Oja dufuo dike, dike banye n’ala, oja abanye na akpa.
It is sad how low we have descended as a people. We show our strength when it comes to our own brothers and sisters. We claim to be educated and aware, yet with each passing day, we question our identity and depend on others to label us and remind us who they think we are.
There is indeed an identity crisis happening within the Igbo community, where education is now measured by the level of vocabulary one is able to quote in a meeting rather than by one’s ability to solve problems.
Ideally, the education we embrace was supposed to make us more aware of ourselves and help us embrace who we are as a people. Instead, it has sometimes made us hostile to many of the things that made us who we are.
It brings tears to my eyes to see how we are gradually losing our culture, our language, our women, and our sense of livelihood. It is also painful to watch some of our brothers struggle to claim ancestry from Israel and others from the Arabs. We seem to want to be everyone else but ourselves.
Ndi Igbo recently celebrated Ohanaeze @50 in Lagos State, Nigeria. One would wonder what happens to the people they are representing in South-Eastern Nigeria. Perhaps that is where their masters told them to do it.
A lot of our cultural values are being replaced by modern ways of life. The danger of this attitude is that it places us in a state where we are neither modern enough to fully belong to Western culture nor sufficiently grounded in the principles embedded in our own culture to truly be ourselves.
Now, tell me, what better way is there to weaken a great people than by getting hold of their women? One would think that having educated women would make them more reasonable and conscious of the responsibilities that come with education. Instead, some have interpreted liberation as complete independence from men and the rejection of traditional responsibilities. As a result, some of our men are gradually leaving to marry women from other tribes who, in their view, understand the importance of cultural preservation.
We have lost much of our religion and are gradually losing our grip on our women. The high level of education among our people should make us appreciate the ingenuity of our ancestors—the men and women who fought a war for 37 years and endured a civil war for three years, manufacturing their own weapons with little external support. Instead, some of us choose to pray against them and disconnect ourselves from their history.
This is not just a crisis of culture; it is a crisis of self-definition.
The solution is not to ignore it or wish it away, but to begin working our way back—to recover our ability to consciously decide who we are, what we keep, what we change, and what kind of society we want to build.
The first step is to ensure that education becomes more than certification. The goal of education should be to help our children understand Igbo history before colonialism and the Civil War, as well as the diversity that exists among Igbo communities, rather than treating Igbo culture as one uniform thing.
Additionally, we have to start learning Igbo philosophy, proverbs, literature, music, and traditional institutions.
It is true that history has been discontinued from the school curriculum. However, that does not mean we should stop studying and educating our children about Christianity, colonialism, Biafra, migration, and modern globalisation.
A person who knows where they came from is not necessarily hostile to other cultures. Rather, a secure identity makes genuine cultural exchange easier.
It is also our responsibility to teach our children that culture is different from whatever is done in its name, particularly when such practices fail to preserve human dignity, family stability, freedom, responsibility, and the flourishing of the people.
Furthermore, this obsession with external ancestry, such as claims of descent from Israel or the Arabs, makes our identity more complicated and therefore requires careful examination. There is no need to use exotic ancestry stories to make Igbo identity valuable. An Igbo child should be able to say, “I am Igbo, and this is my culture.”
Finally, our women should know that they are the life of every nation. It is high time we embraced who we are and developed a deeper sense of self-respect. There is no respect for Ada Igbo anymore; many are found in situations that do not befit who they are.
The challenges are enormous, and I cannot exhaust them in a single post. However, the aim of this write-up is not to make us more traditional for the sake of tradition, but to make us more conscious of ourselves.
In the South-East, there is no international airport and no seaport, yet our politicians continue fighting among themselves instead of focusing on the welfare and development of their people.
When brothers fight, their enemy wins, because nobody will trust someone who sold his brother.
We are not Israel, neither are we Arabs. Anyi bu ndi Igbo.
O ma akwa asa ahu mara onwe ya..ndi igbo wake up!!
I remain your friend and brother,
Maazi Onuora Obodoechi.
