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The Spell of Oral History: A Case Study from Northern Igboland1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

A.E. Afigbo
A.E. Afigbo*
Affiliation:
Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki
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Extract

My case study is taken from the northern Igbo of Nigeria and focuses on the village-group of Ihuwe, which name is today rendered as Ihube— thanks to its Anglicization during the period of colonial rule. This not-withstanding, the people still call themselves “Ihuwe,” the form I use in this paper. The Northern Igbo area, especially the area around Awka, Orlu, and Okigwe, is commonly regarded as the heartland of Igbo culture and civilization. Ihuwe, in that portion of old Okigwe Division known today as Okigwe Local Government Area (LGA), lies in a region of southern Nigeria that has been identified as having witnessed human activity from very early times, at least from the period of Acheulean culture. It also lies on the geographically and historically prominent Nsukka-Udi-Okigwe cuesta, which archeology tells us entered the Iron Age quite early in African history, no later than about the eighth century BCE. We are thus dealing with one of the areas of ancient human occupation, as well as an area known for its dense demographic profile. It is these features–early human settlement and occupation with its attendant consequence of severely attenuated oral history, dense demographic profile, and being the cradle land of Igbo culture—that help to define the Northern Igbo and mark them out from the Western, Eastern, Southern, and North-Eastern Igbo, believed to be relatively more recent descendants from them.

Perhaps another feature that calls for mention here is their political culture. Although, like their other Igbo kinsmen, they could boast of having evolved only micro-, and therefore weak, states (what social anthropologists of the colonial period refused to refer to as states), they had their own special model of these micro-states.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 33 , 2006 , pp. 39 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2006

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Footnotes

1

An earlier and shorter version of this paper was presented at the XIIth International Conference on Oral History held at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 24-27 June 2002.

References

2 Chikwendu, V.C., “Igboland in Prehistory: Technology and Economy” in Afigbo, A.E., ed., Groundwork of Igbo History (Lagos, 1991), 61–95Google Scholar.

3 Okafor, E.E., “Early Iron Working in Nsukka: Information from Slags and Residues” (Ph.D, University of Sheffield, 1992)Google Scholar; Afigbo, A.E., Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Ibadan, 1981)Google Scholar; idem., Igbo Genesis (Uturu, 2000).

4 Afigbo, A.E., “The Indigenous Political Systems of the Igbo,” Tarikh 4/2(1973), 13–23Google Scholar; idem., “Southeastern Nigeria in the Nineteenth Century” in J.F.A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., History of West Africa II (London, 1987), 429-84. See also M.A. Onwuejeogwu, Iguaro Igbo Heritage Inaugural Lecture 2001 (n.p., n.d.).

5 This is the first time that I am coining the concept of “occasional state” in my study of the Igbo-speaking peoples.

6 Forde, Daryll and Jones, G.I., The Igbo- and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of Southeastern Nigeria (London, 1950)Google Scholar.

7 Afigbo, A.E., “Igboland before 1800” in Ikime, O., ed., Groundwork of Nigerian History (Ibadan, 1980), 73–88Google Scholar.

8 Afigbo, “Indigenous Political Systems”; idem., “Southeastern Nigeria”; I. Nzimiro, Studies in Igbo Political Systems: Chieftaincy and Politics in Four Niger States (London, 1972); Onwuejeogwu, Iguaro Igbo.

9 See the sources in note 8 above.

10 Afigbo, A.E., The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891-1929 (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

11 Afigbo, A.E., “Patterns of Igbo Resistance to British Conquest,” Tarikh 4/3(1973), 14–23Google Scholar.

12 Afigbo, Warrant Chiefs, chapters 5 and 7.

13 National Archives, Enugu, File no. EP.9387 Intelligence Report on the Otanchara Clan, Owerri Province by Mr. F.A. Goodliffe, ADO, CSE 1/85/4844A. Also oral information from Chief Mbabuike Ogujiofor of Ogube (Ogwuo) who had in fact been a Native Court Messenger before succeeding his father Ogujiofor as chief, and from Mazi Irechukwu Agriga of Ugwuntu in Ihuwe. The information was collected in 1962, by which time each was over seventy years of age.

14 Report of the Committee on Chieftaincy Matters in East Central State of Nigeria (Enugu, 1975).

15 The information for much of this section comes from the reports of the committees set up in 1977 and 1988 to work on the Ihuwe Eze Organic Document, as well as from the memoranda submitted to those committees by different personalities and villages in Ihuwe. Most prominent persons in the town have these in their archives. I also have them in my private archives. This was supplemented by information collected from such elders and members of Ihuwe Intelligentsia as A.U. Nwankwo (JP) and members of the Customary Court, Okigwem and a citizen of Agbala village; Elder Nwafor Irogbori (now deceased) from Ozara village; Mazi S.O. Udeagu from Ozara village; Mazi Nwafor Ihemekowe from Akpugo village, and others.

16 Stonier, T., “Science, Technology and the Emerging Postindustrial Culture” in Coomer, James C., ed., Quest for a Sustainable Society (New York, 1981), 76Google Scholar. Here it is mentioned that the agrarian society in making the transition to the mechanical and industrial phase of development exhibits different kinds of features, including “internal strife.”

17 Petition dd 9 December 1999 with contact address as Methodist Church Nigeria, Ihube, from Archbishop J.N. Dimoji and addressed to the Deputy Governor of Imo State. See also the group petition dated 25 October 1999, with contact address c/o His Grace, Most Rev. Dr. J.N. Dimoji, addressed to the Executive Governor of Imo State, Owerri.

18 The spokesman for Amalator, which includes Eziama, Mr. S.O. Udeagu, in fact says the foundation of Ihuwe took place five generations before the onset of the colonial era. This would make eight generations by the time he was writing. See his letter of 30 July 1990 to the Peace Mission, Ihube Patriotic Union, Lagos Branch entitled “The Plain Truth About the Ezeship Tussle in Ihube.” On the other hand, the account from Ogwuo, put forward by its main spokesman, Sunday Uzu, suggests six generations before the onset of colonial rule, making nine generations by 1990.

19 M.O. Ijere, “Communal Labour and the Development of Rural Igboland” in Afigbo, Groundwork.