The Igbo are among the three major ethnic groups in present-day Nigeria (the other two being the Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani), and Igboland occupies a landmass of approximately 15,800 square miles, situated in the southeast.12 According to Isichei, while the first human inhabitants probably came from areas further north, people have
32. Examples of ethnographic studies include Basden, Ibos of Nigeria; G. I. Jones, ‘Ecology and Social Structure among the North Eastern Ibo’, Africa, 31, 1961, cited in Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People, London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1976, 290; Simon Ottenberg, ‘Ibo Receptivity to Change’, in W. R. Boscom M. J. Herskovits (eds.), Continuity and Change in African Culture, University of Chicago Press, 1959, 130-43.
9 For example, Dike, Trade and Politics. Dike was associated with the Ibadan school of historiography, which developed at the University of Ibadan in the 1950s and determined the direction of modern Nigerian historiography into the 1970s. The Ibadan school were involved in a reconstruction of the African past in a form that could be used to further nationalist interests.
10 See for example, Afigbo, ‘Prolegomena’, 34-51. While Afigbo maintains that the key to an understanding of Igbo cultural development lies in the interaction between the Igbo and their environment (especially their relationship to the land), he recognises the part played by external influences (both Nigerian and European).
11 These include anthropologists, historians, political scientists and theologians.
12 Arthur Nwankwo, ‘The Igbo and the Tradition of Politics: An Overview’; in U. D. Anyanwu and J. C.
U. Aguwa (eds.), The Igbo and the Traditions of Politics, Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1993, 5;
lived in Igboland for at least five thousand years. The Igbo began to diverge from other related languages, such as Edo and Yoruba, perhaps four thousand years ago.13
Since the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914, which ushered in the modern Nigerian state, different sets of essentially artificial administrative boundaries have been imposed on Igboland.14 In 1951, the Macpherson constitution divided Nigeria into three regions, each dominated by a major ethnic group:
the Eastern Region (predominantly Igbo and Christian), the Northern Region (predominantly Hausa-Fulani and Muslim),15 and the Western Region (predominantly Yoruba, and Christian or Muslim).16 This has had implications for Nigerian political culture ever since, which has been dominated by ethnic and religious politics. Nigeria obtained independence in 1960, and in 1967, the government created the first 12 states, with the bulk of Igboland occupying East Central State.17 This increased to 19 states in 1975, 30 in 1991, and 36 in 1996. Present-day Igboland consists of five states: Abia, Imo, Anambra, Enugu, and Ebonyi.18 There are also a number of peripheral
John Nwachimereze Oriji, Traditions of Igbo Origin. A Study of Pre-colonial Population Movements in Africa, New York/Bern: Peter Lang, 1994, 2; Uchendu, Igbo, 1. See Maps 2 & 3.
13 Isichei, Igbo People, 3. The issue of Igbo origins remains an area of much speculation, partly due to the lack of oral tradition and written records. For further discussions, see Oriji, Igbo Origin; Don C.
Ohadike, Anioma. A Social History of the Western Igbo People, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994, 2-15; Basden, Niger Ibos, 411-23; Talbot, Peoples of Southern Nigeria, Vol 2.
14 Isichei, Igbo People, 140.
15 Islam reached the north in the 11th century, influencing the two Hausa states of Kano and Katsina. In the early 19th century, a reforming jihad by the Fulani cleric Uthman dan Fodiye overthrew the Hausa kings and set up the Sokoto Caliphate, a federation of emirates covering most of the north. It aimed at the formation of an Islamic state based on Shari’a (Islamic) law. Joseph Kenny, ‘Sharia and Christianity in Nigeria: Islam and a “Secular” State’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 26.4, 1996, 339-40; Paul Freston, Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 182.
16 Later, the Mid-West Region (predominantly Edo) was created, carved out of the Western Region.
17 See Map 4.
18 See Map 1.
speaking groups west of the river Niger in Delta State,19 and further south in Rivers State.20 In addition, large diasporic communities exist in some of the major Nigerian urban areas, such as Lagos in the southwest, Kano, Kaduna, Jos, Zaria in the north, and Calabar in the southeast,21 which as we will see facilitated the growth of the Civil War Revival and its Pentecostal progeny.
According to the contested 1963 census, Igbos numbered 9.3 million (16.6% of the total population of 55.6 million), compared to Hausa-Fulani (29.5%), and Yoruba (20.3%).22 The 1991 census put the population of Igbo states at 10.7 million out of 88.5 million,23 but this did not include Igbo communities outside Igboland. Based on projections from earlier censuses, the estimated Igbo population in 2000 was 19.9 million, compared to 20.3 million (Yoruba) and 35.3 million (Hausa-Fulani), out of 111.5 million.24
19 Igbo-speaking groups west of the Niger divide into three main cultural divisions: Aniocha, Ika, and Ndokwa, but under British rule, they were grouped together under the name Western Igbo. They trace their origins to the 10th century AD, when some of their ancestors crossed the Niger in response to ecological crisis (caused by population density and soil deterioration). Since independence, they have chosen for themselves the name ndi Anioma (Igbo: those who live on the good and prosperous land). See Ohadike, Anioma, xv-xvi, 76.
20 Igbo-speaking communities in Rivers State exist in Ahoada, Diobu, and Umuagbayi. See M. A.
Onwuejeogwu, ‘The Igbo Culture Area’, in F. Chidozie Ogbalu and E. Nolue Emenanjo, Igbo Language and Culture, Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1.
21 Ottenberg, ‘Ibo Receptivity’, 130. For Igbo communities in Northern Nigeria, see Obiwu, Igbos of Northern Nigeria, Lagos: Torch Publishing Company Limited, 1996.
22 Nigeria, Nigeria Handbook, Lagos: Academy Press Ltd, 22. Because of their political implications, census results in Nigeria are generally considered unreliable. The 1952-1953 census, which put Igbos at 17.9%, Yorubas at 16.6%, and Hausa-Fulani at 28.1%, was probably a more accurate reflection of the demographic balance of peoples, because the 1963 census was compiled in a more politically charged atmosphere, running up to the elections. For a discussion, see S. A. Aluko, ‘How many Nigerians? An Analysis of Nigeria’s Census Problems, 1901-63’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 3.3, October 1965, 371-92.
23 1991 Census figures, quoted in Eghosa E. Osaghae, Nigeria since Independence. Crippled Giant, London: Hurst & Company, 1998, 232.
24 Quoted in Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World 21st Century Edition, Carlisle:
Paternoster Publishing, 2001, 487-88. Isichei estimated the Igbo population to be 20 million, out of 100 million, in the early 1990s, based on projections from the 1963 census. Isichei, Christianity in Africa, 155, 379. In 1998, Chris Ugokwe, chairman of the National Population Commission, estimated that Nigeria’s population had risen to 108.5 million. ‘Articles from October 1998 regarding Nigerian Population’, retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.motherlandnigeria.com/pop_articles.htm.
Before direct European contact, the Igbo consisted of over two hundred independent village groups, each composed of one or more villages.25 Some scholars have suggested that Igbo ethnic identity was a European ‘invented tradition’ applied during the slave trade, and later by colonialists, to facilitate administration by promoting linguistic and cultural divisions.26 However, this implies too one-sided a process, and overlooks local agency and initiative in identity construction. Anderson’s concept of
‘imagined communities’ is perhaps more appropriate.27 As Ranger notes, identity is essentially a matter of imagination.28 Early documents and traditions suggest that a pan-Igbo identity existed prior to the arrival of European colonialists,29 but was reinforced when people left Igboland because of the slave trade, or when colonial conquest exposed the Igbo to global forces and an expanded universe. Under colonialism, a bounded Igbo ethnic identity replaced more fluid networks of
25 Ottenberg, ‘Ibo Receptivity’, 130. Villages commonly contained several hundred people, but in more densely populated areas some village-groups consisted of more than 5,000 members. See Daryll Forde and G. I. Jones, The Ibo- and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of South-Eastern Nigeria, London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, 1950, 39.
26 For example, Forde and Jones, Ibo, 9; Isichei, Igbo People, 19-20. In 1983, Ranger suggested that in pre-colonial Africa most Africans ‘moved in and out of multiple identities.’ With the colonial period, however, came a determination on the part of colonial administrators and missionaries to ‘make comprehensible the infinitely complex situation’ by imposing order on the ‘untraditional chaos.’ See Terence O. Ranger, ‘The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 248-49.
27 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1991. Anderson applies the term ‘imagined communities’ primarily to nationalities, and examines their creation and global spread, but suggests that ‘all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact . . . are imagined’, because many members do not know each other (Imagined Communities, 6).
28 Terence O. Ranger, ‘The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa’, in Ranger and Vaughan (eds.), Legitimacy and the State, 82. In this article, Ranger describes his own movement away from the idea of ethnicity as an ‘invented tradition’ imposed by colonisers and missionaries upon passive African societies towards an emphasis on African initiative and imagination.
29 For a discussion, see Oriji, Igbo Origin, 3-6. Oriji refers to two early publications, W. B. Baikie’s
‘Summary of an Exploring Trip up the Rivers Kwora and Chadda’ (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 25, 1855) and O. Equiano’s memoirs, and to oral traditions collected from Central Igboland, which suggest that many village group communities were conscious of belonging to the Igbo ethnic group prior to the advent of Europeans. In contrast, Isichei argues that there was no pan-Igbo consciousness or identity at this stage, except among the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. Isichei, History of African Societies, 245; Isichei, Igbo People, 19.
interactions. The combination of migration to urban areas outside Igboland (mainly for trade purposes)30 and the Nigerian civil war further strengthened ethnic consciousness.
While there is considerable homogeneity, in terms of language, religion, economics, and politics, there is also cultural and genetic diversity, due to cross-fertilisation with neighbouring ethnic groups. This has given rise to the culture area approach adopted by anthropologists and historians.31 A culture area is a geographically delineated territory, with common cultural traits. This thesis follows Kalu’s scheme, which divides Igboland into nine culture areas: Western, North-Western, Northern, North-Eastern, Central, South-Western, Southern, Eastern, and Cross River.32 I use it here as a tool for navigating Igbo territory, rather than to analyse cultural variations or differential responses to Christianity.