SALUTE TO A COLLEAGUE

BEING A CITATION ON

PROFESSOR MICHAEL JOSEPH CHUKWUDALU ECHERUO,

B.A. (LONDON), M.A. Ph.D. (CORNELL),

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

Your Honour, The Deputy- Governor, My Lord Chief Judge, Honourable Commissioners, Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.

Our Lecturer today needs no introduction either here, or indeed any- where the English Language and its Literature are studied and appreciated. If anybody needed introducing, it is perhaps the present speaker. However, the form after which the Ahịajọkụ Lecture is modeled requires that the delivery of each lecture be preceded by the reading of a citation on the lecturer. On this occasion I suppose the idea is not so much to introduce the lecturer to his audience, but to share in the just celebration of his eminence and achievements as a scholar. And 1 am glad indeed that I was chosen to prepare and read this citation on Michael Joseph Chukwudalu Echeruo, B.A. Honours English (London) M.A., Ph.D. (Cornell), Professor of English, because I consider it a great honour to have been adjudged capable of appreciating his many contributions to his chosen field which is literature of English expression.

Michael Echeruo was born at Umunumo in the Mbano Local Government Area, Imo State, of a devout catholic family that is also well- rooted in the traditional Igbo sense in being both di-ala and of consistently noble conduct. Thus his father, Chief J.M. Echeruo B.A., Dip. Ed. (London), is not only a Knight of St. Sylvester but also the Ọnụ-Na- Ekwuruọha of Mbanọ and the Igwe Ọkaa-Omee of Ụmụnnumo.

For his education, Michael Echeruo attended some of the most deservedly famous institutions of his time: St. Charles School Ụmụnnumo, Stella Maris College, Port-Harcourt, University College, Ibadan, the University of Oxford (to participate in its Summer School), and Cornell University Ithaca, New York. In his own quiet manner Michael Echeruo has often confessed himself proud that he attended the institutions he did. What he has refused to mention, in keeping with his unboastful character, is that these institutions must now count themselves lucky that they opened their gates to a man who was subsequently to become, and that in record time, perhaps one of the few Africans so far who bear the title and dignity of Professor of English with unquestionable distinction.

Nor did these institutions need to wait till the 1970s to realise, each of them, that in Michael Echeruo it was producing a distinguished alumnus. At the University College, Ibadan, for instance, Michael Echeruo was a College Scholar, a Shell English Scholar and twice Department of English Prizeman. While at Cornell University he won in 1963 the first Prize in the All Africa Poetry Competition. The same year he became a Hoyt Scholar of the University. In 1965 he was admitted to the highly coveted academic orders of Phy Kappa Phy (Social Sciences) and Phy Deta Beta Kappa (Humanities).

Michael Echeruo taught English at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Enugu, at the University of Nsukka, and now teaches English at the University of Ibadan where again he made history, in being the first African Professor to preside over the affairs of the premier Department of English in the Nigerian Universities' system. He is a member of the Nigerian English Studies Association, the Modern Language Association of America, the Shakespeare Association of America, the International Comparative Literature Association and the Founding President, Nigerian Association for African and Comparative Literature. He is on the editorial boards of Conradiana as National Editor for West Africa, of Conch as Associate Editor and of Okike as Poetry Editor. He has examined extensively in English at the degree level - at the Universities of Lagos, Zambia, the Cape Coast and Ife. And currently he is an adviser to the University of Malawi, Zomba, Malawi. Michael Echeruo's national and international standing as a scholar is indeed a source of pride and inspiration to his friends.

And the important point is that this international standing derives not just from his ability as a teacher or just from his achievements as an academic statesman concerned with running departments, founding associations of learned men and supporting those founded by others through active and devoted membership. It derives first and foremost from his productivity as a scholar. And this productivity has been marked by happy versatility, rich variety, unfailing originality and incisiveness, as by limpidity of style and cold un-wavering logic. Michael Echeruo is the one practitioner of his craft on the African continent that I know of today who is at home in creative writing and literary criticism, in African Literature, American Literature and English Literature. He is the only one on the continent I know of who has made significant contributions to the study of some of the seminal minds in English and African Literature.

Thus he has contributed to the study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth and to our understanding of Achebe, Okigbo and Ekwensi. One of his latest books, Victorian Lagos (Macmillan 1977), is a work which touches on intellectual history, on colonial sociology and on literature - a work which, more than any other, guarantees him immortality in that field of academic endeavour concerned with the study of the evolution of modern Nigerian culture.

The population of professors in the Nigerian Universities' system has recently experienced an explosion. On the time honoured principle of 'the more the merrier' this surely is a merry thing. Unfortunately academics is not a merry pursuit. What is worse the average Nigerian is not trained to distinguish between professors and professors. For him a professor is either old or young with the young variety being regarded as a kind of freak. However, more subtle minds have made other classifications. The philosopher Bertrand Russel, for instance, would divide professors into three classes viz: those who are "figures of fun", those who are "technically competent but uninteresting" and then those, usually a minority group, whom inquiring minds admire "whole-heartedly and enthusiastically". In Nigeria we appear rich in the first group - perfect figures of fun, Shakespearian Falstaffs totally out of their elements in the academic environment, men who see a professorship as a kind of retirement benefit to be enjoyed or indeed exploited.

Of Bertrand Russel's third group, we have very few indeed. And it is a matter of joy for us that in the front rank of that small group of dedicated intellectual pioneers we have our own 50n and friend, Professor Michael Echeruo. Indeed one can hardly thank the organisers of this lecture sufficiently for their wise decision in picking on Professor Echeruo to launch the series. By so doing they have offered a double opportunity. The first, to Professor Echeruo to perform also here in our local Jerusalem, Owerri, those great intellectual feats which he has per formed times without number in Capernum and beyond. The second, to this audience to have a first hand live experience of that oratory and high voltage reasoning of Professor Echeruo's which usually leave the alert and the inquiring delirious with joy, and their opposite numbers groaning with throbbing headache. I believe we do not have in this august audience any persons in the latter category. However, my prayer for the organisers of the series is that it may be possible for them to find people capable of maintaining, in subsequent lectures, the standard of delivery and the level discuss which Professor Echeruo is going to set today.

Professor Michael Joseph Chukwu dalu Echeruo. You have, in your chosen field, become a source that generates knowledge and enlightenment. Long after that which, to the uncultivated mind, now passes for power and eminence (whether it be the chief's crown or the soldier's bayonet or the rich man's wealth) has disappeared into the limbo of time, your writings will continue to inform, to stimulate and to delight the cultivated in mind. It is for this that we salute you worthy son of a worthy family.



A.E. AFIGBO

(Professor of History)

THE AHịAJỌKỤ LECTURE MEDALLION

Part of the historical gap in our tradition is the loss of a substantial chunk of our mythology which would have given a universal reference to our modem concepts. This loss in mythology is characterized by inarticulate or even complete absence of experiential forms to our cosmic thoughts. For instance, some Igbo people associate thunder god Amadiọha with white ram; in what form do they see or describe Ala (the Earth goddess), Agwu (the rascal god that causes misfortune), or Ahịajọkụ which relates to cultivation, fertility and harvesting? Whatever form exists is hardly universal or equally vivid in the minds of most Igbo people.

This is part of the problem of symbolizing Ahịajọkụ. What has been expedient in the task is to choose a symbol with an embracing reference and certainly wider universal conceptualization in the Igbo speaking areas. Ikenga amply answers the need and hence its figure on the Ahịajọkụ Lecture medallion. The relationship between the two concepts is of success. Ahịajọkụ relates to success of harvest especially of yam while Ikenga in. all references, points to determined, purposeful, honest drive towards over-all success in life. The Imo State aIU1Ual lecture series is about a total intellectual harvest of an over-all cultural success. Ikenga, therefore, becomes an apt symbol for the medallion.

In the symbolization of Ikenga, three forms are predominant: they are the twin trust into space, the humanity and the fundamental base known as ebe. The base is ancestral offshoot; the humanity shown by mortal face is the transitory but necessary channel of action; and the twin up- thrusting forms show the self will, the push and the ego involvement in quest of honest success. Two palms facing the sky is an Igbo paralinguistic declaration of honesty. If the palms are indeterminate as usually they are, a useful ambiguity of palm and horns emerges. In fact, it is a deliberate dual symbolization prevalent in African motifs.

The dual or even multiple symbolization holds true of the Ahịajọkụ Lecture Series. As an intellectual harvest it is a show of drive towards full cultural excellence and utilization, it is also an agape,: Like the Ikenga motif the past runs through the present to the future- traditionally based present yielding a successful future. The Ahịajọkụ Lecture series as embodied in the Ikenga motif, of the medallion, articulates the past in terms of the present in order to plan for the future.

The medallion this year is wrought in pure ivory and ivory is for, nwa afo, nwa

amuru n'ute, nwa amuru n’obi ogaranya. Ivory is extremely significant in Igbo culture and so the first medallion deserved to be in ivory. It would be rewarding if the medallion is cherished and eventually willed to one's heir as an epistle of appreciation from the Imo State Government and all who would benefit from the lecture.



PLANNING COMMITTEE

1. G.M.K. Anoka - Chairman

2. Hon. Justice M. O. Eziri

3. Professor Agu U. Ogan

4. I.D. Nwoga

5. Chris Duru

6. Rev. Canon (Dr) A.O. Iwuagwu

7. Dr. E.N. Emenyeonu

8. Dr. G.C. Ukaga

9. Uchegbulam Okorie

10. G.I. Odua - Secretaty



FOREWORD

On Nkwo, Friday, 30th November, 1979 the first of the State annual lecture series was delivered at the Multipurpose Hall, Owerri. At the lecture was numerous Igbo sons and daughters as well as scholars in Igbo who gathered from many parts of the federation. Everybody who came wanted to partake of the intellectual feast named AHịAJỌKỤ LECTURE 1979. And the feast was sumptuous. Professor Michael Joseph Chukwudalu Echeruo delivered a most scholarly and moving lecture without any hints to abstruse academics. He touched on the quick cord of the audience and drew laughter, sighs, tears and applause as he pleased.

Professor Echeruo's starting of the Ahịajọkụ series has reassured the Imo State Government and all others concerned that the venture is well worth our while. We are grateful to Professor Echeruo and shall bring such lectures that will keep the high standard of erudition and delivery which he has set.

Mazi Dr. Ray Ofoegbu

Honourable Commissioner for Information,

Culture, Youth & Sports, Owerri

CITATION ON THE AHịAJỌKỤ LECTURES

A civilization is an evolution from tributary cultures. It is marked by distinct attributes of the people in that culture and results in what is generally regarded as progress and well being which ought to be identified.

One of the primary hypotheses underlying the Imo State Annual Lecture series is that several identifiable cultures in Nigeria are simultaneously making contributions to civilization and to humanity. However, a somewhat comprehensive perception is needed to more fully articulate the various strands that make up the Nigerian civilization. The individual perceptions crystalize as thought contributions which tend to survive the physical structures of any generation.

Examples of this assertion abound in history. For instance scholars and a few other people know how indebted humanity is to the Arabs for their numerals, to the Egyptians for geometry and irrigation, to the Greeks for athletics and politics and to the Romans for their law, only to mention but a few from the European classical times. Even today, each country and each culture tries consciously or unconsciously to articulate some worthy strands of its culture. The thought and material contribution of Nigeria to world civilization have ha:-have hardly been articulated. A nebulous and back handed compliment of African contribution to world art and music is not enough.

It is the primary duty of each people to articulate their thoughts and illustrate their material contribution to humanity. In this vein, therefore, the Imo State Government happily takes up the organization of this annual series which will make a deliberate effort to articulate and project Igbo culture.

Simply put, the objectives of the series are:



(a) to define aspects of Igbo culture and relate them to the main corpus of Nigerian cultures as well as to African and World civilization;

(b) to create a challenging situation for scholars to undertake relevant research on Igbo culture, especially the more basic and fundamental ones;

(c) to relate the research findings to Igbo world view and total human development;

(d) to establish a diachronic relationship in each discipline as regards Igbo human development.

The series of annual lectures, however, is asking for a broad view of the subject of culture a holistic approach, a statement distilled from learning and experience. It is the synthesis of researches and not analysis or prescriptions, that would bring the series nearer its set goal.

In other words, the annual lecture series is instituted as an intellectual harvest, hence its title, AHịAJỌKỤ LECTURES. This title is an Igbo conceptual reference to cultivation, fertility and harvest. Yam being the prestige and culturally important crop of the Igbo people that it is, its cultivation and harvesting are traditionally linked with Ahịajọkụ which is also variously called in Igbo land, Ufiejoku, Ifejiọkụ, Njọkụji, Ihinjọkụ, Ahịajọkụ, Ahajọkụ, Fejiọkụ, Ajọkụ, Aja Njọkụ, or Ajaamaja.

The Ahịajọkụ Lecture series is essentially an annual harvest of thought. All Igbo people and indeed al1 Nigerians and the black world at large are invited to join in the cultivation, harvest and feast. Spirited work is called for; Scholars, men and women in all fields of endeavour should come forth and show Igbo contribution to the Nigerian, nay, world civilization.

Each lecturer is to choose his or her language of delivery bearing in mind that the audience understands both Igbo and English.

Finally, the Government and people of Imo State expect bountiful harvest from the AHịAJỌKỤ LECTURES and pray that the series grow in yield from year to year.


KEMJIKA ANOKA

Director of Culture

A MATTER OF IDENTITY

By: PROFESSOR MICHAEL J.C. ECHERUO,

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND DEAN

POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN

Ọha na Eze,

My task, as I understand it, is quite a simple one, I am to share with you such thoughts and reflections as I have concerning the history, culture and civilization of our people, the Igbo people. I am also to relate what I say, wherever possible, to the wider movements of world history and human civilization. I have entitled my lecture "A Matter of Identity", in our language, I would call it Aha m efula.

When a moment ago I described my task as simple, I did not intend to suggest that it was an easy one. It is perhaps not too large an over statement to say the Igbo people are the most important people in the world today, and (unknown to themselves) have probably always been! We have a language which is so efficient in its structure that some say it was first spoken in Eden. We are a people who should have disappeared from the face of the earth a long time ago from a multiplicity of vicissitudes but have miraculously avoided doing so: from famine when the soils suddenly failed us; when the slave raiders carried us away in our thousands, and we laboured and wasted in the oil Delta and in the Americas; or when only a few years ago, we were massacred and bombed and shelled almost out of existence. It cannot be an easy task, therefore, to attempt any serious reflection on the Igbo people; certainly not before an audience as well informed and as committed as the one I have before me today.

Therein precisely also lies the unique privilege of this occasion. There must certainly be older, abler and more influential people than myself to assume this honour. If I had it in me - and I still do not know why not - I would have started this lecture the proper way by admitting how immensely honoured I feel to be asked to give this first lecture in the Ahịajọkụ series. If I also had it in me, I would have wanted to commend the Imo State Government, especially the Culture Division of the Ministry of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports for its foresightedness in inaugurating this series of annual harvest lectures. If I however proceed directly to the subject of my lecture, I would not want to be misunderstood. I am, of course, not ungrateful for the honour which has been done me; and certainly the Government of Imo State deserves to be congratulated on its initiative. I refrain from saying more than this only in order to avoid being under stood to be setting myself up as any kind of judge of the quality of vision here at Owerri; or it being thought that the glory of this occasion has, as we say in Igbo, "eaten my head", that is overwhelmed me.

No, this honour cannot overwhelm not now. There is an Onitsha proverb (quite appropriate to this occasion because it involves the yarn whose god, Ahịajọkụ, is the patron of today's business) which says in effect that Abu onye ji so okolobia ka oji alụ ji. I believe in the truth of that proverb. My life has been one sustained effort to preach whatever I know and whatever I believe in, in as frank (some say, over serious) a way as I can manage - in a sincere effort to woo people gently to a fuller awareness than is conventional of the dimensions of the problems they face or the issues that confront them This kind of approach does not make instant friends. But I know no other method, no other work-song. I, therefore, offer no apologies to any one if, on this occasion, I remain your masquerader whose every act will be one pompous ceremony. Today's dance is all mine. And for this occasion, my dance will be the dance of the ijele masquerade. My pace, God permitting, will (in Achebe's phrase) "perforce be slow and deliberate." I will lift and lower each foot with 'weighty ceremony."

Ceremony is something our people are a little impatient of; a decorative detail which they regard as cosmetic and so almost valueless. But ceremony, as Shakespeare put it, is the sauce to the meat. It is ceremony that adds grace and dignity (ugwu) to an occasion like this one. We celebrate Ahịajọkụ, not because it would be impossible to acknowledge the new yam without the festival but because we become a little more aware of the larger significance of that event for our lives by celebrating it. Ceremony takes the rough edges out of communal il1teraction, and allows practical minded people such as the Igbo people are, a little respectable frivolity. For many other peoples, ceremony is at the very heart of culture. For them true culture is represented in those details of communal behaviour which are added to pure function. The presentation of the kola nut is a functional event in our society; but ịgọ ọji is ceremony; and it is not uncommon to find commentators who assume that a people who devote some of their time to ceremony have a more genuine interest in culture than those who do not. There are absurdities in such conclusions, but it is probably true to say that it is to these details of ceremony that we have to go for concrete evidence of the life styles and values of any given society. The Igbo people, because they do not always cultivate ceremony, and are instinctively suspicious of mere decorativeness, are more liable than most other people to the charge of lacking culture and civilization. Today, as we celebrate Ahịajọkụ, we are doing at least two things: giving formal recognition to a festival which we were almost in danger of losing, and taking the opportunity for serious reflection on ways of understanding the deepest cultural values of the Igbo people.

There are about ac. many accounts as there are old men of t he (1rigins of both the yam and the New Yam Festival in Igbo land. According to one account, the yam was the reincarnation of the first son of an Afikpo woman sacrificed on the orders of the oracle, Ibu Ụkpabi.

The woman first sacrificed a slave and the community quite appropriately got a bastard yam, ji abana; when however she sacrificed her own son, an amadi ji a man's yam, sprouted up, a gift of the god to his starving people. There are variations on this story, and they all remind us of similar stories told about staple crops in other civilizations. Wheat, among the Romans, was an incarnation of Ceres herself, the goddess of agriculture. Perhaps the most familiar of the stories about the origin of the rituals surrounding the eating of the new yam is the one that tells how, when it was first brought into our communities, yams were an untested food item. In fear of the entire community dying from food poisoning, domestic animals, slaves and bonded men (in that order) were forced to eat the yam first. Not until it was thus established as a safe food item, did the leaders of the community allow the generality of the public to partake of it. Even then, according to some accounts, the new yam was eaten in a fixed sequence, beginning with the youngest of the most junior line ages.

These stories must be regarded as re-constructions, pure and simple. For one thing, they presuppose a more recent date for the introduction of yams into our region than the available scientific evidence would support.

The large-scale introduction of iron in West Africa dates from about 300 A.D. At least four hundred years before that, several species of yam and oil palm were already firmly established in the forest and woodland regions of West Africa, long before the introduction of other species of yams (or yam proper), plantain, banana, maize and cassava. It, of course, needed the advantage of the metal hoe and machete to make the large-scale cultivation of yams possible.

Nor must we forget the place of ede and akpụ in hi scheme of things. Ede, cocoyam, is now regarded as the women's crop for which there is an appropriately modest Ima Ede festival. The cocoyam must have been an early staple crop among our people, not only because of the many uses to which it is usually put and the many ways it can be eaten, but also because even in competition with cassava, it appears to have been relegated over time to a very secondary position. In fact, it is the cassava that has revolutionalized traditional food habits. From being a poor man's meal, it has over time made famine easier to avoid by making the failure of the yam harvest a less decisive event than it used to be.

It is worth our bearing it in mind because the New Yam Festival which we are celebrating today is not an exclusively Igbo phenomenon. There is, as many of us may know, what has been called the West African Yam Belt which stretches all the wav from the Camerouns to the Ivory Coast. The New Yam is celebrated throughout this zone. That this Festival is celebrated so extensively over much of West Africa would suggest that all local explanations for the Festival, including our own must be taken advisedly. It would perhaps be simpler to believe that the seasonal year, coinciding with the first Yam harvest, made July and August the true beginning of the season of plenty - or at least, the end of the season of scarcity.

To this we must add the fact which we are becoming increasingly aware of, that the yam is a most un economical crop to cultivate. For one thing, there is only one harvest a year. For another, cultivating yams is truly a man's job: ọrụ okorobia: only the able bodied and persevering can successfully do it. Moreover, unlike the cassava, the yam depends on its own tubers for propagation. This means that a substantial part of each harvest is earmarked for the next year's planting - a rather heavy literal wastage of both capital and profit. In consequence, the yam has become a very precious plant, indeed; and if, for any reason, its harvest failed, the community was doomed, as it were, to starvation.

Chinua Achebe tells us in his Things Fall Apart of Unọka who went to consult Agbala over his perennially poor yam harvest.

Every year, he said sadly (to the priestess), ‘before I put any crop in the earth, I sacrifice a cock to Anị, the owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejiọkụ, the god of yams. I clear the bush and set fire to it when it is dry. I sow the yams when the first rain has fallen, and stake them when the young tendrils appear. I weed...'

Many readers of that novel will remember the reply he got: 'Hold your peace!' screamed the priestess, her voice terrible as it echoed through the dark void. 'You have offended neither the gods nor your fathers. And when a man is at peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm. You, Ụnọka, are known in all the clan for the weakness of your machete and your hoe. When neighbours go out with their axe to cut down virgin forests you sow your yams on exhausted farms that take no labour to clear. They cross seven rivers to make their farms; you stay at home and offer sacrifices to a reluctant soil. Go home and work like a man.

Our harvests, then, can only be as good as our labour. Only when we have worked like men can we hope for a proper harvest and for a stock of yams with which to celebrate Ahịajọkụ. Annual celebrations and propitiations make sense only against the background of all full and thorough season's labour of both hand and brain.

But, as we also realize from Achebe's novel, even the hardworking can be unlucky, Okonkwọ, trying to redeem the bad name his lazy father Ụnọka had made for the family, borrowed 800 seed yams from a family friend to add to his planting stock. He planted the: first set of yams immediately after the first rains. That was a disaster. “The rains lasted only a brief moment. The blazing sun returned, more fierce than it had ever been known, and scorched all the green that had appeared with the rains. The earth burned like hot corals and roasted all the yams that had been sown." Later when the rains came back, Okonkwọ planted the other 800 seed yams he got from Nwakibie.

But the year had gone mad. Rain fell as it had never fallen before. For days and nights together it poured down in violent torrents, and washed away the yam heaps. Trees were uprooted and deep gorges appeared everywhere The yams put on luxuriant green leaves, but the farmers knew that without sunshine the tubers would not grow.

That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself.

There can be little doubt that a crop as precious and as demanding as the yam would in time acquire this "status of a god of life.

Times, however, change. Probably fewer people commit suicide today because of the failure of the yam harvest than because they lost a lucrative government contract. In the past, no one dared eat the new yam before the proper rituals have been performed. The exigencies of life are beginning to dictate new approaches to the rituals of the New Yam Festival. Families desperate for food will quietly harvest and eat the yams planted in their backyards (or their mgbala o mbubo); but these yams will only be eaten, they say, by women and children. It is just an easy step from women to not so prosperous men who have exhausted their stock of the previous years' yams and have large families to feed. There is a lot of common sense in the story told about Ogidi people that they buy and eat the early yams from their Atani and their Anambra neighbours before the New Yam Festival. And they do £0 on the very elegant conviction that the taboo only applies to yams harvested from one's own farm. This foreign yam the Ogidi people call O bu m kolu.

I spoke earlier of a West African Yam Belt. Let us not forget that in very important respects, we that is, the Igbo people - differ from many of the communities of the West African coastlines which celebrate the New Yam Festival. We are unlike the Yoruba or the Bini of Nigeria, or the Ashanti and Fante in Ghana in our political organisation. Whereas these other societies are imperial aristocratic or hierarchical in their traditions, we are (as they say) egalitarian and democratic. In this respect, the one West African community within the Yam Belt which shares this tradition with us are the Ewe people of Ghana. Without overstating the importance of this difference, we must surely not want to forget that we are perhaps the only major ethnic group in West Africa that lacks the monolithic cohesiveness that is usually the characteristic of people with a long history of communal interaction. All the earlier travelers who visited our part of the world never failed to comment on the fact that there did not appear to be any kind of central pan-Igbo authority among us. Every man, they said, was a god in his house; every village was an autonomous community; federations and alliances, were exactly that: affiliations of convenience which did not pretend to be new political entities capable of transforming the primary pattern of political sovereignty in the federating units.

We are now beginning to understand the nature and value of this political organisation as developed and practiced by our people. Professor Isichei has argued that we must look to other spheres than a centralized government for unifying institutions among the Igbo - to language, social institutions and customs, and to philosophical and religious values. Whatever we do, we will still come face to face with a certain radical independence of mind, a certain basic sense of individual sovereign-ness which co-exists with the communal sovereignty of ikwu na ibe obodo, and mba. Oluidah Fquiano, an Igbo man who was sold into slavery in the eighteenth century wrote a book about his recollections of Igbo society, and in that book, which was published in 1789, he remarked that "everyone contributes something to the common stock; and as we are unacquainted with idleness, we have no beggars." A French traveler of the nineteenth century, quoted by Professor Isichei, saw in Igbo society the embodiment of true liberty, "although its name was not inscribed on any monument."

Contrast this picture with another. Archbishop Crowther, for example, war disturbed by the nature of Igbo independence. He saw this independence as a "great drawback." "It is not too much to say that the moral conduct of the Ibos generally is characterised by a something approaching lawlessness.

The people as a rule are impatient of control. "Crowther specifically contrasted this characteristic with patterns among the Yorubas, his own people. "It is no tribal partiality" he wrote, which induces me to say that in this respect (the Igbo) form a striking contrast to the Yorubas, whose respect for lawfully constituted authority is often shown by a loyalty which maybe equaled, but can never be surpassed, by the most loyal civilized nations." This picture is repeated in a way by a report of 1890 by the Agent General of the Royal Niger Company which spoke of the Obosi people as a "wild and savage race of cannibals and apt to be troublesome."

There is no doubt in my mind that Igbo society, at least in the nineteenth century, was a harsh and even brutal one to live in. Traditionally hard-working, the Igbo man found the chaos of the changing world around him both seductive and disorienting. Labour is inseparable from strength. "We are all habituated to labour from our earliest years," Equiano wrote. That habit was given expression in the lean infertile years in a certain basic communal indiscipline founded on raw: strength. A man was a man only if he could both cater for his family and defend that family. In the changing environment generated by the slave, trade, a man could also boast openly of his own individual prowess, not now in the farm, but in the oil or the slave trade. Arising directly from this, each man (and each community) assumed sole responsibility for his own (or its own) defense. Violence was inevitably involved in this expression of power and provision of defense.

Igbo independence, therefore, was both natural and circumstantial. In Sierra Leone where many re-captives were settled in the nineteenth century, the Igbo segment of the community continued to express their independent character without the associated violence reported by Crowther.

Fyfe describes the Igbo people in Sierra Leone as "less clannish" than the Aku or the Yoruba who he said were "particularly noted for their solidarity." But even in Sierra Leone the Igbo would not compromise their independence. In 1839, an Igbo clerk who was alleged to have shot his white manager was burnt to death. The Igbo community could not accept the processes involved in this brutal execution. They threatened revenge on the Freetown maroons who were responsible for the crime and would have carried out their threat but for the intervention of British soldiers.

In 1859, another Igbo in Sierra Leone signed a strongly worded petition to the British Government on behalf of "National Society of the Liberated Africans and their Descendants." But curiously enough, the Igbo community would not define itself exclusively as Igbo. I was thoroughly dismayed to find that in 19th century Sierra Leone., the name Ibo, spelt variously as "Eboe" or "Heebo" was used (again according to Fyfe) as "a group name for peoples who in their homeland lacked the coherent nationhood their name implied.

"Here again we are dealing with a characteristic paradox. Most of those African slaves who wrote on behalf of their fellow slaves were themselves Igbo, though they never made much of this fact. Equiano's story was a major tribute to Igbo culture. Another Igbo slave, known to us as Aneaso, (Ani ASO] who became an assistant to the Jamaica Mission at New Carmel recorded his impressions of Igbo life in 1853; so, nearer home, did David Cekparabietoa Pepple from Isuama who was sold into slavery at Bonny about 1869. One recalls with pride the fact that in 1848, Mr. William Henry Pratt, a former Igbo slave was called to Britain to give evidence before the Parliamentary Committee investigating the slave trade. "His answers," according to one account, "displayed the easy self confidence of the successful businessman." With equal pride one should mention that the first African to take a B.A. at Oxford's University College in 1876 was Christian Cole, the grandson of an Igbo ex-slave. The point, really is that though the Igbo presence was felt as early as the 18th century, no particular honour was bestowed on the Igbo people generally. It all seemed as if there was really no coherence to the world from which these men came, that they had no identity.

The explanation – or part of the explanation for this may lie in our own refusal to acknowledge a common ancestor, in our centripetal search for origins. It does not really matter where we begin. From Onitsha and across the Niger, the claim is of Benin ancestry - which allows us to share in the glory of that well-known empire, But the Bini in turn claim an Ife ancestry. Or is it the other way round? To complicate matters further, the original Oba of Lagos is said to have been a Bini prince. Because we do not know how seriously to take these claims, we find a recent writer wondering whether the Ofala might not have "descended from or been modeled on the Igue festival at Benin. When it is remembered that for many years 'the Onitsha people were living in the realm of the Oba of Benin', the possibility is not far fetched."

Flattering as this association with Benin may be, there are others in Onitsha who reject it and claim affinity with the Igala people farther north. Indeed, many well known families in Onitsha assert with pride that they are the descendants of Igala princes. If we did not know of the frequent wars between Onitsha and Igala, we could dismiss these claims outright. As late as the 1870's the Igala's were still raiding Onitsha; so that it is almost in keeping with our search for origins from outside the Igbo heartland that a theory of Igala origins has its strong attractions. Further north in the Nsukka area, the Igala influence is obviously much stronger to the extent that, as some now claim, the Nsukka people are the warrior descendants of the Atta of Igala's noblemen. Here, the chief priest is atta-ama and a noble man is not simply an ogbu efi as in Onitsha, but an ogbu inyinya in the tradition of the Igala people. The Onitsha and Nsukka traditions of origin came to a head in the Nri tradition of Kingship and priesthood which some people insist is not '"originally" Igbo and exhibits features brought it to the area by Igala princes and their priests!

To the northeast of Igboland and immediately below it we have another set of traditions tracing Igbo origins to the Ogoja and Ekoi people. Nowhere is this search for origins more dramatic than in the case of the Aros who, according to Humphrey Eni of Ujari (in his book The Ujari People of Awka District) "might have associated with, but not descended from, Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella." This view is no less fanciful than the view that the early Portuguese, perhaps as far back as the Middle Ages, had children by their Cross River mistresses and that the Aros are the result. Arochukwu itself is said to owe more to its Akangbe and Ibibio ancestors than to the Igbo. The irony of all this is that according to their own traditions, the Efik lived first at Ibọm in Aro District and were probably descendants of a union of an Igbo man and an Ibibio woman. Professor Afigbo has examined these problems in some detail and concludes, more in exasperation than satisfaction, that it "seems not only possible but probable that, despite the agreement of all variants of oral tradition in the question of the (Aro) ethnic heterogeneity, we are in fact dealing with solid Ibo stock."

Professor Afigbo's exasperation arises from a curious fact of Aro history namely, that “nearly all the names involved in the legendary drama that led to the foundation of Aro Chukwu are Ibo names”, with the exception of Ndem, Loessien, Kakapu and Uruk which can however be explained by the fact of the Aro system of naming. “An Aro man usually names his first son after his own father, his first daughter after his mother. His second son he names either after his uncle or after his wife's father or after a friend who was useful to him during his occupational wandering beyond Aro Chukwu and whose memory he wanted to commemorate.” Whence it is that among the founding fathers of Aro Chukwu were people like Ezeke whose son was Ndem; Ndem's first son was Okpo who seduced Nachi's wife and had a son called Oke. We must, of course, add such classic names as Toti Nwa Toti, Ijeoma nta Ijeoma Ebulu and the most classic of them all, Uruk Nta, son of Uruk and father of Nachi.

To the south and southeast are the Ikwere people who say they are neither Igbo nor Ijo, but a totally new species of blackmen tracing their ancestry over the heads of their immediate neighbours to, perhaps, Egypt Or Israel. The issue clearly goes beyond the puny political compromises and calculations of this year or last. Indeed, the very circumstances which make the ancestry of the Aro a matter for controversy apply with greater vividness to the Ikwere and indeed to the Ijo people of the Eastern Delta. Because there is so much else to talk about today we will not go into any details. Suffice it to say that none of the neighbours of the Igbo people has been known to gladly assume names or claim Igbo ancestry. On the contrary, it is the Igbo who are indifferent to what names they are called or to what nationality they are attached. Consequently nothing is less likely to be true than a people, immediate to the south of Igboland and occupying territory immediately to the north of Bonny, itself a settlement of not later than the 15th century presumably first by Western Ijo migrants and subsequently by an influx of Igbo settlers - nothing, I say, is less likely to be true than that such a people bearing names like Amadi and Wali etc. and having a language so differentiated from both Ijo and Efik/Ibibio could be of other than solid Igbo stock. And this is putting things mildly.

We are concerned today with the matter of Igbo identity, and even if for no other reason, we should dwell a little longer on our connection with our Ijo neighbours of the Eastern Delta. The Ijo people are (or were) a matrilineal people. One consequence of this was that children reverted to the maternal grandparents rather than to the patrilineal line. Such a system, with all its many peculiar advantages, came under very severe pressure during the three hundred years or so of close contract with the Igbo people. First this matrilineal system was almost completely disorganized from the 16th century as a result of the intense commercial rivalry which developed between the various Ijo clans and families, or "houses", as they were called. Both as a result of manpower of the oil trade with the hinterland and of the equally taxing trade in slaves the Ijo "houses", which had virtually became a combination or the family and the 1imitedJiability company found that it was bad business to allow one's sons to marry the daughters of one's trading rivals since a man with several sons and grandsons would in practice be helping build up the manpower of his rivals. The result, as even our Ijo neighbours fully acknowledge, was a massive search not only for able-bodied Igbo youths to serve as porters and trade assistants, and slaves, but also for marriage age Igbo girls who would become wives to their sons. The children born thereby would remain within those houses or clans. Quite as conveniently, many of the so-called Igbo slaves married the daughters of the Ijo house lords and bore children who also remained within the clan. A very convenient cross matching of bloods!

No people on earth including the Igbo, can lay claim to racial purity, and the comments I have just made must not be misinterpreted. The crucial point to bear in mind is that in spite of this massive infusion of Igbo blood into the Ijo system, a process that is still going on no Igbo scholar has made any serious case for regarding the Ijo people as essentially Igbo. Quite as important, too, no strong traditions of Igbo origins have been cultivated among the Ijo people who were products of this major historical event. True to their Igbo upbringing, our women remained faithful to their Ijo husbands and named their children after their Ijo traditions. The Igbo man, too, named their children, not after themselves, but, after their hosts, in conformity with the requirements of the Ijo house tradition. They just simply gave up their identity. Nevertheless a survey of all the Eastern Ijo people with Igbo ancestry would bring in an astonishing (and possibly traumatic) result. The blame is not that of the Ijo people, but of the Igbo people who say Aha m efula, but seem at every turn of their communal history to have made every effort to ensure that that name does not survive.

Hence it is that if the question were really asked, who are the Igbo? Most so-called Igbo communities would point to the community next door. We appear to lack the cohesiveness which a common theory of origins provides for a people. I am not of course, thinking here of the detailed patterns of migration which historians and archaeologists are now establishing for this region. I am rather interested in the folk sense of common origins; the notion that though over centuries there may have been some parting of ways arising from contact with other peoples who are now officially recognized as Igbo and those others who for the time being find it inconvenient to claim to be Igbo.

A crisis of origins inevitably leads to a crisis of institutions and ultimately to a crisis of identity. Professor E.A. Alagoa who has studied Ijo history quite extensively, was very much struck by some of the cultural characteristics of the Apoi people of Okitipupa Division of Ondo State. These people are apparently' the "most westerly group separated from the main body of Ijo" in Bendel and Rivers States. They have adopted the language and manners of their Yoruba neighbours. Alagoa reports; yet they have maintained a strong interest ill certain Ijo rituals and have preserved these rituals in a form almost indistinguishable from those of the Kolokuma region of the central delta. According to Alagoa the Apoi proudly tell traditions of their Ijo origin.

Among the Igbo, the situation is different. Discontinuity, rather than identity, would seem to be the norm. In place of the unifying phenomenon of the Ahịajọkụ or Fejiọkụ festival, our main harvest festival, we now have in several communities in Anambra and even in Imo State, the phenomenon of the Ofala of which Marius Nkwo, in a moment of deserved confusion, said that "it does not appear to be an Ibo name, though it sounds like an Ibo word." The Ofala is fast becoming an institution distinct from and even actually replacing the Ahịajọkụ or harvest institution; and the Igbo people, quite characteristically, are indifferent to this development.

But if Ofala does not appear to be an Igbo word, what of ji itself? Igbo names usually do not begin with consonants. In fact, if we allow for such words beginning with the nasals m and n there are just three exceptions to this rule, namely, di ji and chi, and such derivatives from them as dike (di ike), and chukwu (chi ukwu). It is a simple phonological rule of Igbo that words like fada and foto and monki are clearly borrowings. Exceptions prove the rule, but they raise problems. We either assume that these exceptions are later phenomena in the history of the language, or in the alternative propose a pattern of phonological change (that is, of sound change) which will explain their emergence and survival. We will leave di and chi out of consideration for the moment. Ji; for its part, would appear to simply refer to most tubers. What the English call the common yam (discorea) is our ji; of course. But in the perversity of linguistic logic what the English call cocoyam we call ede, and what they call cassava we refer to as ji akpu or simply akpu. In addition we have ji awa and ji oko. Moreover, in the names Ahiajioku and Fejioku, we have a ji segment which, paradoxically enough, does not operate as if it had any original connection with the name ji. To compound it all, we have to bear in mind the general opinion that the yam tuber, or some variety of it, was (like the oil palm) indigenous to the West African area before the introduction of the Malaysian variety. All this means that a serious skeptic would wonder if the word ji owes anything to shu yi, the Chinese name for the yam discorea opposita, a name which friends who joke about such matters believe is a corruption of ishi ji.

Whatever we think, the point stands out clearly that neither Ahịajọkụ nor Fejiọkụ provides that linguistics link with ji that would suggest that the god and the tuber were generated in the same linguistic environment. If either name referred to the new yam, the affix would be ọhụụ, ọfụụ rather than ji ọkụ. A possible explanation may lie in the original Igbo way of roasting rather than of pounding yams. If so, we are dealing not simply with the new yam but with a hot (roasted) yam: ji oku. In fact, in every tradition I have come across, it is the usual routine for the authorized official to roast and eat one new yam very new moon till he exhausts the stock of sacred yams on the eve of the new moon which accompanies the Yam Festival. There is a humorous but relevant support for this conjecture in the story which Mr. J:E.N. Nwanguru tells in his book Aba and British Rule 1896-1960. According to his account, the original ancestors the Ngwa people were camped on the Owerri side of the Imo River, preparatory to crossing it in their big migration south. Some of the Ngwa leaders who were rather in a hurry did the most unorthodox thing of boiling their yams in a pot, eating .the yams as soon as they were done and crossing the river at low tide. The others followed custom and chose to roast the yams.

By the time the yams were ready to be eaten, the river had risen too high for them to cross, according to Nwanguru, these Ngwa people are regarded as the ohuhuu those who still roast their yams!

What has survived in an undisputed manner is the fact that men devoted or dedicated to the Igbo yam god have a name all to themselves: Ajọkụ, Njọkụ, Fejiọkụ, etc. We must take this as rather strong circumstantial evidence for insisting that the ji sequence in Ahiajiọkụ has a necessary linguistic connection with the Igbo word for yam. In fact, we are dealing with a deity whose name, as is so often the case, ordinary mortals can take, gladly or perforce.

What we are dealing with therefore, is .the familiar difficulty of being unable to explain an institution because we cannot explain its origins. One of the early colonial logists said the Edda were not Igbo because they "adopted the prohibition of eating new yams before the feast day" only after “the arrived at their' present habitat from the Igbo village of Uturu.” On the other hand, in an attempt to prove that the Igbo institutions are mostly imported, another anthropologist, Palmer was willing to accept Chineke as the Igbo word for God; Chukwu, however, appeared to him “doubtless only another dialectic variation of the deified ancestor” of the Jukun, N'yaku or N'yakang. If there is any relevance in all this it is perhaps that the other name for this Kings, N’jokun, is very close to the Igbo God Njoku and that the crisis surrounding our origins and institutions makes it difficult for us today to know who we are or what we celebrate.

Divinities are often the most ancient and most cherished of the institutions of society. Temples, churches, shrines, pagodas and similar structures are built in their names and for their worship. It is in my view par of the peculiar quality of Igbo life and part of the explanation for the crisis of identity which surrounds that life that the Igbo do not appear to care about churches and temples, and even about gods! This statement will shock many people who would want to simply hear that the Igbo people are very deeply religious people which is true. What is equally true is that we are a thoroughly iconoclastic people; that we keep our gods in our hearts and have only an appropriately respectful attitude to the circumstances that surround them. We respect the gods, but, as the proverb says, we also expect the gods to respect us humans. We acknowledge the power of the gods, and cultivate that power; but when these gods consistently fail to prove themselves powerful, we reserve the right to discard them and seek out new gods. In fact, circumstances greater than the gods themselves will take care of the matter.

One divinity, however, was beyond the capriciousness of Igbo men: that divinity is neither Igwe, nor even Chukwu, but Ala, the goddess of the earth. She was the one deity which no man or woman and no community could afford to offend, much less discard. If ever there was a supreme god among the Igbo it was Ala. A crisis in our institutions has obscured this fact; and on an occasion like this, perhaps a Word or two of explanation or reflection is called for.

Our early anthropologists, believing that we all owe our civilization to some ancient spark from Egypt or thereabouts, have propagated the idea of a sun god among the Igbo people, especially of the northern borderlands. Nri, was unequivocally associated in the publications of MD. W. Jeffrey's for example as founded by a sky god, Eri. The symbols of royalty and priesthood were said to confirm both the idea of a sky-god and the foreign character of these institutions. If such a sky based divinity had to have an Igbo name, it would be Igwe, the sky. And the Igbo do have that name and that god.

However, as many of us know, at Umunneọha there did develop a religious cult that went by the name Igwe ka ala. Both Umunneọha and Igwe ka ala would have been household names throughout Igboland if we had taken ourselves seriously as a people. In Achebe's Arrow of God, Ezeulu says of Nwodika's son that he is "not a poisoner although he comes from Umunneora." The comment is full of insinuations, and Ezeulu's companion, Akuebue is quick to draw out one of them. "Every lizard", he advises, "lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache." The point, of course, is that Umunneoha, the home of Igwe ka ala had quite a reputation throughout Igboland. When Ezeulu refused to call the new yam festival and a delegation of ten of the most distinguished elders went to see him over it, Nwaka of Umunneora who otherwise was eligible to attend, stayed away. His absence, Achebe comments in the novel, "showed how desperate they all were to appease Ezeulu."

Igwe ka ala was quite simply not only a devilish sect but a heretical one. Its very name was a daring - a consciously daring - challenge to the supreme deity of the Igbo people. This cult placed Igwe above Ala, and claimed him as supreme. To propose that was in itself an abomination, that is to say, a defilement of the Earth, imeru ala. In short, Umunneora and Igwe ka ala must be seen in the history of our institutions as phenomenon which came closest to setting up a god cult above that of Ala herself, the ultimate sanction to morals.

Where Igwe ka ala failed, another system succeeded. That system was the Chukwu cult of Arochukwu. Historians and ethnologists some of them tell us that on the Cross River, "each village has its secret society and society meeting house." This custom, it is argued, "spread to the adjacent Ibo divisions." In like vein, they argue that the cult of Chukwu derived from the Ibu Ukpabi cult, supposedly originally that the Ekoi people. Professor Isichei sums it up quite simply by saying that "the famous oracle grew out of a local Ibibio shrine, Ibritam." Whatever the exact history of this oracle, we cannot avoid noticing its name as a compound formed from chi and ukwu, a compound which, translated into English, would become the Big Chi. There can be no gainsaying the fact that, for all its excesses, the oracle gave the Igbo people a new name for God, and a name which, as I hope to suggest in a moment, they were quite happy to accept. That achievement was made possible by three considerations, namely, the integration of chi into this religious system, its avoidance of conflict with Ala and, finally, its decisive separation of Eke from Chi in the Igbo metaphysics.

I will not have time to go into details here. I will however want to assert that unless I am mistaken, there is no capital letter god among the Igbo outside Ala. God, among the Igbo, is certainly nothing like the God of the Christians. That is to say, as I tried to argue with members of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, some two years ago, our god is not the ONE towards whom all creation aspires, to paraphrase Plot inus and St. Augustine. He has no heaven and no troop of angels and saints ministering to him. He has promulgated no decalogue, and he has not appointed a day when he will judge the living and the dead. In fact, the dead are not dead in the Christian sense, because among Igbo people, there is a continual coming and going from this life to the other and back. What we have is CHI, probably one of the most complex theological concept ever devised to explain the Universe. It is a concept which both accounts for the Universe, explains Good and Evil, tragedy and good fortune, order and conflict, character and destiny, free-will and metaphysical order. There may he parallels in this idea with Christian thought. In fact, one Catholic priest who discussed the subject with me went so far as to suggest that perhaps CHI is Christus, the intermediary, an African anticipation of the revealed Saviour and mediator. An Igbo woman sings:

I don't have a child of my own

But don't blame me;

Don't ask me why not

Blame my chi, ask my chi.

The woman's relationship with her chi is a very complex one. Her chi, on the other hand, has questions to answer. Her chi may have been lazy and irresponsible. If so, the woman's ill luck is really profound, though nut necessarily absolute since her chi can be taunted and harassed into activity on the woman's behalf. A bad chi does not necessarily come with sin. An otherwise good woman can have a bad chi and the world will easily recognize this and pity her tragedy. In the same way, a person may have a very active and enterprising chi. Chi ya na edu ya: His chi leads him; smoothens his way for his. chi ya di ike: His chi is strong.

A woman with a bad chi prays for a better chi the next time round when, after death, she will return to the world, have a second life on earth, lọ ụwa ọzọ. In fact many Igbo people do not despair about their chi even in the present life, and have no intention whatever of waiting for change the next time round. Their prayer is to their chi for help in this present season. Chimokpolaom ugwo: May my Chi never come to hate me. Hence, also the malediction Chi gi kpọọ gị oku: May your chi set you on fire and burn you up in ashes. Prayer is therefore not an attempt to win back God's goodwill through confession and repentance, but to exhort chi to action. Sacrifice is to appease those spirit forces interfering with this fulfillment.

What the Aro cult of Chukwu did was to build on this thoroughly Igbo foundation and to propose a universal chi parallel to (though more powerful I than) the individual chi. That idea blended beautifully into the Igbo world view. Chi was separated from chi ukwu which then became the standard Igbo name for The Almighty. And yet, Ala was undisturbed; in fact it was through chukwu the Ala could best be appeased; and the priests and charlatans who propagated Chukwu's powers knew they had the good will of a la working for them. Chukwu survived; Igwe ka ala did not. It could never really have. The Ngwa People, when they decided to cross the Imo River took with them both Ekwensu and Ala. At a place then called Umuokike, they set up a shrine or okpu for Ala. Today, that place is Okpu Ala Ngwa.

If the picture I have just painted is essentially true, then We can understand why priests and kings have such a fragile tenure in Igboland. Theirs was a double-handed responsibility to serve god and man, both of them impulsive, temperamental and often ungrateful. The early missionaries who wrote about the dibia, as they called all priests, were dimly conscious of this situation. Crowther believed that the dibia were very highly respected. It was through them, he wrote, that the gods Speak and their word had to be accepted and could not be denied, They were, "in fact, the chief .ruling power among many superstitious tribes." This combination of spiritual and temporal power was neither as absolute nor as secure as many thought. The tragedy of a man like Ezeulu in Achebe's Arrow of God is to be found in his crisis of realization that his people and his god could both abandon him. At the end of the novel, the demented Ezeulu had to learn the bitter lesson which the people called the "wisdom of their ancestors", "that no man however great was greater than his people; that no man ever won judgment against his clan." In fact, as Ezeulu's own people saw things, "their god had taken sides with them against his headstrong and ambitious priest."

I will return briefly to these two adjectives "headstrong" and ambitious" in another minute. For now, let me draw attention to the immense responsibility and utter helplessness of Ezeulu's position. It was his responsibility and privilege as the Chief Priest of Ulu to announce the date of the New Yam Festival. He knew the immensity of the power which this involved; but he often wondered "if it was real."

It was true he named the day for the feast of the Pumpkin Leaves and for the New Yam feast; but he did not choose the day. He was merely the watchman. His power was no more than the power of a child over a goat that was said to be his.

Nothing reveals the predicament of power in Igbo society than this priest's own internal conflicts. Whereas no man in all Umuaro could stand up to say Ezeulu dared not refuse to name the day of the festival, he himself knew he could not actually refuse. Man, god and priest-king were thus locked in a firmly wrought chamber of self-correcting contradictious. Two of the elders, in discussing Ezeulu's refusal to announce the New Yam Feast, saw the potential for mutual destruction.

'Let me tell you one thing. A priest like Ezeulu leads a god to ruin himself. It has happened before.'

“Oh perhaps a god like Ulu leads a priest to ruin himself.”

At the very end the god, the priest and the people lose out and the New Yam (Ahịajọkụ) festival is held not on Ezeulu's orders but in the yard of St. Mark's Church under the superintendence of the cathechist, Mr. John Jaja Goodcountry.

I now, as I move to a conclusion, wish to return to those two words "headstrong" and "ambitious." No two words can better define that quality in Igbo character which has been its primary source of strength and of disaster. We are a headstrong people -sensible but headstrong. When people shook hands with Ezeulu, "he tensed his arm and put all his power into the grip, being unprepared for it, they winced and recoiled with pain." In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwọ did what a headstrong Igbo man would want to do He took his machete off its sheath, chopped off the court messenger's head, and walked home, proud that he had acted like a man but disillusioned to know that his people had allowed the other messengers to escape.

Every phase of our past history has confirmed this cult of individual daring. A certain stubbornness seems to be built into our psyche; an instinctive preference to break when perhaps it is possible only to bend. There is strength, of course, in that resoluteness; and I acknowledge in all humility, a poem I wrote in honour of one of our headstrong and valiant youngmen who fought and died in the last great war.



THE BLADE

Who? He who was,

rots, rotten,

where blades, sharp,

of grass grew two years secure

from foot of man

and woman

cropping for tubers

and hoppers that nourish.



ii

He, now mean, was

Man, hard-headed

adjutant

wielding blades, sunlike,

with fierce thrusts

that made them meat

for hoppers and maggots

by bladeroots

in fields of war.



iii

He, he man

bold blade of palm,

erect,

thunder-maker man of mine,

whose feet stood the sacred

ground of fatherland

and flung revenge

to west and south and north

till woods, marsh and men

learnt his footfall who

awed both beast and man



iv

He, who was Man,

now rots on fatherland

for glory

where watch! these blades,

glad, of grass

how green they shoot

to face

God and his good men

and ways

in the mad tumult of our loss.



v

They, all fatherland's men,

will here crop tubers,

harvests on harvests.

And to who there asks, Who?

will all men, everlasting, say,

He, Dike!

It is not this valour that I fear. It is the cult of individual ambition for power, that refusal to allow one's mind reflect that awkward assurance which was Ezeulu's doom. "No man in all Umuaro can stand up and say that I dare not. The woman who will bear the man who will say it has not yet been born." Unhappily, not only the Ezeulu but every Igbo man says the same thing of himself and exercises himself as if the nature of authority is not proverbially ambivalent in Igbo society. Our history strongly suggests that we need to moderate strength and power with discretion and diplomacy, not only among our leaders but also among the generality of our people. It is not weakness to recognize the value of discretion. It is foolhardiness to choose death (or something close to it) in place of life. Here, again, permit me to refer to Achebe's Arrow of God and to the advice given to Ezeulu concerning his son Obika who, everybody said, was a disgrace to his family. '... You are blessed with a great compound. But in all great compounds there must be people of all minds - some good, some bad, and some fearless ane some cowardly; those who bring wealth and those who scatter it, those who give advice and those who only speak the words of palm wine. That is why we say that whatever tune you play in the compound of a great man there is always someone to dance to it. I salute you.'

The challenge that we all face today is that of re-establishing our identity. As is perhaps evident from my rather oblique presentation of my subject, no simple prescription is being proposed, only an understanding of our predicament and a willingness to pay the real high price dictated by our circumstances. For centuries we have been slaves to our own people, unable to shake off tyranny except by radical and costly action. No subtler, more gently modes of redress seem applicable in an environment which has apparently no room for gentleness. For centuries we have been slaves to other cultures, or have been seen as being such slaves. In the various countries to which our brothers and sisters were carried, we laboured as other people's slaves. Today, we still labour as if we were slaves to a larger community of peoples. Let us learn from the lessons of this history and resolve to be ourselves again. We have begun well with the Ahịajọkụ lecture.

Now that I have spoken before this distinguished gathering of elders, protected by the goodwill of our Governor, and his army of his special assistants and commissioners, I must admit to change my mind.

Imo State is the heart of Igboland. It is a state of very wise and learned people; it is also a state which takes its slowest care before according public recognition to gods and people. It must have been a singular act of graciousness, indeed, for the Government of this State to accept to recognize the feast of Ahịajọkụ as worth celebrating. Modesty prevents me from also saying how immensely kind the Government of this state must be to give me the opportunity of delivering the first of the annual lectures in honour of Ahịajọkụ. That is the irony of life, and (paradoxically) my own good fortune.

Ọha na eze, me me nu.

THE IGBO LEADERSHIP CONUNDRUM AND THE QUEST FOR A RESURGENT IGBO POLITY

A discussion paper on the way forward

by: Committee of concerned lgbo intellectuals, London

SUMMARY
It is argued that the strength of Nigeria as a nation derives from the strength of its component parts. A weak Igbo nation is therefore undesirable on two accounts. Firstly, Nigeria is weakened to the extent that the Igbo nation is weak. Secondly, the Igbos themselves are the immediate recipients of any shortfall in Igbo vitality and strength. Hence, the Igbos owe it to themselves and the rest of Nigeria to make efforts not only to develop themselves to the fullest extent possible but also to learn to act coherently and with purpose and vision as a people.

The Igbo people have suffered a number of reverses in recent Nigerian history. To wit, they have lost millions of lives in the pogrom and the subsequent bid for a separate and independent state (Biafra) as well as the ensuing civil war. They have also been economically emasculated after the civil war and subsequently marginalized not only in the Nigerian political arena but also in the public services, the armed forces and the police, However, these reverses must be seen as temporary, for as the great Owelle of Onitsha (Dr Azikiwe) once remarked: "No condition is permanent.” And so it shall be with the Igbo provided they take appropriate measures to ensure this.

This paper therefore addresses the measures that are needed to change Igbo fortunes. It is suggested that, although the Igbos are a major ethnic group in Nigeria, their influence in all aspects of the Nigerian national life fails to match the degree of their relative numerical strength. This is attributed to the fact that the Igbos are neither organized to act coherently as a people nor have they defined for themselves what their group interests really are as well as how to promote and realize those interests.

 The view taken in this paper is that the starting point for Igbos is to develop an organized leadership - though one not based on personality cults, considering their republican temperament and tendencies. Present realities therefore dictate that the 19oos organize themselves through a Pan-Igbo organization that could be called the Pan-Igbo Cultural Union (PICU). The leadership of Igbos within the framework of PICU will be based not on a single individual but on a small group of competent and committed people reminiscent of the council of elders of Igbo traditional societies - though not restricted to only rich or wise old men.

A number of action programmes are suggested for PICU, and suggestions have been made as to how PICU can be lifted off the ground. In this regard, a timetable of preparatory activities is suggested that would lead to PICU being fim1ly in place and operational on 1 June, 1999.

I. INTRODUCTION
The period between the end of the second world war in 1945 and the outbreak in 1967 of civil war in Nigeria may be regarded as a glorious era in the history of the Igbos. This was the period when the political fortunes of the Igbos had risen to the zenith. An Igboman was then at the forefront, if not at the helm, of the struggle for Nigeria's political independence. With independence gained in 1960, although the Igbos failed to win the ultimate prize of political power in the form of Prime Minister of the Federation, nevertheless the Igbos not only produced the first indigenous governor- general and later (ceremonial) President of the Federation, while the NCNC which eventually became a political party dominated by Igbos provided one of the three main legs on which Nigeria's political stability stood. In the federal bureaucracy, the Igbos not only provided some of the more powerful advisers and permanent secretaries, but a crop of very influential middle-level civil servants. In the armed forces, and police, the Igbos had more than their fare share of the officer corps and indeed eventually produced the first indigenous general and army commander. In education, the early lead of the Yorubas in terms of producing the educated elite was quickly bridged, so much so that the first indigenous vice-chancellors of the first two of Nigeria's federal owned universities were Igbos. In the economic field there were entrepreneurial giants like the late Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, and many other successful business men in Lagos, Kano, Onitsha, Aba and Port Harcourt.

Socially and culturally, the Igbos developed a great sense of solidarity and unity. In this regard, the Igbo State Union, a non-partisan organisation was to playa leading role in promoting not only Igbo unity and ethics but also a will to progress. The Igbo man outside Igbo land not only saw himself as his brother's keeper, but actually regarded other Igbos as kinsmen and 'brothers' (nwanna!). Everything it appeared was going for the Igbo. But fortunately, or unfortunately this carefully built up unity of the Igbo was never allowed to translate into political advantage in the internal struggle for political power once the colonial masters had departed our shores

Although the majority of Igbos supported the NCNC, they did not do so because it was an Igbo political party or because it was led by Igbos. And sure enough, when splinter parties appeared in Igboland (led respectively by Drs K. O. Mbadawe and Chike Obi) they had no difficulty in attracting Igbo followers - often the only followers they had. Thus an important principle of partisan politics - that of not dissipating energy and force in internal rivalry - was never recognised or advocated by Igbo leaders. This is quite understandable because the Igbos by temperament are not a subservient people. Indeed, their dynamism, outspokenness and almost total lack of political guile as well as diplomacy were subsequently to prove their undoing. The above qualities were badly in need - during the political crises of 1964 as well as 1965/67. Unfortunately, the Igbo leaders then preferred to settle for form rather than substance. With strategic thinking apparently lacking in the Igbo vocabulary, the opportunities for advancement of Igbo hegemony were not recognised and thus were lost. It is this lack of strategic thinking as well as caution and pragmatism that led to a fixation on sovereignty for Biafra at all costs. The leadership, rather unfortunately, failed to consider what fate would befall the Igbos if secession failed or was aborted. Consequently there was no realistic fall-back position during negotiations with Nigeria, and certainly no "Plan B", or a contingency plan to ensure that political losses were cut to a minimum, in the event that the war was lost, as seemed probable to any realistic observer.

With hindsight, the collapse of Biafra, given the above facts, was not only inevitable but in a wider sense a valuable lesson for the Igbos. There were indeed a number of lessons to be learnt. First, the saying by Lord Palmiston, that in politics, there are no permanent enemies, but only permanent interests, is especially relevant to Igbo political aspirations. The Igbos often pretended that they were not interested in Igbo hegemony in Nigerian politics. It was a very unfortunate attitude, because her other opponents demonstrated again and again that hegemony was their main if not only goal. In any case, the Igbo abiding belief in a united Nigeria was not seriously shared by other major players in the political field, their concept of unity or one Nigeria was one which enabled them to lord it over others. The second lesson, is the importance of reaching real accommodation if not friendship with neighbours. After all, the eagerness with which some of our neighbours welcomed and supported the invading federal forces during the civil cannot be a better testimony to their alienation from the Igbos. Even in post-war politics (and politics after all is said to be war by other means) the Igbos need the buffer and support and undoubtedly the alliance of their neighbours. The third lesson is the fact that the issue of Igbo leadership had to be faced. Until the Civil war, the Igbos had never believed in the idea of a tribal leadership based on personality cults. Indeed they were proud of their pseudo-republicanism. Hence the saying "Igbo enwe". Nonetheless, the time has come for Igbos to look critically at the question of Igbo leadership. Indeed there has been a long standing confusion about this. The defunct Igbo Union had prominent leaders but these were not political juggernauts in the ordinary sense, On the other hand, the NCNC leaders although politically vigorous, could not deign to speak for the totality of Igbos as a people, because it was not an Igbo party. There was thus a dichotomy, which though healthy, was nevelthe1ess inappropriate for the winner takes all paradigm of Nigerian politics. The confusion was further Compounded by a new class of Igbo leaders - the new breed traditional rulers and their chiefs. The fact is, with the exception of one or two traditional rulers, most of the so-called traditional rulers were co1onially created warrant chiefs with no ounce of "royal blood" in them. Since then, any business magnate and today even 419ers can purchase a traditional rulership or chieftaincy title without must fuss. And in this pantomime, no one is really deceived about the hollow influence and importance of such "rulers"-

It was therefore inevitable that this unconfronted issue of Igbo leadership would constitute an acute problem for the Igbos in their effort to rebuild the Igbo nation from the ashes of civil war defeat. It was a war that not only castrated the Igbos economically, but even more so politically. It was a war that psychologically sapped the Igbos of their self confidence as a people. Hence to rebuild and to recover the pre- war Igbo unity and glory required some kind of organisation and leadership. Whereas the Igbos were accustomed to excel as individuals before the w~, this was no longer important or relevant after the war, especially if the powers that be were not disposed to recognise or reward excellence and talent in a playing field that was not flat. And so with such a system, the Igbo whether in politics, armed forces, economy, education etc. was always at a disadvantage.

It is therefore not surprising that for the Igbos the issue of leadership has assumed such gargantuan proportions that the response has been a multiplicity of leadership bids and claims by both individuals and groups. Unfortunately, the problem, given the Igbo temperament, is not one that can be solved through a top-down approach. Indeed, the crucial question is, and has always been, for the Igbos: Leadership for what? This naturally must lead to some dialectical analysis of the Current situation as a staffing point for finding answers. The issue is thus a big one and no single mind can possibly provide all the answers. Hence the purpose of the present paper is: only to raise issues and excite debate in the hope that the Igbos themselves can be moved to look carefully at the perennial question of their leadership by defining what their common interests and goals are or should be; the nature, form and purpose of organising a common leadership, and a workable framework for future actions in the realisation of the chosen goals.

II. THE NATURE OF LEADERSHIP
According to the Oxford dictionary of current English, the verb (to) lead, has a number of meanings including the following:

cause to go with one, especially by guiding or going in front;

direct the actions and opinions of others;

guide by persuasion example;

be in charge;

go first, be ahead in a race etc.,

have the first place in.

The dictionary goes on to define the noun leader not only as B person that leads, but also as a person followed by others.

From the above, one can infer that the phenomenon of leadership is an important characteristic of the human social order. It is also a mark of the collective intelligence and 8op~stication of a group. For without leadership, the diverse talents, skins, aptitudes, attributes, powers and personal resources generally could not be pooled and harnessed in the service of the common good. Leadership not only offers direction and purpose but also perseverance in the pursuit of commonly accepted or defined goals, Indeed, through leadership the goals themselves are often envisioned and articulated on behalf of the group. All in all leadership helps to promote not only social progress but social efficiency.

Although a group needs leaders in order to exist in harmony and efficiency within its confines, the need for leadership is much greater when progress and the internal stability of the group are threatened by internal or external forces. At such a time, it becomes patent and inevitable that joint and co-ordinated action be taken to meet the threat. It is therefore not surprising that the great world leaders recorded by history emerged in the course of the struggle of groups against intemaVexterna1 aggression or the forces of ignorance.

In this century one can readily think of leaders, from Roosevelt, Lenin, Stalin and Churchill to Macy and Gorbachev; men who changed the course of history, Other leaders that come to mind include the activists like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Mandela, who fought bravely for what they believed was right. There also the pioneers, who pushed forward the boundaries of human experience, such as Lindbergh, Hillary, Tensing and Freud; the innovators, including such visionaries like Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Bill Gates, whose achievements have changed the way we live the scientists, such as thinkers of the stature of Einstein, Marie Curie, Alexander Fleming ;and Stephen Hawkins; and of course the creators, including such artists as Picasso, Joyce, Chaplain and our own Enweonwu as well as E. T. Mensah, who gave us new ways to experience the world. Coming nearer home we have independence lighters like Jomo Kenyata, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah and out own Nnamdi Azikiwe.

What then are the qualities that ~ark out such men? Clearly, examples of leaders indicated above do not and cannot match any identikit picture of a leader. Take for example two contemporaneous leaders like Stalin and Churchill. They could not be any more different. Yet they served the immediate needs of their particular groups at a particular: place and time. Nor is a leader good for all time. Churchill was certainly a great war leader par excellence, and yet shortly after winning the second world war, the British electorate rejected him as their peace time Prime Minister at the polls. It therefore seems that various situations call forth different kinds of leaders. Sometimes the problem is a moral one, and the system not only throws up, but welcomes such leaders like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Sometimes the problem is to do with economics and national security and leaders like Ronald Regan emerge. But at the end of the day, each of these leaders must have demonstrated some talents and qualities out of a huge basket that includes vision, ability to rally and organise, a sense of moral justice, power and elocution, patience, magnanimity, selflessness, ingenuity and reactive thought, group consciousness, power and accommodation with others (though not with principles), perseverance. integrity and honesty, sense of service to the community, compassion and personal discipline among others. We therefore find that leaders tend to be pioneers, trail blazers, innovators, ground breakers, trend setters, pacemakers, visionaries and teachers in some areas of life in which they have talent and have demonstrated competence.

From the above, the leadership problem facing the Igbo is not really a persona or personality problem. To just choose an Igbo leadership in the abstract is not only a useless exercise, but a negative step. This brings us back to the question posed earlier: Leadership fur what? The answer actually provides the key to resolving the Igbo leadership conundrum. Indeed the real issue facing the Igbo is the question of collective Igbo interests - short and long term. The proposition here is that Igbo leaders per se are only relevant in terms of these interests. When these interests are articulated and widely accepted, then the basis for recognising the required leaders will be clear and the right leadership will emerge naturally. Moreover as the group interests change (as they must in response to circumstances) the type of leaders required would also change.


III. THE QUESTION OF IGBO LEADERSHIP IN POST CIVIL WAR NIGERIA
A. Introduction
Whereas the issue of a collective leadership for the Igbos was superfluous and thus not a pressing problem before the civil war, the failure of the secession bid made it an urgent problem. As indicated earlier, it may be stated with hindsight that the Biafran leadership not being very good politicians and strategists, did not appear to have prepared for failure as such. To even think of failure would then have been regarded as high treason! Indeed the much talked about final resort to guerrilla warfare was merely an exercise in posturing and never took off. How could guerrilla action have started when the Biafran Commander-in-Chief was the first to jump the sinking ship of state? Thereafter, it was a question of everyone to himself and God for us all. This was the mass psychology of the Igbos in defeat. It was exactly the same psychology with which they re-entered the erstwhile enemy territory called Nigeria. There was no one to gather the pieces of the war battered and defunct Biafra. Until now there has not been any real effort to rehabilitate the Igbos from the psychological trauma of losing a war. The victorious Nigerians, even if magnanimous in victory, could not be expected to do this for them. True, General Gowon did the best any outsider could do through his 3Rs[1], but it was not enough. The only window of opportunity lay with the then Administrator of East Central State: himself an Igbo. Undoubtedly he tried to get the best deal he could for the 19bos behind the scenes. But he failed to provide a badly needed rallying point for the Igbos, nor did he regard himself as an Igbo leader as such. Indeed, be failed to seize the opportunity of filling the naked vacuum in Igbo leadership after the war. Perhaps this was asking too much of a man who apparently could not himself readily identify with his own people at their hour of greatest need. From the sober perspective of realism, it was a very daunting task for a junior university lecturer suddenly catapulted to national political eminence to be able to provide leadership to a galaxy of experienced Igbo leaders and elite. Since the end of the war the Igbos as individuals have tended to do rather well. In terms of post-war reconstruction, it is to their eternal credit that within a decade or so and through self- effort the physical scars of war had largely been obliterated in Igboland. But while some individual Igbos have done quite well, many soon found the existence of glass ceilings in the way of their progress. The rules of the game bad changed with the end of the war. Hence forth, fair competition, talent, hardwork industry and merit would not by themselves any longer ensure success (as in the colonial days) as the Igbo sought to make a living. Moreover the creation or twelve states out of toe four pre-war regions with the Igbos getting only one state was a clever administrative maneuver to permanently marginalise the Igbos politically. Worse still, the culture of state looting and deconstruction which governed the practice of politics at the Federal level soon permeated to the states. And where heretofore communal property was held sacrosanct in Igbo land, most of the post war politicians (military and civil) have, even in Igbo states, not thought twice before diverting public resources to private pockets, and soon by the multiplier effect produce new business millionaires who would now join the political bandwagon and ensure the calcification of this heretofore foreign, if not errant, political behaviour and culture. The situation is now further compounded by the emergence of 419 chiefs and millionaires.

The Igbos have thus found themselves in an environment in which the age-old social order has not only been subverted, but completely dismantled. Today being highly educated means absolutely nothing in the Igbo social context. Money not only rules the day but also purchases respectability not only in the eyes of the churches but in society generally. Today no one is interested in how those who parade their ill gotten wealth, acquired it. The tragedy is that wealth is now synonymous with leadership. People go into politics not to serve but to make money. Others go into business not to serve but to make money in order to enter politics, and then make more money. In this money making paradigm of politics, no one ever thinks of service, or even the welfare of the people the politicians purport to represent and serve. It is clearly a peculiar form of democracy and leadership that is totally alien to age old Igbo customs and culture generally. At the end of the day, what the Igbos have to deal with, from their so called "successful" men, is what may be called the arrogance of wealth and indeed power. Fortunately, however, the natural law of evolution dictates that only the fittest will survive. Hence, when the real job of Igbo nation building begins, those among the present crop of Igbo nation building begins, those not relevant to the effort will be left behind on the sands of time.

B. Leadership for What?
One may start by asking an obvious question: Why do the Igbos as a people need a leader so badly today? In a recent group discussion with Dr Pius Okigbo, Chief Raph Uwechue, tried to answer this question by saying that what the Igbos need today is not so much a national leader: who happens to be an Igbo man as much as an Igbo man who is a leader of the Igbo people. As Uwechue further remarked, there is, a not too subtle difference between an Igboman who happens to be a "national' leader and an Igboman who is a leader of the Igbo people as such. The reality though is that most of the Igbos who could be counted among prominent Nigerian leaders were first and foremost "Nigerians". Indeed their being Igbos was secondary. But the same could not be said of the other non-Igbo Nigerian leaders. Thus when the rest of Nigeria fought against Biafra during the civil war, the battle cry was "one Nigeria", even though in their heart of hearts the rest of Nigeria knew they did not mean and could not have meant it. Indeed, the history of Nigeria would have been altered drastically and beyond recognition if the former Heads of State, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and General Ironsi, though Igbo themselves, had had an Igbo agenda. Instead, they put Nigeria first and Igbos last. Unfortunately, for the Igbos, the other Nigerian Heads of State did not make the same mistake. They put their tribes or ethnic groups first and Nigeria second. Indeed, it would seem as if it was only the Igbos that believed and promoted the illusion of one Nigeria. One may, therefore, go as far as stating that tribalism as such did not bedevil Nigerian politics as much as the fact that most Nigerian political leaders, with perhaps the exception of the Igbos among them never realty internalized the concept of one Nigeria. Thus Ahmadu Bello did not even attempt to masquerade himself as a Nigerian leader. He was simply a Fulani and a Northern leader, Obafemi Awolowo on the other hand, although he stomped about as a Nigerian leader, nevertheless approached Nigerian issues from the narrow perspective of Yoruba tribal interests.

The net result of the Igbo internalisation of the doctrine (as opposed to the reality) of one Nigeria, is that at all stages, the Igbos had lost out in the Nigerian poker game of politics. Initially the game plan was not obvious to the Igbos. Having been outsmarted for a regional leadership position in the then Western Region, Dr Azikiwe sought refuge in the East and thereafter entered into an unholy alliance with the North to sequester power in the centre. But it was not an alliance of equals or principles and this move seems to have presaged the now familiar standard tactics of Igbos playing second fiddle to the powers that be in Nigerian politics. In other words, the Igbos appear to have psychologically adjusted themselves to the position of politically being 5econd cl88s citizens in their own country. The consequence of this situation is that the Igbos appear to be marginalized in all important aspects of Nigerian life. So whether one thinks of political, military, bureaucratic or economic power, etc., the Igbos are no longer major players in Nigeria. In fact, it was only of recent and after a long period of agitation and political struggle that the Igbos managed to secure a reasonable proportion out of the total number of states and local government areas created by various military regimes out of the geographical expression known as Nigeria.

It is often claimed by certain Nigerian political groups that politics is a game of numbers. Although tills assertion is true enough, the snag is that Nigerians have so far not been able to conduct an accurate and believable national census. At one point, whole villages in the riverine areas were said to have been omitted in the exercise. At other times, the figures appeared to have been so blatantly doctored that the only way any intelligent person could understand them is to assume that cattle and perhaps other live stock were deliberately enumerated in some parts of Nigeria in order to make up the numbers and thus gain political advantage. But the reality is that no one now knows for sure which part of the country has the preponderance of the all too important "numbers". But if one were to project the census figures produced by the former colonial masters (which are probably the most reliable in the history of Nigerian censuses), one would expect that the Igbos would account for anything between a quarter and one third of the present Nigerian population. Put differently, one out of every three or four Nigerians is Igbo! This means that if indeed politics (or more specifically, democracy) is a game of numbers, the Igbos should automatically constitute a force to be reckoned with in Nigerian politics - provided they are organized; and act coherently. The situation today is that the Igbos are neither ipso factor, a force to be reckoned with in Nigerian politics nor are they organized and united in their political vision and struggle. Because the Nigerian economy is dictated by present politica1 realities, the Igbo are confronted by a double-barreled challenge of acquiring both political and economic power. However, in trying to devise a solution to this conundrum, one must appreciate the aberrant nature of the Nigerian political situation. In economically self-reliant and thriving nations, economic power thought not independent of politics, is always in the background and provides the key to political power. Hence, the situation in Nigeria where economic power is held hostage by political power is not only abnormal but temporary. Taking a long term view of this problem, it should be conceded that in due course group economic power rather than the power of individual wealth will come to dictate if not dominate future Nigerian politics. If this is so, then the challenge before the Igbos is that of exploiting their large numbers as well as their well known attribute of industry and hardwork towards building themselves up to achieve not only economic prosperity but also self reliance. This is all the more important because petroleum, which is the main source of the country's wealth is a wasting asset which should drop into insignificance in about a generation from now. Luckily for the Igbos, the huge national income from oil revenues is being mismanaged when it is not being looted, and those ethnic groups that control the oil revenues today, do not seem to be doing all that much to obtain a good head start in the fierce internal economic competition that will mark the end of the oil boom days.

Consequently the challenge facing the Igbos and their leaders is ultimately that of achieving economic self reliance (as much as is possible) such that their economic prosperity becomes a child of their own effort and endeavours rather than the result of some largesse from government. In addition to this, the Igbos need to mobilise and organise themselves politically, in order to sharpen and fine-tune their political and economic interests as a background for future political activities. This, however, does not mean that the Igbos as a group should be narrowly partisan in their approach to politics, but that their approach to partisan politics should be informed at all times by Igbo vital interests. The rest of this paper will attempt to deal with the tactics, strategies and practicalities in this quest for a resurgent Igbo nation.

IV. FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION
A. Introduction
All being well, Nigeria would probably be returned to civilian rule in the last quarter of 1998. The details of the political landscape at that time are yet unclear and difficult to predict. However, it is already clear from the make-up of the five registered political parties and the known presidential aspirants that an Igbo man is rather unlikely to emerge after an electoral process as the President of the Third Nigerian Republic. However, if the proposed zoning of the major political offices in the country is implemented, the Igbos may well hope that if the Presidency eludes them (as it most likely would), they may settle for one of the following: Vice President, Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Out of the 36 states in the country, the Igbos are also certain to acquire governorships in at least five states (Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo) and possible also in two other states (Delta and Rivers) where they have a large presence. This means that at the beginning of the next Republic, the Igbos as a group may not emerge strong enough in the political scheme of things. However, this should not dampen their spirit. For one thing, the country would not then be described as politically stable. For another, the Nigerian economy may not have recovered sufficiently to sustain the civil political process. But the bottom line is that the problems that led to the civil war and which still haunt the nation politic is yet to be addressed. Hence for Nigeria, to be or not to be remains the overriding question.

All of the above points to the fact that the Igbos would really have no choice but to fend for themselves. This is so, because if Nigeria survives politicai1y after 1998, the Igbos would need to be strong as a people in order to maximise their political advantage. If however, Nigeria were to settle into a confederation, or worse still disintegrate, then the Igbos without question would have to fend for themselves. But either way, the best course of action for the Igbos is to adopt a more inward looking posture and to strive towards self reliance.

B. Framework for mobilisation
1. Introduction
Long before Nigeria gained political independence from the British in 1960, the Igbos as a people had established an organisation known as the Ibo the State Union. In order to understand what this was all about, we quote here from the Presidential address delivered by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe to the Ibo State Assembly held at Aba on Saturday, 25 June, 1949:

“...The Igbo people have reached a cross-road and it is for us to decide which is the right course to follow. We are confronted with routes leading to diverse goals, but as I can see it, there is only one road that I can safely recommend for us to thread, and it is the road to self-determination for the Igbo within the framework of a federated commonwealth of Nigeria and the Cameroons, leading to a United States of Africa. Other roads in my opinions are calculated to lead us astray from the path of a national self-realisation. Is it not historically significant that throughout the glorious history of Africa, the Igbo is one of the select few to have escaped the humiliation of a conqueror's sword or to be a victim of Carthaginian treaty? Search through the records of African history and you will fail to find an occasion when in any pitched battle any African nation has either marched across Igbo territory or subjected the Igbo nation to a humiliating conquest. Instead there is record to show that the martial prowess of the Igbos at all stages of human history, has enabled them not only survive persecution, but also to adapt themselves to the role thus thrust upon them by history, of preserving all that is best and most noble in African culture and tradition…”

Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe then went on to describe the apparent marginalisation of the Igbos in the 1940s in the scheme of things in Nigeria bordering on neglect and on outright discrimination in political representation as well as provision of amenities.

He continues:
“On the economic plane, I cannot sufficiently impress you because you are too familiar with the victimisation which is our fate. Look at our roads, how many of them are toned, compared, for example with the roads in other parts of the country? Those of you who have traveled to this assembly by toad are witnesses of the corrugated and utterly unworthy state of the roads which traverse Igbo land, in spite of the fact that four million Igbo people pay taxes in order, among others, to have good roads. With roads must be considered the system of communications, water and electricity supplies. How many of our towns, for example have complete postal, telegraph, telephone and wireless services compared to towns in other parts of Nigeria? How many have pipe-borne water supplies? How many have electricity undertakings? Does not the Igbo tax payer fulfill his civic duty? Why then, must he be a victim of studied official victimization? Today these disabilities have been intensified…

The only worthwhile stand we can make as a nation is to assert our right to self-determination, as a unit of a prospective Federal Commonwealth of Nigeria and the Cameroons where our rights will be respected and safeguarded. Roughly speaking, there are twenty main dialectical regions in the Igbo nation, which can conveniently be departmentalised as Provinces of an Igbo state to wit: Mbamili in the North West; Aniocha in the West, Anidinma and Ukwuani in the South East, Nsukka and Udi in the North, Awgu, Awka, and Onitsha in the Centre, Ogbaru in the South. Abakaliki and Afikpo in the North West, Okigwe, Orlu. Owerri and Mbaise in the East, Ngwa, Bende , Abiriba, Ohafia and Etche in the South West. These Provinces can have their territorial boundaries delimited, they can select their capitals, and then can conveniently develop their resources both for their common benefit and for those of other nationalities who made up this country called Nigeria and the Cameroons."

Again at the close of the Igbo State Assembly convened under the auspices of the Igbo State Union at Aba on 26th June 1949, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in the course of his farewell message, said the following:

“... If the lessons of history mean anything, it must be concluded that the Igbo people though numerous, are friendly in their disposition, charitable in their relations with others and artistic in their temperament. But they are pugnacious when aroused and they resist injustice no matter from what quartet. They are industrious and enterprising and have powers of adaptability due to their colonising instinct, which has .ed them to migrate to almost every part of West African. Granting that in any nation there must exist some undesirable characters, why should the Igbo nation be marked down for wholesale victimization, if the above sterling virtues are inherent in some of them."

The irony of the above excursion into Igbo history is that the dial of Igbo political development had not only moved full circle, but that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe lived long enough to see it. Today, just as in the late 1940s, the Igbos are politically as marginalized as ever. In this regard, the Igbos have a saying to the effect that "if a child does not bother to understand what fate befell his dead father, then he is bound to suffer the same fate as his father." In this discourse, we have tried to review some of the outstanding mistakes of the past. The situation now calls for renewal action along the lines already alluded to.

2. Mobilising and organizing the Igbo people
The starting point for any remedial action is the urgent need to mobilise and organise Igbo people. In doing this, there is a need for the existence and unity of Nigeria as a polity to be acknowledged. In doing so it must be recognised that because of the federal and multi-ethnic nature of Nigeria; a strong Nigeria must necessarily be predicated on the strength of its component parts. A strong Igbo nation therefore can only contribute to a strong Nigeria. But the strength of the Igbo nation is clearly the responsibility of the Igbos themselves.

It is therefore proposed that the Igbos should form a formal pan-Igbo organisation for the immense job of political education and mobilisation as well as social organisation dictated by the present situation. In this regard, it is inappropriate to resurrect the banned[2] Igbo State Union, since the word "state" now has other connotations and would thus be misunderstood. Besides, Nigeria of the 1990's is quite different from the Nigeria of the 1940's. It is therefore suggested that the title of the proposed organisation should be Pan Igbo Cultural Union (PICU). This title is considered particularly attractive, not only because no one can begrudge the Igbos the right to maintain and develop their culture, but also because the world "culture" is all-embracing covering the intellectual and artistic achievement and expression of a people. Nevertheless the PICU should be a non-partisan and non-religious organisation. Its full membership should be open to any person with anyone of the two parents being Igbo or anyone married to an Igbo. Associate membership should also be available to any person who identifies with the aspirations of the Igbos as enunciated by the PICU.

The PICU should have branches at the state, LGA and town levels as well as overseas. Leadership positions at national and other sub-ordinate levels should be chosen democratically by direct election of registered members at village/town level and at higher levels by election through an electoral college system. The PICU should be led by a national president and the PICU branches by branch presidents.

The PICU should organise such activities as would promote the progress of Igbo people in the following areas:
Language and culture (including festivals and congresses and promotion of Igbo language)

Political education and mobilization

General education

Information and propaganda

Industry, science and technology

Finance and economic development

There should be a PICU headquarters secretariat to be sited at one of the Igbo State capitals, and possibly Enugu, as the oldest Igbo capital city. The PICU Secretariat should be manned by full-time employees with a secretary-general as the Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Executive. The overall policies and affairs of PICU should be under the charge of a PICU Central Committee under the chairmanship of a PICU national president. To emphasise the idea of a collective leadership for the Igbos, the National President of PICU should be held annually in rotation among the PICU branch presidents of Igbo states who would automatically be members of the PICU Central Committee.

The PICU Central Committee will be serviced by the permanent PICU Headquarters Secretariat. The Central Committee should also be free to appoint standing action committees and commissions to deal with any problems such as in:
(a) finance and economic development (including fund raising and investments etc.)
(b) industry, science and technology
(c) political education and mobilization
(d) general education
(e) language and culture
(f) festival and congresses (e.g. Ahajioku)
(g) youth and sports (traditional and modem)

However PICU should not be in competition with Federal/State/Local governments in carrying out the above activities. Its role must be to facilitate, to enrich, and to augment and extend the efforts of government. It must therefore support all such actions of government that are geared in the interest of Igbo people.

3. PICU Branches

The following hierarchy of PICU branches should be established:
(a) State branches - these should be established in all states of the Federation. Each state branch should be led by a state president together with a state executive committee. Each state branch, particularly in the Igbo states, should work towards establishing a branch PICU secretariat manned by full/part-time employees.

(b) overseas branches - these would be established in those countries (e.g. UK, USA. Germany, Canada, France, South Africa. etc.) where there is a good concentration of resident Igbos. Each country branch should be led by a country president together with an executive council. Where feasible a permanent secretariat should be established, manned by full/part-time employees as appropriate.

(c) local government area branches - each LGA in Igbo mates should have a PICU branch, led by an LGA president and an executive committee. The function of the LGA branches is to co-ordinate the activities of the PICU town branches in the LGA.

(d) town branches - :in any town, in Nigeria or overseas, where a good number (e.g. 20 or above) of Igbos reside there should be established a PICU town branch, led by a town president and an executive committee. All grass roots activities should take place at town levels. Depending on economic circumstances, the town branches should establish and maintain a PICU Secretariat manned by full/part-time employees as appropriate.

4. PICU Action Programmes
As stated earlier, the purpose of establishing PICU is to give the Igbos a centre of reference, as well as a mechanism for collective thinking and planning not only in tactical but also in strategic terms, as the Igbos make a bid to reassert and re-establish themselves in the Nigerian polity and economy of the incoming millennium. PICU will not be a political party; and therefore will not engage in partisan politics. However, as a political reference point vis-à-vis the best interests of the Igbos, it would give general direction as the Igbos make their individual political choices. PICU also will not compete with any government - federal, state or local - in ministering to the needs of the Igbos. PICU will therefore aim to fulfill those needs of the Igbos as a people that governments cannot or are ill-suited to fulfill. In particular it will augment and extend government efforts in activities and projects meant to benefit the Igbos. PICU will particularly contribute in the following areas:

(a) Language and culture:
PICU in association with the existing Society for the Promotion of Igbo language should take all necessary measures towards the promotion of Igbo language. Efforts should be geared towards the development of the already established spoken and written central Igbo language. To this end special importance should be attached to the promotion of Igbo literature, particularly in primary schools of Igbo speaking states. Overseas PICU branches should take special measures to ensure that Igbo children born and resident overseas are fluent in Igbo language.

The annual Ahajioku festival currently undertaken by the Imo State Government should be broadened into a PICU affair, but with substantial material support of State Governments in Igbo speaking states. The festival should be all embracing. It should also include the display of Igbo culture as well as industrial, scientific and technological prowess. Other events should include exhibitions and sale of Igbo cultural foods and drinks, dance and music displays including masquerades and Igbo traditional sports. The Ahajioku festival should continue to hold annually and should be hosted in rotation by state governments of Igbo states.

(b) Political education:
PICU should organise talks, seminars and discussion groups on the political future of the Igbos. Such activities should seek to educate Igbo masses on current affairs in Nigeria especially as they affect Igbo interests. More importantly, these fora should provide the opportunity for a sense of Igbo identity to be inculcated and for the appreciation of political challenges and opportunities in the country through the spectacles of Igbo interests. In this regard, full use will be made of PICU news letters and magazines as well as newspapers to push this effort.

(c) General education:
It is now a matter of deep regret that a large proportion of Igbo youths (particularly males) have become disillusioned about the value of education, and many Igbo males are now school drop-outs. Although this trend is understandable in a national setting in which education is not a guaranteed passport to the good life, yet it is a misguided response to the fact that excellence and merit count for little in the Nigerian scheme of things. Unfortunately, the present apathy if allowed to continue unchecked is bound to prove very costly to the Igbo nation within a generation. Consequently PICU should take all necessary measures towards educating Igbo parents as well as youths on the importance of formal education. In particular, Igbo youths should be encouraged to study the sciences with a view to going into science and technology based professions, especially information technology and biotechnology.

(d) Industry, science and technology:
It has been said that the three major tribes in Nigeria have some easily recognisable attributes. Thus the Hausas/Fulanis are said to have a penchant for political power; the Yorubas were said to control the national economy (though this is hardly true today), while the Igbos were renowned for their prowess in science and technology. Indeed, the Igbos did prove their scientific and technological ingenuity and creativeness during the civil war. All that is left of this spirit of creativity is the Project Development Agency (PRODA) at Enugu, now being managed by the Federal Government.

It may be noted in this regard that the Awka blacksmiths were a forerunner and reminder of this Igbo proclivity. That this type of creative instinct is not dead is demonstrated by the fact that motor vehicle spare parts entrepreneurs at Nnewi are known to be able to copy or fashion any motor vehicle spare part. In fact such is their level of expertise, that today any motor vehicle spare part which cannot be found at Nnewi cannot be found in any other part of Nigeria.

PICU in association with appropriate government agencies should encourage and promote the creative potential of our youths in science and technology - by giving recognition to successful Igbo scientists/engineers as well as Igbo inventions, and where possible material support.

PICU should give particular attention to the industrialisation of Igbo land. In this regard, Igbo entrepreneurs (in co-operation with foreign partners and investors where appropriate) should establish manufacturing industries in Igbo land. In doing so, due attention should be paid to downstream petrochemical industries (as a complement to the now developing upstream petrochemical industries).

(e) Human resources survey and utilisation:
One of the biggest assets of the Igbos is their human resources. As of date, Igbos have excelled in all aspects of human endeavour, viz: academics, the sciences, engineering, law, medicine, architecture, art, humanities, politics and social sciences, sports, telecommunications, navigation, aeronautics, computer science and technology, banking economics and business, accountancy, journalism, entertainment, hotel management and catering, petroleum sciences and technology, aviation, the armed forces and police, etc., etc. However, there is no comprehensive directory or inventory either at the national or state level of available Igbo manpower resources.

This information is particularly lacking for the Igbo in diaspora, especially in the USA and Europe.
It is important for a resurgent Igbo nation that a comprehensive directory of Igbo human resources both in Nigeria and abroad be compiled. PICU in co-operation with overseas PICU branches shall set up task forces in Nigeria and overseas to undertake this all important compilation.

PICU armed with this directory of Igbo skilled manpower resources, will be in a position to ensure that Igbo people will be given high profiles and support in the placement of personnel in positions of authority at both national and international levels.

(f) Finance and Economic development:
In order that PICU should run smoothly and meet its obligations, it is necessary that it be funded adequately. Such funds would, for instance, be required for the construction and rental of office complexes and meeting halls; meeting the emoluments of part-time and full-time staff, paying for printing and stationery as well as the actual cost of financing specific PICU activities among others

It will be the task of the PICU finance committee to work out details of how the required funds could be raised. This might involve the now established method of "launching", donations and graded monthly contributions by PICU members. PICU could also engage in such revenue yielding projects as banking, investments, real estate developments, etc.

PICU should also establish a permanent Economic Commission (of Igbo experts) to study and advise on a long-term pan-Igbo economic plan. The result of such a study which should articulate medium and long term goals, should indicate mechanisms for implementation and this information should be made available to state governments of Igbo states. PICU should work with the private sector and entrepreneurs to ensure that aspects of the plan that belong to the private sector can be implemented.

(g) Information and Propaganda:
Communication is very important in the leadership - followership equation. Indeed, many political leaders have been known to founder when the lines of communication between them and those they lead become twisted or are disconnected altogether. The followership needs to be well informed on what the leadership is doing, while the leadership needs to keep in touch with the thinking, feelings, and needs of those they lead.

Indeed information is a major resource in any political education programme. But for information to flow, some machinery is required. Thus PICU should establish soon after inception a monthly newsletter (which may be sent out free, or bear a nominal charge), while individual or groups of Igbo financiers and entrepreneurs should be encouraged to set up 'national' newspapers and magazines with an overt or preferably hidden Igbo agenda.

Since the private sector is now allowed to invest in broadcasting, Igbo entrepreneurs should be encouraged to establish radio and TV stations, especially in Igbo speaking states where the Igbo language broadcasts could openly be used for Igbo propaganda purposes. Indeed those Igbo entrepreneurs that have already established newspapers, radio and television stations should be encouraged to give the editorial policies the appropriate Igbo slant.

V. STRATEGIES FOR GETTING STARTED
A. Introduction:
There is an Igbo proverb that states that it is not easy for anyone to just start to cry. But that is not the case, when serious pain and injury have been inflicted. Indeed, the Igbo people have been in such disarray since the end of the civil war (a generation ago!) that mobilising and organising them cannot be a mean task. However, it is a task whose time has come. Indeed, the Igbos have suffered with equanimity painful human and material losses before and during the civil war. They have also suffered financial and economic emasculation after the civil war as well as subsequent marginalisation in Nigerian politics and in the armed forces and police. Consequently, if the Igbos as a group were bent towards weeping, it would come to them easily enough. This means that the Igbo people are now ready and ripe to do whatever it may take to reverse the present situation.

B. Establishment of PICU Steering Committee:
A number of committed Igbos will be approached to consider the above proposals with a view to consolidating and extending rue ideas and proposals presented above. Thereafter, the document will be presented to a very small group of committed and very distinguished Igbos with the request that they establish a steering committee to study these proposals in depth.

The steering committee will map out strategies for the implementation of the adopted proposals. Such strategies may include the reproduction and wide distribution among Igbos (in Nigeria and abroad) of an abridged and modified form of this document, it may also include the organisation of a Pan-Igbo Leaders of Thought Conference. The object of the conference would be to enable further discussion of the adopted proposals and their subsequent endorsement by the conference followed by the election of protem national and state presidents and honorary secretaries and treasurers. The conference would be used to launch PICU formally and to accept voluntary donations from attendees of the conference.

The conference will also consider and adopt a PICU draft constitution to be prepared beforehand by the PICU Steering Committee. After the conference, the PICU protem officers would take over the running of PICU at national and branch levels for the subsequent six months after which, normal elections to PICU central and executive committees will take place.

C. Timetable of events:
The overall objective should be that PICU and its branches should be fully established and functioning by the year 2000 AD. To ensure that this objective is achieved, the following timetable of events is proposed:

February - June 1997: These proposals circulated to a number of committed Igbos for study.

July 1997 - June J998: PICU Steering Committee established. Present proposals studied and adopted. PICU draft constitution produced.

July 1998 - October 1998: Steering Committee draws up list of invitees to a pan- Igbo Leaders of Thought Conference. Venue and programme for the conference decided, and arrangements for the conference made.

Weekend of November 16, 1998: Two day Pan Igbo Leaders of Thought Conference held. PICU constitution adopted. PICU protem officers elected.

Last weekend of May 1999: Election of PICU officers at National and branch levels take place.

1 June 1999: PICU takes off in earnest.

VI. CONCLUSION
For sometime now there has been a lot of discussion among Igbo elites about the predicament and the declining fortunes of Igbo people. There has also been statements made by prominent Igbos in the Nigerian media about the marginalisation of the Igbos, so much so that Igbos are gradually developing into a nation of grumblers. But as Aldous Huxley said; "Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you". Indeed, a lot has happened to the Igbos in the last fifty years and the main message of this paper therefore is that the Igbos should not be lost in the nostalgia of the good old days, nor should they dive into psychological depression because of some of the misfortunes (some self-inflicted) that befell them in the past. Instead, they should allow the totality of their past experiences and the universally acclaimed sterling qualities they possess to motivate them to greater heights in individual and group accomplishments. As the author Polly Berends remarked, every experience whether good or bad that befalls any individual (and groups of individuals) always has the quality of both a blessing and a lesson - a quality she calls BLESSON. For it is through adverse conditions that man learns, develops and perfects himself. The Igbos have so much to learn from their past often traumatic experiences. In that sense they are a blessed people - for these experiences are merely the foundation and prelude to their future greatness.

The present situation should therefore be regarded as a challenge to Igbo dynamism and creativity. It is in fact a direct challenge to the Igbo elites. Indeed, assuming that they take appropriate action today, most may not live long enough to see the fruits of their labours. Nevertheless action must be taken now in the interest of our children and grand-children, most of whom have grown up to see Igbos as veritable second class citizens in Nigeria - a far cry from the pre-civilian Nigeria. That action and the anticipated results, especially pride in the Igbo nation, more than riches and caches of individual wealth, is the least we should bequeath to out children and their children.

We return finally to the question of Igbo leadership. As the Igbo themselves know only too well, they are mostly not a monarchical nation, even though there are a few Igbo towns (especially in Delta, Anambra and Abia States) that had been ruled by monarchs (obis and ezes) even before the arrival of the first white men in our society. Consequently the overall tendency of the Igbos has been towards republicanism. This is perhaps why it has been so difficult for Igbos to identify with a singly tribal leader. In spite of these, the Igbos have had a political system that relied on individuals within a collective leadership based on consensus.

In spite of extensive Igbo intercourse with other tribes in Nigeria (that operate a monarchical system), the Igbos, essentially and at heart, remain republicans. This is precisely why the Igbo State Union (which did not encourage personality cults) thrived. This is also the rationale for proposing PICU with the implied leadership of the Igbos by a small group reminiscent of the leadership of elders in the disparate Igbo communities of yore. The only difference between PICU and the traditional Igbo leadership, is that whereas one is based on old age, the other will not necessarily be based on age but on personal qualities, acquired skills, competence and talent. The new generation of Igbo leadership, serving through PICU, should be one identified by a number of personal values that must include the following.

A love of truth - essential for a just, inclusive and progressive society.

A sense of justice - that recognises the rights and needs of all.

A spirit of co-operation - based on active goodwill and the principle of good human relationships.

A sense of personal responsibility - that recognises group, community and national interests.

The will to serve the common good – through the sacrifice of selfishness and the belief that only what is good for all is good for each individual.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Senator Onyeabo Obi for a discussion in the summer of 1996 that provoked this study. They also thank Dr Pius Okigbo for encouragement and for moral and material support. Finally the authors thank; Mr. Chike Okeiyi for providing archival material on the Igbo State Union, and Chief Raph Uwechue, Barrister J.S.P.C. Nwokolo and Dr. Eugene Okereke among others for very useful discussions.

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 [1] The 3Rs were: Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation

 [2] All tribal cultural unions in Nigeria were banned by the Ironsi military regime. Presumably, the ban may be regarded as void with the return of civil rule in 1979.