For Oga BJ in Admiration

On A Soyinka Prize In ‘Illiteracy’, By Biko Agozino

by Premium Times  July 14, 2018 Reading Time: 11 mins read

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I will admit to a ‘strategic misreading’ that is necessitated by placing the text within the context of a recent history of trauma that the author did not simply witness as a bystander but one in which he actively tried to stop the genocide and earned himself solitary confinement without trial.

On July 13, 2018, the 84th birthday of Olumo Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Laureate for Literature, I honoured him by revisiting a debate that is raging on the internet over what many call my misreading of his work, especially with reference to my interpretation of his play, Death and King’s Horseman. Literary experts have been marveling about the ‘Author’s Note’ that accompanies Death and the King’s Horseman. Most playwrights leave it to the directors and producers of their play to interpret it as they wish but Soyinka was worried that most experts would misread the play. He took the unusual authoritarian step of stipulating how the play should be interpreted but the critics appear not to notice and have continued to misread the play, in my own humble opinion. Soyinka leaves clues that would guide readers to decode his original intention in writing the play but most literary critics miss the point and some accuse me of being the mis-reader.

The very first sentence in the Author’s Note may have led many critics astray by stating that the play is based on real historical “events which took place in Oyo”, which the author defines as “an ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria”. This is misleading in a number of ways that literary critics should have been able to understand. To say that the events took place in 1946 would be to localise the time and space of the dramatic events, whereas in the world of theatre, events do not take place exclusively in the setting but also on every stage where the play is produced. Soyinka expected that literary theorists would understand that the playscript is not simply an archival document or ethnographic report but the work of original creation, even when based on real events. The play was not expected to be read as the verbatim report of a tragic case that took place once upon a time. This is true of all works of creative writing that are supposed to be inventive, no matter how much resemblance there may be between fiction and reality. In fact, many writers include a disclaimer that any resemblances to real events are unintentional. As a matter of fact, the same can be said about reality genres that are full of inventions too. Soyinka clearly states in the first paragraph of his Author’s Note that he made “changes” in the narrative “in matters of detail, sequence and of course characterisation.”

He also informs the illiterate critics that he deliberately set the play back a few years “while the war was still on, for minor reasons of dramaturgy.” Here, Soyinka is guiding the would-be producer away from a simplistic historical interpretation of the play as being only relevant to the case of 1946, given that dramaturgy grants artistic license that defies the laws of historical specificity. In addition, Soyinka may have misled the interpreters of the play by saying that Oyo was an “ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria.” Here he could be challenged by historians who may point out that Oyo was an ancient Yoruba Empire and not simply a city and that by 1946, it was no longer simply a Yoruba city but a multicultural one. Moreover, nothing ‘of Nigeria’ can be said to be ancient because Nigeria itself is a modernist invention by colonisers. The hint about the Nigerian setting of the play should have encouraged the critics to understand that the play is not only about a Yoruba tragedy but about a Nigerian tragedy. The reference to “while the war was still on” should have massaged the memory of the critics to remind them that the play was published only five years after a tragic genocidal war in Nigeria in which Yoruba elites played a leading aggressive role, along with other ethnic elites in Nigeria. This play, in my lay opinion, is better understood as part of the soul-searching by Soyinka after he was released from solitary confinement for opposing the genocidal war against the Igbo. Why were highly educated Yoruba leaders the ones who cheered on the genocide against the Igbo in Biafra?

Also, Soyinka indicates that those who were interested only in the factual account of the case of 1946 should go and read it in the British National Archives in Kew. He also points out that those who want to read a more exact historical reenactment of the case should consult the “fine play in Yoruba (Oba Waja) by Duro Ladipo.” In other words, Death and the King’s Horseman is not that kind of historical re-enactment nor is it the kind of ‘misbegotten’ German television film about the case. The play was a more urgent intervention while Soyinka was in exile following the end of the war and his release from solitary confinement for having the audacity to oppose tyranny. Unlike his other plays, he did not wait for the play to be produced before he published it. I believe that Soyinka was directly and indirectly challenging his fellow Nigerian intellectuals to account for their opportunism in supporting a genocidal war that took 3.1 million lives in 30 months.

I offer the original interpretation that Soyinka was referring to the genocide against the Igbo, which was the theme of the novel that he referred to, “Season of Anomy”, in which he recounted the eye-witness account of how fellow Nigerians hunted down tens of thousands of innocent Igbo men, women and children and massacred them in a pogrom that led to the secession of the Eastern region and the intensification of the genocide.

In the third paragraph of the author’s note, Soyinka declares that the “bane of themes of this genre” is that once the text appears, ‘they acquire the facile tag of “clash of cultures”’. He rejected such a label as “prejudicial” in the sense that it is prone to “frequent misapplication” and also because the label “presupposes a potential equality in every given situation between the cultures of the coloniser and the colonised ‘on the actual soil of the latter’”. Soyinka went on to award “the overseas prize in illiteracy and mental conditioning” to the writer of the blurb of the American edition of his novel, Season of Anomy, for ‘unblushingly’ stating that the novel is about the “clash between old values and new ways, between western methods and African traditions”. Soyinka explains that it is due to “this kind of perverse mentality” that he was forced to warn future producers (and critics) of the play to avoid “a sadly familiar reductionist tendency” and instead attempt to capture “the far more difficult and risky task of eliciting the play’s threnodic essence.” Experts on the work of Soyinka are baffled by this injunction and wonder openly what he was banging on about? What is Soyinka trying to hide, asked Anthony Kwame Appiah? He was trying to reveal something, in my own opinion.

To repeat, I offer the original interpretation that Soyinka was referring to the genocide against the Igbo, which was the theme of the novel that he referred to, Season of Anomy, in which he recounted the eye-witness account of how fellow Nigerians hunted down tens of thousands of innocent Igbo men, women and children and massacred them in a pogrom that led to the secession of the Eastern region and the intensification of the genocide. In that novel, he mocked the archeologists for poking around in search of fossilised bones while fresh blood flowed like river Niger in the country and they did not seem to be bothered. He also challenged the sociologists who came with ‘erudite irrelevances’ about marriage and divorce but refused to join him in opposing a genocidal war. The novel depicts the Marxists who were locked up in a mental asylum as a phrase-monger who failed to recognise the revolutionary situation in the country and instead rallied in support of the genocidal military dictatorship, rather than turn the civil war into a liberation war. To suggest that the novel was about the clash of cultures was a strategy to condition the mentality of Nigerian intellectuals towards the acceptance of the propaganda that the Igbo who led the struggle for decolonisation were primitive tribalists, perhaps because they had no chiefs, while the ethnic groups that ganged up against them were more civilized because they were monarchical, according to the ideologues of colonial domination, such as the Oxford colonial anthropologist, Margery Perham, who advised the military dictators to impose chiefs on the radically democratic Igbo in order to control them better. Walter Rodney also observed that to call the genocide against the Igbo a tribal war would be to call Shell BP an African tribe (along with the Labour Party government of the UK and the Soviet Union that generously supplied the weapons of mass destruction). Ikenna Nzimiro argued that the Marxists in Biafra were engaged in class struggles while the Marxist in Nigeria were engaged in national defencism. 

The ‘threnodic essence’ of the play refers to funeral songs in Greek tragedies and I believe that Soyinka was inviting the producers of the play to imagine a national mourning for the 3.1 million killed in Biafra that the country has refused to mourn. Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo had been calling for a National Day of Igbo Mourning to be recognised by the Nigerian government as part of the atonement.

In the final paragraph of the Author’s Note, Soyinka observes that an alternative structuralist interpretation of the play is to see it as a cruel joke on the British colonial District Officer. He quickly dismisses such a reading as distasteful and adds that he deliberately avoided writing dialogue or scenes that would support such a misinterpretation. He dictates that “No attempt should be made in production to suggest it’. This sounds like an angry response to critics who choose to misread his works for ideological reasons while ignoring the concrete conditions that his works address. 

A prominent Marxist literary theorist that I admire, Biodun Jeyifo, who is an expert on the work of Soyinka, was invited by the BBC to write about any work of literature that he saw as being representative of global culture. He chose to write beautifully about Death and the King’s Horseman as an anti-colonial play that tries to subvert the use of the Queen’s English by creating a ‘future’ tradition of the Anglophone that is more figurative than the English language. He invoked the work of Marxist Cultural Studies by Raymond Williams (but without mentioning the more relevant anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-sexist work by Stuart Hall) to suggest that the other Englishes around the world serve to subvert the domination of the world by standard English. 

I pointed out that Jeyifo's interpretation is too superficial for a Marxist because the ‘thredonic essence’ of the play is not to show that Africans can speak English better than the English. I suggested that a Cultural Studies reading of the play would not have focused exclusively on the beautiful writing or language of the play but would have tried to see the challenge to monarchism and oppressive traditions in the play. Jeyifo told me privately that I should go and read the play again because it is not against the monarchy or against ritual suicide but simply against the colonial domination of African cultures. Moreover, the melodrama about the coveting of the virgin bride of another man as a right in Esin Oba's rites of passage to ritual suicide appears to be the ridiculing by Soyinka of the rapaciousness of the genoicidist troops that forcibly took underage girls and the wives of other men and claimed them as 'wives', as Achebe recounted in There Was A Country, and as Boko Haram continues to do. I admitted that I could be accused of misreading the play but I called it a strategic misreading and wondered if it is possible for an expert on the work of Soyinka to misread it? Soyinka seems to think so and that is the whole point of his detailed telling off of the experts in his Author’s Note.

I am only saying that there is something missing in the community of Soyinka interpretations and I contend that what is neglected by critics is not minor but a central aspect of his work – his self-sacrificial opposition to the Igbo genocide in particular as a foundational part of his oppositional aesthetics in the face of tyranny.

Contrary to the claim that Death and the King’s Horseman is only an anti-colonial play, Soyinka concludes his Author’s Note by stating that “The Colonial Factor is an incident, a catalytic incident merely.” To him, the central ‘confrontation’ or conflict that he tried to resolve in the play was ‘metaphysical’ in the sense that it played out in the world of “the Yoruba mind – the world of the living, the dead and the unborn, and the numinous passages which links all: transition.” Soyinka was puzzling about the metaphysics of the Yoruba worldview that made it possible for the best educated characters in the play to be the ones who cheered most vociferously for Elesin to abide by the tradition that expected him to kill himself in honour of a dead king. Similarly, Soyinka was wondering why the best educated Yoruba were the cheer-leaders of the genocide against the Igbo. 

Soyinka advised producers to try and capture this tragedy by using music to represent the macabre dance to the “music from the abyss” by the intellectuals who danced while millions were being slaughtered in Biafra. In his Talakawa column, Jeyifo once wrote that while blood was flowing in Biafra, (1967-1970) he led his secret Pyrates fraternity, that Soyinka founded as a student at the University of Ibadan, in chanting, 'Give us this day, give us this day, our daily manya' (wine in Igbo). Were the elites drunk on power during the genocide? The play symbolizes this with the 'Not I bird' and the hunter who consumed many gallons of manya before trying to kill the innocent Not I bird.

I am not an expert in dramaturgy but I love the work of Soyinka. I cited his essay on Neo-Tarzanism in my criticism of the film, Black Panther, which I called an example of neo-Tarzanism. Following the serialisation of the criticism, I was invited by Assumpta Oturu to the KPFK public radio in Los Angeles to discuss the film with an Ethiopian publisher and an African American director of the Pan African Film Festival. During the discussion, the Ethiopian said that we should not condemn the presence of monarchies in Africa because there were popular emperors such as Mansa Musa and Haile Selessie who were admired by Africans and by the African diaspora. The director of the Pan African Film Festival questioned my reference to Soyinka because he saw Death and the King’s Horseman as an indication that Soyinka was a monarchist who supported even the tradition that the horseman should commit suicide to honour the dead king. 

As Killmonger asked derisively in the film, I asked, “This is your king?” Why must African brothers be expected to fight to the death to determine who should be the next king when we can just hold elections to select our leaders with term limits? I stated that Soyinka used that play and almost every play of his to undermine the institution of the monarchy and call for democracy, which he is on record as admiring in Igbo culture. He tried to spare the life of the horseman in the play and his other tragedies – Kongi’s Harvest, Madmen and Specialists, King Babu; his novels, his poetry and his memoirs all support my interpretation of his anti-monarchical orientation. Since the experts who have studied his work have focused almost exclusively on the structuralism, I propose to offer a post-structuralist or deconstruction radicalisation of his body of work to show that the tragedy of state violence, especially against the Igbo, is at the centre of the conflicts that he has been trying to resolve. Just as the genocidal war was waged without a cease fire for humanitarian interventions, the author coincidentally instructs on page 8 of Death and the King’s Horseman that ‘The play should run without an interval.’

I agree with critics who will charge that I am misreading Soyinka here. If so, I will admit to a strategic misreading that is necessitated by placing the text within the context of a recent history of trauma that the author did not simply witness as a bystander but one in which he actively tried to stop the genocide and earned himself solitary confinement without trial. Sociologists approach the work of writers by taking into consideration, the context of the private and the public lives of the authors, whereas literary theorists may concentrate exclusively on the technical, language, or structural aspects of the script as instructed by T.S. Eliot in his foundational essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. 

To reiterate, what I am offering is a sociology of literary interpretation of Soyinka and I am certain that the rebel in him may force him to disagree with my interpretation and award me a national illiteracy prize. I am not contending that all existing interpretations of Soyinka are wrong. I am only saying that there is something missing in the community of Soyinka interpretations and I contend that what is neglected by critics is not minor but a central aspect of his work – his self-sacrificial opposition to the Igbo genocide in particular as a foundational part of his oppositional aesthetics in the face of tyranny.

Biko Agozino is a professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences in Virginia Tech, USA.

Originally published in massliteracy.blogspot.com. Republished as a tribute on the passing of Biodun Jeyifo at the age of 80 years.

Soyinka Is Right

Soyinka Is Right In a Sense 

By Onwubiko Agozino 

Do you agree with anything or everything that Wole Soyinka said about the embarrassingly disorganized and badly marred 2023 elections in Nigeria in which he singled out one party for apparently undeserved harsh words? Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie expressed her disagreement with the ‘strong words’ that Soyinka used in describing one of the candidates, but Adichie did not point out if there is any area of agreement with Soyinka. 

Baba Sho done old now. But no matter what he says, he will remain a hero for many; and whatever he says matters to most. We may not always agree with him; but even when we disagree, there may be areas of agreement with his views that must be pointed out in recognition of his complex narratives that are open to interpretation at different levels of analysis. 

 Personally, I agree with Soyinka that the slogan, Obidient, is inappropriate for a democratic society or for a party seeking to be taken seriously by the people. Obedience is more correlated with fascist regimes than with democratic societies prone to debates and freedom of expression without fear. Perhaps, M-Obi-lized could have been more grammatical to Soyinka but he is entitled to say that he is not Obidient to anyone. He could have added that he was not Batified nor Atikulated either. He should have said it better but what he said has progressive implications. 

 The Obidient movement is wider than the Labour Party and it is not an ethnic movement of the Igbo, contrary to comments that wrongly suggest so, perhaps to incite Igbophobia. The Igbo voted more for Obasanjo than some Yoruba did. They voted more for Yar’adua than some Hausa and Fulani did. They voted for Jonathan more than some Ijaw did. Even when they voted against Buhari, some of them voted for him too. They did so even when there were Igbo candidates contesting against the candidates they voted for. The Igbo were not the only ones who voted for Peter Obi for president across the country. All parties should commit to offer apologies to the Igbo for the hatred and violence against them and offer them reparative justice. 

 The task of the Labour Party is to mobilize the masses of workers, farmers, traders and youth through a closer link with the organized labour that has offices already across the country. Peter Obi can commit his significant shishi towards building the party up by, for example, helping to hire full time staff, funding training and workshops for party workers, and helping to open offices across the country. The party can build beyond the organized labour and the Obidients and should mobilize to defend its mandate and be ready to contest every seat in every election going forward. Obi cannot always be on the ballot paper. Labour Party should organize beyond the colonial boundaries of Nigeria and mobilize across Africa for Union Government.

 About 26% of the electorate were reported as coming out to vote. Perhaps this figure would have been higher if there was no voter intimidation, ballot box snatching, and violence. To raise this poor turn-out percentage, I have suggested elsewhere that there should be an INEC lottery at every general election. The voters whose numbers are electronically selected would win the prizes in their own senatorial zones. For example, if INEC budgets one billion naira per senatorial zone to be awarded to 1000 voters at the rate of one million each, I bet that the turn-out will be almost 100%. 

Such an incentive to vote is small compared to the reported nearly one trillion naira budget of INEC. It is a small price to pay for increased voter awareness and against vote buying. Nigeria should consider abolishing INEC and allowing the state electoral commissions to run all elections, including the presidency and national legislatures elections. Just add the state governor and state assembly elections to the ballot for the federal elections on the same day. Allow voters to be identified with any government-issued ID and not just with the PVC. Allow early and absentee voting. Allow the Diaspora to vote. Allow a citizen like Nnamdi Kanu to campaign for referenda of his choice without being locked up even after the courts freed him. 

 Nigeria should move away from the divisive imperial presidency model and adapt the presidential committee of Switzerland. Each geo-political region should elect one candidate to the presidential council. Each of them will get a chance to chair the council for one year while serving on the committee, then there is another general election every six years. Any region that elects a male president to the presidential committee will automatically elect a female vice president from the region to the committee of vice presidents and vice versa. Proportional representation will allow smaller parties to be represented in parliament, as in South Africa. 

 Collective leadership may help to reduce the heat over which region produces the president and focus our attention on what matters. No matter where the president comes from, no region enjoys 100% literacy, poverty eradication, security, electricity, water supply, sewage service, garbage collection, healthcare, motorable roads, employment, gender equity, agricultural subsidies, etc. 

 Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. To follow similar debates on USAfricaDialogue Series on Google Groups, see: Ode to Soyinka at 86 91 views Subscribe Biko Agozino's profile photo Biko Agozino Jul 13, 2020, 5:27:28 PM to Dialogue From ten years ago, this Oriki still dey fresh: Ode to Soyinka @ 76 Ode to Soyinka @ 76 ODE TO BABA SHO AT 76 By Biko Agozino ‘Unlike societies right next to the Igbo for instance – more famously the... Gloria Emeagwali's profile photo Gloria Emeagwali Jul 13, 2020, 6:32:16 PM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/12/lewis-hamilton-vows-to-spend-life-fighting-racism-after-black-power-salute Sent from my iPhone On Jul 13, 2020, at 5:27 PM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:  -- Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1041738840.1477311.1594655395274%40mail.yahoo.com. Biko Agozino's profile photo Biko Agozino Jul 13, 2020, 8:27:13 PM to 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series 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 Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka Soyinka's representation of postcolonial African identity is re-examined in the light of his major plays, novels... Biko Ibrahim Abdullah's profile photo Ibrahim Abdullah Jul 13, 2020, 9:07:34 PM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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. Sent from my iPhone On 14 Jul 2020, at 12:27 AM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:  To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/843384819.1773442.1594686359560%40mail.yahoo.com. Biko Agozino's profile photo Biko Agozino Jul 13, 2020, 9:40:01 PM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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 https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/8E3F1986-345A-4D85-9C38-D44BC4FD8189%40gmail.com . Emeagwali, Gloria (History)'s profile photo Emeagwali, Gloria (History) Jul 14, 2020, 5:58:01 AM to 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series 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 From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 8:25 PM To: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ode to Soyinka at 86 Please be cautious: **External Email** To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/843384819.1773442.1594686359560%40mail.yahoo.com. Ibrahim Abdullah's profile photo Ibrahim Abdullah Jul 14, 2020, 5:58:01 AM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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? Sent from my iPhone On 14 Jul 2020, at 1:39 AM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:  To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1732211526.1776323.1594690031699%40mail.yahoo.com. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's profile photo Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Jul 14, 2020, 5:58:04 AM to usaafricadialogue 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- Ifeanyi Valerie Nwadike shared his first post. New member · 10 July at 18:38 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! ❤️ Image may contain: 1 person, close-up 128You, Adeleke Adisaogun Ajiyobiojo and 126 others 392 comments 17 shares Wow Comment Share To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/843384819.1773442.1594686359560%40mail.yahoo.com. Ibrahim Abdullah's profile photo Ibrahim Abdullah Jul 14, 2020, 9:21:35 AM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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! Sent from my iPhone On 14 Jul 2020, at 9:57 AM, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:  To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTSgODdSEnU7OXFEZ%2B2r30KNAg-ty5ievGOP-JDhZbVb6w%40mail.gmail.com. OLAYINKA AGBETUYI's profile photo OLAYINKA AGBETUYI Jul 14, 2020, 9:23:17 AM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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 Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone. -------- Original message -------- From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series Date: 14/07/2020 02:50 (GMT+00:00) To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ode to Soyinka at 86 Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (usaafric...@googlegroups.com) Add cleanup rule | More info 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 wrote: https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/8E3F1986-345A-4D85-9C38-D44BC4FD8189%40gmail.com . -- Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1732211526.1776323.1594690031699%40mail.yahoo.com. Biko Agozino's profile photo Biko Agozino Jul 14, 2020, 10:39:40 AM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com '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 To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB29827C1AADE9CB069C4A5E04A6610%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju's profile photo Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Jul 16, 2020, 9:38:21 AM to usaafricadialogue 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 toyin To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1087066256.2278768.1594737459775%40mail.yahoo.com. Emeagwali, Gloria (History)'s profile photo Emeagwali, Gloria (History) Jul 16, 2020, 12:29:47 PM to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, usaafricadialogue 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 From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2020 9:36 AM To: usaafricadialogue Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ode to Soyinka at 86 Please be cautious: **External Email** Beautiful summation but this section is an effort to avoid the issue- To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTS2DbeJe4CrrTznZLNJv6ysDkJpMY-i7zvjxZRToZjitQ%40mail.gmail.com. Biko Agozino's profile photo Biko Agozino Jul 16, 2020, 3:46:23 PM to usaafric...@googlegroups.com 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 To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/MN2PR01MB556869545B23A1068785C323DE7F0%40MN2PR01MB5568.prod.exchangelabs.com.

On Amala, Ohu and Osu

By Biko Agozino

In answer to a question raised by colleagues on the USAfricaDialogue Series, I wrote this on December 11, 2020, but recurring questions have led me to repost it on this blog:

 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... 

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/her 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, ewu Ali, is untouchable. Ewu Ali 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 problems of Osu and residues of Ohu that arose from the trans Atlantic holocaust that cry 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 kings or monarchical Eze. Uchendu identified the monarchy as an 'intrusive trait' in Igboland, meaning that it intruded from neighbors. However,  Nzimiro documented that some Igbo are rather proud of their evolving monarchies just as others remain proud of their status as members of a 'royal' family with 'royal blood' today among the more monarchical neighbors of the Igbo. You are mistaken when you asserted that such people are not against democratic equality. They are 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 Women, 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.

This is from a Facebook post of mine in response to another post:

The problem in No Longer At Ease was never the problem of jargon or the simplicity of expression, Achebe excelled in the simplicity of expression and no one despised him for it. The problem was that of the miseducation of Obi Okonkwo. Here was a brilliant young man who was sponsored by artisans to go and read Law in England in order to be of better use to his community but he chose to switch to English Language without refunding the scholarship money so that another student ready to read law would be sponsored. Achebe also switched from Medicine and gave up his scholarship fund in preference for English Literature but was lucky to have his brother pay for it. In fact, Obi never contributed toro or shishi to the scholarship fund for any other student as expected nor did he use his knowledge of English language to write novels, plays or poetry to narrate the history and culture of Umuofia the way Achebe did. Instead, he got a job working for the colonizers at the scholarship commission and, after initial refusal of bribes, started extorting candidates who had to bribe him to be considered for scholarships. 

What sort of education did he receive in England to make him go and give his mother high blood pressure by telling her that the girl he fell in love with in London and wanted to marry was an Osu, prompting the mother to threaten suicide if he went ahead with it? Achebe was suggesting that as an educated man, it was nobody's business who he chose to marry. When the mother died, probably of hypertension, the efulefu refused to go home and bury her under the pretense that the money for his transportation home would be better used to pay for the funeral. Ewu. And when his girlfriend that he did not have the balls to marry told him that she was pregnant, he forced her to get an abortion but still expected her to keep in touch with him afterwards. Obi Okonkwo was an all round punk upon whom the villagers wasted their scholarship fund and who brought shame to the English university that miseducated him. That was why members of Umuofia Improvement Union were disappointed in him, not because he spoke with 'is and was' like everybody else. Nothing wrong with jargon anyway if put to proper use. Obi Okonkwo failed.

Achebe Critiqued Okonkwo

By Biko Agozino

The interview of Achebe by Soyinka and Nkosi in 1964 goes to show why written reviews and the sort of interviews that James Eze did for The Sun should be accompanied with video documentaries for the archives. I work with video a little and I have won an award in this genre to my credit but we should do more. In this interview, Achebe critiqued the 'aggressive' masculinity of Okonkwo as representing the 'weakness' of an 'unbending' society.

I have always suspected that Achebe identified with Unoka, his fellow artist, more than with Okonkwo, the brute. Very reassuring to hear it from his mouth and see him dressed as a Hausa talakawa or onye nkiti, commoner, for the role. Okey Ndibe once wondered why Achebe presented his fellow poet, Unoka, in such poor lights but it is not the fault of Achebe that we live in a capitalist world where money talks and some talented artists tend to starve to death:

"I visited Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, the one who is responsible for introducing the word “agbala” in Cameroon. Due to him many secondary school children who were not macho enough ended up with the nickname “agbala” which means woman, and, it was a derogatory word for a man in Umuofia who had not taken any titles which was the case with Unoka. If some students did not get “agbala”, they got another name “efulefu” meaning worthless person, another word introduced in the Cameroon language arena from Things fall Apart", reflected Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang, while waiting to interview Achebe on the 50th anniversary of the novel.

This is not a diss against Unoka but a critique of Okonkwo who boasted of his many farms but allowed his single-parent father that raised him to be a strong champion wrestler to die of kwashiokor or malnutrition. It is an indictment against the society for which Unoka performed without charging a fee but they still had the bold face to go and hassle him for little loans whereas he had written on the wall, the bigger debts that his society owed him for his performances. 

When Okonkwo went to the Oracle of the Hill to divine why he was having a hard luck in life, he was told that it was the spirit of his father that was angry because he was yet to sacrifice a goat to him. The Efulefu that he was, Okonkwo did not chew on the proverb carefully but disdainfully asked the Oracle if his father left him a chicken when he was alive, how come he was demanding a goat? Okonkwo ended up dying like an ojugo chicken and was buried like the carcass of a dog because the fly without advisers follows the corpse into the grave.

Here Achebe said that despite the cruelty in colonized Igboland, there were also beauty and arts to be appreciated. Jimanze Ego-Alowes recently announced that Okonkwo was Achebe's alter ego but the honor goes to Unoka, the intellectual. He also tried to revive the allegation that Achebe got the story of Arrow Of God from Mr Nnolim just because the characters in the novel are similar to the characters in Nnolim's pamphlet. That is understandable because the story of Arrow of God is a historical event and Achebe admitted that Mr Nnolim was one of those he interviewed while researching the novel.

In the Arrow of God published the year of the interview, the year of the Civil Rights Act in the US, Achebe again chose to resolve colonialist conflict non-violently through the dialogues led by Ezulu against the historicism of Obierika who warned against confrontation with the white men. Instead of rushing into war with a machete in hand to chop off the head of the African messengers of the invading white men the way Okonkwo did, Ezulu went on a hunger strike as a decolonization strategy. Instead of overthrowing him in a bloody coup and installing a new priest who was ready to eat the sacred yam and declare the new yam festival to enable them to start harvesting their yam, the people of Umuaro simply converted to Christianity and started harvesting their yam in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Yet, Achebe called Okonkwo 'my hero' in the interview for he remained a tragic hero who had lost touch with his people following his alienation in exile in Mbanta, according to Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe. 

Today, African rulers idealize the genocidal masculinity of those that Ali Mazrui lionized as carrying on the 'warrior tradition'. Rather than admire the philosophical Igbo who prefer eating words with the palm oil of proverbs and instead of honoring hero-poets like Chris Okigbo, Mazrui tried the spirit of Okigbo and convicted him in the land of the ancestors after death for the crime of abandoning poetry to take up arms in defense of his people who were threatened with genocide. Unknown to Mazrui was the fact that Okigbo actually saw his participation in the resistance to genocide as a participant-observation methodology through which to gather new materials for his writing being the scholar-activist that he was (recounted by the literary theorist, Ben Obumselu, in an interview with James Eze; though Okigbo may have used that camouflage to avoid being dissuaded from going to the war front by his fellow intellectuals). 

The neocolonial genocidal states imposed on Africa by European colonizers are still in the business of killing Africans en-masse but that should not be called the warrior tradition of Mazrui, it is the genocidist tradition that started with the genocide against 3.1 million Igbo, the foundational genocide of postcolonial Africa orchestrated by the colonizers, as identified by Achebe in There was a Country and in Biafra Revisited by Ekwe-Ekwe and against which the Igbo mounted a heroic resistance just as they did to colonial conquest (Ekumeku War), indirect colonial rule (Ogu Umunwayi), resistance against wage theft (Enugu Colliery massacre), and the ongoing non-violent demand for a referendum on the restoration of Biafra by Igbo youth. Prior to colonization, the neighbors of the Igbo never committed genocide against the Igbo with the aid of such African 'tribes' as Shell BP, The British government led by the left-wing Labour Party, and by the Soviet Union, Walter Rodney observed.

By the way, the interpretation of Ikenga, by Achebe in the interview with Soyinka and Nkosi, as representing male virility is a mistaken patriarchal attempt to monopolize power. Every Igbo person is born with both aka Ikenga, right hand, or aka nri (food hand) and aka ekpe, left hand, or aka nshi (shit hand). The fact that both males and females hold the hoe with aka ikenga leading and aka ekpe following suggests that Ikenga is not exclusively male but that men fashioned an art object, Ikenga, to represent the essence of male dominance. It is only a simulacrum, signifier or sign signifying the referent or signified male authority. 

It does not follow that women lacked authority since Things Fall Apart emphasized the enormous influence of Mbanta, the mother's kindred, where Okonkwo, the child-killer and wife-beater, was schooled by the mother's brother that mother is supreme, Nneka. Moreover, the power of the female deities, Ani or earth mother and Agbala the Oracle of the Hills signifies that there could never be male power and authority without female power and authority among the radically democratic Igbo who say that when one thing stands, another thing stands beside it. 

In other words, the Igbo take it for granted that both men and woman are equally blessed with aka Ikenga even though some Ikenga pass others for strength just as the male hoe (for tilling) tended to be bigger than the female hoe (for weeding). The fact that Africans were forced into colonialism with machetes and hoes as farming implements and have continued to rely on these ancient tools for farming 60 years after the restoration of lumpen independence is part of the evidence indicating How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, according to Walter Rodney.

Genocidal Self-Incrimination by Danjuma

By Biko Agozino

In an interview with the Vanguard Newspaper, Danjuma confessed that he lost control after arresting the head of state, Ironsi, that he was sworn to protect and that he conspired to assassinate him in retaliation for the January coup of 1966 that even Danjuma acknowledged that Ironsi helped to end, that Ironsi arrested the suspects and jailed them to await trial. Danjuma claimed that they assassinated Ironsi and his Yoruba host, along with numerous Igbo army officers, in retaliation because it was taking too long to bring the suspects to trial and the press were clamoring for their release as national heroes. 

Danjuma did not confess that he has since also lost control of his village and that the same narrative of retaliation is being used to justify the genocide against innocent civilians all over the country. He wondered why the coup makers also killed military officers if they were only after corrupt civilians as if military officers were immune to corruption (no excuse for the assassinations) but he did not say why his retaliatory coup did not go to the prisons to get the coup suspects if their motive was retaliation. He did not spare a thought for millions of civilians killed in his so-called retaliatory coup that he confessed to in self-incrimination. 

There is evidence that more of the Igbo fleeing the initial pogrom from the North were waylaid in Gboko (home area of Danjuma) and systematically massacred as Soyinka recounts in many of his works in different genres and as documented by Obumselu in the massacre of NdiIgbo in Northern Nigeria. The genocide against the Igbo was led by Christian army officers from the Middle Belt and from the West but then blamed on the Muslim Hausa Fulani who are yet to brag about it like Jack Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma, Mathew Obasanjo, Benjamin Adekunle, Anthony Enahoro, and Jeremiah Awolowo with the rare exception of the boast attributed to Buhari that he was ready to kill the Igbo again with no regrets. 

Contrary to the claims by Danjuma, it was not an Igbo coup that killed leaders of other regions and spared Igbo ones (if they also killed Igbo leaders, that would not make it less treasonable). Officers from other parts of Nigeria participated in that coup and their plan was to free a Yoruba leader from prison and put him in power, something that Danjuma and co fulfilled. Yet, the genocide singled out the Igbo for total destruction, forcing the East to secede even though they were the ones persuading other regions not to secede earlier. What have the Igbo done to Danjuma to deserve such unrepentant genocidal hatred when everyone knows that genocide is never justifiable? Other coups have been done by officers from other regions (including the region of Danjuma) and yet no one has tried to subject the people from such regions to the final solution. Why the Igbophobia?

The questions that The Vanguard journalists should have asked the self-confessed genocidist Danjuma are what was the retaliatory cause of the riots against the Igbo during the colonial rule in 1945 in Jos when the war-time scarcity imposed by the British was blamed on Igbo traders and on the NCNC-supported general strike by labour led by Michael Imoudu? How about the Kano massacre of the Igbo still during colonial rule in 1956 following perceived insults to Northern leaders by politicians from Western Nigeria arising from the motion for immediate independence and the amendment of independence when practicable, was that also retaliation against the Igbo for what? 

The use of 'starvation as a legitimate weapon of war' and the indiscriminate defoliation with abundant supply of weapons by the UK Labour Party government and the indiscriminate bombing with jets supplied by the Soviet Union and flown by Egyptian pilots against Biafran civilians, were they also retaliation, for what? How about the extra-judicial killings of innocent youth who have only ever called for a referendum on the future of the country and for the democratic right to stay home and mourn their dead by flying a Black Nationalist flag (that is actually more beautiful than the lame green-white-green imposed by imperialism) in honor of their dead ancestors, how about their proscription as terrorists while 'foreign' cattle herders who have massacred civilians all over the country remain legit? Where are the responses of the Nigerian pseudo-intellectuals to the admission of fascist genocide by Danjuma and co?

As Achebe, Ekwe-Ekwe, Jacobs, Adichie, Emecheta, Uzoigwe, Nzimiro, Soyinka and a few others documented, the genocide against the Igbo was premeditated by ethnic warlords who feared that the Igbo would dominate the country in open and fair struggles for scarce resources and it was orchestrated by the British who sowed the fear of Igbo domination due to the fact that the Igbo led the struggle for the restoration of Independence in Nigeria as Shagari admitted in a 1945 poem urging the North to join the struggle to show Waka to Boko. The Igbo have since demonstrated that they are not interested in dominating anyone but only in pursuing their livelihood through their own efforts despite systematic efforts to deindustrialize their home region, quit notices from other regions, and their exclusion from top political positions. Unlike Danjuma and his fellow self-confessed genocidists, the Igbo are not looking for retaliation but they will welcome reparative justice any day as the Justice Oputa Panel on human rights violations recommended. Other Nigerians will not lose anything when the government finally admits that a great wrong was done to the Igbo and atonements are made.

Recently, Obasanjo was reported as surrendering in his efforts to conquer the Igbo when he allegedly admitted that the Igbo cannot be conquered because they are democratic and not constrained by feudal institutions in their tireless efforts to uplift themselves and their communities against all odds. Colonial anthropologists advised Obasanjo to subjugate the Igbo by imposing traditional leaders on them after the war to make them more submissive like people from other regions, a thing that the colonial authorities had attempted before being defeated by the Women's War of 1929, leaving the East with no House of Traditional Rulers unlike the North and the West.

Obasanjo got it wrong because the other sections of the country never had a single leader compared to the Igbo who supposedly have only individualism. There have always been majority and minority politicians in every region of Nigeria (Aminu Kano in the North West, Waziri in the North East; Tarka and Lar in the North Central; Akintola, Agbekoya, Fela, Soyinka, and Falae in the South West; Boro and Ita in the South South; and Chike Obi, SG Ikoku, CC Onoh, Arthur Nwankwo and even Ojukwu in the East) in line with democratic rights to freedom of association. 

The Igbo have consistently voted their conscience for presidential candidates from other regions even against Igbo candidates in the cases of Shagari, Obasanjo, Yaradua, Jonathan and Atiku (they also elected a Fulani man as the Mayor of Enugu and appointed a minority Eyo Ita as head of government business in Enugu while Chimaroke Nnamani included a Yoruba man in his cabinet from 1999-2007 in Enugu). 

Apart from the Plateau State support for Azikiwe in the second republic and the initial victory of Zik in the Western region, no other region can boast of a similar detribalized record in supporting presidential candidates and yet the Igbo are still suspected of being a threat to Nigeria (the appointment of Okonkwo Kano, Ojukwu's uncle, to the Northern Legislative Council, the alliances that Zik formed across the country, and the election of Igbo candidates to the Federal House of Representatives from Lagos - that attracted threats of drowning in the lagoon if the Igbo did not vote a certain way preferred by a traditional ruler - notwithstanding). 

It is the genocidist generals who have dominated the misrule of Nigeria who should apologize to Nigerians for scapegoating the Igbo while giving self-confessed terrorists oil blocks, hundreds of billions, and political appointments to placate them. The result is that when the rain falls, it will not fall on Igbo rooftops only. Danjuma has since lost control of his village after leading the genocide against the Igbo. 

The solution to the genocidist states that imperialism foisted across Africa is the dissolution of the colonial boundaries to make way for the United Republic of African States or the Peoples Republic of Africa for which the people have voted with their feet as they transgress the imaginary lines drawn at the Berlin conference in search of their livelihood. The neocolonial states in Africa beg to be restructured in Pan African directions to prevent any group of genocidal trigger-happy killers trained by imperialism to attempt another genocide in any part of Africa without being stopped by the people who will be busy rebuilding Africa in leaps and bounds. Do Not Agonize, Organize!