Before I go into the details of how Igbo nationalism emerged and how it changed with the defeat of Biafra, I will summarise the following chapters and identify the main difficulties in narrating Nigerian history. It is unavoidable to talk of collective actors such as ‘the Igbo’ and ‘the Yoruba’ or of their ‘elites’ who have an intense interest in manipulating communal antagonisms. However, these actors are plagued by internal divisions, and their identities are ambiguous. When rival groups clash, their conflicts may be perceived more in ethnic or religious terms, depending on local circumstances. Furthermore, the way conflicts emerge and develop is shaped by global identifications with faraway peoples such as Palestinians and Jews, Americans and Afghanis. As I will show by analysing a week of riots in the city of Jos, political alliances and lines of cleavage can shift within a matter of days. This scenario indicates that imagination plays a central role in the definition of conflicts. When Igbo or Hausa-Fulani leaders discuss political strategies and alliances, they have to define their common interest, and this interest depends on who they are.

Nigeria’s political geography has been determined by the cleavages between North and South, Muslims and Christians, and by the antagonism among the three largest ethnic groups: the Hausa-Fulani in the far North, who are overwhelmingly Muslim, the Igbo in the Southeast, who are largely Christian, and the Yoruba in the Southwest, who are evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. Since the end of colonial rule, these groups – or their elites – have vied for control of the central government. The largest, the Hausa-Fulani who constitute about 30 percent of Nigeria’s population, [48] had the upper hand most of the time, and they used their hegemony to advance the cause of Islam. When the Igbo seceded in 1967, they saw the Hausa-Fulani as their main adversary, and emphasised the religious divide between them.

The civil war, as the separatists interpreted it, was a religious war: "Biafra is a Christian Country, we believe in the ability of the Almighty God to come to the aid of the oppressed and give us victory as he gave victory to young David over Goliath". [49] Such religious fervour was not just a matter of state propaganda; Europeans who visited Igboland in those years found a widespread "self-consciousness of a Christian state facing a Muslim jihad". [50] For outside observers, this religious interpretation of the war was puzzling, as it seemed to be at odds with the political reality. Nigeria’s head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, was a Christian from the Middle Belt, an area between the Muslim North and the Christian South, inhabited by ethnic minorities. His deputy Obafemi Awolowo was a Christian Yoruba, and most of the soldiers who invaded Biafra were also Christians. In the eyes of the Biafrans, however, these alleged Christians had betrayed their faith by siding with the Hausa-Fulani ‘jihadists’. While Nigeria’s government acted as "a tool of the world moslem league", Biafra defended itself as "the core of Christianity in this part of Africa". [51] Among the beleaguered Igbo, Christianity became an ethnic religion. It seemed as if the God of Israel, who had led his people out of bondage and shown them the Promised Land, was also guiding the Igbo. They were destined to suffer as the Jews had, but in the end they would triumph, as promised in the Bible. Today’s nationalists have revived this idea of being a chosen people, closer to God than others. When the Old Testament speaks about the Kingdom of God or the Promised Land, the holy scriptures seem to be referring to a project that has been entrusted to the Igbo. The divine messages are addressed not simply to individual Christians but to the Igbo as a people: "what the Holy Bible said about the Old Biafra and is still saying about the New Biafra". [52]

Identifying with the fate of an ancient, mythical people has appealed to the Igbo who had no national history of their own before they were drawn into the orbit of Nigerian politics. However, religion is not a necessary ingredient of Igbo nationalism. The cause of Biafra can be propagated without recourse to the Bible or to pre-Christian religion. Among today’s nationalists are former Marxists and pan-Africanists who prefer to define an Igbo identity without a spiritual dimension. In Chapters 6 and 7, I will discuss a secular version of Igbo nationalism, but my main interest is in the relationship between nationalism and religion, a topic which has received little attention in the literature on Africa. [53] One important aspect of Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is their global dimension. They link the Igbo, the Hausa-Fulani and other nations to people outside Africa. Chapter 4 will illustrate the entanglement of ethnic, religious and global identities by examining a conflict in the city of Jos, one of the most contested places in Nigeria. This conflict in September 2001 involved all of the main ethnic groups, yet the cleavages among them shifted within a matter of days. I want to analyse how these groups interacted and which role the Igbo assumed in this setting.

When violence erupted on September 7, the participants viewed it mainly as an ethnic conflict, pitting Hausa and Fulani 'settlers' from the North, who had migrated to the Jos Plateau in colonial times, against the 'indigenous' Berom, Anaguta and Afisare, on whose ancestral land the city had been founded. This scenario changed when news about the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington reached Jos. Muslim residents, most of them Hausa and Fulani, took to the streets and celebrated victory over the United States. Some of the demonstrators, while shouting anti-US slogans, attacked the shops of Igbo traders and other Christians from the South who had not been involved in the dispute. Two days later, after police and army units had restored order, an estimated 3000 people were dead.

It is common in northern Nigeria to see the Igbo as representatives of Western civilisation and to involve them in wars by proxy. No other people have so fervently striven to acquire Western education and lifestyle, [54] and when judging global events, the Igbo are generally more supportive of Western policies than are their fellow-Nigerians. However, as a minority of traders and small businessmen, who enjoy little protection from state authorities, they are anxious to avoid being drawn into local conflicts. Moreover, their relationship with the West is ambivalent. During the Biafra War, ‘Christian’ nations in the West did not come to their aid but supported their adversaries: "We have constantly been victimized by Muslim aggression. We hoped the outside world would take notice, but we are mistaken. In fact, the British government representing an arch-Christian country has done everything in its power to enable and support Muslims in Nigeria in [their] genocide against Igbo-Biafrans". [55]

Although the Igbo still tend to side with governments in North America and Europe when global conflicts are concerned, they are more inclined to identify with the Jews who seem to have suffered a similar fate since they were also abandoned, without protection, in the face of genocide. It has become common to assume that Jews and Igbo share basic historical experiences and that their traditional cultures bear many striking similarities, as can be seen from Biblical descriptions of purity taboos, circumcision rites and animal sacrifices. Such similarities have been noted by Bible readers in many parts of Africa, and this gave sometimes rise to the idea that their ancestors were Jews. Claims to a common descent are nearly always fictitious, [56] but questions of belief are of minor importance in the discourse on Igbo Jewishness. When politicians and intellectuals refer to similarities with the Jews, it does not really matter whether they assume a genealogical link. Most would probably argue that common cultural and personality traits are due to common historical experiences. But this makes speculation about similarities and differences no less attractive.

Comparing themselves with Jews is attractive for various reasons; one of them has to do with the Igbo’s relationship to the past. Since they had no national history in precolonial times, it is tempting to use the Old Testament as a "sort of alternative ‘tribal’ history" [57] and thus as a repertoire of metaphors, narratives and religious ideas that help to organise collective experiences. Adopting such an un-African past is not thought to be embarrassing or offensive. Although many nationalists talk of the need to "rediscover" [58] their Igboness, they are more interested in reinventing themselves and become modern people. Like Pentecostal Christianity, nationalism can be used as a means to break with a past that prevents them from getting ahead. What the Igbo reject first and foremost is the stigma of defeat that has followed them since Biafra: "They are used to do dirty jobs only to be dumped later. In offices, Igbos despise themselves. […] When you speak Igbo language to them, they reply you in English because they are ashamed of speaking Igbo. […] They prefer cash and carry business instead of investing in industries. Persecution complex and self-defeatism have become a way of life". [59] Discrimination and humiliation have damaged their self-esteem, yet they know that they are gifted people who can achieve far more than their present situation allows: "the Igbo have lost a generation of people" who wasted their talents on "buying and selling of spare parts and cosmetics". [60]

The wish to shake off the past applies to both their life in Nigeria and to the precolonial past. The old ways of life are still remembered in town, village and family histories. [61] Moreover they have been preserved in novels such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which is read today as a description of archetypical Igbo village life. They have also been recorded by ethnographers who wrote studies of the ‘Igbo’, although they had just investigated a few villages. Some of the old practices are still celebrated faithfully, such as the rite of ‘breaking kola nut’ which is often used when opening a political meeting. Another marker of Igbo identity is the New Yam Festival, a first fruits festival that used to open the season of yam harvest but is now staged by Igbo communities in Lagos and other urban centres. [62] But apart from such folkloristic events, there is little interest in reviving the world of the ancestors. For most Igbo, as for many other Nigerians, the past has "failed to provide the moral grounding for a good society in the present". [63]

Biblical stories and reports about modern Jews are fascinating because they seem to prove by referring to a real, world-historic case that a people can recreate themselves. The Jews used to live scattered all over the world and suffered repeated persecution but mustered the strength to form their own political community, guarded by a powerful independent state. The quest for a life in freedom and dignity that led to the foundation of modern Israel has been a constant theme throughout their history, intimately linked with their belief in God in His promises. The Old Testament provides a "model of nationhood" that fits well into modern nationalist discourses because it "fused land, people, language, and religion". [64]

Other features of Jewish history that have fascinated Igbo nationalists are its time depth and its dramatic turns of events. It comprises stories about slavery in ancient Egypt and the grandeur of Solomon’s kingdom, about the Holocaust and Israeli tanks invading the Gaza Strip. All these stories, however divergent, are understood as referring to one and the same people that have existed for thousands of years. Jewish history combines an extreme diversity of personal and collective experiences, from the agony of the concentration camps to the security of an imposing military might. Thus its narratives can be used to express conflicting experiences and self-perceptions. For the Igbo who went through shocks and dislocations and who have had to find meaning in their suffering, it is important to reflect their fate in a discourse that can integrate a wide range of contrasting views. Their discourse on Igbo Judaism is not a rigid ideology but a venue for intense debates.

QuotaSystem:


Quite illuminating. This explains the seemingly permanent victim mentality and persecution complex .

Solid research.

Is that all you see...have you seen from the other perspective

QuotaSystem:

Quite illuminating. This explains the seemingly permanent victim mentality and persecution complex .
Solid research.

ariesbull:



Is that all you see...have you seen from the other perspective

Allow him to cherrypick from the narrative while masturbating on his preconceived bias.

Aegon:
Allow him to cherrypick from the narrative while masturbating on his preconceived bias.

Lol