Viva! Arthur! Viva!

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Biko Agozino

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Dec 9, 2020, 8:43:59 PM12/9/20
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Dr. Oohay

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Dec 10, 2020, 2:47:33 AM12/10/20
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 10, 2020, 2:47:49 AM12/10/20
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Oga Biko.

I join you in celebrating the life and times of Agwucha Nwankwo.

But I still maintain that it is a malapropism that the Igbo know no kings. As a fellow Igbo stated previously here,  it depends on which part of Igbo country we speak about.

Obasanjo did not impose the Obi of Onitsha on Igbo people.  The position had existed before he even enlisted in the army.  The fact that we have the position of the Owelle subordinated to that of the Obi means not all heads are equal in Igbo land.


OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 10/12/2020 01:51 (GMT+00:00)
To: Usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Viva! Arthur! Viva!

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Biko Agozino

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Dec 10, 2020, 4:56:05 PM12/10/20
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OOA

Obi does not mean Eze in Igboland and Eze does not really mean king, it means excellence as in Ezeji for a farmer who excels in growing yam and Ezemuo for a priest who excels in service to a shrine. The Obi means the home and every Igbo man has his own Obi. The Obi of Onitsha is only the Obi chosen by the other Obi in Onitsha to represent them in intergroup relations. No one sees him as the king or Eze of Onitsha. The Owelle was never subordinate to the Obi because the Obi has only one head and the Owelle has only one head, just like everyone else. Therefore the Obi and the Owelle are equal human beings along with everyone even if the office of the Obi is Primus Inter Pares or first among equals.

Now, you owe us an explanation as to why you are opposed to a democratic equality among all citizens as espoused by the Igbo. This is exactly what the Nigerian constitution, plagiarized from the US, promises to guarantee. If you do not like it, then renounce your Nigerian citizenship and go and become a subject under a monarchy of your choice. Most people will agree with the Igbo that democracy trumps feudalism. You are welcome to disagree with most people.

Biko

Gloria Emeagwali

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Dec 11, 2020, 5:17:58 AM12/11/20
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With due respect Biko, there was a hierarchy in Igboland.  Eze means excellence? Great. What does Ohu mean? Are the Osu and Ohu equal to the title holders? To obtain a title was quite expensive.The Eze, Ali and Mkpisi titles in Asaba are also a case in point. 

Class formation was manifested in the mechanisms of power and control. Senior titled men had more voice in decision making than others. 

Democratic equality? In fact political 
power was not diffused but concentrated in such a way as to exclude a sizable segment of the polity. Senior title holders called the shots and seemed to be part of a local aristocracy.  They could not even  be convicted in some areas.

 Ifemesia has challenged “the false impressions of utopian egalitarianism “ in pre- colonial Igboland. 

 Titled free-born males had the political and economic advantage. The Obi of Aboh was elected by 60 elders at one point, many of whom were titled. A similar trend occurred in Western  and Southern Igboland, in particular. In Abakaliki  titled freeborn elders were the major advisors. In the case of Aro in the Southeast, the Eze Aro was the eldest freeborn male tracing descent from the founder family and he certainly had more power than an Osu or Ohu or a non titled person.

At some point in my academic career I paid some attention to this issue and feel obliged to add my voice on this matter. 

As I understand it, OAA is not opposed to democratic equality but to the mythology that Igboland was a model in that regard. There was communitarianism, and communal land use and so on, but individualized ownership and   private property emerged in the context of surplus production.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali 

On Dec 10, 2020, at 16:56, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



Emma. 'Ozili

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Dec 11, 2020, 5:18:39 AM12/11/20
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Thank you Biko for the valedictory post on the Avatar ; Agwuncha. I appreciate the citation of his Nunc Dimittis on Nigeria. Most important though, is your closing paragraph in the post which has spoken the mind of many of us.

Emma. Onyeozili

 

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2020 2:01:30 PM
To: Usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Viva! Arthur! Viva!

 

To be interred tomorrow:

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Salimonu Kadiri

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Dec 11, 2020, 10:08:29 AM12/11/20
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​Just like Mokwugo Okoye and Dr Chike Obi, Dr Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo was a true Nigerian with political admirers all over Nigeria, even though he was Igbo by birth. He was a big whale in the Nigerian sea and that is why I object strongly to his being reduced, after death, to a small fish in an Igbo lake. Therefore, in honour and memory of the late Dr Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo, I hereby register my protest against associating his name with falsified history.

To make the Igbo easier to control, the military dictatorship was advised to impose chiefs on them and this was decreed by General Obasanjo in 1976. I concluded that the Igbo should defend their democratic philosophy which says all heads are equal and that Igbo know no King because that is the philosophy of government promised by the republican constitution of Nigeria with no role for traditional rulers - Biko Agozino. 

Whatever General Obasanjo might have decreed, concerning the Igbo, in 1976, it could never have been imposition of Chiefs on them since it was the British colonialist that imposed Warrant Chiefs on the Igbo in the 1920s. Truly, when the colonialists came, there were no Kings in Igboland as there were in the North and the West through which they could govern. Therefore, the colonialist created Warrant Chiefs with red caps to enhance their colonial administration in Eastern Nigeria. Eze and Igwe as we know them today in Igboland evolved from the Warrant Chiefs created by the British colonialists. The Ibibio, Ijaw, Efik and other minority groups in the then Eastern Region had traditional rulers and as such were excluded from Warrant Chiefs arrangement. In fact, it was the pressure of the minority groups that forced the Eastern Region government in 1959 to establish Eastern House of Chiefs in emulation of the North and the West that had constitutionally established House of Chiefs respectively a year earlier.

In pre-colonial Nigeria, the Igbo lived in small enclaves and in hostile relation with one another. There was no organised society and the Igbo of that time would pass for anarchists than republicans. 'The Igbo democratic philosophy which says that all heads are equal and that Igbo know no king' according to Biko Agozino, would appear to be an invented fable or a wish for history. If all heads are democratically equal in Igbo land, why do they till date have masters and slaves (Diala, Osu). Let's recall some relevant parts of the speech of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in the Eastern House of Assembly on 20 March 1956, while seconding the motion for the second reading of the Abolition of the Osu System Bill. Hear him, "This Bill seeks to do three things: to abolish the Osu system and its allied practices including the Oru or Ohu System, to prescribe punishment for their continued practice, and to remove certain social disabilities caused by the enforcement of the Osu and its allied systems. What is Osu system and why must it be abolished? ... the Osu system includes any social way of living which implies that any person who is deemed to be an Osu or Oru or Ohu is subject to certain prescribed social disability and social stigma. /...../ Mr Speaker, this Bill offers a challenge to the morality of the Easterners. I submit that it is not morally consistent to condone the Osu or Oru or Ohu system. I submit that it is devilish and most uncharitable to brand any human being with a label of inferiority, due to the accidents of history."  Despite the fact that the Bill against branding and treating some Igbo as slaves by Dialas was passed in 1956, the Osu, Oru, and Ohu system are still in practice today throughout Igboland by those who claim to be Diala (Masters). We just need to remember from Ojukwu's 1st June 1969 Ahiara declaration that while the Osu/Oru/Ohu were starving to death in Biafra, the Diala were throwing weekend parties and slaughtering cows to celebrate their new-born babies. 

According to Biko Agozino, "Igbo know no king because that is the philosophy of government promised by the republican constitution of Nigeria with no role for traditional rulers." Nigeria became a Federal Republic on October 1, 1963 but the Constitution did not abrogate the House of Chiefs in the regions. It was the military intervention of January 15, 1966 that abrogated parliaments of which the House of Chiefs were components. In the present dispensation, the traditional rulers are paid salaries by the States' governments in recognition of the services they are presumed to be offering to their citizens. 
Rest in peace, Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo.
S. Kadiri

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: 10 December 2020 05:29
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Viva! Arthur! Viva!
 

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Dec 11, 2020, 10:08:30 AM12/11/20
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Oh!  So there is a priestly cast in Igbo land.  Then there is stratification since not all Igbo are in the priestly cast.

So Ezemuo excelled over and above other priestly cast.  Then there is stratification in the Igbo priestly cast just as it exists among the Yorùbá Ifá priests.

You have not dealt with Toyin Adepoju' s query satisfactorily as to why there is still the Osu cast in Igbo land today.  Yes, they have one head just like the priestly cast have each only one head.  The Yorùbá do not have Osu.  So how is Igbo society more egalitarian?
Why do you still stick to this myth, after all we have debated this thread on this forum before?

Have you forgotten?


OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 10/12/2020 22:05 (GMT+00:00)
To: "'Dr. Oohay' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Viva! Arthur! Viva!

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OOA

Obi does not mean Eze in Igboland and Eze does not really mean king, it means excellence as in Ezeji for a farmer who excels in growing yam and Ezemuo for a priest who excels in service to a shrine. The Obi means the home and every Igbo man has his own Obi. The Obi of Onitsha is only the Obi chosen by the other Obi in Onitsha to represent them in intergroup relations. No one sees him as the king or Eze of Onitsha. The Owelle was never subordinate to the Obi because the Obi has only one head and the Owelle has only one head, just like everyone else. Therefore the Obi and the Owelle are equal human beings along with everyone even if the office of the Obi is Primus Inter Pares or first among equals.

Now, you owe us an explanation as to why you are opposed to a democratic equality among all citizens as espoused by the Igbo. This is exactly what the Nigerian constitution, plagiarized from the US, promises to guarantee. If you do not like it, then renounce your Nigerian citizenship and go and become a subject under a monarchy of your choice. Most people will agree with the Igbo that democracy trumps feudalism. You are welcome to disagree with most people.

Biko

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Biko Agozino

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Dec 11, 2020, 12:47:07 PM12/11/20
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Sistah Glo,

This one na historical piccong. Ent?

Of course, no one ever said that precolonial Igboland was an Eldorado of mythical absolute equality. There has always been a hierarchy between elders and youth irrespective of gender and wealth as Oyewumi pointed out in The Invention of Women even among the monarchical Yoruba. In any system of equality, there is also respect for achievement and competition for titles, a Goat (Greatest of all thinkers) has been bragging that he has more degrees than Soyinka and Achebe, so he must be equal or even superior to his elders! Let the goat bleat. 

The difference in a republican system such as the radical democratic tradition of the Igbo is that your Ozo title does not make you king over anyone and your privileges are mainly in relation to other members of your Ozo society. Your elderly status does not mean that you run a gerontocracy either because an elder could be foolish in some matters to be corrected by a beardless youth. When a youth has learned to wash his hands clean, he/she can feast with the elders from the same plate. 

The Oha, or community, still gathers to discuss and vote on choices because the Oha is the Eze of the Igbo. No Igbo person lies down on the floor to greet another human being just because the other is more elderly, richer, wiser or whatever. We do not even kneel down to pray to Chukwu, rather we sit down and have a chat with the Big God. Soyinka loves this about the Igbo and adopted it by refusing to lie on the floor to greet his elders since no one expects him to do that before God. Yoruba elders must have called him Omo Igbo or literally, bush child.

On Osu and Ohu, Rodney has convincingly argued against the mythology of Fage that slavery was universal and that Africans freely engaged in the slave trade with Europeans. To Rodney, there was no slave mode of production in Africa prior to contact with Arabs and then with Europeans. The Osu, I humbly suggest, arose from people who took refuge at shrines when kidnappers raided their community instead of joining the resistance that Ekwuoanu -Spoken Unheard - (Equiano) described. People may have shouted, Osula!, Osukwanu o, Osu, or it is happening. The people who took refuge in a shrine are untouchable in the sense that they are sacred and cannot be harmed by anyone. Even a goat dedicated to the shrine of Ani or Mother Earth is untouchable. That goat could eat your yam and you dare not strike it. Some say that the Chiefs who survived the Ogoni attack were the ones who took refuge in the shrine of the Voice and could not be touched while they rained curses on their attackers until rescued and later gave witness against the Ogoni 9. 

There is no evidence in history of mass execution or genocide by the Igbo against the Osu or Ohu. Instead, the democratic Igbo have used modern education and trading based on competition and achievement principles, to tackle the problem of Osu and residues of Ohu that arose from the trans Atlantic holocaust that cries out for reparative justice today. In school, no one wants to know your status because what matters is your position in the class, whether you carry first or last, in examinations. Igbo no dey carry last because we are always in the business of helping our family, community, and country to rise, according to Uchendu in The Igbo of the Southeast Nigeria!

Some communities like mine do not even have anyone who is Osu or Ohu. With the migratory tendency of the Igbo, people buy and sell, seek employment, make friends, play sports, pray and worship together, and listen to music without any concerns about Osu, Ohu, and Amala statuses. Azikiwe made a law on day one as Premier of the Eastern region to abolish the Osu status. It is now revived by some mainly when someone wants to get married and the family wants to know about the family background. However, this is the practice all over the world where families seek to guarantee the happiness of their children in marriage. Osu, Ohu, Amala, or not, once you want to get married, you will find busy bodies telling your potential in-laws that you are too sexy or too ugly for their child, or too educated, not educated enough, too tall, too short, too fat or too thin, too rich or too poor, Catholic or Protestant, Christian or Muslim, Obeah or Maroon, Shooter or Informer, foreigner or native, etc. I lie? Today blood tests are compulsory to rule out sickle cell and HIV.

On Ohu, it is historically known that democratic societies like ancient Greece and modern America co-existed with the institution of slavery because democracy is rarely absolute. In the case of the Igbo, it was not chattel slavery but more like servitude from which an individual like Amanyanabo Jo Jo Ubani rose to be King Jaja of Opobo after rising to become the head of the trading House that 'enslaved' him. The content and context differed from Ohu or slavery. That social mobility is not found among the Greeks nor among the Americans. The Igbo did not have a slave mode of production and there was never genocide against any group of people based on their status as servants or Ohu, nor because they were called Osu. The Igbo have never committed genocide in their history even after they suffered genocidal attacks. Exemplary.

You are right that the Aro and the Asaba Igbo were beginning the process of state formation probably due to their proximity to more monarchical neighbors. Yet they fought the Ekumeku war against colonization for about 30 years, according to Ohadike, and the Aro resisted British attempts to penetrate the interior and take control of the lucrative palm oil trade, according to Chinweizu - The West and the Rest of Us - long after the slave trade had ended but those who started it and ran it for 400 years used the suppression as the guise for the scramble for Africa. Eze Aro and Eze Nri  were chief priests or Eze Muo and not a king or monarchical Eze.

Uchendu identified the monarchy as an 'intrusive trait' in Igboland though Nzimiro documented that some Igbo are rather proud of their evolving monarchies just as OAA remains proud of his status as a member of a 'royal' family with 'royal blood' today. You are mistaken when you asserted that he is not against democratic equality. He is too. 

That process of state formation was distorted by the slave raids and by colonialism which still found the Igbo resistant against the imposition of feudalism. The Igbo could have evolved a democratic state. Igbo women won the war against warrant chiefs in 1929 and the East was the only region without a House of Chiefs but only had a Legislative Assembly under the McPherson's and Richard's constitutions while the North and the West were bicameral with a House of 'Natural Rulers' each. Zik should have negotiated a second elected chamber of Senators or Councilors for the East. 

As Soyinka observed in his Nyerere Lecture, the Igbo and the Kikuyu are exceptional in their refusal to build empires by conquering their neighbors. He identified the democratic tradition of the Igbo as a good indigenous model for Africans to study and adapt because that is what post-colonial constitutions promise in principle though neocolonialism is far from being a system of mythical perfect equality, mind you. 

Rodney also made the same point in Groundings with my Brothers when he warned that it is a mistake to study African history simply from the perspective of kings and queens because such monarchies were found mainly on the coastal fringes of the continent while the vast majority of people in the interior remained in direct democracies to some extent. He specifically identified the Igbo, though he called them Ibo, on page 55 as a good example of indigenous democracy that we should be proud of instead of always clashing and boasting over who should be crowned Calypso Monarch or Reggae King or Dancehall Queen and thing. 

Afigbo offered a similar critique of 'colonialist historiography' of the sort that tries to find evidence of Eze in every family just to prove to the colonizers that we were as advanced as they were since we also had kings and queens. Afigbo said that we should be studying the history of indigenous medicine, textiles, crafts, music, agriculture,..and indigenous democratic tendencies rather than obsess about a minority of  dying monarchical intrusions (see his papers edited by Falola).

On equality, it is obvious that all fingers are not equal, as Oliver de Coque sang. Some fingers are tall, some fingers are short. Yet, no finger ever claims to be the royal, Osu, Ohu, or Amala, finger. All the fingers combine to wash the hands clean, to form a fist when necessary, shake hands, and to wipe the bottom with the left hand or feed the mouth with the right hand. The Igbo are not all the same, some hold doctorates, some hold money, some are great musicians, farmers, traders, athletes, healers, priests, some are tall and some are short but they are all equal because nobody has more than one head. Hence we say that ishi aka ishi, a head is no bigger than a head. All heads are equal. Gbam! Ho-Ha! Period.

This is a radical philosophy that we should not try to belittle. Let us study it and find ways to overcome the contradictions invented mainly by colonialism. For instance, the claim by Simone de Beauvoir that women are always the Second Sex has been challenged by Nkiru Nzegwu in Family Matters to show that among the Onicha Igbo and even with the Obi of Onitsha who is far from, being a king, women had equal rights to inherit property from their husband and father until colonialism came to impose the patriarchal principle. Yet Igbo women continued to resist and in 2018 won the Supreme Court ruling that women have equal rights to inherit property. Amadiume also demonstrated that Igbo and Kikuyu women can still marry other women as female husbands or remain unmarried as male daughters even today.

The Igbo who name their daughters, Nneka or Mother is Supreme, as explained to Okonkwo by his maternal uncle, Uchendu in Things Fall Apart, will never accept the racist-imperialist-patriarchal notion that women are always the Second Sex. That may be why the Igbo lead Nigerians in the equal education of their sons and daughters today. Equality is not sameness because it is something else that stands beside something to claim equality as Achebe put it and as I demonstrated in Black Women and the Criminal Justice System. Equality does not mean that women want to become men, that Africans want to become white, though the poor rightly want to become rich and should enjoy equal opportunities to pursue happiness.

I greet you sistah Gloria for provoking me this morning and sending me to look for words to clarify things for myself. You be better ticha o.

Biko

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Jan 4, 2021, 1:35:18 PM1/4/21
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This view on Osu ignores the fact that it's caste based discrimination, not preferences based on individual  expressions of universal human attributes demonstrated by anyone.

We need full honesty on the inhumanity of Osu caste system if it is to be abolished.

Whitewashing it won't help.

Toyin 

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