LIFE AMONG THE IGBOS: A PEOPLE, HER COMMUNAL ETHOS

…a story told in my own eyes



“If you will not like my story about the Igbos, please simply write your own.”



There is a tribe or [for the sake of avoiding the debate] an ethnic group in Nigeria called the Igbos. For four years, I had the opportunity of living and growing among them.

Some “tribalistic” people generalize that Igbo people like money. However, I am yet to meet an Igbo man who is dishonest because he is an Igbo man. I have met dishonest ones though but I have met dishonest people from other parts of the world too. Dishonesty is not an Igbo problem. It is a human problem. However, the Igbo man hates to be a hypocrite so he does well in business because he keeps his word and puts all his energy to achieve his dreams. So if by chance he happens to enter into a "bad business", he commits havoc too because he puts all his energy to it. Simply put, the Igbos know how to live their dreams.

The community life is supreme among the Igbos. The Igbos believe that together they stand and divided they fall. A strong case can be made that the successes of the Igbos today can be traced to their sense of community. Whether it is about an age-grade coming together to repair a particular road, or in the community scholarship schemes that sent many of their sons abroad to study or even in those 'co-operatives' [where traders contribute money monthly that helps each of them have a chance to get bulk capital once a year for business], Igbos are always looking out for one another.

The Igbos are very philosophical and they have many proverbs to teach and remind themselves of their ethos. They say "egbe bere ugo bere, nke si ibe ya ebena nku kwaa ya (may both the eagle and the kite perch but if one does not want the other to perch, may his wings break)" illustrating their belief that everyone has a place in the society no matter how highly-placed or lowly-placed he might be. They also recognize the need for strong human communities when they say "oko kowa mmadu o gakwuru ibe ya, ma na oko kowa anu ohia o gaa n'akuku osisi (when a human itches, he goes to another human to scratch it, but when an animal itches, it goes to a tree)."

The world has many lessons to learn from the Igbos on how we can build strong human communities. One of the ways, the Igbos do this is by learning to value people and not things. Chinua Achebe portrays this in Things Fall Apart where he writes “a man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.”

There is a saying in Nigeria that there is no place in the world where there is no Igbo man, but I believe people “lie” when they say that because I have never heard of any Igbo man in Antarctica -but only in Antarctica have I not heard of them. The Igbos are everywhere else.


The Igbos take their sense of community with them when they go abroad. An Igbo friend of mine, a Nigerian writer puts it this way: when you see a group of black people sitting together chilling in your country, the one that greets you in your language is an Igbo man -or maybe words to that effect. That is typical among the Igbos. They are easily assimilated into any society they live in. They come to your country with nothing, maybe only with some little money. They work hard. They are very wise and decent so they save some of the money that they make. They buy properties and invest in your own country, perhaps because they believe that a man should give back to a land that is good to him. So, they rise up the social ladder in your country and then they can conveniently ask for your daughter's hand in marriage without any shame. That writer went on to say, ‘it is not because they are arrogant. It is because they are confident.’ The Igbos have so much faith in human beings [which is borne out in the way they treat other people who live in their own land] so they don’t find it difficult leaving their lands to live in other communities in the world as long as they will be living with human beings. This is because they believe they will be treated like they treat others.

Yet, the Igbos have been hurt too at times because of that nature of theirs. There have been instances when they invested in a community, only to lose everything at the twilight of their lives. Yet that does not stop the Igbos around the world from investing in communities far away from home. It is not that they are stupid. It is just that they are optimistic to a fault. They don't make permanent decisions based on temporary regrets. They always believe the sun will shine once again. They say, "o te aka o di njo, emesie o ga-adi mma (it won't be long, everything that is bad will be good)."

As I wrote pieces of this story on my Facebook wall, some Igbo friends suggested to me that I must marry an Igbo girl. In other words, they want me to marry their sister (every Igbo person calls the other his brother or sister and that was one of my greatest confusions when I started living with them). That is how kind, generous, warm and welcoming the Igbos are. Anyway, whether I will marry an Igbo girl is a case of "Chi ka o di n'aka (everything is in God's hand)" but I want to end this story by talking about marriage among the Igbos. The sense of community of the Igbos is greatly borne out in the way they celebrate marriages. There is a proverb which describes it perfectly. It says,"Nwunye anyi, nwunye anyi: ka ndeli bia ka anyi mara onye o bu nwunye ya (our wife, our wife: come midnight, only then we will know whose wife she really is)." This is the explanation: among the Igbos, marriages are amongst and not between -among families, not between two people. The Igbos see marriages as a way of building bridges and fostering unity among different families in the communities they live in. So, on the wedding night, the whole of the groom's family addresses the new bride as "our wife" to let her know that they all welcome her to their family. As an outsider, you might have to wait till midnight when only one of the men will take his bride home for the honeymoon for you to know who the real groom is...

You cannot help but admire the sense of community displayed among the Igbos.

This saying illustrates what the world needs to learn from the Igbos, "anyuko mmamiri onu, ojia ufufu (when many people urinate together, only then will there be a fume)." Simply put, a people will only do big things when they are united!

I love my Igbo friends and they have been good to me in many ways –so they must love me too…

Umu Ibe, ndioma, I salute you! Igbo Amaka!



Nyikkeabasi Bassey Ekott
Friend of many Igbos
Kharkov, 2013