Igbo Women And Money Stereotype

It's a good stereotype, really.  If you can fall in love with (honest) money, you will have less problems in life.

From the success of the Igbo traders all over the country.  Lagos, Sokoto, Kano, name it.

It's not only Igbo women but Igbos as a whole who have this stereotype. If you don't like money, let's see you embracing poverty, we'll see how you really like that.

These Igbo people sef

There's nothing to forget.  Some of us were not born during the war.
Remembering the war will do us a lot of good.  It will teach us to say no to sectarian agitators.

Fans of Biafra. Niger Delta 'liberators'. 
Uninformed people who think wars is cool.

Anyway, back to the Igbo money issue.

To understand, u'll got to go back to what achebe wrote: in igbo land age is respected, wealth is revered.

The igbo culture, even before the civil war places a lot of worth on wealth even over kingship: igbo enwere eze (igbos don't have king).

From the woman's side, marriage is very expensive in the east except the girl's parents are very understanding. So an igbo girl usually wants more gifts on her traditional wedding and in most igbo families, especially among the traders, it's the men that do all the providing while the women take care of the home front. So these chicks don't want to end up with a poor dude.

Ever wondered why it takes a longer time 4 igbo dudes to marry? Cos they got to make a lot of cheese.

Interesting!! 


Other ethnic groups fought in the war & lost almost everything in that war, too. The Efiks, the Ibibios, the Anangs, Kalabris etc. were also involved in the Biafran war. Yet, very few people ascribe the 'money-conscious' stereotype, to them. So why do you think that the bid to recoup the losses suffered in the civil war, is the sole reason for wealth acquisition, by the Igbo?

Uh??  Have you been following the trend of discussion in this thread, at all? Londoner made a comment & I replied, waiting for him to expantiate on his previous post, and you are here jumping up and down in the middle of the thread, making wild statements about something called hatred of the Igbo!!   What kind of crap is that?

Please take time out to read all what has been posted here, before you start making any silly noise! Rubbish! _*Hiss* You are actually the one that has deep-seated problems & is blinded by warped hate! Seek help, before you kill yourself with paranoid thoughts 

Laudate, I am female actually. Yes you have a point that there were other tribes who were involved in the war, but I really don't think you can compare their loss as a community to that of the Igbo.
My point was not that the war was the sole reason, but that it is a fundamental factor in Igbo attitudes towards money and economic stability. I don't know whether Ibibios and Efiks were paraded and shot for being their respective tribes, or whether millions of them were starved or murdered for being Efik or Ibibio. Maybe you can enlighten me on that subject.

Other Nigerians would rather like to think that Igbo's are money hungery by birth or creation, but let me ask you this, was the Igbo known for being so called lovers of money before the war? The Igbo of yesteryear believed that a good name was better than money, and many still do.

To be honest, people often cleave to negative stereotypes about others to make themselves feel better.

Its like when people describe todays troubled tribes of the Niger delta, they often describe them as trouble makers, but conveniently skate over their experience in today's Nigeria. The rest of us don't have to live in their impoveraged communities we are far removed from Shells assults on them, so instead we try to blame some ingrained defect in them rather than dealing with the real underlying issue.

Its like calling  Edo people prostitutes without giving any crediance to the issues which have led up to the present day characterisation.

To answer your question as to why people don't call other tribes money hungry, its because they have already given Igbo's that title, and really Nigerians tend not to be interested in minority tribes in the first place, sad but true.

Now let me ask you a question, why do people in Nigeria characterise the Igbo as money hungry, when our "leaders" who have stolen the most from our country in terms of hard cash tend not to be the Igbo? Really it depends on who you ask really, if you ask the Swiss banks, they may give you a different view altogether.

@ topic
I ve also noticed and experienced it first hand"no be igbo babe,them too like money" and as for where the notion sprang frm,i would say frm the grossly myopic point of view of some bitter and lazy set of folks  who would rather critize than blame themselves for their failure to succeed.An average igbo person is enterprising, hardworkn and strives @ all cost, as best as he/she can to escape the clutches of poverty,term the igbos crooks,shrewd or whatever,now if that is interpreted as money hungry or watever then i dnt think its a bad stereotype rather i see it as a form of distraction which shld be ignored totally.

Check all the threads on nairaland about Igbos.
Wherever the gong is sounded,there must be laudateniqua to ask about "others"
She has big issues,much bigger than nairaland

Gladly!

When the pogrom in the north started in the sixties, any group from east of the Niger, was tagged as Igbo (didn't matter to others, what they were) and dealt with.

During the war, the same treatment meted out to the Igbo, was given to them. People from other ethnic groups couldn't be bothered to differentiate among the various ethnic groups, that existed in the East. Weren't the Efiks/Ibibio/Anang etc. part of that war? Didn't they suffer bullet wounds, victimisation, pain & hunger, during that war? Yes!! Now, did they lose all they had during that war?? Were their homes bombed during that war?? Did they have to flee for their lives?? Yes!! Do you have any other questions about the degree of suffering and pain they experienced during that war? Or do you still feel that "as a community", they didn't have a rough time, simply because they were smaller in number than the Igbo? 

The point am making is that they also shared in the same pain that the Igbo went through, in the sixties. But that hasn't made them decide to apply money as a yardstick, in a manner that makes others tag them, sometimes unfairly, as being 'money-hungry' because they want to build themselves back up again and  to never be in a position of vulnerability again, to use your own words.

Initiator has already answered your question, Londoner. Wealth acquisition was a way of life, even before the civil war among the Igbo. Basden wrote about it in his book on the Igbo. And so have a few other historians.

The war is not the reason for that stereotype.

Now what 'issues' were you referring to? Kindly state them here in black & white, since you are so conversant with what Laudate has, or does not have. Every correct answer gets twenty marks!! 

Last time I asked you to substantiate your frivolous comments, you went into hiding like the coward, you truly are. Let us hope that this time around, you will be able to step up to the mark.

Hehehehe. . . . .babyosisi, you have a habit of seeking for attention, by making baseless, inaccurate, hyperbolic remarks. Sorry, am not in the mood to feed your vanity, today. 

Kindly state the views I have expressed or words I have used against the Igbo, that makes me an Igbo hater. If I have any objections against an individual, I face that individual directly and I address him or her personally, NOT his ethnic group. So your insinuations of hatred are baseless.

As for passing comments on Igbo threads, I didn't realise it was a crime on nairaland for a non-Igbo to make his or her views known, on an Igbo thread. If there is any such rule in the house, kindly bring it to everyone's attention and we shall all endeavour to comply.

I don't blame you, however. Rational thought, isn't your forte. You would rather sink into the mud of insulting rhetoric, simply because you are seeking for some cheap attention. *Hiss* What else can one expect from a deliquent like you??

this is not only igbo women thing. ok who doesn'y like money raise your hand up? abeg everybody lyks money jareeh not just igbo women so i don't knw who came up with this type of streotype abeg