Igbo Landing2 Ancient lgbo Contemplated
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Igbo Landing2 Ancient lgbo Contemplated..."Freedom Or Death""The ancient lgbo contemplated this phenomenon of worldview and concluded that there is no universal worldview. Uwa Awughi Otu! Different men, different worldviews! One man, one worldview! Those who claim to share God's view on the world would be considered mad and allowed to be by the ancient lgbo. The lgbo do not trust the individual mind, which they hold, is subject to illusion "agwo otu onye huru n'agho eke" Based on this profound conclusion, ancient Igbo civilization had granted man such far-reaching fundamental freedoms that still appears strange or incredible to many other peoples. Freedom to be, ONYENANKEYA! Freedom to a world-frame, ONYENUWAYA. Freedom of thought, ONYENUCHEYA! Freedom of religion, ONYENACHIYA! etc. To appreciate, why the ancient Igbo granted man these far-reaching freedoms, one has to appreciate lgbo value for LIFE - NDU, the HUMANBEING MMA NDU and lgbo concept of the SELF, ONWE. To the lgbo life is the supreme value : NDUBISI. A name of one of my daughters is GINIKANDU A rhetorical question, what is greater than life And the Igbo answer to this question is, simply, "NOTHING!" Within this life-valuing scheme, the lgbo assign man an apex position. Man is MMA NDU - the crown of creation, the beauty of life, and the glory of creation. Conceiving man in this highly romanticized way, the lgbo granted him the greatest possible right to autonomous existence. Hence the Igbo concept of the self is ONWE, a contraction of two words "ONYE NWE" The (own) possessor "OWN LORDSHIP". The lgbo sees a given human being as "ONWE YA" a lord unto himself. To lose freedom to the proper lgbo is, therefore, a logical equivalent of death. And he would prefer the death option, under situations of un-freedom, as history shows . To understand the Igbo or the lgbo worldview is to empathize with these ideas. When the lgbo say that the kolanut cannot speak other than lgbo language he means that some of these fundamental concepts are not easy to translate to other languages. To be enslaved, to be owned by
another is to not be. To become a living dead - O di ndu onwu ka
mma! WORLD STRUGGLE FOR A JUST WORLD By Maazi Chidi G. Osuagwu, Phd "The early Nris were divinely endowed with the quality of human value, that no human mortal has the divine authority to enslave the other hence their courage. They would rather kill themselves than be subjected to slavery. This dogma is one of the tents of NRIOLOGY. NRIOLOGY is the concept of Nri-ness, i.e. Equality of human being, that all people are equal before God." From the Palace of Eze Nri In acknowledgement to the letter from Ekwe Nche Research Institute/ Organization inviting Eze Nri to "Igbo Landing" St. Simon Island, in Georgia (July 11, 2002) "It is a truism in the historical literature that Igbo, especially Igbo males, were not at all appreciated in the Americas, mainly because of their propensity to run away and/or commit suicide. Igbo were indeed, sometimes described as "refuse slaves" who were purchased in High percentages in Virginia because the poverty of the slave owners left them no alternative." THE IGBO: EXCERPT FROM BOOK MANUSCRIPT AFRICAN ETHNICITIES IN THE AMERICAS: RESTORING THE LINKS. By GWENDOLYN MIDLO HALL "The Egboes cannot be driven to an act; they become most stubborn and bull-headed; but with kindness they could be made to do anything, even to deny themselves of their comforts. They would not, as a rule, allow anyone to act superior over, nor sway their conscience, by coercion, to the performance of any act, whether good or bad, when they have not the inclination to do so; hence there is not that unity among them that is found among other tribes; in fact everyone likes to be his own master." West African Countries and Peoples By James Africanus Horton (1868)
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