On the Igbo not being perfect, no one ever said that they are perfect for they name their children, Uwaezuoke, the world is never enough. Yet, with all their very human imperfections, the Igbo do not deserve the hatred that the rest of Nigerians reserve for them. That is what Soyinka keeps reminding us, we have things to learn from the Igbo just as we have things to learn from other cultures. Threatening the Igbo with genocide is a form of phobia that is unjustifiable given their actual and potential contributions to the reconstruction of democratic praxis in Africa. Democracy itself is not perfect, it is the worst system of government, except for all the other alternatives, said Churchill. He would know because he preferred to impose colonial dictatorship in line with the philosophy of Plato - The Philosopher King - and Aristotle - the Aristocracy - as better models compared to democracy or what they called mob rule.
Eze Nri was not a king but a chief priest whose authority never extended beyond the hamlets of Nri. It is true that chiefs were emerging in some parts of Igboland as documented by Nzimiro but Uchendu identified them as 'intrusive traits' from our monarchical neighbors. Rather than scoff at the deeply democratic traditions in places like Igboland, Rodney invited us to study them and celebrate them as much as we celebrate the empires of Western Sudan. The fascination with the Igbo by Rodney is all over HEUA where he praised them for building their own schools when the colonizers pretended that there was not enough money for schools; he celebrated their resistance to the double squeeze of underpaying the peasants for their harvests and hiking up the prices of manufactures, leading to the Women's War of 1929; and he dismissed claims that the genocide against Biafra was as a result of tribal war since the nations of Nigeria are too big to be called tribes, and there was never a record of genocide by Nigerian nations against their neighbors before colonization, while there are no African tribes called the Labour Party government of Britain nor Shell BP that orchestrated the genocide with Soviet Union help.
The Osu and Ohu institutions, in my humble opinion, were impositions resulting from the slave raids and they are not present in every Igbo community. The Ohu system of slavery came about as a result of the slave raids to capture people for sale but the Igbo resisted such raids as much as they could. The British claimed that they burnt down the Long Juju of Arochukwu in order to end the slave trade that they themselves imposed and ran for 4 hundreds years. Chinweizu dismissed such a claim as false because the British had long ended their slave trade by the time they organized the punitive expedition to Arochukwu over the struggle to dominate the lucrative trade in palm oil.
Osu came about, in my own opinion, as a sacred order for people who ran into the shrines to dedicate themselves rather than join in the resistance against the slave raiders. The Igbo would say, O sukwa, or it is happening; and those who fled into the refuge of the shrines were feared for having made contact with supernatural forces and became ndi Osu. A goat that is dedicated to the shrines is never beaten and it can come into your house and eat your dinner without fear. The Osu were untouchable because no one could beat them or kill them.
Azikiwe made it his priority to abolish the Osu system once he became Premiere of the Eastern Region in 1952. The problem remained a burden to the Igbo because anyone who married an Osu was regarded as an Osu too. Parents would still make enquiries to make sure that their children will be happy in their marriage rather than face discrimination. Other nations in Nigeria also discriminate in the choice of spouses for their children.
The Osu system has already been dissolved by the Igbo who are dynamic and cosmopolitan more than any other nation in Nigeria. For instance, no parents would withdraw their child from school if the teacher was known to be Osu, no one would refuse to go to church if the priest is an Osu, and no one would refuse COVID-19 relief if the governor or senator sharing it is an Osu. With the Igbo excellence in modern education, their success in trading and widespread enthusiasm for travel to other lands, the distinction between Osu and Amala is almost completely erased as people make friends in school or at work or on the sports field or in a musical band without bothering to find out if there is still a caste system. It may still be a problem in local politics but it is fast dying out.
The residues of Ohu and Osu among the Igbo could be additional points to make in a legal writ or negotiations for reparations for the slow healing wounds of slave raids and post-colonial genocide for which the Igbo suffered more than most. The Diaspora demand for reparative justice should be extended to Africa too.
Baba Sho cannot be imagined to be a scholar-activist who never paid homage to the Civil Rights Movement. That is exactly the theme of his play, Bachae, a homage to the civil rights movement in the US. Much more than almost any other African writer, Soyinka has been fascinated by the survival of African cultures of struggles for freedom in the Diaspora. His joke about the tiger and the tigritude should be understood as a critique of Senghore who preached Negritude but relished being an evolved Frenchman, though Senghore understood the joke and retorted that Soyinka does not speak tigrese or he would know what the tiger professes. See a commentary on Soyinka and the Civil Rights Movement in the US: Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka
|  | Postcolonial Identity in Wole SoyinkaSoyinka's representation of postcolonial African identity is re-examined in the light of his major plays, novels... |
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