Finally, the Igbo belief in the reincarnation of the ancestors remains a religious dimension that contributes immensely to the Ohacracy governance among the Igbo people. This belief has a strong social and moral influence on the Igbo people. A person who has lived a morally good life, which is identified as life conducted in accordance with Omenala, can attain the status of reincarnation. Any Igbo who lived and died for the promotion of moral and social development among the people earns the status of an ancestor (Agbasiere 2000:56).
Reincarnation remains a pivotal institution for the maintenance of political and moral cohesion since the dead parents are believed to have made a comeback, owing to their well modelled and high moral life in the former life. Reincarnation in the Catholic Church’s language is equivalence to resurrection. Though not in eternity; in the Igbo Ohacracy sense but, in the form of “a come back to life” on earth in the particular Igbo community.
“dynamic, diversified and market-oriented” resulting from “centuries and decades of meaningful dialogue between the Igbo genius and the environment.”
As this study is not focused on anthropological history of the Igbo people under which the detailed study three economic activities would fall, I will rather summarize how these three areas cemented the Ohacracy governance among Igbo people and their development. As this will be treated with some degree of importance, it should be noted that agriculture is the main and most vital economic activity, with trade and manufacturing coming as subsidiaries.
Survival for the Igbo depends so much on the activities on the land that is agriculture.
Economically, Igbo men, women and children practised agriculture. Every age group had to contribute to the tilling of the land and production of food. Citing Olaudah Equiano36 on how agriculture and its produce remained central among traditional Igbo, Isichei (1976:27) writes:
…Our land is uncommonly rich and fruitful, and produces all kinds of vegetables in great abundance. We have plenty of Indian corn (maize) and vast quantities of cotton and tobacco. Our pineapples grow without culture; they are about the size of the largest sugar loaf, and finely flavoured. We have also spices of different kinds, particularly pepper, and a variety of delicious fruits, which I have never seen in Europe …all our industry, is exerted to improve these blessings of nature.
The Igbo people used crude implements in their tilling of the land. Such included hoes, axes, shovels and beaks or pointed iron used in tilling the soil. They produced vegetables, yams, beans, plantain, cocoyam and fruits (Ebelebe 2009:13). Yet among all these farm produce, the farming of yam (the King of all crops) is seen by the Igbo people as man’s main duty to cultivate (Ukachukwu 2007:252) and it remains a major crop that is sold in all Igbo community markets. As I noted above, the myth of how ‘Yam and Coco-Yam’ came to be the major crops among the Igbo Ohacracy governance; the blood of Eri’s children gave origin or brought into existence the cultivation and domestication of these two most vital crops among the Igbo. Okwu (2010:7) comments that until this day the “yam god, Ifejioku/Ahiajokuji, is one of the principal deities in Igbo-land and the crop, ji, itself, the most important cultivated plant, as a symbol of wealth and well-being among the people.”
36 A remarkable Eighteenth century Igbo man was sold into slavery. Olaudah Equiano, otherwise known as Gustavus Vassa the African! He published his autobiography in London in 1789 in which he narrated his experience of village life that is today attributed to the Igbo people of South-eastern Nigeria. He was born around 1745 and in 1756 he was kidnapped with the sister and sold into slavery and was brought to Virginia in the United States of America. He was removed later to England, and sold again to a sea captain who gave him the name Gustavus Vassa. In England, Equiano bought his freedom in 1766 (Ifemesia 2002: 27-29).
New Yam festivals or Iwa-Ji (as in Igbo language equivalent) are occasions therefore for socio-cultural celebrations among Igbo communities whereby a new harvest season is celebrated by the entire community to commemorate a good harvest signalling food security among the entire community (Achebe 1965:34). Yam as the main agricultural crop of the Igbo people and their staple food, calls for celebration after a harvesting season. The Iwa-Ji is a celebration depicting the prominence of yam in the socio-cultural life of the Igbo people. The Iwa-Ji is celebrated in the month of August of every year just before the beginning of the harvest season among the Igbo rural agricultural communities as noted by Ifemesia (2002:71- 72). Each rural Igbo community has its own date and day of this august occasion. This day symbolizes the conclusion of a work cycle and the beginning of another. Invitation to the new yam festival is usually open to all who wish to attend meaning that, abundant food is ready for all; and not just the harvesters but for the entire community in celebration. A variety of festivities like cultural dances, masquerades parades and parties, etc. marks the beginning of the eating of new yam. This festival remains vital since it symbolizes the abundance of the produce. Similar festivals are held in the West African region like in Ghana where it is called the “Homowo”; that is “To Hoot at Hunger” Festival. By so doing the entire people hope for a good harvest to overcome famine in the coming planting year.37
The Igbo Ohacracy order also kept bullocks, goats and other domesticated animals. Trade and craftsmanship took the Igbo people beyond their territory. The Igbo were entrepreneurs and highly industrious. It was from this business-mindedness that the traditional Igbo were able to develop the four-day counting for a week calendar. In the traditional Igbo calendar, a week (Izu) has 4 days (Ubochi) namely Eke, Orie, Afọ, and Nkwọ; while seven (7) weeks make one month (Ọnwa), a month has 28 days and there are 13 months in a year (see Afigbo 2005:80).
In the last month, an extra day is added. The traditional Igbo calendar is fully demonstrated in the table below.
37 Igbo Land 2011 ‘Iwa ji ofu, new yam festival in Igbo land’ (http://www.africanloft.com/iwa-ji-ofu-new-yam- festival-in-igboland/ (Accessed 18 April, 2016).
TABLE NO. 4.1 Igbo Market Weekly/Monthly and Yearly Calendar38
THE FOUR WEEK DAYS
AFOR NKWO EKE ORIE
IZU NTA
(SMALL WEEK)
4TH DAY (A SMALL MARKET DAY)
4TH DAY (A SMALL MARKET DAY)
4TH DAY (A SMALL MARKET DAY)
4TH DAY (A SMALL MARKET DAY)
IZU UKWU (BIG WEEK)
8TH DAY
(A BIG MARKET DAY)
8TH DAY
(A BIG MARKET DAY)
8TH DAY
(A BIG MARKET DAY)
8TH DAY
(A BIG MARKET DAY)
7 WEEKS OF 4 DAYS EACH
28TH DAY IN ONE MONTH
28TH DAY IN ONE MONTH
28TH DAY IN ONE MONTH
28TH DAY IN ONE MONTH
13 LUNER MONTHS
364 DAYS A YEAR
The small and big market designations attract different audiences, populations and interests.
The small market days of every 4th night attracts the short distant or home based marketers whose base is walking distance to the market grounds; while the big market days attracts the far distant marketers who trade in bulk goods of their choice in which 8 days is required for these markets to repeat it activities of trading in different goods and services. As Ebelebe (2009:14) concludes, these two variations came into existence to effect to apportion or allocate every Ohacracy Igbo town its own market day; while avoiding and preventing each other’s market from clashing with the other nearby market. But of course, the system is
38 In explaining the table above, the market order is rotationally kept and known by all in the Igbo Ohacracy communities. Basden (1966:151) notes that the Igbo calendar as seen in the table is divided into thirteen lunar months of twenty-eight days and seven weeks. The four days in the Igbo week are Eke, Orie, Afo, and Nkwo (Izu nta that is small market week). Two four-day periods make big week that is eight-days (Izu ukwu, big market week) (Uzukwu, 1988:94) and (Ebelebe, 2009:14) attests to this.
heavily considered with a number of factors namely, population, location, natural resources and a high level of services available would attract its status to be minor or major market as the case may be. Different agricultural goods and services were provided to all in need of such at any of the markets available.
Furthermore, Igbo community titles like “Eze-Ji” (King of Yam) or “Ogbu Efi” (Elephant or Beast killer) Di Ji (Yam husbandry) respectively are awarded to people of great farm productions that had sustained the Igbo population by their hard work (Ebelebe 2009:13). By so doing, the Igbo Ohacracy governance had been able to work in solidarity with all who live and survive in the Igbo land. It is in this regard that Cole (1982:7) notes that size of family matters for one to achieve like others, many wives and children was the way forward. A successful Igbo man or woman farmer would seek social recognition by taking a local title. A title was a guarantee of character, as well as of success.
The possession of wealth does not guarantee or earn any Igbo person in the Ohacracy governance a status of prestige in the community (Cole 1982:9-10). Wealth in the individual hand must serve the good of the Oha community for one to be recognised as having made a social impact in the life of the people. Also, how one made his or her wealth played an important role and is carefully considered before an individual could be accorded with the honour of any local or Ohacracy cultural titles. All who had acquired wealth illegally or through a corrupt means are not recognised with such social status of titles of chieftaincy. One must keep to the moral and ethical standard of acquiring wealth.
Moreover, the Igbo Ohacracy people’s response to the inevitable changes in the modern economic era however, has been very positive and rapid too. The Igbo response in the modern setting, from their traditional base into the modernity has been motivated by complex factors but principally by economic considerations. The desire to participate in the economic activities which brought more monetary reward than the traditional agricultural activities can be noted. The recognition or title driven as the incursion of money into the economy has tremendously developed. The new occupation of modern epoch brought a desired change, which the Igbo people needed to transform itself and it has made the Igbo a formidable force of respect in today’s Nigerian economic market.
While emphasising on the reason for such rapid success of the Igbo in a short encounter with the new economy, Olutayo (1999:163) and Okonjo (1976:39) further maintain that the Igbo have been able to achieve such a progress by generating and maintaining a communal civic spirit (in other words Oha centred way of living) in the Diaspora. The communal spirit, Olutayo (1999:163) insists, is the life-blood of the entrepreneurial ability of the Igbo people, and it manifests itself in the apprenticeship39 network founded to achieve economic progress.
Credit must be given therefore to the Igbo Ohacracy/communal civic spirit, which has informed solidarity among the Igbo people. Ohacracy remains the major force and value that has propelled the Igbo society to such height of economic development that followed colonialism. The resilience of the Igbo culture to hold together shows a remarkable buoyancy of the Igbo people’s practice in their Ohacracy governance. In essence, this successful modernisation complemented the communal fabric and the traditional means of food production. A community walking together in the midst of change and modernity; keeping in mind the Oha centred way of life and communal bonded spirit of solidarity. Not even modernity could break the Oha spirit among the Igbo until the ideology of individualism raised its ugly head and begun to destroy this vital value of life giving and life protecting practise of Oha mindedness among the Igbo.
Trade as noted, played a very prominent part in the modern Igbo people’s economy. Its role was made prominent partly because of the effect of the Nigeria – Biafra civil war in the early 1960s among the Igbo people. The destruction and disruption of the agricultural activities among the Igbo people in this era of war in turn, promoted trade and travel as noted above.
The effects thereof led to the strengthening of two important Ohacracy aspects of governance, namely apprenticeship and development unions.
Within the outcomes of apprenticeship and development unions, Igbo Ohacracy governance utilises as agents to counteract individualism that was destroying communal spirit. Trade and
39 The apprenticeship system was fully developed among the Igbo just after the Nigerian and Biafra civil war in the mid-1960s. A lot of Igbo men and women were displaced in their daily economic and social activities by this war. At the end of the war apprenticeship was introduced to help these displaced able and disable men and women to stand on their own again having learnt one trade or the other from fellow relatives or friends. The Igbo communities detest begging in any form; and thanks to apprenticeship (Uzukwu 1996:96). This system had worked so well that Igbo Ohacracy people (land) recovered so much from its loss and became vibrant again with numerous economic activities that eventually encouraged development.
manufacture had their strong anchor on the effects of the war since agriculture has been the primary life activity of the Igbo people was disrupted by 1967-1970 civil wars. Hence, the search for an alternative way of life became inevitable. Talented and hard-working individual