Yes, that “Igbo bu ofu” – “Igbo people are one” may be correct, but have we ever bothered to find out why some of those people of Igbo origin may never wish to be associated with Ndigbo despite all proofs of their Igbo origin?
Most of the Igbo brethren that have migrated and/or settled/domiciled in some places outside the core Igbo lands may have done so purely for economic reasons while others are arguably descendants and/or remnants of prospective slaves and/or freed slaves, when global liberation caught up with them, thus making them free citizens of where they are today.
So, some of these people in denial of their Igbo origin may have been and still be so bitter with their Igbo roots for ostracizing/banishing them, making them slaves and/or selling them off as slaves!
This, apart from other political considerations and/or existential expediencies may have also informed the adulteration of their Igbo names, dialects and the original Igbo names of their settlements/locations.
Examples of such abound in what is Rivers State today and environs.
For example, I know a man whose great grandparents were originally from somewhere around Obosi in today’s Anambra State and bears Igbo names; whose great grandparents settled down in one of those places in today’s Rivers State, who swore never to have anything to do with Ndigbo and his original ancestral place because of the bitterness that his own Igbo brethren sold his forebears into slavery!
Couldn’t this have also informed why it was only in some of those places where people of Igbo origin settled/migrated to, that the issue of “abandoned properties” arose after the so-called civil war in Nigeria?
Even the Osu cast system in Igbo land hitherto, helped in no small measures to worsen the situation of the denial of Igbo roots as some of the affected persons had to relocate/ migrate to somewhere else where they could be free from discrimination and/or subjugation.
However, history records that most people who were sold into slavery then from Igbo hinterlands may have qualified for public execution/imprisonment in today’s Nigeria as outlaws, hooligans, miscreants and so on including those that committed sacrilegious offenses against humanity, Igbo deities and Igbo culture/tradition.
Some of these people ended up in what was known then as “evil forests” and were meant to die there. Some of them were ostracized and some were banished from core Igbo settlements and communities then.
Whatever the case was then, the truth is that these people cannot continue to live in denial of their Igbo origin ad infinitum.
The truth is that, their denial of their Igbo origin does not cancel the existence of their Igbo origin!
Therefore, some things have to give way for a proper and genuine appeasement, reunification and/or holistic reconciliation of these people in denial of their Igbo roots by the leadership of Ndigbo Worldwide.
The leadership of Ndigbo Worldwide needs to reconnect with Ndigbo’s kit and kin across the country and possibly globally.
How a genuine reconciliation, reunification, reconnections and/or appeasements can be accomplished for the unity of purpose of Ndigbo generally is left for the leadership of Ndigbo to sort out.
Professor Echefuna’ R G ONYEBEADI
27/09/2024.
