Igbo clinic

A newspaper interview series on Igbo language and my answer.
Igbo language on the brinks of extinction.

Some time ago, precisely in 2006, the United Nations predicted that some minor languages of the world will go into extinct in 2050. On the list was the Igbo language, which is spoken in the Southeastern Nigeria by over 20 million people.

Given the attitude of some Igbo parents, especially, the present generation, something has to be done urgently to avert this dangerous prediction and save our language.

Consequently, let's look at how to save Igbo Language. Talk to notable Igbo leaders and stakeholders.

1.What role should parents play to ensure that this prediction does not come to pass.

2. What should the academia do to rejuvenate the interest in this language as it seems that there is dearth of Igbo books.

3. How do we convince our people that fluency in speaking foreign language is not a measure of intelligence but an extension of neocolonialism?

4.How do we encourage pupils and students to love and speak Igbo language.

5. Do teachers still punish pupils and students who speak Igbo Language in classrooms.

My answer:

A case for the preservation of the Igbo language
1. Parents should speak the Igbo language to their children at home, during family meetings and when they are with other Igbo people.
2. Igbo language literature should be promoted by the publication of Igbo language novels, drama and poetry. Igbo language folk tales, novels and drama should be used to make films. Scholarship for undergraduate degree and post graduate scholars of Igbo language should be encouraged by Government, NGO's and Communities.
3. Government officials of the Igbo speaking states should as a matter of Government policy address the public in Igbo language and may repeat themselves in the English language.
4.Schools should institute prizes for Igbo language, Igbo literature and Igbo language education at all levels of education. Also the film industry should be approached to include Awards for Igbo language films and documentaries.
5. The practise of flogging children who speak the Igbo language is not been carried on to my knowledge.
As a person, I speak Igbo language at home and answer phone calls with the word opening word "Kedu" instead of "Hello". It is when the person on the other side indicates that he or she cannot speak the Igbo language that I continue the phone conversation in the English Language. The preservation of Igbo language is fundamental to the socio-cultural growth and development of the Igbo race. It is also key to the generational transmission of Igbo philosophy of life. " Igbo ekene m unu".

Prince Christopher .O. Muo
(Ogbuonyara agu nke abuo) na Amuro, Okigwe.

*THE ORIGIN OF THE FOUR MARKET DAYS IN IGBO LAND*
There are four market days in the Igbo land. These market days are *Eke, Orie, Afor and Nkwo* . Market days in Igbo land are very significant so much that the four market days I mentioned above are uniformly observed within every community in Igbo land. It was during the reign of *Eze Nrijiofor I (1300-1390AD)*, *the fifth Eze Nri in the line of succession that the Igbo tradition of four market days was instituted*. According to Igbo historical records, one day during the reign of Eze Nrijiofor I, four wise strangers came to visit him at his palace. When they arrived, these four men pretended to be deaf and dumb. They did not say their names or their mission to Nri kingdom. Each of them carried nkata which literally means basket. They were taken to the visitors’ chamber by Adamma the king’s servant. Later in the evening, Eze Nrijiofor 1 went to see them, but they did not respond warmly to the Eze and did not acknowledge his greetings. Oji – kolanut was presented to them but they did not say anything in acceptance or rejection of the oji . Later at night, the four wise strangers were shown where to sleep. But in the middle of the night, Eze Nrijiofor ’s soothsayers sent a rat to disturb their sleep. When the rat went to the first basket that belonged to Eke and started to nibble at it, Oye woke up and said: “ Eke, wake up! A rat is trying to get to your basket.” Eke woke up and the rat ran away. After a while, the rat repeated the same trick on the remaining baskets, and in the same manner, all of them revealed each other’s names. In the morning, the Eze Nrijiofor I went to the strangers’ room to greet them and to perform the oji ututu (morning kola nut rituals.) As Adamma broke the kola nuts and the king called each of the visitors by their names-‘ *Eke’ ‘Oye’ ‘Afo’ and ‘Nkwo.*’ The visitors who were hitherto referred to as ‘Ndi bialu ije ekwu okwu ’(visitors that do not talk) were astonished when they heard their names being mentioned by Eze Nrijiofor I. They asked for water to wash their hands and faces; and took the oji that were presented to them. After chewing the oji , they gave the King ite ano (four earthen pots) and directed him to keep the pots in front of the Nri Menri shrine outside the obu (palace) with each pots facing the sun. Eke, who was the spokesman of the visiting wise strangers, told Eze Nrijiofor I that the first pot was owned by him, Eke , the second one by Oye, the third by Afor and the last by Nkwo. He told the Eze that the four pots were sent down from Chukwu (God Almighty.) He instructed Eze Nrijiofor I that he and his people whom he ruled should be observing those names daily as market days, during which they should be buying and selling. These market days are used in Igboland to count Izu (Igbo native week). *Therefore, Eke, Oye, Afor and Nkwo (four market days) make one Izu (week) in Igbo calendar*. Eke also instructed Eze Nrijiofor I that the first name that should be given to their male and female children should contain either *Eke, Oye, Afor or, Nkwo*. That is why we have igbo names as *Okeke or Nweke, Okoye or Nwoye, Okafor or Nwafor, and Okonkwo or Nwankwo* . In the same order, female children should be given *“Mgbeke’, ‘Mgboye’, ‘Mgbafor’ and ‘Mgbankwo’* . The message was preached throughout Igbo land by spiritual priests of Nri and rudimentary open market squares were set up in Igbo land. The four strangers later told Eze Nrijiofor I that they were messengers from God. Some foods were prepared for them but they did not eat them. In the noon of that day, these wise men of Igbo tribe disappeared from the Eze Nrijiofor’s palace like angels. Their news subsequently spread throughout Igbo land and are observed till date.

COPIED.

please, click on Igbo BBC & stay on the site for at least 5-10 minutes everyday to save BBC from shutting it down. This is the least you can do to save the Igbo Language..

Ogbako - BBC News Ìgbò BBC News Igbo na-agbasa akụkọ sị Naịjirịa, Afịrịka na mba ụwa niile... Ihe na-eme ugbua gbasara akụkọ, egwuregwu, ihe nkiri na ihe na-ewu ewu... BBC Nkeji.

copied:
The first book in Igbo language (Isoama-Ibo: A Primer) was written by a Yoruba man, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809-1891) in 1857. The book had 17 pages, with the Igbo alphabets, words, phrases, sentence patterns, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and translations of the first chapters of Matthew's Gospel.

In 1882, Crowther also wrote the "Vocabulary of the Ibo Language", the first comprehensive dictionary in Igbo.

Crowther, a descendant of King Abiodun, an Alaafin of the Oyo Empire (1774-1789), was the grandfather (through his second daughter, Abigail Crowther) of Herbert Olayinka Macaulay (1864-1946), Nigeria's first civil engineer, whose father, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1826-1878), founded the first secondary school in Nigeria, CMS Grammar School, Lagos, in 1859.

Copied:
It is not debatable that the tiger is the biggest of the cats. However tiger is not an African animal but a Eurasian animal, just as the bear is not an African animal and has no original Igbo name. Igbos did not know or see a tiger, and so really did not have an original name for it.
Lion is the king of the jungle because it hunts in groups and can kill even some elephants and giraffes. Tiger hunts alone, but one on one a tiger will most likely defeat a lion. Please check this up on the Internet.
Leopard is smaller and has spots. But it is also strong and agile. It can climb trees with an antelope in its mouth.
Lion is odum while leopard is agu. Igbos say
odum na-egbu agu (the lion that kills the leopard).
Wall gecko is called agu-ulo) because it has spots like leopard.
Crocodile is called agu-iyi because it has patches that look like the spots of a leopard.
The body of a lion is brown with no spots or lines.
Chinua Achebe published Chike and the River in 1966. What killed Chike’s father was a leopard, not a lion. Chukwuemeka Ike published The Leopard’s Claw in 1950 and
The Bottled Leopard in 1985. The generation of Achebe and Chukwuemeka Ike had no confusion over agu and odum.
It was rare to find any old Igbo novelist writing about the lion. It was always the leopard that was written about. The reason is simple: The leopard was more common among the Igbos than the lion. It may seem small to us today because we watch animal documentaries, but in the days of our forefathers, the leopard evoked fear in the villages. It killed people. Once it was sighted, an alarm would be sounded. Women and children would not go to the stream or farm alone. Strong men would go out in search of it to kill it. The community would not be at rest until it had been killed or there was news that it had left the community. Anybody who killed a leopard was honoured as an ogbuagu.
Yet the Igbos admired the leopard because of its beauty, strength and agility. And many people took the name or sobriquet of agu because of this admiration. That could have contributed to the choice of two leopards as part of the coat of arms of the Republic of Biafra in 1967.
Those who say that leopard is edi or ediabali should remember that when someone sleeps a lot, the person is called an edi. The leopard is not a sleepy animal and so cannot be the so-called edi . Some friends have drawn my attention to the point that based on its nocturnal, sleepy and smelly nature,
edi or ediabali should be the African civet. And they sound correct. Edi or ediabali has some negative connotations which the leopard does not have among the Igbos. The leopard is admired, while edi is not.
African civet (It also has spots like the leopard)
Growing up, there was no confusion about which animal was agu or odum . There was a masked spirit ( mmonwu ) that was called
agu . It had spots and was designed like the leopard. It snarled, crouched and attempted to pounce at people, but was always pulled back by the man who held the leash. And we fled each time it came near us during a festival like a funeral or New Yam Festival. But we would quickly return to watch its performance. That masked spirit was used to re-enact the strength and beauty of the leopard and its place in the Igbo cosmology.
My part of town is called Umudim because our progenitor killed a leopard and took the title Dim Agu. There are still photos of our great men with the leopard skin to show that they killed the leopard and became “ogbuagu”. I never heard of anyone called
ogbu odum (lion killer), neither did I ever see any of our great men of yore in a photograph with the skin of a lion or a tiger.

This mixup about lion and leopard is a new development and we must not pass it on to our children.
……
About the big cats
The biggest, strongest and fiercest of the big cats is the tiger. Among the tigers the Siberian tiger is the biggest, weighing up to 300kg.
The leopard is smaller. Its male can weigh up to 80kg. But it is agile.
Note that the leopard is about 3 times smaller than the lion and does not stand a chance when faced with a lion, unless it escapes by climbing a tree.
——
So when Igbos say odum na-egbu agu, they mean the lion that kills the leopard. The lion cannot kill the tiger of the same size. But then the tiger never lived in Africa or Igboland and so never met the lion. The Igbos could not have created that saying if they did not witness the lion killing the leopard.
Those who want to disagree with this article should not just continue to say “agu is lion” or “agu is tiger”. Please let them add some value to the discussion by giving us concrete evidence from authorities. Or let them explain to us which animal is odum or agu in the expression “odum na-egbu agu.”