By all standards, Anambra ought to be an epitome of Igbo worldview. But instead it has become a painful irony for the Igbo and a metaphor for the malaise into which Nigeria slid in the last four decades. How do you explain the fact that a state that is home for Nigeria’s eminent scholars, jurists, writers, scientists, politicians and priests has become a cesspool of necromancers, ritualists, high-profile thugs, high-jinks rascals and pimps? If an African will become the first black Pope today, it will likely be Francis Cardinal Arinze. He is from Anambra. Fr. Iwenne Tansi is on his way to becoming canonized a saint. He is from Anambra. It has even been said that Tansi’s body was first taken to the ogwugwu shrine before burial! So there is no knowing how sacrilegious Anambra has become since 1857 when the Church Missionary Society set foot on Onitsha in Anambra state!
This is no time for rationalising evil. Col. Joe. Achuzia, the Secretary-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo tried a rationalisation without proper perspective and ran into a storm. It is not even time to play Pontius Pilate. Senator Adolphus Wabara tried that and came to peril. This is a time to face up to what we have all become. It is, therefore, important to put on relief what is happening to the Igbo, which everybody seems to ignore, and also to state how they keep happening. It is only in seeking why it keeps happening that we can connect all of these to the larger Nigerian decay.
The Igbos must recognise that they have been undergoing a character shift. It is this character shift that is responsible for the confusion and indiscipline in Igboland. A people that placed premium on human life are now associated with human parts industry, human sacrifices, human trafficking and ritual killings. In my father’s time, which was just yesterday, he only needed to send one with his staff to conclude a deal on his behalf and it was binding! No other receipt or agreement was needed. But today two Igbos can’t trust each other or respect an agreement, a bond or an oath sworn on the Bible or before a Bishop. Igbos rapidly developed and caught up with other competitors in the country through the philosophy of onye aghala nwanneya, (each, his brother’s keeper), but today, every Igbo is his brother’s killer. A Republican race is today not only regressing to monarchy but is busy replicating panjandrums known as Ezeigbo all over the country. Extreme selfishness masquerading as individualism has taken over from the kindred spirit. Many Igbos in public office believe that their survival depends on either distancing themselves from their kinsmen or completely betraying the community interest. Yet the Igbo envy the clannishness in other groups in Nigeria and how well they take care of their group interest!
I have always wondered how a people that are reputed to be industrious, brave, intelligent, smart, enterprising and resilient can at the same time manifest intellectual and moral starvation. How has the strong become weak in the face of integrity? How has the able become disabled in the quest for wealth? We see this collapse of the character of the Igbo happen everyday, in copying the aso ebi, in out-spraying the authors of spraying, in abandoning the Igbo language and in aping alien traditional wears, yet we miss the acute point that a pattern is developing. The nearest we have come to accept it is to bemoan how money now rules the land. But if it were just money that rules it would probably not be as bad. But it is evil money. It is what Chinweizu called Aku Agwu. It is wealth driven by greed, madness and arrogance that rule the land, not that which came from the sweat of a people reputed to be strong!
People must not miss the irony that almost all the ogwugwu worshipers confessed that they are Christians! Anthony Okonkwo, James Obi and Osita Ndu are all members of the Anglican Church. James Obi said that “it is under the traditional religion that people speak the truth as opposed to the church which thrives on falsehood. Many Christians oppress their neighbours and relations. But idol worshippers are upright because the deity does not condone falsehood, cheating and oppression.”. You may want to contradict him on that. But the fact is that this is no time for finger pointing. It is no longer enough for Churches to mount their pulpits and point fingers against belief systems they know nothing about. The question must be asked whether the missionary intervention in the life of the African has served the purpose or has it just created a contradiction? Look around you.
People are stepping out of the Churches and into the babalawos’ huts. Many people are looking for quick fixes. Just as people are finding quick fixes in ogwugwu, others are finding theirs in the Pentecostal churches! Why? There is a system collapse! Established institutions of reward and sanctions are no longer delivering on people’’s expectations.
Did Christianity totally wipe out idolatry or did it compromise? Why do you have Reverend Nwosus, Bishop Njokus, Fr. Nwaogwugwus, and Deacon Amadis? From where did these names originate? What do they suggest to you? You can fault James Obi’s thesis on the ground that in olden days idolatry was essentially for divinity and not what they stand for today. But you may be wrong to equate practices informed purely by superstition with idolatry. What would you then say of today when a nation can be convulsed by the so-called killer GSM numbers or disappearing genitals? What the churches ought to do is to meaningfully engage the cultures to understand them in order to influence positive changes, not to confront and demonise phenomena they either do not understand or are afraid to acknowledge.
How does the Anambra saga connect to the national malaise? I have often said that the Igbos are the greatest victims of the bastardisation of Nigeria. In 30 years, from 1934 to 1964, the Igbos made a tremendous burst and caught up with its major rivals. Note that that period coincided with the era of merit, justice, discipline and rule of law in Nigeria. By 1965 the national decline had started and the nation sank into gbomo-gbomo, Indian hemp trafficking, missing genital organs, ritual murders, malams plucking eyes of young girls and boys for money rituals, hard drugs trade, otokoto and advance fees fraud.
The Igbos became not only the targets but at the receiving end of many other perversions that were legitimised by the Nigerian state. Ethnicism and godfatherism had supplanted merit. If you force a strong, agile and enterprising man who is used to going through the door to be jumping through the window, the tendency is that as more people crowd the window, he will begin to jump through the roof! So, as Nigeria increasingly became lawless, the Igbo were made more and more deviates! The simple logic is that to repress an enterprising people is to indirectly criminalize them.
For example, the 2003 general election was a legitimisation of electoral fraud in Nigeria. We all saw it. It was nationwide. But it was in Anambra that it took a bizarre turn. People who did not contest election were returned as elected. Those who contested were made to go through the rigour and extra financial burden of Election Tribunal that has almost turned into a farce! Meanwhile those who did not contest continue to draw public fund as salaries! Today Senator Ben Obi is still being denied his seat in the Senate by INEC in spite of the Appeals Court ruling in his favour. Elsewhere, Senator Ajibola has since been sworn in to replace Senator Ajadi after a Court of Appeal verdict. In perverting justice in such a manner, a national institution sets the stage for crisis in Anambra. If Chief Ben Obi were not a perfect gentleman, would he not be tempted to seek justice from ogwugwu?
We are all so familiar with the case of the abduction of Governor Ngige of Anambra on 10 July 2003. Notwithstanding the outcry of every right thinking Nigerian, nothing happened to the culprits because they were connected to powerful places. The Nigerian state condoned the criminal act. But the irony is that Ngige the victim is the one being hounded by the Nigerian state. His police security was withdrawn ostensibly in obedience to a court ruling. Yet the same authority has found it impossible to obey the ruling of a court that ordered the restoration of his security. Ngige has resorted to alternative means of security. If ogwugwu offered security services, maybe he would have patronised them! Again the wheel of justice is grinding deliberately very slow at the Election Tribunal for Peter Obi who is reputed to have won the Anambra gubernatorial seat for which Ngige was reportedly dragged to ogwugwu shrine by Chuma Nzeribe and co.
So when James Obi talks of the oppression of poor people by fellow Christians, it cannot be dismissed, much as it is not a justification for what the police insists is strictly a case of mass murder. We can only begin to imagine the level and nature of oppression by looking at the oppression of the mighty by the mighty! In the rampaging of the mighty in Anambra, which small man has a chance for justice? You can now appreciate the popularity of ogwugwu in Anambra. I say popularity because it struck me as odd that not one family ever reported a case of missing person for any of the odd 50 bodies and skulls found at the shrines! It means that ogwugwu was not a secret and that the people accepted “justice” according to ogwugwu.
What the Igbos are pursuing now, to me, is not what should be their priority. The priority ought to be how to recapture the essence of the Igbo, how to retain the sanctity of the Igbo spirit in spite of Nigeria’s pervert ways, how to prevail in spite of the obstacles strewn on its way by Nigeria and how to be what the Igbo want to be unencumbered by the Nigerian state. The starting point is to take a hard and honest look at Anambra and recognise it as what has gone wrong with the Igbo nation in the last forty years. Anambra is today a festering sore on the soul of the Igbo man. To allow it to continue will be a great threat to the Igbo nation!
