My people are known as the Igbo and our language is Igbo. Igbo people constitute one of the three largest ethnic groups in Nigeria – what Nigerian historians have come to term the tribal tripod. The other two are the Yoruba and the Hausa/Fulani. The primary Igbo states in Nigeria are Anambra, Abia, Imo, Ebonyi, and Enugu (if justice and equity reigned, there should have been 6 or 7, instead of just 5 states). Due to their mobility, the Igbo constitute between 25% – 60% of the population in some other Nigerian States such as Delta, Rivers, Lagos, Kano, Cross River, Kaduna, Akwa Ibom and Plateau, to mention a few. Although my people mainly and primarily inhabit the southeastern part of Nigeria, they have, however, spread, like ants in the savannah, to every nook and cranny of Nigeria, Africa and indeed the globe – thriving, building and enriching themselves, their environment and others in all facets of life as they do so. The veteran American diplomat, Henry Kissinger, hit the nail on the head when he aptly observed: “The Ibos are the wandering Jews of West Africa… gifted, aggressive, Westernized; at best envied and resented, but mostly despised by the mass of their neighbors in the Federation.” – Henry Kissinger, MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT, Tuesday, January 28, 1969 [Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Volume E-5, Documents on Africa, 1969-1972]. IGBO AND THE PROVERBIAL RAINFALL Permit me at this point to invoke an ancient African idiom which has its roots in Igbo wisdom: onye na amaghi ebe mmiri bidoro mawa ya, agaghi ama ebe o kwusiri (He who does not recognise the point at which the rain began to beat him would not recognise when the rain ceases to fall altogether). For Igbo people in Nigeria, the rainfall ensued in the early 19th century when the British first explored the Lower Niger (I will put aside, for today’s purposes, the preceding hellfire that was black African slavery and the Igbo’s share of hell in it).
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 01:38:26 +0000
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