Ode to Soyinka at 86

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Biko Agozino

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Jul 13, 2020, 5:27:28 PM7/13/20
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Gloria Emeagwali

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Jul 13, 2020, 6:32:16 PM7/13/20
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Biko,

This is Illuminating but you seem to be throwing out the Igbo Kingdom of Nri, out of your discussion of Igbo history.
Why so?

Igbo society was also hierarchical with the Osu and Ohu being at the lower rung of society. Title holders were not on the same rung as those without titles. Athenian democracy was shallow and  over hyped in the textbooks since half of the population were enslaved and had no voice to participate. Another white lie. Igbo society may have been better but by no means a perfect model.

As for Soyinka I wish him happy birthday although I still hope to ask him one day why he was so lukewarm about supporting the civil rights movement in the US? Correct me if I am wrong on this.

 A tiger does not show its tigritude , he said.  Well you can say the same about the BLM movement -  but Black Power symbolism was crucial for the movement to energize and inspire, and that it did.

Yesterday the great Formula One racer
Lewis Hamilton the only Black racer in the sport  at a high level, did just that:

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Biko Agozino

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Jul 13, 2020, 8:27:13 PM7/13/20
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Sista Glo,

On the Igbo not being perfect, no one ever said that they are perfect for they name their children, Uwaezuoke, the world is never enough. Yet, with all their very human imperfections, the Igbo do not deserve the hatred that the rest of Nigerians reserve for them. That is what Soyinka keeps reminding us, we have things to learn from the Igbo just as we have things to learn from other cultures. Threatening the Igbo with genocide is a form of phobia that is unjustifiable given their actual and potential contributions to the reconstruction of democratic praxis in Africa. Democracy itself is not perfect, it is the worst system of government, except for all the other alternatives, said Churchill. He would know because he preferred to impose colonial dictatorship in line with the philosophy of Plato - The Philosopher King - and Aristotle - the Aristocracy - as better models compared to democracy or what they called mob rule. 

Eze Nri was not a king but a chief priest whose authority never extended beyond the hamlets of Nri. It is true that chiefs were emerging in some parts of Igboland as documented by Nzimiro but Uchendu identified them as 'intrusive traits' from our monarchical neighbors. Rather than scoff at the deeply democratic traditions in places like Igboland, Rodney invited us to study them and celebrate them as much as we celebrate the empires of Western Sudan. The fascination with the Igbo by Rodney is all over HEUA where he praised them for building their own schools when the colonizers pretended that there was not enough money for schools; he celebrated their resistance to the double squeeze of underpaying the peasants for their harvests and hiking up the prices of manufactures, leading to the Women's War of 1929; and he dismissed claims that the genocide against Biafra was as a result of tribal war since the nations of Nigeria are too big to be called tribes, and there was never a record of genocide by Nigerian nations against their neighbors before colonization, while there are no African tribes called the Labour Party government of Britain nor Shell BP that orchestrated the genocide with Soviet Union help.

The Osu and Ohu institutions, in my humble opinion, were impositions resulting from the slave raids and they are not present in every Igbo community. The Ohu system of slavery came about as a result of the slave raids to capture people for sale but the Igbo resisted such raids as much as they could. The British claimed that they burnt down the Long Juju of Arochukwu in order to end the slave trade that they themselves imposed and ran for 4 hundreds years. Chinweizu dismissed such a claim as false because the British had long ended their slave trade by the time they organized the punitive expedition to Arochukwu over the struggle to dominate the lucrative trade in palm oil.

Osu came about, in my own opinion, as a sacred order for people who ran into the shrines to dedicate themselves rather than join in the resistance against the slave raiders. The Igbo would say, O sukwa, or it is happening; and those who fled into the refuge of the shrines were feared for having made contact with supernatural forces and became ndi Osu. A goat that is dedicated to the shrines is never beaten and it can come into your house and eat your dinner without fear. The Osu were untouchable because no one could beat them or kill them.

Azikiwe made it his priority to abolish the Osu system once he became Premiere of the Eastern Region in 1952. The problem remained a burden to the Igbo because anyone who married an Osu was regarded as an Osu too. Parents would still make enquiries to make sure that their children will be happy in their marriage rather than face discrimination. Other nations in Nigeria also discriminate in the choice of spouses for their children.

The Osu system has already been dissolved by the Igbo who are dynamic and cosmopolitan more than any other nation in Nigeria. For instance, no parents would withdraw their child from school if the teacher was known to be Osu, no one would refuse to go to church if the priest is an Osu, and no one would refuse COVID-19 relief if the governor or senator sharing it is an Osu. With the Igbo excellence in modern education, their success in trading and widespread enthusiasm for travel to other lands, the distinction between Osu and Amala is almost completely erased as people make friends in school or at work or on the sports field or in a musical band without bothering to find out if there is still a caste system. It may still be a problem in local politics but it is fast dying out.

The residues of Ohu and Osu among the Igbo could be additional points to make in a legal writ or negotiations for reparations for the slow healing wounds of slave raids and post-colonial genocide for which the Igbo suffered more than most. The Diaspora demand for reparative justice should be extended to Africa too.

Baba Sho cannot be imagined to be a scholar-activist who never paid homage to the Civil Rights Movement. That is exactly the theme of his play, Bachae, a homage to the civil rights movement in the US. Much more than almost any other African writer, Soyinka has been fascinated by the survival of African cultures of struggles for freedom in the Diaspora. His joke about the tiger and the tigritude should be understood as a critique of Senghore who preached Negritude but relished being an evolved Frenchman, though Senghore understood the joke and retorted that Soyinka does not speak tigrese or he would know what the tiger professes. See a commentary on Soyinka and the Civil Rights Movement in the US: Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka



Biko


Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jul 13, 2020, 9:07:34 PM7/13/20
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There was no Igbo as we know it today in 1500; what Afigbo called "village republics" pre-dated Igbo identity in the same way kingship authority and monarchical institutions pre-dated Yoruba identity. At issue here is communalism---as a universal phase through which human society pass through. Communalism as a pre-capitalist socio-economic formation sans class would read like "democracy"---Afigbo's "village republic" but they're not. Comrade Ikenna's conclusions on this subject refers. 

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On 14 Jul 2020, at 12:27 AM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Biko Agozino

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Jul 13, 2020, 9:40:01 PM7/13/20
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Democracy is not a phase in the evolution of republics, democracy predated republics or nation states. Democracy is a system of government of the people by the people and for the people. It is ahistorical to say that there were no Igbo before 1500 based on what you know today as identity. There was no entry for identity in the Encyclopedia of Social Science until the 1960s, what they had was an entry for identification, according to Stuart Hall. 

The Igbo language was always there from the beginning of human evolution of languages in Africa. The name Ndi Igbo literally means Early People. Ancient or modern, they have exemplary contributions to democratic forms of governmentality, said Soyinka. You are welcome to dismiss it as village republics but they were wider than the villages, they saw democracy or self-ownership as spreading throughout the world of the Igbo or Uwa Ndi Igbo, not just the village or hamlet.

Biko

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jul 14, 2020, 5:58:01 AM7/14/20
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Thanks for the clarification on Soyinka. You are right the statement was about negritude.

I hope that the everybody -hates -the -Igbo sentiment   is a figment of your imagination.
The Biafra war is over but you seem to think that it is not, loyal soldier.

Some historians link  the Kingdom of Nri  to the elaborate and exquisite  9th century artifacts at Igbo Ukwu.


GE



Professor Gloria Emeagwali 
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU


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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jul 14, 2020, 5:58:01 AM7/14/20
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Biko---you come across as a crass Igbo ideologue! So identity is new and democracy is old? Where is the evidence? Stuart Hall and Abe Lincoln? Is that what history teaches? And the Igbo language has always been there--unchanged and changeless. So the link between Igbo and Igala and the suggestion that they split from a parent language; and the findings linking kingship institutions to borrowings from Igala is all crap. And Wole is your authority re Igbo forms of what "democratic governmentality". Am sure you will agree with me that Foucault is from Aba---true or false?  

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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Jul 14, 2020, 5:58:04 AM7/14/20
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Biko,

well done on your beautiful summation on igbo achievement.

But its vital we face the osu problem head on which you and other igbo scholars on this subject who insist its not a huge problem are not doing.

a search for the term 'osu' in the igbo centered facebook group igborant hq brings up at least eight posts on the subject.

the richest of these is this  active post and thread linked below with 392 comments as of today, a post where young igbo are actively demonstrating the permeative force of usu caste discrimination in igbo society.
 
they are doing this through first hand accounts of the agonies of victims and their own self declared allegiance to this evil ideology-even in the face of fellow igbo who are so discriminated agst, other so described 'second class igbo' who would also be on that group, victims watching in pain as their fellow igbo openly describe them as less than fully human. 

unless igbo elite address this horror forcefully, its going nowhere.

and even when they do so, its depth of superstitious and classism- being a means of feeling superior to others-  and the heavy investment in it by those who call themselves 'freeborn' or 'diala', if i get the name right, in contemporary igbo  society, means it might take up to 100 years of active campaigning to bring this evil practice to an end.

we should avoid ethnic gymnastics and semantic pyrotechnics in addressing this delicately painful culture of dehumanization within and by members of the same ethnic group agst their own kin.

we should be wary, agst stark and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of  claims that non-igbo dont understand the reality of usu caste culture bcs non-igbos are outsiders to the culture or that those igbo who criticize it dont understand it.

we should focus on the evidence. 

it is a mark of the greatest inhumanity that a people facing the double challenge of a struggle within their own country and as black people on the global stage could insist on continuing to be so evil to each other.

we must rise above ethnic self defense and indifference to and mockery of ethnicities not ours and address this horror as the whole world is struggling for african-americans-


Akwaugo was supposed to be married tomorrow but a particular reoccurring Igbo Tradition tarnished that eternal bliss.

Akwaugo met Kenneth in the University and they both fell hopelessly in love. Both from Imo State, they were novice to any Culture and Traditions. They were in love for 3 years and after giving her a promise ring 💍, it escalated into an Engagement 💍 ring and Boom!!!

Marriage.

Both parties introduced themselves to their various families but something happened. The Mum knew the place of the girl very well. She sent spies to investigate 'Nchoputa' and found out the girl was an Osu. Her world came tumbling down. Ken who has a First Class in Physics says "I won't marry you baby cos of the future of our kids!"

Akwaugo weeps on. 😨😫

Footnotes:

Honestly, I don't think your Bible, Church or Religion has taught you anything if you still believe in the 13th century barbaric custom of OSU CASTE SYSTEM.

You cannot be shouting BLACK LIVES MATTER or complaining of discrimination by whites when you discriminate against your own brothers and sisters at home.
Our extant Constitution condemned discrimination at all level but in IGBO LAND, the OSU CASTE SYSTEM is still prevalent. 🌚🌚

There are many customs that have been abolished because they're repugnant to natural justice, equity & good conscience. Customs like forbidding females from inheriting their parent's property, sleeping with the corpse of their husbands to prove their innocence, what's so difficult in abolishing the OSU CASTE SYSTEM?
Like how do you tell a 2 years old boy that he's an OUTCAST simply because your forefathers married their forefathers to the gods over 1000 years ago?

Your Bible said you should treat others the way you would want to be treated (golden rule). How would you feel if your fellow being discriminate against you? 🌚
CUSTOM is the people's way of life.

Discrimination is not our way of life & shouldn't be one of our customs.

🌚🌚🌚

Or what do you think? 🤔

I'm a freeborn tho. Will I say I'm lucky or blessed? 🤷🏾‍♂️ I'm just not happy to see a friend treated like she has a plague.

Happy Weekend! ❤️

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jul 14, 2020, 9:21:35 AM7/14/20
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Gloria:
Biko is the last soldier standing with the last ogbonigwe that has refused to explode. He will never accept Jack's no victor no vanquish plea. But he is still my comrade. Recall the heated exchange between Comrade Ola Oni and Ikena at the Marx indaba in Zaria? Biko always reminds me of that encounter whenever he appears with his ogbonigwe. He appears trapped in a past sans closure! 

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On 14 Jul 2020, at 9:57 AM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:



OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jul 14, 2020, 9:23:17 AM7/14/20
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Biko.

I slways stand back when most of your arguments revolve around Igbo exceptionalism.  Thank God you have not yet resorted to sneers and veiled insults at interlicutors in this particular thread as may be unbecoming of a professor on the eve of his sixtieth birthday.

I dont know how anyone can be speaking of 'village republics' as synonyms for village democracy. The Igbo may indeed have practiced village democracies as many African communities ( and the Greek city states did) but that did not translate into republics with their unique political traits.  

A republic will pledge the various democracies to a central authority through representation  which the Igbo village democracies did not.  To this extent most of the Greek city states and Yoruba city states were not republics even though they tended in evolution in that direction.  That is why the Yoruba city states remained at best constitutional monarchies ( they only sent military contingents in time of war as Greece did in the Delian League.)

Full republicanism started with Rome with three centralised assemblies to which member communities sent representatives.

To refer to emergence of chiefs in Igboland as intrusive traits is to suggest that the Igbo unlike other communities were incapable of political evolution, incapable from learning from others but were created perfect at the beginning of time.
.Nothing could be further from the truth.

And why do you always undercut all reasonable arguments with people hating all Igbo and still threatening genocide against them?  Come on,  you can do better than that.  You are no longer in your 20s and 30s.


OAA




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Date: 14/07/2020 02:50 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ode to Soyinka at 86

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Democracy is not a phase in the evolution of republics, democracy predated republics or nation states. Democracy is a system of government of the people by the people and for the people. It is ahistorical to say that there were no Igbo before 1500 based on what you know today as identity. There was no entry for identity in the Encyclopedia of Social Science until the 1960s, what they had was an entry for identification, according to Stuart Hall. 

The Igbo language was always there from the beginning of human evolution of languages in Africa. The name Ndi Igbo literally means Early People. Ancient or modern, they have exemplary contributions to democratic forms of governmentality, said Soyinka. You are welcome to dismiss it as village republics but they were wider than the villages, they saw democracy or self-ownership as spreading throughout the world of the Igbo or Uwa Ndi Igbo, not just the village or hamlet.

Biko
On Monday, 13 July 2020, 21:07:31 GMT-4, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Biko Agozino

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Jul 14, 2020, 10:39:40 AM7/14/20
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'No victor no vanquished' is a polite way for the genocidist army to say la luta continua. It is the triumphalist Igbophobes who are continuing to wage the genocidal war against Igbo survival with things like Python Dance I and II, quit notices, deportation, and threats of mass drowning of the Igbo in the lagoon. 

No Igbo group or individual is waging war against the haters orm against other innocent Nigerians in retaliation. No one among the Igbo is seeking to build and explode Ogbunigwe or to fight with small arms to kill fellow Nigerians and steal their land or to destroy their places of worship. Not I bird, said Soyinka in Death and the King's Horseman - a puzzle that literary theorists are yet to unravel as an allusion to the violence against the Igbo.

Some Igbo are asking for a referendum on the reconstruction of Nigeria and the call for restructuration is heard all over the country, not only in the South East. Even if there is a referendum today, you may be surprised to find more Igbo voting to continue with the one Nigeria of Azikiwe due to their heavy investments in other parts of the country and their love of travel. Even if Nigeria is divided today as an Arewa group recently called for, I will not be surprised if the Igbo call for us to go beyond division and try multiplication of cultural diversity through migration and settlement, subtraction of hatred, discrimination, and phobia, and addition of tolerance, atonement, and reparations.

The Igbo example to the world is that even in the face of phobic hatred, a people can thrive if they invest their energies in education of their young rather than invest in weapons of mass destruction. Countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea, and China that have avoided war in the past 50 years have taught the world that education is better than invasion and forceful occupation.

In other words, if the Fulani cattle herders and the Boko Haram terrorists are willing to learn from the open secret of Igbo survival and success, for example, let them build modern schools to educate all their boys and girls to the highest level of their abilities. The brilliance of the few who are given access to education in the North shows what Africa is missing by neglecting the education of our youth while arming them with foreign weapons to make Africa ungovernable. Education, education, education is the key to success, according to CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution.

There will always be discrimination and heartbreaks in the choice of spouses. All over the world, families are choosy when it comes to the marriage of their children but education ensures that some stones that some builders refused may become the head corner stones. The Osu caste system is a contradiction in the democratic Igbo tradition but the Igbo have dealt with the problem democratically without resorting to genocide, incarceration, expulsion, drowning, or the seizure of properties. To the Igbo, it is less important to know whether you are Osu or Diala today, what counts is your morality, your skills as a medical doctor, teacher, musician, footballer or lawyer, your faith as Cathlic, Protestant Muslim, or Odinani, your education as in formal or Imu Ahia apprenticeship, your support for the community, and your wisdom. 

To a great extent, the Igbo are proof that when you have contradictions in a democracy, the solution is not less democracy but more democracy. Yes, the Igbo learn a lot from their neighbors, but I hope that they will learn more democratic lessons than undemocratic feudalist ones, more scientific lessons than money medicine superstition, more humility than ethnic supremacy. The neighbors of the Igbo are free to learn also from the tail of the kite how 
to fashion the ogene metal gong if they want. Who is sick and beautiful, asked Oriental Brothers?

Biko



Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Jul 16, 2020, 9:38:21 AM7/16/20
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Beautiful summation but this section is an effort to avoid the issue-


''There will always be discrimination and heartbreaks in the choice of spouses. All over the world, families are choosy when it comes to the marriage of their children... The Osu caste system is a contradiction in the democratic Igbo tradition but the Igbo have dealt with the problem democratically ''''

Not true.

It is dealt with through ongoing discrimination that is far from  ''healthy  discrimination and heartbreaks in the choice of spouses. All over the world, families are choosy when it comes to the marriage of their children''.

Brother, please Igbo elite should address this scourge, not sweeten or whitewash it.

On the way to repositioning  Ndigbo, I wonder how you can do so without seriously addressing anti-Osu discrimination amongst Ndigbo.

An Igbo writer went so far as to describe disaffection by Osu as critical to Biafra's defeat in the Nigerian Civil War.

The more realistic response in self defense is 'we are sensitive to this problem, and are working on it'', not ''ít no longer exists'.

Everyone knows the latter response is false, so no one is deceived, the speaker and those whom they are addressing.

Taking this further, at the risk of being accused of ethnic essentialism, if I get the term right, ignoring the continued pervasiveness of the Osu phenomenon plays into the hands of perceived inadequacies in Igbo political organisation, this perception being centred in the question of unity of vision amd issues of leadership. 

People point to Ojukweu's poor showing when he returned from exile and went into politics.

What has been the range of Igbo elite's response to IPOB, the modern, more refined version, though still in need of refinement, of the Biafra initiative?

thanks

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Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

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Jul 16, 2020, 12:29:47 PM7/16/20
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Quote of the day

“We are sensitive to this problem and are working on it “ not “it no longer exists.”  Adepoju 


Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies

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Beautiful summation but this section is an effort to avoid the issue-

Biko Agozino

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Jul 16, 2020, 3:46:23 PM7/16/20
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Adepeju,

You are making things up in quotation marks that I never said - 'healthy discrimination'; 'no longer exists' - na you sabi that one.

What I said is that Azikiwe abolished Osu on day one after the British tolerated it for 100 years. Unfortunately, Zik did not have enough daughters to marry off to all the fine Bobo who were Osu, it was joked by some. My observation is that no matter how handsome and attractive you are in your mirror, once you want to marry someone, there will be many critics to object that you are too short or too tall, too educated or too illiterate, some may even accuse you of being too sexy to be trusted with the opposite sex, or that you go to the wrong place of worship and must convert first, or that you are too poor to afford the bride price, or too rich to be humble. Abi na lie?

Yes, I said that the Igbo are dealing with the Osu residues of the European slavery holocaust by relying on indigenous democratic modes of governmentality. There has never been massacres, genocide, expulsions, abandoned properties, sectarian suicide bombing, kidnapping of gwongworo loads of school girls for sex slavery, no ritual killing for money medicine, no internal deportations or threats of drowning in the Oshimili. Never! To the Igbo, a core principle of life is live and let live, life to water and life to fish, let the eagle perch and let the kite perch, when one thing stands another thing stands beside it to make the forest rich. You are right that the Igbo elites could do more by, for example, bringing a writ for reparative justice against the British who orchestrated the slave raids and later the genocide in Biafra against the Igbo who did not make good slaves and who led the struggle for the restoration of independence. 

The Igbo elites and masses have already done much by ignoring the caste system when it comes to the personal choices of spouses, friends, business associates, co-workers, congregations, play mates, schools, books, movies, songs, or political comrades. But when it comes to the retail politics of who should be crowned Igwe based on the imposition of 'natural rulers' by the Obasanjo dictatorship in 1976 in an attempt to pocket the indomitable Igbo; against the victory of the Women's War against colonialism and the praxis of Azikiwe that shunned traditional rulers in the Eastern Region under the Richards and the McPhersons Constitutions with a big Con, caste systems may be revived by rivals as fake news. The Igbo could end this by returning to their indigenous democratic system without chiefs and by relying on elected town mayors and city council members for fixed terms in office.

I do not know where you got the prejudice that the Osu were to blame for the defeat of Biafra. Most rational scholars know that the blame goes to Christian Yoruba and Christian Middle Belt military commanders with the support of some Christian Niger Delta elites and with generous supplies of deadly weapons by the Christian Labor Party government of the UK, the Christian Soviet Union and Islamic Egyptian military pilots but blamed it all on the Muslim Housa-Fulani elites. The Christian and Indigenous Jewish Igbo did not discriminate when it came to allowing refugees to share their homes without charging rents, they did not discriminate when it came to joining the resistance forces without guns against the genocidist military, they still do not discriminate when it comes to the education of all the boys and girls for a greater tomorrow. 

Ojukwu did not lose his deposits because anyone accused him of being an Osu, you are making this stuff up. He simply committed the blunder of joining the NPN to contest against the party of Zik with the long-shot hope of displacing Ekwueme as the presidential candidate in the next election (see Ezechukwu, The Rebel that I served). Ikemba could have joined Achebe and S.G. Ikoku, Eskor Toyo and Soyinka in the Talakawa party of Aminu Kano, Balarabe Musa, Rimi and Bala Usman that was aligned with the NPP of Zik, Nwobodo, Mbakwe and Solomon Lar. Or he could have stayed away from partisan politics as an elder statesman or Eze ndi Igbo gburugburu (all round). Had he joined Zik's party, he would have been unopposed for any position that he wanted to contest and no way could he have lost a seat to an unknown medical doctor in his Nnewi home constituency. You cannot blame everything on the Osu because it is a dying institution without the juju power that you attribute to it.

The opinion of the Igbo towards IPOB is very democratic. The masses of the Igbo believe that IPOB members should be allowed to have their say and to fly the Garveyist flag (which fine pass the Green-White-Green that Soyinka said must have been designed by a dyslexic colonial official, of all the colors in the world, they imposed green twice to suggest that we are bush people, hence ain't no black in the green-white-green, The Penkelmese Years), stay home once a year to eat nsala soup in honor of the dead, and should be given the right to demand for a referendum (as is done in Scotland, California and in Barcelona) without being declared a terrorist organization to be terrorized with Python Dance, mass killings, jails and proscriptions. However, no Igbo person will agree that IPOB speaks for every Igbo person because everyone has the right to self-ownership or freedom. Say your own and let me say my own, sang Osadebe.

Many Igbo believe that the way forward is the Pan Africanism of Du Bois, Azikiwe, Nkrumah, Mandela, and Marley towards a United Republic of African States. There is no country in Africa where you will fail to find a significant Igbo presence and the task for us elites is to make all Africans feel at home across Africa. This is the promise of the democratic dispensation - to allow freedom of movement and freedom of association to all people of African descent. Unfortunately, some groups still fantasize about building colonies and empires, expulsion of others and the domination of the security forces in the world of the knowledge economy which is better built with book houses than with ammunition supplied by imperialists for the mass destruction of Africans to enable the theft of our resources.

Biko

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