₦airaland Forum

Wetlink:
Yes, anybody fit pick but while waiting for your miracle, can you be a litle bit grateful, humble and do away with the entitlement mentality?

You call it being Selfish?���
Wait until you have offered help to someone and the person displays this your level of ingratitude. Only then will you understand.

Instead of you to thank your uncle and his family for spurring your dad to get sense and build his own house, you are here yarning dust.
If your uncle was like Op's father na so all of una for still dey that house dey contemplate to claim inheritance. Tueeh!

Perhaps, you are not Igbo, to understand what the traditions are in Igbo villages. Anyway, things have changed and are changing so fast. Values are changing quickly. In Igbo traditions, everyone has equal rights (you can say entitled) in your ancestral land (Obi) since they are inherited, even though the custodian is the first son, such that if your father doesn't have a house in the village, anyone that first builds on the ancestral land builds for the family. It is also the reason why a brother who doesn't have a house of his own will contribute heavily to the completion of the first house in the family. My dad did too, he later regretted but not now any more, perhaps the blessings followed him and us. Anyway that is the good old custom. Selfishness, greed and arrogance have taken over. Siblings now fight each other and even get a bit more selfish not to care for their old parents. The next will be for people not to see any need of sacrificing in order to have kids as it is in Europe these days.

This tradition is also the only reason why many Igbo people succeeded from nothing with the 'apprenticeship culture' but now this culture is almost down.

You can't fight your siblings, lord over them and expect your kids not to do the same to each other when they are of age.

Anyway, we all reap what we sow, it's not rocket science.

baby124:
Yes you are a slave and beggar when you can’t afford your own roof. You should carry yourself with humility as the squatter and burden you are.

Anyway, life knows how to humble people with the type of mentality you have.


I have noticed, no one who is really successful thinks this way, but only people who managed to get 1 or 2 things going for them at a particular point in time. You can't manage a successful business like this, because the employees who will make the money will definitely leave for better options or will just be inefficient because of the boss attitude.

If you like learn, or just be a regular abusive nairaland'er'.

baby124:
While one is squatting and homeless, the person has to be very humble and put other family members in check. So that they don’t inconvenience or become a nuisance to their hosts. Anybody call fit pick, but don’t be a nuisance while waiting for the call.

Humble? You better say slave, because that is what our selfish minds would like to see as humble. Anyway, the society and values keeps going down and we all will still be the beneficiary of the decay. You can't plant rice and get beans.

I have to say this again, the selfishness we brew these days in our Igbo families, I really don't get it. I am sure the problems between your father and the brothers arose because either your father or mother is trying to be Lord over them just because they live in your house and they resisted.

Your parents should learn to tolerate his brothers. As you said, they can't go and live in the bush, the so called ancestral land till they build theirs and you also know they are not capable to.

Imagine, what your father and his siblings are going through and you think later it will not be the same between you and your siblings. Let me tell you what will happen, if you guys succeed in pushing your uncles out. The next fight will start between you and your siblings over same house. I am telling you from experience, it is psychological. I has happened in many families I know, even mine.

Moreover, which relationship do you want to maintain with your cousins when through your parents you chased them away from the house.

This is the same problem that happened in my paternal family and now happening between my maternal uncles. People will never learn. The level of selfishness these days is really overwhelming. I don't get it.

My story;
If you like learn from it.

My uncle built an up-stair (big house) in the early 80's. Both families all live in the city, so we just come back to stay in the village house during Xmas and sometimes Easter. Within the few days in the village, their mum and mum will always quarrel. I mean sometimes even physical because both women were always at loggerheads with flimsy things. E.g one of my brothers (a kid then) 'pooed or peed' in the compound, my mum was cooking here and not there. So this quarrel has been there for years when we were kids till our late teenage years when it escalated. My Dad even though not buoyant, started to build a house but then they were not even patient enough for my Dad to near completion of the house before we were sent packing. My Dad had to sell a small property in the city to even roof the building. Then we moved. Of course the relationship dwindled, everybody started minding his or her business.

Now, in less than 7 years, we are better of. Completed my Dad's building, built another with complete finishing and live better and bigger. However their house remained uncompleted as it has been, no fence, not tiled, no paint and all that. Now, they all want a closer relationship but naturally it can't happen, the discord is there already. The news around the village now is that my cousins (now adults and married) are quarreling on who will occupy upstair of the house and who will stay down. Imagine.

Don't neglect people. Nobody is God. Everybody fit pick.