Dr. Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe

The history of a people is like the stream of life from which the character, form and structure of their identity, their backwardness and progress are drawn. It affords a people the platform on which to predict their future. Thus, just as every stream has a source, so every group of people has a beginning, the course of a stream, the course of their history and the mouth, the end of an era.

No nation or people who toys with the knowledge of their past expects a future built on a strong foundation of unity, identify, pride and sustainable development. In other words, the past is what gives the present the legitimacy of existence and the present, the platform to launch into the future. The carpenter hammering his wood is a graphic example of the importance of history as an impetus to human development. He has to pull his hammer backwards in order to push the nail into the wood,and the extent to which he pulls the hammer backwards often determines the force with which the nail is driven into the wood.

Every group of people who desire progress must therefore look back into their past, their source, their course, and their successes and failures at a particular epoch, in other to inspire progress.
The evidence is obvious with the cases of the world's most developed nations - the United States of America, Britain and other European nations, Japan, China, South Korea and India.
Every scientific and technological advancement made by these people was based on the foundation of their pasts and studded with a pride of identity and cultural exclusiveness. The question then is, to what extent have the Igbo shown commitment to the knowledge of and preservation of their historical heritage as compared to their Edo, Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba counterparts in the Nigerian project. Ironically while the Edo and Yoruba who had contacts with Europe and Christianity many decades before the Igbo, are elevating their historical and cultural heritages, particularly their deities, traditional music, sports, feasts and festivals to international status, the Igbo are busy destroying their time-honoured sacred grooves, like the case of the people of Awka- Etiti, raining curses on their deities, divesting the ritual sacredness of Ozo title-taking initiation process, de-solemnizing the emotional spirituality of their life-cycle - the rituals of birth, marriage, death and mourning, in the name of trying to be holier than the Pope in the business of Christianity.

Christianity must be married to the people's historical and cultural settings, and not vice versa. The way a man presents his identity to his visitor determines the visitor's conception of his personality. The Edo and Yoruba confronted the invading Christian missionaries with a strong conception of pride in their past and cultures and they were treated with exclusive respect, protected rights and privileges. The Igbo on the other hand presented themselves as a people with nothing valuable to offer to the invading Christian Missionaries as a compliment to the new ideas, hence they were treated as a people whose past and culture have no spiritual value , and it has remained so to the present day.

However, it is not late yet. The Igbo could begin at this stage to make amends - a stage of the twilight of their cultural heritage, a stage where it does not matter for both the educated and non- educated Igbo man to speak fluently in his dialect, write artfully in Igbo language and communicate with his family in Igbo. In this regard, one may be tempted to acknowledge the Anambra State edict on Igbo language usage as an important step towards that cultural Uhuru. But that is not enough. The Government and her sister-south East States should move a step further to introduce the history of the Igbo including their culture and folklore as compulsory subjects in both primary and secondary schools, notwithstanding the debilitating 6-3-3-4 educational system. This is because the wisdom of any man begins with the knowledge of self, and the knowledge of self can only begin with the knowledge of one's root, the Cemen fondu of his past, which is his history.

For the Igbo, there is a past which is anchored on a root. Call it the tap-root of their history, if you wish. That root is the source,the beginning or the genesis, whichever term one wishes to adopt. One does not need to ask who the Igbo are, because everybody now knows that the Igbo are the Igbo. In other words, they are what God has created them to be. But how they came to settle in their present geo-cultural homeland is what has bothered most people, both the historians and non-historians.

In recent times, quite a number of writings on the subject of Igbo origins have emerged on the scene of historical scholarship, most of them by non-scholars and non-historian scholars. They wear the garb of history but are in their forms, structures and analysis unhistorical, lacking in depth, proven sources, critical analyses and unbiased judgment. They fundamentally aim at elevating one group in the course of Igbo history and cultural evolution at the expense of the others and against the rules of historical writings, which subsequently gravitates into a riotous contest of primacy in the body history and cultural evolution of the Igbo.

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Igbos in Kano trying to leave the city. PHOTO:
Madu Nmeribeh.

is it that Igbo culture is in extinction? for instance, yoruba have promoted their culture and language to the extent of having yoruba movie industry but this can't be said of Igbo

As igbos have dominated the Nigerian- English movie industry, they should channel that effort in promoting their language and culture.

and so in conclusion ?

Ayekotoo: is it that Igbo culture is in extinction? for instance, yoruba have promoted their culture and language to the extent of having yoruba movie industry but this can't be said of Igbo

Igbo culture is not in extinction. What Igbos suffer from is individualism which has resulted in the inability to accept central Igbo by all Igbo groups. Whose version of Igbo should be used in the movie? Yorubas were able to adopt Oyo. I believe that if not for our inherent individualism, we should have achieved some level in the Igbo language movie industry. It has worked in music as Flavour sings in a different dialect from Sunny Bobo or Owuikiri but we all listen to them as Igbo artists.