Igbo, Ibo (self-designations Igbo, Onyeigbo, Ndigbo), people of southeastern Nigeria. They constitute the greater population of the states of Enugu, Ebonyi, Anambra, Imo, and Abia; they also inhabit the northwest of Akwa Ibom state, the northeast of Delta state and the southeast of Rivers state (Bonny Island).
Population: 32 million (2022, estimate) They are classified into the Above Ground Igbo or Northern Igbo (Onicha group – Elugu, Nri Awka, etc.), the Southern Igbo or Owerri (Ikwerre, Isoma, Oratta, Bonny, etc.), the Western Igbo (Ika, Ogba, Egbema, etc.), the Eastern Igbo (Aro, Ada, Afikpo, Umuahia, etc.), and the North-Eastern Igbo (Nsukka, Izii, Ikwo, Mgboo, etc.) They’re also native to Cameroon (120,000 people), Liberia (at least 100,000 people), Sierra Leone (about 100,000 people), Ghana (70,000 people), Equatorial Guinea (60,000 people), Gambia (7-10,000 people), the USA (about 250,000 people), Great Britain (up to 20,000 people), Australia and Canada (2,000 people each).
That’s at least 33 million people in all. They speak Ibo, a member of the Igboid branch of the western subfamily of the Benue-Congo family of Nigero-Kordofanian languages. There is no one literary norm (there is literature in the Onicha and Owerri dialects, the so-called standard Igbo was evolved on the basis of Owerri and Umuahia, but there is also a “United Igbo,” formulated in 1915 by missionaries on the basis of the Onicha, Owerri, Bonny, Ngwa, and Aro dialects; many other dialects have their own written tradition).
Latin-based alphabets since the 19th century. Based on the pre-colonial period, Nsibidi pictographic writing is in use. Most Igbo are Christians (Catholics and Protestants: Methodists, Anglicans, Reformed, etc.), some retain traditional cults, and there is a small Jewish community.
The origin of the Igbo. Various hypotheses exist about the origin of the Igbo. Their ancestors may have been the creators of the Igbo-Ukwu archaeological culture. Traditions testify to their connections with the Yoruba, Ipibo, Igala, Bini, etc. From 1437, there was contact with the Europeans ; in 16-early 19 centuries, the lower reaches of the Niger were the most important center of the slave trade, based on which several chiefdoms arose there among the Aro, which united in the Arochukwu Confederacy. Many were taken to North America and the Caribbean as slaves; their descendants form the basis of the population of the states of this region. The chiefdom was also in the north of the Igbo and E. ; the rest never had centralized political institutions. Some West Jong were tributaries of Benin in 18–mid-19 centuries .
The landing of Englishmen in the Niger Delta led to the economic collapse and, as a consequence, the resistance of the Igbo of various groups. During the Civil War of 1967-70 in Nigeria, the Asian shacks were the ethnic basis of the self-proclaimed state of Biafra; strike action caused massive demographic and socio-economic consequences, discrimination against the Igbo, and their emigration. There are ethnic Igbo organizations in the diaspora. Since the 80s, the development of Igbo in the position of the economy and politics of Nigeria has greatly intensified.
The traditional culture of the Igbo is characteristic of the Guinea subregion of West Africa. The principal activity is manual slash-and-burn (yams, cassava, corn, and, with the northern and southern Igbo, rice; with the eastern Igbo, the dominant crop is oil palm).
They are also fishing and harvesting breadfruit and other wild plants. Cattle-breeding is poorly developed, being inhibited by the tsetse-fly; cattle are highly prized and have mainly a ritual significance. Crafts include, but not limited to, blacksmithing (blacksmith work is done by male members of the Nri Awka clan which constitutes most of the male population), pottery, weaving, braiding and wood carving.
Palm oil and timber trade and export is developed; seasonal work to plantations, mines, oil fields, and enterprises in large cities is common, and a large number of Igbo have migrated north and west of Nigeria. An intelligentsia and civil service developed, and business had started to emerge.
The Igbo constitute a significant segment of Nigeria’s economic and political elite; many past political and religious leaders and figures in science and art came from among them, including the country’s first two presidents, Nnamdi Azikiwe and J. Aguiyi-Ironsi (in 1966), the president of Biafra C. Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Cardinal F. Arinze, the writers Chinua Achebe and Cyprian Ekwenzi, the singer Nelly Uchendu, the historian A. E. Afigbo; the American singer and actor Paul Robeson and the Martinique poet and politician, one of the founders of the idea of negritude Aimé Césaire were of Igbo descent.
Social organization is based village and extended family communities with clans (Umunna) among Ada and other eastern Igbo, the kinship system is patrilateral (there are patrilateral relatives of the father-“Umunna” and mother-“Umunne”) among Ada and other eastern Igbo it is a double unilateral.
kinship terminologyThe kinship system is generational with a number of descriptive and reduplication terms; relatives are divided according to relative age (the father’s elder brother is addressed as the “big father”, the father’s younger brother, if older than himself, as “father’s son”, i.e. he is equated with the ego’s brothers).
Polygamous families have fullm(Nwanne-m) and half(Nwanne Nna) siblings.
The northern, eastern, and southern Igbo share male and female age grades (or age classes) upon entry into which initiations are performed;male and female circumcision and scarification are also practiced. Secret societies played a significant role in the past, particularly among the southern Igbo: includes Mmvo (or Mmo), Ekpe, Akang, Obon, and Okonkwo. It’s virilocal marriage; there’s frequent polygyny, sororate, levirate, and dowry. Domestic slavery was common.
The settlements are disbursed, made up of extended family clusters, with a few reaching eight thousand folks. The building is rectangular, square, or circular, a framework of poles covered with clay in the northern Igbo-adobe; the external surfaces are sometimes adorned with mosaics of broken mass, furs, etc.
In the case of many western Igbo, a village is divided into upper and lower (or older and younger) halves. It is widespread, especially in East Nigeria and it follows, among others, the cults of ancestors (Ndi-Ichie), water, good and evil spirits (Alusi), personal patron spirits (Chi), the creator Great Spirit Chukwu (its children are the spirits of the sun, “Anyahu”, “Anyamvu”), the spirit of fertility (Omummu), the spirits of thunder (Amadioha), the drum (Ikoro), the spirit of the hearth— a patron of women (Eku).
There are priests, fortune tellers, rainmakers, sorcerers, healers. Representative is the belief of reincarnation of the souls of the dead, and the twins are characteristically insecure (in the past, you killed).
There used to be human sacrifices at noble funerals. The production of sculptures and figurative masks made of clay and wood is highly developed. Wood carving is part of the eastern stylistic group of the Guinean coast. Ikenga also lends its name to a type of wooden sculpture – standing or seated male figures, with horns and accouterments of power (weapons, trophies, and so forth); they are destroyed after the owner’s death.
They constructed clay shrines, adorned with decorative wall painting, and filled with clay effigies of the genies. There’s a conventional calendar with a four-day “market” week and a yam harvest festival.
(There are especially developed genres of folklore music). The ethnic music of Ikorodo is also popular – singing, accompanied by various musical instruments, including various percussion instruments — drums of various types, small xylophones (2-12 keys), lamellaphones, wooden and iron bells, numerous rattles, aerophones – flutes (ocarinas and longitudinal), pipes (made of animal horn, made of dried pumpkin fruit). Highlife (an early jazz-infused mix of grooves) and its urban climes is a favorite here and throughout West Africa.
