us to where we are today. We can get our freedom back, but we can only when we become free culturally. When we begin to think like Igbos (Hebrews), and for Igbos (Hebrews), much energy, resources, etc, that are being wasted will begin to be put to good use. We just have to rediscover who and what we are, and what our goals and objectives as a people ought to be, or are. If we don't take necessary steps, our children will see what we are seeing, and more, perhaps without even a land that they can call their own in Nigeria. If I say that more than 4/5th of Igbos live outsode Igboland presently, I won't be exaggerating. Persons following this should look at their families, and check who and who are still on the land, and as for those outside, who and who still comes home. I'll pause for now with a submission by an Igbo whom I see as a good thinker:

“It is not the responsibility of the governors in the East alone. It is the responsibility of all individuals and all communities to begin to create conditions that will secure and sustain the security of lives and property. Government is a mere abstraction if there are no people or systems to organize and govern. The sheer economic, cultural, and social implication of what is happening now in Igbo land must be clearly placed before everyone - and let us decide whether to live with or die trying to change it. It is better to die than to live without freedom. But the core important questions are these:

A) Who is driving the Igbo, especially its elite and middle class out of Igbo land?

B) Why? To what end? There seems to me to be a real situation here in which the Igbo, once again unwilling to safeguard their own unique personal and collective interests will allow the massive evacuation of the Igbo people from their homelands into the margins of the urban ghettoes where they will live in fear and at the edge of culture. Perhaps the true equivalence of the "Jewish exile" is happening right before our very eyes, and we

are busy complaining and wringing our hands. Two hundred years from now, when a new people have resettled Igbo land, and become more dominant, and we would have ceded the greatest gifts of our heritage -land and its culture - the Igbo would then be fully the rootless, homeless people of the future. But may our ancestors never permit that we allow this”.

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Obinna-nwobi Obinwanne likes this.Flowing Rivers Of-Peace I asked my dad once why he "escaped" from Igboland to settle in Lagos n he sid it was "juju" and "wickedness" of the people of the land? I probed him further and found out that it was just a misconception n age long misundestanding. I've been home and I can tell u that there r nt more than 1000 pple living currently in my village and they r mostly the aged. Infact my village is so backward that u can count the number of brick houses there with most of them made of mud and so far placed from one another that u can walk a full 30mins before u get to someone else's mud house. Funny tin is that the pple that came out of that place r mostly abroad with many houses scattered in big cities like lagos. Infact I heard that someone from my place has 5000 houses in Abuja and he sells each one for 20million naira yet he has just one small house at home. Too bad. Funny tin is that the "jazz" they r so scared of and that mad we all run away can be found more abundantly in the West yet our pple are trooping down to these places in their droves. Its unbecoming of us. And that is why they will keep hating us because they feel that we left our land to come and struggle with them for the limited natural resource in their place.

about an hour ago via mobile · Like · 1Flowing Rivers Of-Peace I think another serious problem is that the great river Niger has not been dredged. Once it is dredged, we would come back home.

about an hour ago via mobile · Like · 1Flowing Rivers Of-Peace I spoke with Prof Catherine Acholonu and she adviced me that I shd make sure I go back home and develop my place and I wud do my own share of the work at the rite time.

about an hour ago via mobile · Like · 1Reuven Kossover Remy, look at your Ethiopian brethren. In Ethiopia, they were called "falasha" - Amharic for stranger. HERE, they wear the uniform of the IDF, sling M16's or Tavors over their shoulders, open restaurants and speak the language of the land - HEBREW. Most of them do it better than I do. When you stop looking at the Eastern Region of Nigeria as "home" and stop saying "Igbo" and say instead, "Ivri", MENTALLY you will direct yourselves northeast - towards your TRUE HOME - ISRAEL. Time grows short. Gog strides on the stage of History NOW. And History is like a train. It does NOT wait for passengers to board beyond a certain time.

Ultimately, people with white skins like me will find themselves in the minority in the revived HEBREW nation of Israel that is to come. You outnumber us. So do the Pashtuns. EVEN AMONG JEWS IN ISRAEL, white people are a minority. So, in spite of the racism of the present Ashkenazi ruling élite, war will break that élite's power. And you will find open arms here in Israel - AS HEBREWS. Serious identity change is on the way, Remy.

53 minutes ago · Edited · Unlike · 1Remy Ilona Big Brother Reuven Kossover, I know and understand what you mean. I know that I'm ha Ibri. I know that I moved from ha Ibri to Igbo/Ibo. But many of my people need this knowledge too, and the only way to get them to the necessary awareness is to take ...See More

41 minutes ago · Edited · LikeRemy Ilona Flowing Rivers Of-Peace (this your name is very funny)ndi Igbo run away from home because ndi Igbo believe that Igboland is filled with wickedness, idolatry, poverty, sinfulness and other evils. In time; at this present time this belief which was not based on facts has actually brought in wickedness, idolatry, poverty, sinfulness, and other evils. If you believe long enough that you are a pagan, be sure that you'll become one. Igbos who know next to nothing about Igbo history and culture have become 'great scholars', and they specialize in manufacturing gods, spirits, etc, for a people who have only one God in their culture. The 'Igbos who convinced you that you have deities created your problems. Non Igbos and Igbos who are illiterate on everything Igbo, have no holiness in them, but are addressed as men of god by contemporary Igbos now move around Igboland declaring that everywhere in Igboland is filled with demons, witches, wizards, principalities and powers. Too sad that our people have refused to take our history seriously. We all here are old enough that we met many of our forebears that many modern Igbos now believe that they were evil idolators. We know that many were perfectly holy men and women, (my mother said that my grandfather Eze ofido did not utter a falsehood from when she entered his family as a young bride till he died full of years). That he touched his mouth with his ofo during his prayers to Chi ukwu in the mornings, and said, 'may falsehood never issue from my lips. My grandmother whom I spent many of my vacations with was holy. She made sure that all the orphans in her kindred never went to bed hungry. So, as perceptions are at-times as strong as realities, your father has 'good' reasons for fleeing. I recommend that the serious and interested study Igbo history and culture, from the books written by scholars, verify what they read by on the spot investigations, and catch up by getting a J.H.Hertz Pentateuch and Haftorah.

32 minutes ago · Like · 1Obinna-nwobi Obinwanne Cultural revival...we need it so badly.

18 minutes ago via mobile · Unlike · 1Remy Ilona I was talking recently with some of the ablest Igbos that I've met in my life. Ndi Igbo have enormous capital. Ndi Igbo practically built/are building Nigeria. So, the problem is not dearth of resources. The Igbos have tremendous manpower. Many non Igb...See More

17 minutes ago · Like · 2Remy Ilona Obinna-nwobi, yes cultural revival, and it'll be started by dissemination of information about Omenana-which you know that its what we do here. You should boost the work by bringing in your serious friends so that they can learn. We don't like sleepers. If you get them aboard, get serious and active, they'll follow you.

12 minutes ago · Like · 1Obinna-nwobi Obinwanne You are right brother.