Return Of Traditional Worship In Igboland

One of the remarkable trends in Igboland in recent time is the rise of interest in traditional religious practices as well as actual embrace of same by young people. The trend has become so widespread that hardly is there any corner of Igboland where this development has not been felt. This latter-day enthusiasm for indigenous religiosity has provoked discussions and debates, a development that seems inevitable given the perceived implications of that cultural shift.

Obvious in this new trend is some hostile fervour that accompanies this latter-day traditional devotion. Many of the people who are embracing traditional worship (or something that looks like it) tend to be a bit confrontational as to their right to practise their belief. This attitude, it must be admitted, is an expected response to how the ideology and conduct of Christians, who constitute the majority faith group in Igboland, have continued to demonise and delegitimise traditional worship. History also shows that traditional worshippers have enough moral grounds to feel indignant. As observed by Matthew Hassan Kukah in his best seller, RELIGION, POLITICS AND POWER IN NORTHERN NIGERIA (1994, Ibadan, Spectrum Books), Christianity and Islam, in their attempts to plant their faith in Africa were greatly aided by the accommodating disposition of the indigenous worshippers who welcomed them with open arms, and in many cases, actively assisted them in their missionary projects by providing land and labour for building worship places. However, having gained footing here, the two foreign religions, according to Kukah, have failed to reciprocate the kindness of their indigenous hosts. As can be seen over the years, the hostility to traditional beliefs in Christian-dominated communities has gone beyond mere spoken attacks to include actual destruction of places and objects worship. Such unrelenting desecration is bound to sow seeds of indignation and hostility making communities prone to conflicts.

However, the new trend of embrace of traditional faith by young people across Igbo communities isn’t as straightforward as people going back to their indigenous way of worship. It raises some fundamental questions deserving of sobber contemplation.

First is the question of legitimacy; how authentically indigenous are these latter-day traditional spiritual practices? Igbo religion is communally rooted; its institutional base starts from one’s family which membership makes one a partaker in the spiritual heritage of the community (which the family is part of). Thus, the head of the family possesses the family “ọfọ” (a sacred object of profound cosmological symbolism in Igbo worldview sourced from a plant known as Datarium Senegalense); and this “ọfọ” becomes the eternal embodiment of the family’s religious heritage, hence the “ọfọ” is forever handed down from generation to generation to succeeding firstborn males. This succession ensures that over time, an extended family (Ụmụnna) – comprising several nuclear families – will have its own “ọfọ” as handed down from their patriarch, even as each of the nuclear families may also have theirs. In the same way, a community own their own “ọfọ” through many years of succession that started with the patriarch of the community. As generally known, there is also the claim that the “ọfọ” possessed by Eze Nri (in Anambra state) is the “ọfọ” of the entire Igbo race based on an account that traces the origin of the race to the legendary Eri.

Thus, like the Jewish religion (in its original traditional sense), the Igbo religion draws and sustains its membership through bloodline succession. If you are not born of a family, a community, you are outside of its religious fold. One does not adopt their faith, they inherit it. This is the same way the Jews regarded anyone as an unbeliever (gentile) if they were not of the Jewish bloodline that has its beginning in Abraham with whom, according to the Jewish belief, God entered into a covenant (berit) that inaugurated the Yahadut (the Jewish religio-cultural heritage).

Thus, the institutional architecture of Igbo religion subsists in the nuclear family (ezinụlọ), the extended family (Ụmụnna), and the community (obodo). Thus, its custodians are family heads and community-based offices like the priesthood (ndị dibia), titled institutions (like Nze na ọzọ), and elders (ndị okenye). Some of the key custodians (such as priests and family heads that carry the “ọfọ” of the family or the community) must obtain their offices through inheritance.

But the reality of today is that this religio-cultural succession has been disrupted in many families and communities due to the influence of Christianity and modern life. Thus, many of the young latter-day converts who now brandish “ọfọ” as evidence of their religiosity cannot trace the “ọfọ” to their family’s or community’s religious heritage. They did not inherit it from their fathers who, in many cases, are Christians and having no links with indigenous faith. For some, even their grandfathers did not practise indigenous religion. So, where did these young folks receive the religious “heritage” they’re brandishing?

In OUR RELIGION PAST AND PRESENT (2005, Awka, Martin-King Press), Rev. Fr. Dr. R. C. Arazu, CSSp, insightfully reflects on the transgenerational hereditary essence of Igbo religion when he wrote about “ọfọ” as follows: “When the traditional Igbo man holds his ‘ọfọ’ in a prayerful mood, he is in active contact with his ancestors who carry on existence on the other side of the coin of life… One inherits an ‘ọfọ’ of the ancestors on becoming the oldest man in the family, in the kindred, in the clan, in the village, village-group or town. Certain deity shrines have ‘ọfọ’ which generations of priests use in turn for invoking the god of the shrine…

“‘Ọfọ’ opens up vistas of a world inhabited by the living, the life-after-death inhabitants of the great beyond and the gods of the race… With the ‘ọfọ’ in his right hand, the Igbo mystic prays as it was done in the beginning of the history of the race, as it should be done now, and as it will continue to be done. He is adding his voice to that of those who went before him and whose praying made his own first a possibility and then a reality. His attention is gathered and concentrated through the ‘ọfọ,’ on the unseen world, and by virtue of all prayers said by the race with the ‘ọfọ’, from time immemorial, his prayers travel with both traditional and modern meaning, along spiritual channels carved out by centuries of devotion towards the goal of all religious awareness, Deus Incomprehensibilis – the incomprehensible God (Ama-ama-amasi-amasi)” (pg. 132 & 136).

Thus, religious devotion in the traditional Igboland is not a function of individual initiative but that of a continuing communal heritage as passed on from generation to generation along bloodline succession. So, one may ask: are these young traditional religionists of today really going “back to our root” (as is popularly said today) or creating another root for themselves?

The same question should go to many of them who have taken up the role of Igbo priests (‘dibia’), a role known to be ordinarily inherited through bloodline succession. Priesthood is viewed by the Igbo as a calling which usually subsists in certain families, hence, some families are known to produce dibias from generation to generation. (There are however dibias who merely learnt their trade, but their roles are mainly private and not part of the communally upheld religious heritage).

The above would make one to worry whether all these latter-day “dibias” are really practising priesthood or priestcraft. Many of them have become social media sensations, brandishing wealth and promising would-be clients of instant life-changing wonders – a well know ploy common among fraudulent impostors. Priesthood is a devotional practice while priestcraft is a manipulative venture. Both exist in all religions including Christianity.

This trend of new-generation “dibia” practice comes with so much drama and unorthodoxy that should concern all of us. We should worry about the culture whereby these young mavericks gain some sort of stardom, commanding large social media followership whereby they’re able to generate buzz around grotesque subjects like “oke ite” (magical pot) and “ọgwụ ego” (money rituals). In all this drama, one clearly sees a subtle legitimisation of the amoral and creation of a potentially disruptive force that tends towards the elevation of magic, superstition, and inordinate ambitions over time-honoured values that have sustained societies.

Not on few occasions have I heard people observe the sudden drastic reduction in the spate of kidnapping and other violent crimes in Anambra state since Governor Chukwuma Soludo launched his war against these folks. Now, many people have begun to take seriously his prior diagnosis that there is a link between these modern-day traditional practices and the new era of crime in society. A state governor receives security briefings from state agencies including weekly intelligence report, every Monday, from the DSS.

The bastardisation of the Igbo religion by the latter-day converts should not surprise anyone. It is a religion that has lost much of its custodial architecture as historically subsisting in family heads, elders, and other traditional institutions. So, its practice today by young people cannot, in most cases, be a product of transgenerational mentorship, and neither are the practices subject to the scrutiny of any of the custodial institutions. So, abuse and unorthodox practices are very predictable.

One instructive thing I have personally observed is that majority of these young protagonists of the indigenous faith are largely social outliers; rebellious folks who are on the fringes of society’s norms. In many communities, the ranks of these champions of “going-back-to-our-root” are populated by idling folks who hobnob with alcohol and drugs, and engage in various other delinquent behaviours.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the phenomenon before us is such that can destroy us, if care is not taken. If the latter-day frenzy about “going back to our root” is meant to be a cultural protectionist movement, it is one that is devoid of any sound intellection; its tilt towards the amoral and social disruption exposes its ideological poverty. A movement championed by uncultured social outliers cannot embody the sort of philosophical sophistication that made many famous historical movements tick.

If it is intended as a spiritual movement, it is such that lacks the sincerity and sobriety of devotion associated with a highly morally sensitive faith like the Igbo religion. The concept of “arụ” (or “alụ”) – abomination – in Igbo religio-cultural worldview makes this point strongly. In his discourse on “ọfọ” Arazu (in the same book earlier cited), noted: “The Igbo man prayed with the ‘ọfọ’. It is a symbol that links his religion up with morality, a rare achievement in religious history. Nobody would hold the ‘ọfọ’ in those days and at the same time speak lies with his mouth. That would constitute an abomination” (pg. 136). The latter-day converts of the Igbo religion are obviously not in the mood to contemplate let alone practise this depth of morality.

The phenomenon on our hands is one we should not igmore. There is no room for playing ostrich here. Our religion scholars, sociologists and anthropologists are called to action here – we need to study this phenomenon, its sources, dimensions, and impact. All other stakeholders, including community leaders and the government, have a role to play. However, in all this, individuals’ rights to hold and practise whatever faith that appeals to them should be respected.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.