Let us restate at once, for the avoidance of doubt: the presence of 'Osu Culture' is not unique to Igbo land; its persistence may be the problematic. Like other ancient practices such as child immolation, which cut a swathe across humanity, for example as represented in the biblical near- sacrifice of Isaac, the sacrifice of Oluorogbo or Ela in Yoruba mythology and the Ikemefuna sacrificial story as retold by Achebe, Osu culture represents a shared footpath into the past.
When I read the Leith-Ross article and came to the point where a Yoruba respondent declared that such practices was alien to Yoruba culture, I instinctively felt that she was either being economical with the truth or is ill informed about her own culture (and the latter is not so impossible to contemplate given that people have varied engagement with their own culture, let alone the culture of others.) It occurred to me then that the Osu culture among the Igbo may be a stepping stone to a robust examination of cross-cultural comparative religious and political evolution and practices of the Igbo and the Yoruba, rather than an Inquisition of the Igbo culture. I noted with interest that response to Osu culture was not and is still not uniform across Igbo communities, therefore different strands developed along different paths, and the reason for segregation in one area may be seen as reverence, while in other it may be due to contempt.
What again seemed most fascinating to me, especially in its similarity to Yoruba 'Osu' culture was the locale and circumstances of its origin. Given the generally accepted loathing of centralization among Igbo people, it seems very probable to me from the group psychoanalytic perspective, that a group transference had occurred from the rudiments of a hated culture to symbols of that hated culture, the Osu; and i will make a link with the Yoruba comparative cultural evolution in a moment.
In the evolution into centralized polities two of the prominent routes are the transition from a priestly caste to a political caste, in which one of the most powerful priests transmutes priestly power to political overlordship. The other prominent route is the overwhelming of the priestly caste through military valour and coercion of that caste to do the bidding of the military political overlord. The long juju priestly chieftain seemed to have combined the two routes according to the accounts given by Leith-Ross's informants as well as Achebe. The Osu as stranger theory and Osu as slave theory could then be seen as metaphors for military supremacy of Aro facilitated by the powerful charms of its chief priests. Other communities would, naturally, unfamiliar with this culture, resent this new imposition of powers. The chief ministrants of the powers of this new centralizing powers -the Osus- would therefore be equally resented. this resentment could therefore be aggravated by the fact that the Osu in the dispensation of such powers would have been acting like quasi monarchs. Some Igbo communities may have reacted to these developments with equanimity, since such powers would be seen as devolving from the deities, and confrontation with such powers would be tantamount to confrontation with the deities represented. let us now turn our attention to the Yoruba parallel.
Anyone conversant with Yoruba myths of origins would have come across the Omo Oluwo Ni myth which explains the genealogy of the forebears of the occupant of the most reverred traditional stool of the Yoruba. Like the Osu, the palace had palace personnel dedicated to the service of the deities. During the period of the first Yoruba dispersal and formation of kingdoms, the reigning monarch joijed the ancestors, and because there no one at home in the regular royal lineage, the person dedicated to the service of the gods (to ensure stability when everyone else was away) was enthroned. This is the genesis of the Ooni lineage in Ile-Ife till today according to the myth, and the title is a reminder of the ancestry of the occupier of the throne. This worked well for the Yoruba because the Yoruba had developed centralized political system by this time but led to acrimony against, what was seen as anathemic centralizing ethos among the Igbo, it would appear, following the line of this argument. It led to an early development in Yoruba society of what the United States would develop later -effectively two contemporaneous capitals: Oyo and Ile-Ife; one religious, the other political. The Igbo trajectory could be seen as having taken a different path due to a general loathing of centralizing tendencies, represented in the human symbol of the Osu. Resentment of Osu is therefore tantamount to repressed memories of resented centralized authority; resentment undergirded by taboos as early societies are wont to do.
Now regarding treatment purportedly meted out to contemporary Osu, the only thing one can say is that Nigeria now operates a secular constitution and anyone who feels maltreated at variance with the provisions of the constitution, must know that the courts are wide open.
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 15:03:05 +0000
From: ienwana@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
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Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 15:03:05 +0000
From: ienwana@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Thanks, Toyin,
You actually researched, and I mean compliments. I did not set out to discuss the rights or wrongs, or even the morals, of tagging anybody created by the same God Who created me an Osu. Unless I have misunderstood your treatise, you seem to think that I was making a case for the practice in the Usu caste to persist. Mine was a mere lexical exercise only seeking to explain the difference in the words used by Ndi Igbo to express the two phenomena. Yes there are some communities that still keep to that outdated culture; but these live in the past! Honestly had it been that I was one, it would not have bothered me one bit having known what I do know about human creation. Afterr all these thinkings arise from our understanding of God's creation. Even as a young man it would not have mattered to me if the girl I fell in love with were called Osu by some ignorant persons. Some may say that I could say so from a position of a freeborn. But the Creator knows. I do not discriminate against any person on any prejudice. I call on all humans to treat one another as brothers and sisters, realising that, but for the grace of the Almighty, the person in the disadvantage could be me or you.
Ifedioramma Eugene Mary NWANA
From: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 17:31
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 17:31
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
Thanks, Ifedioramma.
Granted, in Igbo society, the names for slaves and for osu were different, as you and other sources point out.
At the same time, however, the dominant status of osu in Igbo society, past and present was a form of servitude and social denigration that may be described as slavery, as various writers agree.
It was a form of servitude because it involved a denigrative social status from which the osu and their descendants could not escape, a status based on dedication to deity in a spirit more suggestive of bondage than of empowerment.
True, as you state "An osu is one dedicated/sacrificed to a god; he or she is holy and one does not hurt him/her without incurring the wrath of the god to whom he/she is dedicated" this status went with a paradoxical denigration of the humanity of the osu. Their dedication to deity went with a dehumanization so much so that at its most extreme, interaction with them was seen as capable of bringing disaster and marrying them capable of bringing a curse into the family line.
This discrimination was so thorough that it followed the osu into the Westernization and Christianization of Igbo culture. The osu are described as the vanguard of Igbo Westernization, being the first to immerse themselves in the new order beceause it promised a sense of being regarded as full human being equal to other humans, an acceptance of a common humanity denied them by their fellow Ndigbo, who saw themselves as freeborn or diala while the osu were understood as lower than fully human bondspeople.
The osu paradox therefore continued. From being people dedicated to deities and performing sacred functions on behalf of the community and yet reviled as being subhuman and contaminated in as way that made association with them dangerous, they now became the cutting edge of the new Igbo intelligentsia and embodiments of a new order of economic power and yet, they were still discriminated against!
Imagine the irony-the very people who spearheaded the Igbo Westernisation Achebe uses as a central thrust of his description of the place of Ndigbo in Nigerian history, the people who enabled what he describes as Igbo ascendancy in modern Nigeria, were still regarded by their fellow Ndigbo as not fit for intimate association, as not fit to be allowed public leadership in Igbo communities and even as open to oppression from fellow Ndigbo, the last being suggested by the tragic story of the Omuode community in 1999.
The scope of this tragedy becomes clearer when one gives names of those described as osu.
Newswatch Magazine of September 18, 1989 ago ran a thorough study of the subject and gave some indications of some of these people.
It is dangerous to call anyone osu publicly on account of the stigma associated with it and because there is some legislation against it, so Newswatch used pregnant suggestions.
I remember clearly it mentioned 'a famous Igbo poet'.
Of course, the only 'famous Igbo poet' who does not need to be named is Christopher Okigbo, perhaps one of the world's greatest poets, a pioneer in the emerging field of animistic mysticism in his interpretation of the goddess Idoto of the village stream of which his grandfather was priest in terms of the "water spirit that waters all creation", a poet whose carer was cut short, his work in progress lost, when he was lost in action fighting on the Biafran side in the Nigerian Civil War, supposedly as he covered the rearguard of his men retreating from Nigerian forces. Ali Mazrui evokes the magnitude of this loss to the world in his Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which the poet is challenged after dearth for sacrificing his creative potential to a cause outside his primary vocation the way he did.
Describing Christopher Okigbo as osu would thus include economist his brother Pius Okigbo, described by ex-Permanent Secretary Philip Asiodu as one of the greatest intellects in Nigerian history and as a key figure at Ojukwu's side at the fateful Aburi Accords, a presence that to Asiodu, suggested that Ojukwu grasped the importance of the Accord much better than Gowon, a grasp that made all the difference in the events that led up to the civil war.
Whether or not it is true that the the Okigbos are osu, the fact that Neswwatch could present a description that fits Okigbo suggests the depth of the social tragedy at play, a significant number of osu being described as being among the most successful Ndigbo.
Does it include Bart Nnanji, stellar engineer, ex-Nigerian Minister of Power and pioneer in private energy generation in Nigeria, issues around whose impending return to his community led to the attacks against the Omuode community in 1999?
In Broken Back Axle:Unspeakable Events In Biafra [Amazon link that enables one read a good part of the book] Obi N. Ignatius Ebbe presents the anti-osu discrimination problem in particularly poignant terms as being fundamental to the fall of Biafra through sabotage of Biafran efforts by osu who saw themselves as likely to continue to suffer discrimination at the hands of other Ndigbo even in a Biafra they had fought to create.
In my response to Chidi, I will describe the need to disengage the various strands of the description of what it means to be osu and the various strategies being adopted to engage with the problem.
Avoiding the dominant negative interpretation might not be likely to succeed because that perception is too strong, too old, too entrenched, it seems. More likely to succeed, as Okenwa Nwosu suggests in an essay I link in my response to Chidi, is to fight the denigrative interpretation directly.
One effort used is to claim the osu identity in the name of what is understood as an orginary valoristic significance before this was purportedly distorted. Another is to acknowledge the negative valuation but insist on focusing on positive possibilities inherent in the character of osu as sacred dedication and communal intercession. One can even develop a Osu Spirituality and Philosophy which I will outline, as one demonstration of the creativity of classical Igbo culture.
thanks
toyin
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Granted, in Igbo society, the names for slaves and for osu were different, as you and other sources point out.
At the same time, however, the dominant status of osu in Igbo society, past and present was a form of servitude and social denigration that may be described as slavery, as various writers agree.
It was a form of servitude because it involved a denigrative social status from which the osu and their descendants could not escape, a status based on dedication to deity in a spirit more suggestive of bondage than of empowerment.
True, as you state "An osu is one dedicated/sacrificed to a god; he or she is holy and one does not hurt him/her without incurring the wrath of the god to whom he/she is dedicated" this status went with a paradoxical denigration of the humanity of the osu. Their dedication to deity went with a dehumanization so much so that at its most extreme, interaction with them was seen as capable of bringing disaster and marrying them capable of bringing a curse into the family line.
This discrimination was so thorough that it followed the osu into the Westernization and Christianization of Igbo culture. The osu are described as the vanguard of Igbo Westernization, being the first to immerse themselves in the new order beceause it promised a sense of being regarded as full human being equal to other humans, an acceptance of a common humanity denied them by their fellow Ndigbo, who saw themselves as freeborn or diala while the osu were understood as lower than fully human bondspeople.
The osu paradox therefore continued. From being people dedicated to deities and performing sacred functions on behalf of the community and yet reviled as being subhuman and contaminated in as way that made association with them dangerous, they now became the cutting edge of the new Igbo intelligentsia and embodiments of a new order of economic power and yet, they were still discriminated against!
Imagine the irony-the very people who spearheaded the Igbo Westernisation Achebe uses as a central thrust of his description of the place of Ndigbo in Nigerian history, the people who enabled what he describes as Igbo ascendancy in modern Nigeria, were still regarded by their fellow Ndigbo as not fit for intimate association, as not fit to be allowed public leadership in Igbo communities and even as open to oppression from fellow Ndigbo, the last being suggested by the tragic story of the Omuode community in 1999.
The scope of this tragedy becomes clearer when one gives names of those described as osu.
Newswatch Magazine of September 18, 1989 ago ran a thorough study of the subject and gave some indications of some of these people.
It is dangerous to call anyone osu publicly on account of the stigma associated with it and because there is some legislation against it, so Newswatch used pregnant suggestions.
I remember clearly it mentioned 'a famous Igbo poet'.
Of course, the only 'famous Igbo poet' who does not need to be named is Christopher Okigbo, perhaps one of the world's greatest poets, a pioneer in the emerging field of animistic mysticism in his interpretation of the goddess Idoto of the village stream of which his grandfather was priest in terms of the "water spirit that waters all creation", a poet whose carer was cut short, his work in progress lost, when he was lost in action fighting on the Biafran side in the Nigerian Civil War, supposedly as he covered the rearguard of his men retreating from Nigerian forces. Ali Mazrui evokes the magnitude of this loss to the world in his Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which the poet is challenged after dearth for sacrificing his creative potential to a cause outside his primary vocation the way he did.
Describing Christopher Okigbo as osu would thus include economist his brother Pius Okigbo, described by ex-Permanent Secretary Philip Asiodu as one of the greatest intellects in Nigerian history and as a key figure at Ojukwu's side at the fateful Aburi Accords, a presence that to Asiodu, suggested that Ojukwu grasped the importance of the Accord much better than Gowon, a grasp that made all the difference in the events that led up to the civil war.
Whether or not it is true that the the Okigbos are osu, the fact that Neswwatch could present a description that fits Okigbo suggests the depth of the social tragedy at play, a significant number of osu being described as being among the most successful Ndigbo.
Does it include Bart Nnanji, stellar engineer, ex-Nigerian Minister of Power and pioneer in private energy generation in Nigeria, issues around whose impending return to his community led to the attacks against the Omuode community in 1999?
In Broken Back Axle:Unspeakable Events In Biafra [Amazon link that enables one read a good part of the book] Obi N. Ignatius Ebbe presents the anti-osu discrimination problem in particularly poignant terms as being fundamental to the fall of Biafra through sabotage of Biafran efforts by osu who saw themselves as likely to continue to suffer discrimination at the hands of other Ndigbo even in a Biafra they had fought to create.
In my response to Chidi, I will describe the need to disengage the various strands of the description of what it means to be osu and the various strategies being adopted to engage with the problem.
Avoiding the dominant negative interpretation might not be likely to succeed because that perception is too strong, too old, too entrenched, it seems. More likely to succeed, as Okenwa Nwosu suggests in an essay I link in my response to Chidi, is to fight the denigrative interpretation directly.
One effort used is to claim the osu identity in the name of what is understood as an orginary valoristic significance before this was purportedly distorted. Another is to acknowledge the negative valuation but insist on focusing on positive possibilities inherent in the character of osu as sacred dedication and communal intercession. One can even develop a Osu Spirituality and Philosophy which I will outline, as one demonstration of the creativity of classical Igbo culture.
thanks
toyin
On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 8:40 PM, Ifedioramma E. Nwana <ienwana@yahoo.com> wrote:
Osu is different from slave. An osu is one dedicated/sacrificed to a god; he or she is holy and one does not hurt him/her without incurring the wrath of the god to whom he/she is dedicated. A slave is an ohu or oru. He/she belongs to another human and may, indeed, be able to purchase his/her freedom, become a free citizen and rise to any height.IEM NwanaFrom: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 21:37
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade
I read somewhere that the Asante used slaves in clearing the forests on which they built their communities.Is that true?What about the osu cast system in Igboland? To what degree were the osu not slaves? I know little about this but a pic I saw of an osu and a dibia on the Igbocybershrine blog a powerful and unforgettable pic, suggested something that reminded me of slavery.toyin
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdullah@gmail.com> wrote:Skip gates is not bill gates. And a slave mode of production was not dominant in any african society by 1500. It became dominant and hegemonic in some societies only in nineteen century--a result of their involvement in the european slave trade.History does not repeat itself: you do not swim in the same river twice. Agents of /in history make mistakes but it is not the historical process that is being reproduced. You cannot drink in the same cup twice!Ib Abdullah------On Mar 19, 2013 10:45 AM, "Ikhide" <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:"There are some fundamental facts. First, no African kingdom used slavery as its principal mode of production. Africa has produced no economies based on slavery. It was left to Europe to create a system of slavery where humans were chattel to be used as tools in the development of wealth. Secondly, in all massive enterprises where there are oppressors and the oppressed there will be collaborators. It is no secret that some of Afriica's best minds, Fanon, Memni, Karenga, have isolated incidents of collaboration among victims of oppression. Blacks were police officers in the white minority regime of South Africa but one cannot blame apartheid on black people. So when Gates claims that Africans were involved in the slave trade one can accept this, but what one cannot accept is that Africans were equally culpable for the slave trade. Nor should one blame the Judenrats (Jewish Councils) of Germany for Nazi atrocities although they often collaborated with the Germans. Indians collaborated with the British colonialists in India and some Chinese collaborated with the Japanese in occupied China, and while there is no excuse there is certainly explanation for collaboration."- Molefi Kete Asante
http://www.asante.net/articles/44/where-is-the-white-professor-located/
Hmmm/ It is incorrect that "no African kingdom used slavery as its principal mode of production." That is silly hagiography. There are many ways to counter Bill Gates without minimizing the role of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade. Africans are just as culpable as those that came to take away our siblings. *cycles away slowly*
- IkhideStalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/--To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mailto:usaafricadialogue%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
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