The Igbo And Homecoming -By Ugoji Egbujo

The civil war united the Igbo and strengthened the attachment to the ancestral home. So when they rose from the ashes and ruins and sojourned again to find hope, they knew home keenly. Home was where to refuge and live, or come back to rest and die, in peace. The home was where they couldn’t flee from and abandon.

So it became imperative that wealth must reach home. Because wealth stored outside could become abandoned property. War made home the place of last resort and homecoming a fundamental cultural rite. Those who ignored home, and made home elsewhere, were deemed lost. Besides ancestral sentimentality, that culture fostered the unity between the diaspora and the rural dwellers.

Homecoming brought back succour and hope and gave happiness to home comers. Apprentices were found and nurtured to prosperity, and wives and husbands were created.  Traditional marriages, funerals and church festivities, cultural rites and dances were artificial if they didn’t happen at home. Home was safe and tranquil. So Judges retired and went home. 

But things are falling apart. Homecoming has become risky. In some parts of Igbo land, home has been deserted. Orsu is desolate. In many parts, the affluent elderly, who choose home for retirement, are now endangered species, hunted by kidnappers. Many of those masquerading as freedom fighters have taken off their pretenses and started full-scale banditry.

Men with balls now dread taking their wives and children home for Christmas to inculcate in them the homecoming culture. Grown men now sneak into their ancestral homes and sleep fitfully with windows shuttered, drenched in sweat. And before dawn, before they see their umunna and reconnect with ancestral spirits, they elope to the nearest city from where they would weigh the safety of another clandestine entry. The fear of home has become an existential threat to the Igbo nation.

Without homecoming, the Igbo nation won’t just regress, it will gradually lose its identity. That regular communion between the village and city is why the Igbo is one of the most dispersed and yet most evenly prosperous groups in Africa. Without homecoming, the Igbo will become soulless wanderers scattered all over the surface of the earth.

Without homecoming, the Igbo heartland will stagnate and become overrun by thorny weeds. The social intercourse between the diaspora and the ancestry motivates, rewards and edifies everybody. Schools are rebuilt. Churches are funded. Social amenities are serviced and charities dispensed.  Apprentices are assigned and mentored.  In the last couple of years, Igbos have held traditional marriages in Lagos and Abuja. It used to be a taboo.

It’s true that all cultures evolve and that homecoming could become obsolete at some point. But the  untimely death of a fundamental group-edifying culture at the hands of petty criminality is a monumental tragedy. A few high chiefs have sneaked in to bury their feathered fathers at night. The celebrations of the lives of these titled men were subsequently held in hotels in distant lands. The gods can’t be amused. The loss of homecoming will be a catastrophic social mutation.

There is a reason the Chinese and Indians are respected globally. They have kept faith with their cultures for centuries. They have retained their souls and resisted thoughtless modernization and wokeism. Home must remain home for the Igbo. During the rainy season, the Igbo used to travel home for August meetings and New Yam festivals. The trips were partly metaphysical. They would renew their spirits with the virginity of ruralness, filiality of kinship and melancholy of nostalgia.

Yes, home used to be where succulent maize with lush tassels were eaten with juicy pears while birds sang. Those days folks would skirt the puddles on the earth roads and watch the drenched palm trees drip water. Then they would long for fresh  palm wine  and enjoy it with native Ugba. When their Umunna came to welcome them, they might come to them barefooted , they would not look over their shoulders. Home was where tranquility and peace lived.

Since home became scary, the connection between the diaspora and home is now strained. Diaspora children are learning that home is dangerous. If they grow into adulthood with that impression, they will have no reason to love home like their fathers. When folks forsake home , the rural economy folds up. Without money and jobs, and without the motivation that city people bring back with their success stories, the village youth take to yahoo yahoo , drugs and crimes.

And home becomes more unlivable. The security situation in Igbo land is urgent. Igbo lords and peasants must gather. The damage in the link with the diaspora and rise in youth criminality will destroy the soul of Igbo land. Tranquility must return to the entirety of Igbo nation as a matter of urgency. When tranquility returns, a conscious and concerted effort to fill the rural areas with cottage industries must begin.

After March 18, the Igbo must think. There is truly no place like home. The average Japanese in Europe are better respected than the average Nigerians. The prosperity and dignity of Japan confer on them some respect and they are not called aliens. No passerby would imagine that a bunch of Japanese giggling at the Tube at Edgware could have come in a migrant boat. The Igbo are justified in their anger against the ethnic violence visited on them in Lagos to deny them their right to vote. They must assert themselves wherever they live in Nigeria like free citizens of one country. But they must as a matter of urgency fix home. 

The Igbo have the capital and manpower to fix home. The five states can sit with all spiritual leaders and extinguish the embers  of insurgencies in Igbo land. Some of the indignity the Igbo suffer outside  the southeast come from the disorder at home.  When home was home many Igbos preferred to vote at home.  But on March 18, the process at home was as flawed as the process in Ikorodu and Obio Akpor. Thugs carted away ballot boxes and forged results were later published.  The five states can form joint southeast development and security commissions. A joint consultative assembly can agree on a circular rail line around the Igbo nation. The bestowal of sub-national honours on Igbos who site factories and job-creating businesses in Igbo land can also begin. So that those who seek to brag can brag with the number of jobs they have created in Igbo land. 

Igbo amaka. But in Igbo land, things are gradually falling apart.