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This study is however, not about Igbo history, this historical analysis will show the origins of belonging or cultural solidarity. The African history in general and the Igbo in particular, have

12The Elder-Leader is usually the first male born called Okpara, among brothers and sisters in a given particular family who by birthright is tasked and responsible to particular issues and difficulties that arise.

He is the first among equals of his blood family members. He attends the meeting of the Elders and while representing his family makes a meaningful contribution in response to the solidarity need and development of the Igbo community, to which he belongs.

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not received their rightful places in modern day studies. This play-down attitude towards African history may be attributed to what Ifemesia (2002: 6) observed thus: “…African history do not possess that peculiar and indefinable African-ness which would make their indigenous readers freely relate to their spirit and message”. It is, therefore, based on this concern that any aspect of history in this study would be appreciated, focused and commended.

As African nations participate in modern day technology and science to improve the common lives, the continent’s history plays a very vital role to determine the future and redress the present system to enhance the life of the majority. This argument agrees with Ifemesia’s (2002:

7) line of thought when he wrote:

…African history has a responsibility to inform young Africans and all, in appropriate terminology, of their immemorial heritage and traditional manner of living, to encourage them to have greater confidence in their own, and even to stimulate them to take a hard look at some of their current problems and see if the past could not help them, in some measure at least, to redress the imbalance of the present.

The Igbo cultural solidarity under consideration is based on such an understanding of social practice as a historical value system among the Igbo, that this study would be considered as a means of historical tool to re-evaluate the present day challenges in other to progress the necessary development in our African societies. As we consider solidarity in its role in rural development of the Igbo, we owe this knowledge to the historical culture that has passed through numerous generations. Let me now deliberate on the history of the Igbo origin.

Scholars have made efforts to identify the Igbo people from a historical perspective. Victor Uchendu 1965, Basden Green 1966, Elizabeth Isichei 1976 and Adiele Afigbo 1981 have all written extensively on the history of the Igbo people. The Igbo are to be found in the South-eastern of Nigeria. This stretches from the River Niger from the West of Agbor to the fringes of the Cross River and from the north of Nsukka highlands to some parts of the Atlantic Coast (Onwurah, 1984: 21). The Igbo nation covers a landmass of over 15,800 square kilometres (Ifemesia, 2002: 15). The Igbo people’s language, Igbo, is the third largest spoken language in Nigeria after the Hausa/Fulani in the North and the Yoruba in the Southwest. The Igbo are estimated to be over 35 million people in the Nigerian population of about 140 million.

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In his classification of African languages, Greenberg (1949) groups Igbo with the speech communities of the Kwa subfamily in the Niger-Congo linguistics group (Greenberg, 1949:

87). Quoting Uchendu, Onwurah (1984: 22) observed the difficulty of the nature of the Igbo language when he wrote:

It is marked by a complicated system of tones used to distinguish meaning and grammatical relations, a wide range of dialectical variations that is a source of difficulty to westerners, but not to the Igbo, and a tendency to vowel elision which makes it difficult to express a few of the spoken words in writing.

While this difficulty is true of every language, the Igbo language in Nigeria remains an oral and written language.

During the 20^th century (from 1900 onwards), the colonizers described the Igbo as a people

‘without history’. The Igbo people had no Kings, Chiefs or known cities. This was not the case among Igbo neighbours of Benin and the Oyo people who had already developed centralized governance before the advent of colonisation. The Igbo were said to be stateless (Afigbo, 1981: 1). This idea has raised questions among Igbo scholars.

A people with culture, myths, proverbs, folklores, and pithy sayings cannot be described as being ‘without history’. Afigbo (1981: 2) gave reasons for this negative perception by the colonizers. He outlined four points in the Igbo cultural histories thus:

1. The Igbo did not know a literate culture.

2. The Igbo land lay outside the areas traversed by early travellers (Arabs or Europeans);

the result was that the development of Igbo culture throughout the millennia before 1900 went undocumented.

3. The fact that the Igbo did not evolve centralized state systems comparable to their neighbours (Benin or Oyo), that had well developed institutions for the preservation and transmission of oral traditions, has meant that information which survives about the Igbo past is scanty and scrappy.

4. Finally and above all, scholars have not yet made a determined effort to tackle the problem of reconstructing the Igbo past. Historians are only beginning to exploit what little information exists on pre-colonial Igbo society (Afigbo, 1981: 2). There was a basic lack of interest in grand history among the Igbo as a people.

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From the literacy point of view, differing from Afigbo is Ifemesia, who claimed the Igbo were among the pre-literate people of Africa. Their history was not committed to writing in any appreciable manner before the 1800 century. Though the Igbo developed an ideograph (written language using symbols or characters) known as nsibidi¹³, literacy as it is understood today came to Igbo society in the 1800 century (Ifemesia, 2002: 16-17). Nsibidi took the form of formalised pictograms, like Chinese writing. Isichei (1976: 35-38) pointed out that, had colonialism not disturbed the Igbo people and their neighbours from their own patterns of development, it seems likely that literacy would have been developed. Nsibidi writing would have acquired more characters, becoming a richer and more flexible vehicle of literary expression.

Ifemesia (2002: 17) furthermore, coming from another perspective, noted the art of reading and writing had come to Nigeria particularly in the North and South via the advent of Islam between eighth and the ninth century A.D. The reading or writing in Arabic was a result of Islamic influence in these areas. This literacy activity had taken place in the courts of the Oba, King of Benin, and the Olu, King of Warri. The Calabars, the Igbo’s closest neighbours, Efik traders in the southeast had begun to keep English records by the eighteenth century. In all these activities, literacy did not reach the bulk of Igbo land and so no substantial material for Igbo history were put to writing before the eighteenth century.