THE Igbo people of Nigeria : JEWS OF AFRICA

THE Igbo people of Nigeria : JEWS OF AFRICA
In a White House memo dated Tuesday, January
28, 1969 to President Nixon, former Secretary of
State, Henry Kissinger describes the Igbos as “the
wandering Jews of West Africa-gifted, aggressive,
westernized, at best envied and resented, but
mostly despised by their neighbors in the
federation”(foreign relations document, volume
E-5, documents on Africa 1969-1972).
Kissinger's description aptly portrays the
Christian Igbos and their experience in Nigeria.
Over the years, the Igbos have been the victims of
numerous massacres, that they have lost count.
Most of the violence directed against the Igbos
have been state sponsored. One can say that the
Igbos knew how to spell “state sponsored
terrorism” before the rest of the world did. The
state sponsored terrorism directed against the
Igbos in 1966, led to the declaration of the
Republic of Biafra by the Igbos and subsequent
civil war. Over two million Igbos died in the civil
war, primarily by starvation. One will not be
wrong, if they call the Igbos the “Tutsis” of
Nigeria. Today, an Islamic terrorist Conglomerate
led by the dreaded Boko Haram are still
slaughtering Igbos and other Christians in
Northen Nigeria. Igbos have always seen
themselves as a bulwark against the spread of
Islam to Southern Nigeria, and as a result, a
perennial target of Islamic zealots.
However, the Igbos are one of the largest and
most distinctive of all African ethnic groups.
Predominantly found in Southeastern Nigeria, they
number about 40 million worldwide, with about 30
million in Nigeria. They constitute about 18% of
Nigeria's population, with significant Igbo
populations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon and the Ivory Coast. Igbos predominate in
five states in Nigeria-Imo, Anambra, Ebonyi,
Enugu and Abia. In three other states- Rivers,
Lagos and Delta, they constitute almost 25% of
the population.
During the slave trade, Igbo slaves were known to
be the most rebellious. Most of the slave
rebellions in the United States, Haiti, Jamaica,
Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and
Guyana were led by Igbo slaves. In South
Carolina, Igbo slaves were reported to have
drowned themselves, rather than be kept as
slaves. Today that place is called Ebo Island in
commemoration of the slaves who died there. The
Gullahs are Igbo. Igbos were one of the 13 African
ethnic groups that provided the bulk of the slaves
who were brought to the Americas. Majority of
the slaves who ended up in Virginia, Alabama,
Tennessee, Maryland, Arkansas, Mississippi,
South and North Carolina and Georgia were Igbo.
An Igbo museum has been built in Virginia to
honor the contribution of Igbo slaves to the state.
One of the Igbo slaves who was sent to Liberia
by the American Colonization Society-Edward
Roye- became the fourth president of Liberia.
Another Igbo slave, Olaiduah Equiano wrote the
famous slave chronicles.
During the colonial period, the British disliked the
Igbos, because of their supposedly uppitiness and
argumentativeness. During military service in
Burma and India, the pride of Igbo soldiers
amongst other African soldiers was proverbial. In
the company offices and orderly rooms, the first
few words from the White officer speaking to an
Igbo soldier was followed by “don't argue, you! Or
“you want to be too clever”, and similar
expressions. Their expressive and aggressive
mentality which they enjoy in their culture at
home, does not always allow them to accept
false charges or accusations without responding.
The late famous writer, Langston Hughes,
observed “the Igbo looks proud because he is
bred in a free atmosphere where everyone is
equal. He hates to depend on anyone for his life's
need. He does not mind if others look proud. He
has much to be proud of in his land. Nature has
provided for him. He is strong and able to work or
fight. He is well formed. He is generally happy in
his society where no ruler overrides his
conscience. He likes to advance and he is quick
to learn. He likes to give rather than take”.
Culturally, the Igbos are a very diverse group with
different clans, families, subcultures, and
subgroups. However, the customs are similar with
local varieties. Although there are disagreements
about the origins of the Igbos, there is a
consensus that they originated from Nri in
Anambra State of Nigeria. The language of the
Igbos is Igbo or Ibo. It is one of the largest
spoken languages in Africa, with Hausa and
Yoruba. Igbo speaking people are divided into five
geographically based subcultures-Northern Igbo,
Western Igbo, Southern Igbo, Eastern Igbo and
Northeastern Igbo. Not as urbanized as the
Yoruba, they live in multitudinous villages,
fragmented into small family groups. They do not
have hereditary chiefs like the the Yoruba or
Hausa/Fulani. Every Igbo more or less is his or
her own master. The Igbos operate the “Umunna
System”, which emphasizes the patrilineal
heritage, rather than the matrilineal. Some of the
important Igbo cities include, Onitsha, Enugu,
Umuahia, Aba, Asaba, Abakaliki, Owerri, Nsukka.
In commerce, the Igbos are a mobile, vividly
industrious people who have spread all over
Nigeria and Africa as traders and small
merchants. In countries like Gabon, Ivory Coast,
Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Togo, and
Gambia, Igbo traders predominate in retail trade.
Most Igbos are clannish, despite their
individualism and hold closely together in non
Igbo communities. They are often very unpopular
in the communities they live in, because they push
very hard to make money and often dominate the
retail business in alien communities. In his book,
the Brutality of Nations, Dan Jacobs describes the
Igbos “as ambitious, dynamic and progressive
people whose education and abilities did not
endear them to those among whom they lived.
Even during British rule, there were massacres of
Igbos in Northern Nigeria-in Jos in 1945 and in
Kano in 1953. The Igbos have acquired the
sobriquet, Jews of Africa”.
Education is highly emphasized and given priority
in Igboland. Converted to Christianity by Catholic,
Anglican and Presbyterian missionaries, they took
up self improvement with such enthusiasm, that
by the 1960's, the Igbos had the highest
percentage of doctors, lawyers, engineers,
physicists, and teachers than any other ethnic
group in Africa. Because of the abundant
educational talent in Igboland many newly
independent African nations recruited them to fill
vacancies in their civil service. The first American
style university built in Africa was in Igboland-the
University of Nigeria at Nsukka. Its founder, Dr.
Nnamdi Azikiwe was a graduate of Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania. The Igbos and the
Yorubas are the most educated ethnic group in
Africa.
Politically, the Igbos are very effervescent and
volatile. According to author Dan Jacobs “for
Britain and for the British civil servants who
continued to work in the Northern Region, the
Igbos have always been a troublesome element in
the federation, a people with a democratic
tradition who are not easily controlled. Many
British were glad to see them out of a central
position in the federation, as were those who had
driven them back to their homeland and those
who now held the civil service and other jobs they
had left”. The Igbos had been the most ardent
advocates of a united Nigeria. Upon independence
in 1960, an Igbo, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe-American
educated- became the first President and
Governor General, while another Igbo, Aguiyi Ironsi
became the first indigenous military chief.
Leadership of most of the elite universities in
Nigeria were also occupied by the Igbos.
Following the military coup of January 1966,
which the Igbos were accused of initiating, Aguiyi
Ironsi, an Igbo, became President and Supreme
Commander of the armed forces. Tensions rose
very high in the country resulting in the massacre
of Igbos in May 1966. In July 1966, a Hausa/
Fulani/Tiv inspired military coup overthrew
Ironsi's regime and a terrible massacre of the
Igbos began in earnest. This led to the secession
of the former Eastern Nigeria and the declaration
of the Republic of Biafra. This eventually led to
the civil war. According to George Orick, an
American businessman and consultant to UNICEF
who was in Nigeria at the time, one million Igbos
were to be killed in order to avenge the death of a
man called Ahmadu Bello, who was the Sardauna
of Sokoto-Prince of the Islamic Sokoto Caliphate.
He reported that “one could hear on Northern
Nigerian radio the reading of long lists of Igbos
who were targeted for extinction”.-see Goddell
team report, congressional Record of February 15,
1969, pp51976-7. The Igbos believe, and rightfully
so, that had they not fought back, their fate
would have been worse than that of the Tutsis in
Rwanda. The same way Northern Nigerian radio
was exhorting the Hausa/Fulanis to kill the Igbos,
was the same way Radio Milles Collines was
exhorting the Hutus to slaughter the Tutsis in
Rwanda.
Similarly, Heinrich Jiggs, a Swiss businessman in
Nigeria who later became the chief Red Cross
delegate in Biafra, reports seeing one of the
circular letters in Northern Nigeria which stated
that every Igbo down to the age of six would be
killed. A Canadian Journalist, Alan Grossman,
who had been West African Bureau Chief of Time
Life News Service in Lagos from May 1966 to
June 1968, testified before the External Affairs
Committee of the Canadian House of Commons
on what he saw. He told the committee “many
thousands of Igbos were slaughtered in towns
and villages across the north, and hundreds of
thousands of others were blinded, crippled or
maimed or in majority of cases, simply left
destitute as they attempted to flee to the Igbo
homeland in Eastern Nigeria. Some of the fleeing
refugees did not make it home. On one train that
arrived in the East, there was the corpse of a
male passenger whose head had been chopped off
somewhere along the line. Another group of Igbo
refugees men, women and children whom I
happened to see-I would say 100 or more of
them-were waiting in the railway station in the
city of Kano, the largest city in Northern Nigeria,
for about three days, with no security guards, for
the arrival of a refugee train, and a land rover full
of government soldiers came and mowed them
down with automatic weapons. Igbo shops and
Igbo hotels were ransacked and looted, while
blocks of non Igbo businesses were carefully left
untouched”. (see minutes of Canadian House of
Commons proceeding, external Affairs Ref. 7 pp.
239-40).
In the final analysis, Dan Jacobs, in the Brutality
of Nations, summarizes the plight of the Igbos in
the following way, “to the other Nigerians, the
Igbos were not only leaving Nigeria, they were
departing with the oil under the lands with which
they are seceding. Here lay the explanation of the
paradox that the Nigerians had driven the
Biafrans out, yet seemed to be fighting to keep
them in the federation. What they actually wanted
was the land the Igbos were on and what lay
under it-without the Igbos”.
Some internationally recognized Igbo personalities
include former president Nnamdi Azikiwe, former
military ruler Aguiyi Ironsi, writer Chinua Achebe,
former Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu, former
justice at the World Court Daddy Onyeama, former
commonwealth secretary general Emeka Anyoku,
former middleweight and lightheavyweight
champion of the world Dick Tiger and Cardinal
Francis Arinze-Pope in waiting.. Some African
Americans of Igbo ancestry include evangelist
T.D. Jakes, actor, scholar and athlete Paul
Robeson, actors Forrest Whitaker and Blair
Underwood.
*Dr. Leonard Madu is President of the African
Caribbean Institute and African Chamber of
Commerce in Nashville, Tennessee.

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