Igbo Culture

Igbo background assignment: Throughout my trip to Igboland I had opened my eyes to a wonderful culture, a culture with values and morals, and with respectable people. The Igbo people are a major ethnic group in Africa, it is reported that there are 15 million of them living inside Nigeria, whilst there are a million living outside. Igbo is a culture with a rich heritage, and their beliefs are grounded in certain myths. The Igbo believe in a supreme God whom they call Chukwu, they believe that to him belongs all power and might, thus I was able to realise the religion has a vital importance in their everyday lives. Many people from various other nations or cultures, not particularly in Africa, disregard many cultures for the simple reason of thinking their culture is greater than another. What I found in igboland was rather astonishing, their culture has a lot of substance, many of us find certain cultures to be primitive due to their ritual beliefs. Moreover, the history of the Igbo culture is very unique, before the twentieth century, it was considered wrong to refer to the Igbo as a single people, each of their groups were so distinct from another, that if an Igbo person were to travel twenty or thirty miles into another village and tried to converse with the inhabitants of the village, it would have been difficult for them to be understood. Furthermore, archaeology suggests something distinctive to Igbo culture, unlike various other African cultures it has been discovered that the Igbo people have inhabited the same geographical location for over two thousand years. I urge people who are not educated on the unique Igbo culture to visit Igboland and witness such a momentous and distinct culture. An evident characteristic of the Igbo society was the lack of a centralised political structure, this is substantially different to certain nations and cultures or areas in the west, which are governed by rules and regulations set by the governments. Many of us feel that a centralised power or government is the best way to rule a country or nation, however, the Igbo people lived a comfortable life governed by their elders as they lived in towns ruled by the ones considered to be senior in that village. The lives led by the Igbo people was somewhat different to how we’re used to living life, the relationships of people were grounded on blood ties, each person traced their ancestry to three fundamental groups, namely; uno or house, umuma or lineage and the third was obodo or town. The first group (uno) consisted of family such as one’s wife and children, the second comprised of a number of closely related houses, while the third group was town of which one belonged to. It is important to realise and know that the head-man of each town, village and lineage was elected the position by virtue of his age, this highlights the importance given to the elderly people an Igbo society, this further demonstrates the stark contrast between the values or beliefs of the Igbo society as opposed to the West. We realise that the Igbo society is a caring one, and everyone in the village is united and are willing to live together in harmony under the leadership of a head-man. In our various nations, we strive for democracy and the Igbo people achieved democracy without a central government. This was achieved as the Igbo adhered to the concept of direct participation in governmental affairs, the whole idea of democracy stemmed from the idea of cross-cutting ties. There were five most important cross-cutting institutions, these institutions were; the council of chiefs, women’s association, council of elders, secret societies and age-groups, without them the whole Igbo society would malfunction and disintegrate. Therefore, we find that the Igbo had designated institutions to deal with certain issues, although being governed by elders of the village, they did fantastically well to achieve democracy whereby each person was treated equally. This further implied, that the people of the Igbo community were able to live with one another in perfect harmony. Moreover, the Igbo culture is unique, especially to people who aren't from an African nation, those who are from the Western nations. Many people from West consider African societies to be primitive, yet, their culture is far from primitive, it is a culture that is sharply different to any other. They have the utmost respect for elders and treat them as rulers and saviours. Their beliefs and political structures implies their close bond between every single person belonging to a community and group. Even though, they aren't governed by a government, they seem to be living lives under democratic rule, and each case or problem is taken care of a by a particular institute.