IGBOZURUOKE MEDIA

I pray the so-called liberated Igbo women, feminists and their male collaborators who despise and want Igbo culture supplanted have not found a new format to castigate, obfuscate, and spin a self-conceited narrative of Igbo culture to advance their agenda. While every disclosure and literature on Igbo culture are desirable to further unlock some mysteries surrounding some aspects and to clarify and validate those already known, absolute falsehood born out of mischief will be catastrophic and must not be allows under any circumstances.

If the Igbo culture that is constantly being attacked, misconstrued and misapplied faces deliberate falsehood such as we are witnessing, Ndi Igbo will begin to experience a slow but consistent decline in at all levels. Already, Igbo culture is facing attacks, intimidations and blackmails from the Christian church and individuals who believe the inflexible and puritan culture has being a hindrance to their designs and engagements.

Recently on the social media, a channel, Odinalalgbo/culture’s Post that has been commenting on Igbo culture veered into an unsubstantiated claim. In the post, the writer/writers disclosed that in Igbo culture, women do partake in the administration of kola nut and libation in the midst of men who applaud and partake.

Unfortunately, the post did not indicate the Igbo community where such engagements are the norms and becomes a custom. There are about eight sub-cultural entities in Igbo land, none of them engage in such practice. Moreover, in entities that has female chief priest, they don’t exercise such authority in the presence of one man, even if he is a boy, let alone, where there are men.

To further buttress this point, in the Igbo sub-group of Anioma communities, where women, the Omu, women rulers, discharge some limited traditional functions, breaking of kola nuts and pouring libation in the midst of men are not part of their delegation. So where did the OdinalaIgbo promoters get their brief from?

Caution should be the watchword, in matters concerning the Igbo culture. Unlike in the other places, with the exception of  the Jews’ culture where  the Igbo tradition is about ninety-eight percent in conformity, the Igbo tradition remains fragile and at the brink of extinction, due to uninformed or deliberate falsehood like this. If urgent measures are not taken to see how the culture can be earnestly revitalized and preserved, it will spell doom for a meaningful Igbo growth and existence.

To further expatiate on this, first, it might be proper to caution the Christian community in Igbo land. Igbo tradition is superior to Christianity. It is an indigenous religion that forms a component of Igbo evolution. Christianity is a young and foreign customs—that is not even a tradition but an adoption of the Caucasians —which the colonial masters brought into Igbo land.  Igbo Christians should emulate their counterparts in other parts of Africa and stop reviling and denigrating Igbo culture. So-called Christians in Igbo land have deviated from the footprints of their masters, who brought the religion and resort to insulting and attacking the Igbo religion. 

For example, why should Christianity in Igbo land, authorize their worshippers to go about desecrating and destroying places of deities and their shrines. In most Igbo community, huge trees, under which adults relax in the day time and children had moonlight rendezvous in the past, have been designated evil mediums and destroyed. Hardly can one see ancient relics or Igbo traditional heritage still standing. While heritage sites and monuments dot every nook and cranny of the Yoruba and in other nationalities, Christian fanatics and pretenders in Igbo land have mauled and cut everything down.  

Second, Igbo women and men who have been hiding behind Christianity to castigate and malign Igbo culture for different reasons should refrain from such. For those who think the tradition is antagonistic to them and their generations,  must understand that the tradition did not cause their predicaments but serves as the conscience and preservation of Igbo spirituality.

In the same vein, Igbo ladies who are hiding behind Christianity to advance their feminists’ agenda are being delusional as the laws and privileges that apply to the co-existence of male and female in Igbo culture are both inclusive and exclusive as the matter may be. The injunctions that promote female transgressions in other cultures do not thrive in Igbo system. While a Yoruba, Efik etc., woman can be a butcher who sells venison in the market and inherit ancestral lands, the case in different in Igbo land. In every Igbo community, women are not even allowed to deep their hands in a bowl and pick kola nut. While the bowl is passed round for men to pick lobs or pieces of kola nut and eat, in the case of a woman, the male who is passing the bowl around will pick a piece or lob from the bowl and hand it over to a female in the midst.         

Consequently, the posts of OdinalaIgbo/culture on women administering the rituals of breaking kola nuts and pouring libations in the presence of men in Igbo land are not only ridiculous, and a gross misrepresentation but malicious.  

Kola nuts, especially, the Igbo type and the exercise of pouring libations are at the centre of Igbo spirituality, traditional and all social engagements. Igbo kola nut is not a mere desirable fruit; it is an item of mystic and spiritual engagements. Igbo kola nut has lobs that differentiate their importance, uses and spiritual connotations. It fiercely abhors women interactions or interference because of their nature, in which the menstrual circles play a major role.

Intrinsically, the Igbo culture recoils from anything that relates to women during their menstruation periods. The Igbo and Jews’ cultures are two edicts that fiercely abhor this phenomenon. Administering kola nuts and pouring libation in Igbo land, exemplify this and validates the Igbo culture as a second to none. Boniface Alanwoko