Who is igbo

We have a small favour to ask: if you appreciate our work, would you mind considering making a donation to support our work? Donate now. Their traditional homeland straddles the Niger River in the south-east and is one of the most densely populated areas of the African continent. Igbo are predominantly Christian. Traditionally, Igbo were subsistence farmers of yams, taro and cassava.

Today many are well educated and work as civil servants and in business. Over a period of many years, over 1 million Igbo have migrated to other parts of Nigeria. Igbo are believed to have originated as a people several thousand years ago in the area where the Benue flows into the Niger River. The Igbo were active slave traders, selling captives from the interior to European traders.

Christian missionaries also found Igboland to be fertile ground for proselytizing. Regional tension in Nigeria became acute after independence as politicians fought ruthlessly for the spoils of office. The problem was exacerbated by the discovery of large oil deposits, and many Igbo came to fear that oil-producing areas would be carved out of their area of control. In January , Igbo army officers carried out a coup. There were reprisal killings of Igbo in majority Hausa areas of northern Nigeria, and six months later, a counter-coup brought a northerner, General Yakubu Gowon, to power.

In September , Radio Cononou in neighbouring Benin broadcast a rumour that northerners had been killed in the Igbo-dominated south-east.

Northern mobs went on a rampage, brutally killing thousands of Igbo civilians, while Igbo soldiers were hacked to death in army barracks. Those who survived fled east, many injured and destitute, posing massive problems of relocations. There followed a major exodus of skilled Igbo from other parts of Nigeria towards the east. The federal government made little effort to heal the wounds or condemn the atrocities.

Rather, President Gowon presented a plan to replace the four regions with twelve new states, meaning the break-up of the Igbo-dominated east. Control of rich oil deposits would be placed in the hands non-Igbo minorities.

In , the Igbo, under the leadership of Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared the independence of the east as the Republic of Biafra. The federal government responded with full military force and isolated the Igbo in their heartland.

The violence and starvation led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Igbo before Biafra surrendered in January Following their defeat, Igbo have been excluded from significant representation in the higher echelons of the military and government. In May , the International Crisis Group ICG reported that the failure of the electoral process has deepened the separatist sentiment in the south-east.

The s Igbo separatist leader, the now-elderly Odumegwu Ojukwu, contested the presidential elections, coming sixth. He later told the BBC that the Igbo had more reason than ever to seek independence — basing his comments on the widespread electoral irregularities.

Throughout , there were protests from Igbo associations that Chief Ralf Uwazuruike, leader of MASSOB, remained in jail — although other separatist or rebel leaders had been released. But at the end of October , Uwazuruike was released from detention. A number of the charges were struck by the judge in March , and Kanu was released on bail in May While Boko Haram activity in the north-east continued to garner most attention, a number of experts highlighted the significance of the re-activation of the pro-independence movement in the south-east.

Aside from the reported deaths and numerous arrests of protestors by the authorities, hostility also grew amongst some segments of the population elsewhere in the country. In June , activists in the northern city of Kaduna called for the eviction of Igbo residing in the state. Arrest warrants were issued for the protest leaders.

Despite this worrying global situation, we reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the rights of minority and indigenous communities and implementing indivisible human rights for all. Sign up to Minority rights Group International's newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news and publications. Since August, MRG has been assisting Afghan minority activists and staff from our partner organizations as their lives and their work came under threat with the return of the Taliban.

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In summary, the Igbo are African people who have occupied their land for many millennia, splitting off from other Africans and evolving a distinct system. Before Foreign Colonization. Pre-colonial Igbo political organization was based on semiautonomous communities, devoid of kings or governing chiefs.

With the exception of towns such as Onitsha, which had kings called Obis, and places like Nri and Arochukwu, which had priest kings known as Ezes, most Igbo village governments were ruled solely by an assembly of the common people. Although titleholders were respected because of their accomplishments, they were never revered as kings, but often performed special functions given to them by such these assemblies.

This way of governing was immensely different from most other communities of Western Africa, and only shared by the Ewe of Ghana. Igbo secret societies also had a ceremonial scriptcalled Nsibidi. Igbos had a calendar in which a week has four days. A month has seven weeks and thirteen months a year. The last month had an extra day. They also had mathematics called Okwe and Mkpisi and a saving and loans bank system called Isusu. They settled law matters by oath taking to a god. If that person died in a certain amount of time, he was guilty.

If not, he was free to go, but if guilty, that person could face exile or servitude to a deity. After The Colonization. The arrival of the British in the s and increased encounters between the Igbo and other Nigerians led to a deepening sense of a distinct Igbo ethnic identity. The Igbo also proved remarkably decisive and enthusiastic in their embrace of Christianity and Western education.

Under British colonial rule, the diversity within each of Nigeria's major ethnic groups slowly decreased and distinctions between the Igbo and other large ethnic groups, such as the Hausa and the Yoruba became sharper. The novel Things Fall Apart by Igbo author Chinua Achebe, is a fictional account of the clash between the new influences of the British and the traditional life of the Igbo.

Instability and Biafra Seccession. Although the coup was foiled primarily by another Igbo, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the belief prevailed in northern Nigeria that Hausa leaders were singled out for death.

This situation gave rise to a retaliatory pogrom in which tens of thousands of Igbo were murdered in northern Nigeria, which led to the headlong flight back to the Eastern Region of as many as two million Igbos. Eventually, the crisis reached an apex in May with the secession of the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region from Nigeria to form the Republic of Biafra headed by the aforementioned Colonel Ojukwu. The secession quickly led to civil war after talks between former Army colleagues, Yakubu Gowon and Ojukwu broke down.

The Republic of Biafra lasted only until January after a campaign of starvation by the Nigerian Army with the support of Egypt, Sudan and the United Kingdom led to a decisive victory. Derived from the last wartime speech of Chukwuemeka. Odumegwu Ojukwu Head of Biafran state. During those three years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built rocket, and we designed and built our own delivery systems.

We guided our rockets. He says the Israeli government does not recognize ethnic communities in various countries claiming to be descendants of lost tribes. Freund says he has received numerous letters and emails from Nigerians trying to connect to Israel. But with a rising number of groups around the world attempting to link their ancestry to the ancient Israelites, he is aware that some of those claims are "wishful thinking. The film featured Rabbi Howard Gorin.

He retired from the congressional rabbinate in after 32 years as the spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation in the U. Gorin has played a significant role in the rise of Judaism in Nigeria since his first trip to the country in He ships books on Judaism to synagogues in Nigeria.

Watch video: Lagos megacity. More support comes from groups like Kulanu, a New York-based non-profit group. Kulanu assists emerging Jewish communities around the world, like the one in Nigeria.

But most of the Igbo who practice Judaism were not born to a Jewish mother and have not converted according to halakhah, Jewish law, so many Orthodox Jews would not recognize them. Even among Igbo people, the claim to be Jews elicits strong criticism. One critic, Catherine Acholonu, attributes Jewish identification among the Igbo as a result of Christianity brought by missionaries, since most Igbo people are Christians.

She feels that Igbo people are whitewashing their history and diminishing the value of their own culture by attempting to link their heritage to the Jews. He started practicing Judaism in after leaving the Methodist church.

He says that the more he followed the commandments in the Torah, the more he realized that he was doing what his parents had always done as followers of traditional Igbo culture and spirituality.

Agbai is one of the founders of the Ghihon synagogue. He plays an important role as a spiritual leader in Abuja's community of Igbo Jews. And without exaggeration, it can be suggested that the knowledge of one must have led to the building of the other. There are other interesting arguments, with regard to the topic of this article, that has been presented by concerned Igbo scholars. Known to be the first book in the bible, some Igbo scholars believe that the word is a corrupted version of the Igbo phrase "jee na isi isi" which when translated in English means "go to the very first".

The Igbo phrase, "Detere nu umu" means "written down for the children". And actually, the book of Deuteronomy was words written down to serve as laws for the children of God.

According to the biblical story of creation, God rested on the seventh day. Sabbath is a day set aside for rest and worship. The word is said to be thesame with the Igbo phrase "asaa bu taa" which means "today is seventh.

Described in the Bible as a winged angel and represented in ancient Middle Eastern art as a lion or bull with eagles' wings and a human face, Cherubim is regarded in Christian angelology as an angel of the second highest order of the nine-fold celestial hierarchy.

However, the name is believed to be a distorted version of the Igbo phrase "chere ubim" which means "guard my home. According to the book of Mark , Jesus was storied to have raised from death- the daughter of Jairus.