WESTERN VIEWS & PERCEPTION OF THE HEBREWS IN AFRICA THE IRREPRESSIBLE AUTHENTIC IGBOS WITH NUANCES AS HEBRUS, IBRUS, EBOES, IBOS AND CURRENTLY I G B O S

WESTERN VIEWS & PERCEPTIONS OF THE INDUSTRIOUS, HIGH NEED-ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION DRIVEN HEBREWS IN AFRICA: 

THE IRREPRESSIBLE AUTHENTIC IGBOS WITH NUANCES OF NOMENCLATURE .... AS HEBRUS, IBRUS, EBOES, IBOS AND TODAY WITH IGBO LANGUAGE ORTHOGRAPHY SPELT "I G B O S"

The Eboe or Igbo is a language cluster that constitutes a subbranch of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. There are nearly 20 million speakers of Igboid languages in southeastern Nigeria. In the early years of the 20th century an attempt to develop an artificial form of Igbo called Union-Igbo, based on four Igbo dialects, was not successful. Later a standard literary form developed based on the Owerri and Umuahia dialects. There is a growing body of literature in Igbo, and such Igbo writers as Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, and Christopher Okigbo are internationally known. Igbo also is used as a second language by others who live in this area of Nigeria. 

John T. Bendor-Samuel

also called  Ibo 

people living chiefly in south-eastern Nigeria who speak Igbo, a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The Igbo may be grouped into the following main cultural divisions: northern (Onitsha), southern (Owerri), western (Ika), eastern (Cross River), and north-eastern (Abakaliki). Before European colonization, the Igbo were not united as a single people but lived in autonomous local communities. By the mid-20th century, however, a sense of ethnic identity was strongly developed, and the Igbo-dominated Eastern region of Nigeria tried to unilaterally secede from Nigeria in 1967 as the independent nation of Biafra. By the turn of the 21st century the Igbo numbered some 20 million.

Most Igbo traditionally have been subsistence farmers, their staples being yams, cassava, and taro. The other crops they grow include corn (maize), melons, okra, pumpkins, and beans. Among those still engaged in agriculture, men are chiefly responsible for yam cultivation, women for other crops. Land is owned communally by kinship groups and is made available to individuals for farming and building. Some livestock, important as a source of prestige and for use in sacrifices, is kept. The principal exports are palm oil and palm kernels. Trading, local crafts, and wage labour also are important in the Igbo economy, and a high literacy rate has helped many Igbo to become civil servants and business entrepreneurs in the decades after Nigeria gained independence. It is notable that Igbo women engage in trade and are influential in local politics.

Except for the north-eastern groups, the Igbo live in rainforest country. Most Igbo occupy villages of dispersed compounds, but in some areas villages are compact. The compound is typically a cluster of huts, each of which constitutes a separate household. Traditionally the village was usually occupied by a patrilineage.

• Leaded bronze ceremonial object, thought to have been the head of a staff, decorated with coloured …

Before the advent of colonial administration, the largest political unit was the village group, a federation of villages averaging about 5,000 persons. Members of the group shared a common market and meeting place, a tutelary deity, and ancestral cults that supported a tradition of descent from a common ancestor or group of ancestors. Authority in the village group was vested in a council of lineage heads and influential and wealthy men. In the eastern regions these groups tended to form larger political units, including centralized kingdoms and states.

• Maiden spirit mask symbolizing beauty and peacefulness, painted wood, Southern Igbo Ekpe society, …

Traditional Igbo religion includes belief in a creator god, an earth goddess, and numerous other deities and spirits, as well as a belief in ancestors who protect their living descendants. Revelation of the will of the deities is sought by divination and oracles. Many Igbo are now Christians.

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To cite this page:

• MLA Style:   "Igbo." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009.
• APA Style:   Igbo. (2009). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

WHAT THE WHITES NEVER KNEW WAS THAT SOCIAL MOBILITY IN IGBO LAND WAS BY PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT

·         “The true facts from the Federal Office of Statistics on education tell otherwise, showing that 3 Ibo states for the past 12 years have constantly had the largest number of graduates in the country, producing more graduates than Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Oyo states. These eastern states are Imo, Anambra and Abia. Yet he calls Ibos traders. Indeed, the Igbos dominate because excellence dominates mediocrity – truth.

·         Let me enlighten this falsehood’s mouthpiece even further: before the civil war Ibos controlled and dominated all institutions in the formal sector in Nigeria from the universities to the police to the military to politics:

·         •The first Black Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan was an Ibo man

·         •The first Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos was an Ibo man

·         •The first Nigerian Rector of the then Yaba College of Technology was also an Ibo man

·         •The police was run by an Ibo IG

·         •The military as a professional institution was also run by elite-ilk Ibos.

·         Facts can never be hidden. To be first does not mean you would win the race; let us open up all our institutions and may the best man win. Let us not depend on handouts or privileges but on hard work. Let us compete and give the best positions to our brightest – be it Ibo, Yourba or Fulani, and then we shall see who is the most successful Nigerian.” Dr. Samuel Okafor

·         Superstition mingled with half-baked imported religions had always spelt retrogressive competition among semi-illiterates!

·          

·        

PRE-INDEPENDENCE IGBO CULTURE OF SOCIAL MOBILITY BY PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT ENCOURAGES HARDWORK AND EXCELLENCE

THE CHOICE OF A CEREMONIAL LEADER IS DEPENDENT ON THE SOCIAL LADDER ONE HAD SUCCESSFULLY CLIMBED OR ACHIEVED IN LIFE APPROVED FOR KEEPING NSO ANI FROM CHILDHOOD, BEING AN HONEST HARDWORKING MAN OR WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN PURE, CHASTE AND DILIGENT BEFORE AND AFTER MARRIAGE TILL THE COMMUNITY RECOGNISES AND RESPECTS ONE’S INDIVIDUAL MERIT TO LEAD. IT HAS NEVER BEEN BY INHERITANCE BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF WHITE MEN ON OUR SHORES! TODAY ALL THAT HAS CHANGED!

THE DESECRATION OF OUR PRE-COLONIAL HIGH MORAL VALUES STARTED WITH THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST WHITE MISSIONARIES IN WEST AFRICA. WHAT THE NATIVES CALLED “NSO-ANI” WAS RE-BRANDED FORGIVEABLE SINS AND SO WATERED DOWN THE SANCTITY OF RELIGIOUS VALUES IN BIAFRA. ITS PARTNER, WESTERN EDUCATION NEATLY COMPLETED THE ‘COUP DE GRACE’ AS THE FOREIGN CONCEPTS AND SOCIAL VALUES OF THE COLONIALISTS DESTROYED THE SOCIAL ETHICS OF THE NATIVES AND RENDERED OUR PRISTINE MORES AND NORMS INEFFECTIVE. IN SOME COMMUNITIES; “APING THE WHITE MAN’S DRESS CODE AND MANNERISMS BECAME FASHIONABLE AND IGNORING THE CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS OF THE COMMUNITY WAS SEEN AS THE CRITERION OF BEING EDUCATED AND MORE CIVILISED THAN THE ILLITERATE FOLKS IN THE VILLAGES!

---DR JIDEOFO KENECHUKWU DANMBAEZUE,

@ 30/06/2011 04:14:32 HRS GMT.

Healthy Competition is the Secret of Igbo Success

LET US LISTEN TO A WHITE MAN’S VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF FEAR OF THE IGBOS aka “IGBOPHOBIA”

Biafra or Igboland is the secessionist western African state that unilaterally declared its independence from Nigeria in May 1967. It constituted the former Eastern Region of Nigeria and was inhabited principally by Igbo (Ibo) people. Biafra ceased to exist as an independent state in January 1970. In the mid-1960s economic and political instability and ethnic friction characterized Nigerian public life. In the mostly Hausa north, resentment against the more prosperous, educated Igbo minority erupted into violence. In September 1966, some 10,000 to 30,000 Igbo people were massacred in the Northern Region, and perhaps 1,000,000 fled as refugees to the Igbo-dominated east. Non-Igbos were then expelled from the Eastern Region. Attempts by representatives of all regions to come to an agreement were unsuccessful. On May 30, 1967, the head of the Eastern Region, Lieutenant Colonel (later General) Odumegwu Ojukwu, with the authorization of a consultative assembly, declared the region a sovereign and independent republic under the name of Biafra. General Yakubu Gowon, the leader of the federal government, refused to recognize Biafra's secession. In the hostilities that broke out the following July, Biafran troops were at first successful, but soon the numerically superior federal forces began to press Biafra's boundaries inward from the south, west, and north. Biafra shrank to one-tenth its original area in the course of the war. By 1968 it had lost its seaports and become landlocked; supplies could be brought in only by air. Starvation and disease followed; estimates of mortality range from 500,000 to several millions. The Organization of African Unity, the papacy, and others tried to reconcile the combatants. Most countries continued to recognize Gowon's regime as the government of all Nigeria, and the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union supplied it with arms. On the other hand, international sympathy for the plight of starving Biafran children brought airlifts of food and medicine from many countries. Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia recognized Biafra as an independent state, and France sent Biafra weapons. Biafran forces were finally routed in a series of engagements in late December 1969 and early January 1970. Ojukwu  fled to Côte d'Ivoire, and the remaining Biafran officers surrendered to the federal government on Jan. 15, 1970. Biafra, on the point of total collapse, thereupon ceased to exist.  To cite this page:  MLA Style:   "Biafra." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2009         

IGBOPHOBIA IS AN EGO DEFENCE MECHANISM OF MOST NIGERIANS, A MORBID REACTION TO THE DOMINANCE OF THE SOCIOPOLITICAL TERRAIN BY CONGENITAL IGBO PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE AND ECONOMIC SUPREMACY.

Dominance in Politics started with King Jaja of Opobo prior to 1904 and continued with the great Nnamdi Azikiwe of Africa who fought for Nigerian Independence from the 1940s till 1960 also had an Igbo genealogical doggedness for pursuit of both!

Indeed the Action Group developed as a result of jealousy, envy and fear of Igbo domination of politics in Nigeria with the British trained lawyer Obafemi Awolowo selling tribalism to his people as the only way to checkmate the Igbos whom he felt had taken his birthright by sweeping the elections into the Western House of Assembly. It was only after putting fear into the average Yoruba man at the time did they cross carpet en bloc overnight to usurp the Western House of Assembly in 1959. These are facts.

Awolowo started tribalism in Nigeria; with his divisive dictum, “WEST for Westerners, NORTH for Northerners and EAST for Easterners” that derailed true homogeneity in United Nigerian Nation the Great Nnamdi Azikiwe envisioned and championed! That was/is is why he never politically won any elections to rule this country. Hatred can never stand the test of time both in ancient and modern history. Did Awlowo not declare that ALL I WANT TO RULE NIGERIA EVEN IF FOR ONLY 48 HOURS? All the Igbos ask for, is fairness and competition. Open up all the job positions and academic spaces in our institutions and let us compete and we would see who comes out on top.

Besides THIS HATRED STARTED BY THE WESTERNERS, the DIVIDE-and-RULE TACTICS of our wicked colonial masters GREAT BRITAIN led by self-imposed Queen Elizabeth that ceded 2/3 of both LAND MASS AND POLITICAL DOMINANCE to their preferred Sir Ahmadu Bello and his NORTHERN PEOPLES CONGRESS, our dear Nigeria would have been built based on a level playing ground that favoured HARDWORK, ACHIEVED SOCIAL STATUS and PROVEN EXCELLENCE.

I, Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue, as an experienced Professor of Clinical Psychometrics and double decorated Biafran Commado – Nigerian Air Force military psychologist will like to caution my people to stop the unproven claim or exhortation that IGBO is a corruption of the word HEBREW. From Hibru to Ibru to Eboe to Ibo to Igbo. Like them we are only courting HATRED and shall equally only attract the same Anti-Semitism the Jews suffered and are still suffering to date.

Nigeria, anyway, has no choice. To remain relevant in the global village our world has turned into, it must adopt best practices in socio-political dealings and so become a merit-driven society. When this occurs the Igbos would again dominate for in the words of the greatest African writer of all time, the man who has sold the most books and the only African whose books have been translated into more languages than any – Professor Chinua Achebe – “the Igbo is a creature built for competition held down neither by religion no tradition.” Social Mobility is by Personal Achievement, I guess!

A historical example of this IGBO STATUS MOBILITY THAT DRIVE EVERY YOUNG MAN TO CARVE A NICHE IN ANY COMMUNITY HE IS DOMICILED based on ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION, PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE AND FINANCIAL SUCCESS was/is 

That Sir Odumegwu Oiukwu, the First Millionaire in Black Africa loaned the Federal Republic of Nigeria his British custom made limousine to allow Queen Elisabeth II tour Nigeria as far back as 1950s is a veritable example of this! Or is anyone around to contest that he also sent his son to Eaton College in Britain for secondary school education?