Every Village in Igboland 3

by Mac Odu

Every village in Igboland is made up of men, women and children. Everyone belongs to a family. Every family belongs to an extended family. Every extended family belongs to a kindred. Every kindred belongs to a hamlet. Every hamlet belongs to a village. Every village belongs to a clan held together by a market.

Towns were not original to Ndigbo. Towns became prominent with the arrival of colonists. It was copied from settlements developed on the basis of commerce in the riverine areas that hosted the white man first. It just happened that slavery created the first towns in southern Nigeria, as overland commerce created the first towns in western and northern Nigeria. Perhaps the hostility shown Ndigbo from the riverine areas had its roots in the days of slavery when Ndigbo became kings from the status of slaves on account of their daring and ingenuity. King Jaja of Opobo outwitted his peers and competitors and became king in foreign land even though he came from present day Umuduru in Isu. Ndigbo helped to dehumanize their own kind under the craving for profit. They founded towns in the nineteenth century when the white man came. Otherwise we were segmented societies independent in form and function. Representation was the law at all levels of association. That is whey Ndigbo are republicans in the main.

Who says that credit cannot be administered to women without the need for establishing companies and co-operatives in a different idiom from that which women have cultivated and nourished through centuries as dependable?

Every family had a head. Every extended family had a patriarch to whom the extended family sought counsel from. Every family has a first born male who would hold family property in trust for the rest of the male members until a patriarch passes on Rites of passage of a patriarch are usually the burdens of the first born male of the family. In some cases where the first born male fails to rise up to his responsibility for sake of prodigality, imbecility, outright irresponsibility or other causes, he may lose social status, although he may not be over-ridden as a first male child. His role as a first born male remains inviolate until his death. Those who are found to depreciate family pedigree are encouraged to migrate from their homestead rather than cause grief to patriarchs of the larger family. Heads of family that value heritage of decency contrive to checkmate wasteful heirs in all manner of ways. Our systems have been self adjusting, spewing out never-do-wells and propping up hard working members of family to take charge of affairs without hurting the status of a first born. It just happens that first born males that give trouble to their patriarchs are deserved by such patriarchs if not in this incarnation, in previous incarnations. People who are aware of this do not take hasty decisions about their first born males. They patiently live through their misconduct and wait for nature to take its course. No one reaps what he or she did not sow. Understanding this as an indelible law of Creation should make people sober when certain travails befall them.

Women are always more in number in every village in Igboland through our history. Inter-clan or intertribal wars of the past took their tolls on male populations before the white man dared our land. The warrior breed had short lives. Their widows kept the family to survive the warriors. Those who had many wives were lucky to have strong thresholds even after the death of a patriarch. The women usually chose some among the husband’s kinsmen to continue procreating to enlarge the family of the short-lived patriarch. Very soon, children of the widow would resemble some members of the patriarch’s family and negative traits acquired become a thorn in the flesh of the community. Character traits alien to some families develop and grow into horrendous distortions that depreciate family pride. A downward destructive trend develops and stigmatizes the family sometimes indelibly. Widows hurt Igboland by this waywardness and the trend should cease. Let families remain distinct and unpolluted progenies to their forebears.

 Young girls number higher than young boys. The boys die young in their pursuit of short cuts to wealth and power. Girls go to school in greater numbers than boys. Boys want to trade and make money earlier. Girls consequently find husbands scarce in their clans with linguistic and dialectic affinity, after acquiring education. The choices imbued by proper education put our girls out of the orbit of the scantily educated male peers. They opt for foreign mates as a result.  They live in foreign lands to the detriment of their places of birth.

Time was when daughters of the land, married in neighbouring lands kept social control levers in their birth places and assisted with stabilizing communities as a formidable group. A generation before ours, daughters of each land had a day to celebrate their relevance. In not so remote time line from now, Umuada Ndigbo was nearly off the ground. It was programmed to be a movement to sensitise Igbo men on what would redound to the greater happiness of women folk in Igboland. My late wife Edith Ike Mark-Odu worked so hard at it. It floundered for want of good soil. It should still be considered at clan levels for reasserting the relevance of women in all matters in all communities. Men should call women endowed with subtle connection with higher planes of existence to opine on issues before they are passed. I am witness to my aunt who stormed into our home in the village as soon as she developed a hunch that trouble was looming in the distance. She just appeared and doused it before it developed into cause of grief. Dilution of our culture by received religions has dealt a deadly blow to this cohesiveness and cognateness that women shared with their parental homes and we are prostrate. Our ladies find no joy with their birthplace anymore. Maidens who do not get married are harassed in Igboland to migrate and melt away in cities. Those who are married are threats to their brothers especially as they are usually better off than their siblings who shun education. The women endeavour to lift their families but their siblings blow resources wallowing in vanities until disgust sets into the minds of the benefactors and they cease to water their families. Usually the families atrophy out of relevance and are soon forgotten.

Some women however now have double names to connect them back to their pedigree when they have long distance unions especially when their expectations fail in the unions. That is healthy for our women. They should be encouraged to keep their family names, near or far. I do not think that marriage is a journey into doom. There should be a release valve when pressure develops. Parental homestead should continue to provide our women relief valve when the going gets uncomfortable in matrimonial homes.

Both parents in a union have spiritual and material values to subscribe in every union. Those values must be supplied continually without ceasing no matter how remotely. Some incarnations occur more for one party than another in a family. Both male and female parties to marriages are connected by the human spirit they share and must provide continuing flow of love to sustain the parties to marriage. The parties should in turn honour both sides’ parents through their lives.

Women work harder than men. Ndigbo have learnt to be idle in shops trading in wares and merchandize made in other lands. Their wives are made to stay at home tilling the land for their food, tending children resulting from short visits home, and bearing the brunt of welfare of relations of their spouses whether they like it or not. Usually their husbands who shun home for fear of envy return as corpses and women have the indignity of being stripped of all husband’s assets by idle folks who now claim closer relationship than wives in ownership of family property. Most times women are envied to the extent that despicable humiliation and expropriation disadvantage offspring of a benevolent member of a family who through diligence made the family tick while he was alive. Severe sanctions should be contrived against such families that come hard on women who labored with their husbands only to be shoved aside to suffer upon their husband’s demise. The spiritual burden that families bear in this divestment horror is too heavy for one life time. For they turn otherwise happy unions into nightmares for which grave consequences must be reaped. Ndigbo should set their gazes on own wealth rather than on wealth of relations.

Men look down on women in spite of the loyalty women show to families come rain come shine. I have immense disgust when men talk down on women in Igboland. Only real fools do not value women and their ennobling roles. Women are not shown Kola nuts. Women must not talk in an assembly of men. Women should not own land. Women should not eat gizzard of chickens. Women should kneel before their husbands. All rubbish! He is a man who knows the worth of a woman and seeks to make matters light for her. Women have spiritual lightness that helps them see and pilot families to safe harbours all the time when they stand aright in their duty posts unblemished with wrong principles and distractions. Ndigbo had better listen to their wives in all matters before decision. Or the wives were never theirs.

Women organizations thrive better than male organizations. There are many community based organizations, guilds, associations, faith-based organizations, thrift societies, and self-help groups that keep women feeding their families and retaining relevance. Why should government not adopt existing institutions for providing credit to our women folk? Certainly those organizations have withstood storms and are bound to endure in perpetuity. Credit institutions are less than creative for avoiding these age-old and tested organizations.

It is sad that after fifty years of independence we have been unable to make a dent in our social structure with development assistance originating from the public sector. Various grandiose development plans of government from inception have fallen short of providing any help to peasants male and female. Ndigbo have traditional modes that work. Financing institutions should approach credit delivery from those institutions.

Should women not now be free of some burden by deliberate policies of government so that their miserable lives may be longer and more comfortable? Systems should quickly be erected to reduce drudgery for Igbo women especially with industrial processes of all types. Our women need processing plants quickly for all manner of foodstuff. Every village should endeavour to develop processing plants rather than trade in foreign foods.

Should men not remain in their places of origin and invest in their own land so that their wives and children may better fulfill their missions in Creation?