5.7 Institutions of Development in the Igbo Decentralised System
5.7.1 Development Unions/Associations in the Igbo Ohacracy Order
As already noted in this chapter earlier on, every Igbo Ohacracy community before the colonial era was an autonomous decentralised unit and had pursued its own interest and independent policies in social, economic, religious and political matters in search of common good. Communal solidarity was always the focus and major successes depended on how a community was able to drive, imagine, manage or steer this wagon to its desired collective decision or conclusion, otherwise defined as Ohacracy order, (Ubah 1987:171). Through this already identified collective nature of Igbo Ohacracy governance, it is clear therefore that leadership in Igbo land was in many ways the same with elder-ship while at the same time collective. Ubah (1987:172) therefore argues:
…A leader was inextricably involved in the political and other processes relating to the government of his society at one or more levels. What also emerges is that leadership was largely collective since all the important leaders within each monarchy or village-group were involved in practically all aspects of governance – legislation, dispensation of justice, maintenance of law and order, and foreign policy matters such as making of war and peace. Leaders with special knowledge of particular matters under discussion could guide their colleagues, but nobody was presumed to have the final word on any issue.
In essence, the community’s determination is the entire focus of the Ohacracy Igbo communities. This leadership of Igbo Ohacracy communities was now transposed into migrant towns and cities and even countries where Igbo Ohacracy citizens migrated in search of new beginnings and greener pastures. While dwelling heavily on this inevitable readjustment and reminiscence of the village reality in a foreign land, Bersselaar (2005:52) argues in his “Imagining Home: Migration and the Igbo Village in Colonial Nigeria” about the Igbo Ohacracy order making some emphatic realization on how the Igbo villages were re- imagined through the complex relations between Igbo sons and daughters abroad. These communities of origin for most migrating Igbo citizens became imagined very broadly wherever city they find themselves in the Nigerian nation.
Dersselaar (2005:52) points out what he refers to as ‘the Reproduction of Locality,’ and envisioned locality in the modernity; as men and women of a certain culture Trans-locate or
Trans-experience their original-reality into the new context they found themselves. Dersselaar (2005) observes that this perspective that all communities are concerned with producing locality and making local subjects. Therefore, locality must be understood as primarily relational and contextual and as continually recreated. Thus, producing locality also means recreating either contexts of home and equally bringing city to home.
This was the dawn of the development/welfare unions/associations among the Igbo of South- eastern Nigeria. However, to do justice to the institution of the Igbo Development Unions/Associations, this brief historical background is necessary and unavoidable to help give a clearer and better understanding of this aspect. The second factor among others that gave birth to the development/improvement union/associations among the Igbo Ohacracy people was the impact of the Nigerian-Biafra civil war between 1966/1970. The Igbo surrounding was devastated by the war and the surviving Ohacracy population trooped out into the unknown world of towns and cities which most of the time were very hostile and unwelcoming environment.
Alongside these inevitable changes were three other major factors that affected immensely the Igbo Ohacracy ways of life; namely (i) Christianity [Catholicism] (new way of religious belief and following), (ii) Western Education (Western system of primary and secondary education that produced village graduates in search of new life) and (iii) Urbanization (small and big cities came into place and attracted a huge population). All these factors led to the traditional Igbo Ohacracy people to look elsewhere for identity and cultural survival from these unavoidable changes. The Igbo Ohacracy people who were known for their firm rootedness in village communities were now to leave and settle outside (abroad) their village groups (see Uchendu 1965:38 and Egboh 1987:9). Migration became part and parcel of Igbo Ohacracy life. Bersselaar, (2005:51) notes: “... observers of contemporary Africa persist in discussing ‘town’ and ‘village’ as opposites, whereby the town is regarded as modern and reflecting recent intervention, while the village is perceived as primordial and reflecting African tradition.” The village by this has become the only authentic-space for real African life, while town represent all colonial interventions in the reality of African way of life.
However, the following changes and factors could be attributed to the historical formation of Igbo Ohacracy Development/Welfare Union’s Institution as noted by Egboh (1987:10-12):
i. Having left their known home surrounding and settled in the new urban centres, the Igbo people were faced with enormous challenges of isolation away from home. Their general feeling was that this isolation, over the years, might lead to a complete submergence of their traditional values and ways of life.
ii. More so, as the Igbo people were scattered in different parts of the new urban centres where they sojourned, they lost their traditional village life style and found it difficult to secure the co-operation of their fellows (as was the case in village community) in the solution of common problems.
iii. There was also what was referred to as ‘heterogeneous elements’ as the urban centres harboured people from different villages and ethnic groups. These diverse elements sometimes revived in their new environments hostilities which had plagued them in the villages and ethnic areas from which they had come; with the result that each of the groups feared that its rivals might constitute a serious threat to its means of existence and livelihood in the urban areas.
To address all these concerns and difficulties, unity was to be maintained in the form of identity solidarity among these Igbo Ohacracy urban dwellers. This situation created among the Igbo citizens a strong desire and sense for a reunion with their kith and kin in the villages.
It was based on this state of affairs that each Igbo Ohacracy group and tribe came to the conclusion to establish ‘Associations’ of their members in each of the urban areas where they were residing or have migrated to (see Isichei 1976:217 and Egboh 1987:11). Bersselaar (2005:53) in his conclusion points out that these ethnic unions and hometown associations rose rapidly among many West African groups during the colonial period. Having attracted attention from scholars, their different functions as organizations reflect changing interests over time. These unions have genuine diversity of interests as noticed and aimed by their leadership and members as well.
Uchendu (1965:37), while verifying the foundation and formation of the Family-Unions, (Village-Unions, Town-Unions and Development/Welfare Unions as known in different towns), notes that, in Nigerian cities where some Igbo people work or seek employment, the need to provide security has become vital. For the new arrivals, the need to instruct and keep them to the rural aims has become eminent. Hence, this new reality has led to the formation of various associations called Family Meetings or Improvement Unions in production of locality
in the cities. These associations meet once in a while to deliberate and map out strategies to achieve welfare for their home towns where city is also reproduced.
Hence, the Development Unions among the Igbo people came about as a result of Igbo’s contact with the foreign world. Their relation therefore served as a means and instrument by which the Igbo people were to manage, re-adjust or cope with this event or advent of the western world and modernity. The birth of development union-institution was very much a contemporary age, a 20th century event and institution in which an Igbo living outside his/her natural location was able to keep contact with their identity, hopes and aspirations and desires back in their rural communities.
The Roman Catholic Igbo context will be highly welcoming with regards to the effects of the Igbo Ohacracy development unions for a common participation. With such self-motivated and self-supporting initiatives, the Vatican II should be very much alive in the Igbo Catholic context as the development unions try to promote self-reliance. The Roman Catholic Church in the Igbo context relied on foreign donations for over a century. To this day, the Igbo Catholic Church still expect material donations like motor vehicles, heavy machine equipment, hospital and health operating materials to come from the Western Catholic Churches yet such can be locally funded or sorted. The Western Catholic Churches have created what this study would call a “dependence theology of syndrome.” By this understanding the Western Catholic Churches believes: ‘We have riches; God has blessed us so that we can give you; you are poor and are in need to be helped. Therefore depend on us.’
No local means and avenues were sort to create a self-dependent Catholic Church among the Igbo. Hence, the Igbo development unions’ model can be an approach that would serve as agent of development in the Roman Catholic Churches among the Igbo people by which the common participation of the masses will be fully realised.
Indeed the mentality of dependency has delayed the growth of the Catholic Church among the Igbo Ohacracy context. Both the laity and clergy long for these so called “free gifts or donations” in order to solve the needs of local Catholic Churches. However, the development unions in the common participatory governance among the Igbo Ohacracy people calls for self-reliance. It has been evident in recent years that a self-supporting Catholic Church has been initiated among the Igbo and elsewhere in Africa to do away with the dependency tendencies developed by Western Catholicism. This study strongly suggests that the
development union of the Igbo is the way forward to realise a self-reliant, self-supporting and self-worth Church in the Igbo Ohacracy Catholic Church. As this study seeks to create and introduces the development union values as an agent of common participatory approach in the Igbo Catholic Churches, the lay people and the clergy will own their Churches and the development therein. Uzukwu (1996:88) notes the challenges of dependency as he calls the Igbo and African Catholic Churches to rise up the challenges of self-reliance and called to the end of what he calls “Dependency Syndrome” that has held back the Catholic Church’s towards growth.
Of course, this dependency on the Western Catholic Church could be seen as a way of control and managing the Igbo Catholic communities who continually depend on the charity (hand- outs) from the centralised model of governance of the Western Churches. But, the question that remains is, until when will the Western Church control and manage the Igbo Catholic communities? The saying that, ‘You can take the fish out of the water, but you cannot take water out of the fish’ stands out to teach the centralised Catholic Church a lesson to set the Igbo Catholic Churches free. Decentralised context remains the ground of growth for the Igbo Catholic communities. The Igbo Ohacracy cannot achieve the expected development with this mentality of dependency syndrome.
The next section discusses the Igba-ndu ritual (binding life together) which is the second most important development institutions among the Igbo Ohacracy model for a common participation.
5.7.2 Igba-Ndu: Binding Life together (Igbo Institutional Mechanism for