Igbo Quotes

...my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.

Now I know that speaking good English is not the measure of intelligent mind and sharp brain. English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense.

You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, weaned on the myth of drawable lines between human beings, have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.

I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there’s no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories should be told—from many different perspectives.

Although Christianity had almost cleanly swept through Igbo land, crumbs and pieces of the African traditional religion had eluded the broom.

Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves.

Typical Igbo psychology; men never do wrong, only the women; they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for and must remain like that, silent, obedient slaves.

Please don't speak Igbo to him,' Aunty Uju said. 'Two languages will confuse him.' 'What are you talking about, Aunty? We spoke two languages growing up.' 'This is America. It's different.

Igbo sayings and proverbs are far more valuable to me as a human being in understanding the complexity of the world than the doctrinaire, self-righteous strain of the Christian faith I was taught.

Take sleep mark death.

— The Igbo are a very democratic people. The Igbo people expressed a strong antimonarchy sentiment—Ezebuilo—which literally means, a king is an enemy. Their culture illustrates a clear-cut opposition to kings, because, I think, the Igbo people had seen what the uncontrolled power of kings could do.

Of course, of course, but my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe,’ Master said. ‘I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.

The Igbo culture says no condition is permanent. There is constant change in the world.

Who is Genereux Philip? People always ask me for my complete name and state of origin; I'm Genereux Uwabunkonye Philip from Imo State, Nigeria. I’m from a tribe called IGBO.

You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, weaned on the myth of drawable lines between human beings, have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said. “They don’t become black until they go to America or come to the U.K.,” she said. “It is then that they become black.

There's organized confusion on African roads while driving in the cities. If you want to mess up Afican Cities very easy, just fly in 100 Americans put them on the road and tell them to drive.

You need to be extremely clear and deliberate about what you will accept and what you won't. Standards must be clear; you must stand for what you believe in and live by your own moral compass.

Mom wasn’t born in Nigeria like Dad was. She was born here and lacks the harshness that comes with a village upbringing—the harshness my dad has. She doesn’t speak Igbo like grandma used to, but still, her speech is different and foreign sometimes.

You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, we have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said. “They don’t become black until they go to America or come to the U.K.,” she said. “It is then that they become black.

I started telling people different stories about my life so that when they get together and gossip about me, they wind up bickering.

—El abuelo solía decir que todo empeora y luego mejora. O dikata njo, o dikwa mma —comentó Kainene.

It is impossible to talk about a single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali". it's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another". Like our economic and politicals worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependant on power... Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity... When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

Some people refer to a ‘just war’ or a ‘war of necessity’ and others posit that it is simply an illusion to dignify war, no matter the circumstance. Having said that, the necessity or otherwise of war can be seen in the Igbo of Nigeria concept of ‘akwa aja ahụ ọgụ’. A man is thus bound to defend his ‘ama’ or territory and his manhood against any intruder, oppressor or aggressor or be regarded as a ‘woman’ by his people.

There is a popular saying in Igbo 'Amakam ihe na Ozubulu, puta Nnewi buru ewu'. This means, you can be so enlightened in a particular place and when you step outside that place, you become ignorant. Again, the Igbos say "Agwo otu onye furu na agho eke" - A snake seen my one man is usually described as a Python! Always try to see what and how others are doing. It will help you stop wallowing in an imaginary self glorification! Remember to be humble.

In this time of Covid-19 I feel an overwhelming exhilaration every morning that I have survived to see another day, and on Monday mornings that feeling of elation endows me with colorful words to express my gratitude to God for his gift of life.

If the past isn't weighing me down, I could have climbed higher. Who knows what I could have been, a free spirit and a better person, if the memories had set me free. For years, I haven't been able to close the door to the room that keeps pulling me in to my past.

The Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with. It did not have the apparatus of centralized government but a conglomeration of hundreds of independent towns and villages each of which shared the running of its affairs among its menfolk according to title, age, occupation, etc.; and its women folk who had domestic responsibilities as well as the management of the scores of four-day and eight-day markets that bound the entire region and its neighbours in a network of daily exchange of goods and news, from far and near.

Peace is not given,” Ngozi says in a voice as hard as the metal of an Igwe. “It is taken. For so long, they have visited violence upon us. It never starts with machetes. It starts with shutting the Igbo out of government. Then it becomes giving all the good jobs to the Hausa andthe Fulani and the Yoruba. Then we are accused of crimes we do not commit. Called animals. They say we infest this country. Then we become the reason the Sahara grows larger and more and more of Nigeria turns to desert. We are blamed for the drought. We are blamed for the radiation. Then we are thrown in jail. Then we are murdered.

When you revive a connection or relationship that has humiliated you, you are disrespecting yourself. Forgiveness is one thing, but having limits is quite another. By selecting what you will and will not tolerate, you educate people how to treat you. Maintain your self-worth and don't be scared to say no when required.

We have tried peaceful protest,” Ngozi continues. “We have tried marching. We have tried registering even those Igbo in the hinterlands to vote in the elections.” She speaks not like she’s reciting from an article or from some downloaded history but from life experience. She speaks like someone whose parents argued politics over thetable at family dinners, like someone who was carried in her father’s arms during those peaceful marches. She speaks like someone who knew a period before war. Before it all turned to violence. “You do not meet hate with love. Some will say that when a hateful person makes you hate, they win. But those people will never say what exactly it is that that hateful person wins. They will say that if you resist hate and meet it with love, that you win. But they never tell us what we win. We see with our eyes. We see that the only thing we win is death by machete. Isolation. Massacre.” Her frown deepens. “They did this

The Igbo people of Southern Nigeria are more than ten million strong and must be accounted one of the major peoples of Africa. Conventional practice would call them a tribe, but I no longer follow that convention. I call them a nation. "Here we go again!," you might be thinking. Well, let me explain. My Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines tribe as follows: "group of (esp. primitive) families or communities linked by social, religious or blood ties and usually having a common culture and dialect and a recognized leader." If we apply the different criteria of this definition to Igbo people we will come up with the following results: a. Igbo people are not primitive; if we were I would not be offering this distinguished lecture, or would I?; b. Igbo people are not linked by blood ties; although they may share many cultural traits; c. Igbo people do not speak one dialect; they speak one language which has scores of major and minor dialects; d. and as for having one recognized leader, Igbo people would regard the absence of such a recognized leader as the very defining principle of their social and political identity.

You are an Igbo woman and Igbo women are stronger than any form of pain.

Nigerian women came to America and became wild, Igbo Massachusetts Accountant wrote in one post; it was an unpleasant truth but one that had to be said. What else accounted for the high divorce rates among Nigerians in America and the low rates among Nigerians in Nigeria? Delta Mermaid replied that women simply had laws protecting them in America and the divorce rates would be just as high if those laws were in Nigeria.

In order to construct a flawless imitation, the first step was to gather as much video data as possible with a web crawler. His ideal targets were fashionable Yoruba girls, with their brightly colored V-neck buba and iro that wrapped around their waists, hair bundled up in gele. Preferably, their videos were taken in their bedrooms with bright, stable lighting, their expressions vivid and exaggerated, so that AI could extract as many still-frame images as possible. The object data set was paired with another set of Amaka’s own face under different lighting, from multiple angles and with alternative expressions, automatically generated by his smartstream. Then, he uploaded both data sets to the cloud and got to work with a hyper-generative adversarial network. A few hours or days later, the result was a DeepMask model. By applying this “mask,” woven from algorithms, to videos, he could become the girl he had created from bits, and to the naked eye, his fake was indistinguishable from the real thing. If his Internet speed allowed, he could also swap faces in real time to spice up the fun. Of course, more fun meant more work. For real-time deception to work, he had to simultaneously translate English or Igbo into Yoruba, and use transVoice to imitate the voice of a Yoruba girl and a lip sync open-source toolkit to generate corresponding lip movement. If the person on the other end of the chat had paid for a high-quality anti-fake detector, however, the app might automatically detect anomalies in the video, marking them with red translucent square warnings

dreamt that I was our grandmother,” I tell him. “I looked in a mirror and she was there, just like the pictures, and she spoke to me in Igbo.” “What did she say?” “Hold my life for me.” I wait for his laugh, but it never comes. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask him. “I’m not sure my belief matters,” he says. “If it is, it is, whether I believe it or not.” “You know what I’m asking.” My cousin gives me a small smile and twists some of my hair in his fingers. “They talk about you and her in the village, did you know?” I have never heard this before. I sit halfway up, leaning against his body.

At this time of the year, far away in a place some may consider a hallowed ground, the wind incessantly whistles my name with a flutelike sweet melody that permeates the seasonal dense air. Occasional interruptions by cacophony of birds’ chirps only add suspense to the allure of the mystical pronouncements. This is the place I call home where I cherish my return with barefoot walks on the ground my ancestors treaded.

MONEY SPEAKS ONLY ONE LANGUAGE. IF YOU SAVE ME TODAY, WILL SAVE YOU TOMORROW.

How long has it been since you and me? Hugs and kisses. Blankets and snuggles. Our sparks smoldering without a fireplace. Losing time is not losing you. It strengthens my yearning for you

Anụ ọhịa-azụ. In Igbo, the language spoken by eighteen million Nigerians, this is the beast on your back that gobbles up your food and leaves you the scraps.

reference to the Nok culture and the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes, that the peoples of west Africa had an ancient tradition of fine artistic work in terracotta and copper alloys. Techniques of metal casting need not necessarily have been imported from afar.

In the years that followed, the British used their Sierra Leone colony as a base for settling freed blacks whom they released from captured slaving ships. The bulk of these ‘recaptives’ originated from among the Yoruba and Igbo peoples of modern Nigeria (the main source of west African slave exports in the early nineteenth century). The original settlers, known collectively as ‘Creoles’, were ardent Christians and strongly anglicised in character.

LESS ARROGANCE, MORE ACHIEVEMENT. LESS CHATTER, MORE ACTION. LESS RUMORS, MORE COURAGE. LESS DISTRACTION, MORE EFFECTIVENESS. LESS NEGATIVITY, MORE AFFECTION.

Allow me to remain unique and distinct, God. I have no issue with being set apart or feeling excluded from the crowd. In fact, I embrace the idea of standing alone, as it allows me to maintain my individuality and authenticity.

it is the character who performs the act of translation by switching from his native language, Igbo, to English. This self-translation occurs on the level of story and is represented on the level of text. Example 2.2, however, is a case of translational mimesis: it is the narrator who performs the translation of the character’s discourse and signals the event of this translation through the use of hybrid language. This act of translation occurs on the level of narration. What both cases have in common is the fact that (i) the translator is a textual agent and (ii) that the translation occurs not on the level of text, but on a deeper narrative level. We can therefore construct the notion of what I will call the fictional translator, for want of a better term. This fictional translator inhabits the story-world or the level of narration—both in the ST and, provided no TT shift occurs when the ST is translated into another language, also in the TT. In other words, the fictional translator can be either a narrator or a character.

Impossible,” he said, and switched to Igbo. “Ama m atu inu. I even know proverbs.” “Yes. The basic one everybody knows. A frog does not run in the afternoon for nothing.” “No. I know serious proverbs. Akota ife ka ubi, e lee oba. If something bigger than the farm is dug up, the barn is sold.” “Ah, you want to try me?” she asked, laughing. “Acho afu adi ako n’akpa dibia. The medicine man’s bag has all kinds of things.” “Not bad,” he said. “E gbuo dike n’ogu uno, e luo na ogu agu, e lote ya. If you kill a warrior in a local fight, you’ll remember him when fighting enemies.

He who has done his best for his own time, has lived for all times. (Igbo proverb)

We as Nigerians do not know how lucky we are …with everything falling apart in several other countries we should count ourselves very lucky to still be at peace …I feel sorry for the young igbo man screening biafra …bu then even in the mist of peaceful loving people I guess a hint of madness is allowed to remind the normal minded people of love peace and unity d basis upon which the country, Nigeria was originally built on …Nigeria has indeed grown and is blossoming to become the beauty of the world every day…no country even America got to where they are now without first nearly going extinct. ..look at the grate depression amongst others, am not saying we have to get to that extent but its darkest before dawn..lets persevere and hang in there ..Nigeria will be great I tell u…thanks for the lovely pictures. .God bless our motherland .

Don't work for money, work to learn

The fourteenth-century court artists of Ife made bronze sculptures using a complicated casting process lost to Europe since antiquity, and which was not rediscovered there until the Renaissance. Ife sculptures are equal to the works of Ghiberti or Donatello. From their precision and formal sumptuousness we can extrapolate the contours of a great monarchy, a network of sophisticated ateliers, and a cosmopolitan world of trade and knowledge. And it was not only Ife. All of West Africa was a cultural ferment. From the egalitarian government of the Igbo to the goldwork of the Ashanti courts, the brass sculpture of Benin, the military achievement of the Mandinka Empire and the musical virtuosi who praised those war heroes, this was a region of the world too deeply invested in art and life to simply be reduced to a caricature of “watching the conquerors arrive.” We know better now. We know it with a stack of corroborating scholarship and we know it implicitly, so that even making a list of the accomplishments feels faintly tedious, and is helpful mainly as a counter to Eurocentrism. There

The Igbo are a very democratic people. The Igbo people expressed a strong antimonarchy sentiment—Ezebuilo—which literally means, a king is an enemy.

Scholars believe that The Blues originated with slaves, particularly those from the Igbo people in West Africa who allegedly had a penchant for expressing melancholy in song.

With unparalleled rapidity, the Igbos advanced fastest in the shortest period of time of all Nigeria’s ethnic groups. Like the Jews, to whom they have frequently been likened, they progressed despite being a minority in the country, filling the ranks of the nation’s educated, prosperous upper classes.

The Igbo culture, being receptive to change, individualistic, and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials for advancement in Nigerian colonial society. Unlike the Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind of creature, fearing no god or man, was custom-made to grasp the opportunities, such as they were, of the white man’s dispensations. And

museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon with the postulate: “This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it’s made it should be venerated.” No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there’s no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it’s already been done.

A man with dry, graying skin and a mop of white hair came in with a plastic tray of herbal potions for sale. “No, no, no,” Aisha said to him, palm raised as though to ward him off. The man retreated. Ifemelu felt sorry for him, hungry-looking in his worn dashiki, and wondered how much he could possibly make from his sales. She should have bought something. “You talk Igbo to Chijioke. He listen to you,” Aisha said. “You talk Igbo?” “Of course I speak Igbo,” Ifemelu said, defensive, wondering if Aisha was again suggesting that America had changed her. “Take it easy!” she added, because Aisha had pulled a tiny-toothed comb through a section of her hair. “Your hair hard,” Aisha said.

paraphrase an old Igbo (Nigerian) "Where you mend the roof; there is your home

Equiano, one of the luckiest among them, acquired an education, freed himself, and wrote a book in 1789: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. He preceded his European slave name by his original Igbo name and affirmed his African identity, waving it like a banner in the wind.

A GLOSSARY OF IGBO WORDS AND PHRASES agadi-nwayi: old woman. agbala: woman; also used of a man who has taken no title. chi: personal god. efulefu: worthless man. egwugwu: a masquerader who impersonates one of the ancestral spirits of the village. ekwe: a musical instrument; a type of drum made from wood. eneke-nti-oba: a kind of bird. eze-agadi-nwayi: the teeth of an old woman. iba: fever. ilo: the village green, where assemblies for sports, discussions, etc., take place. inyanga: showing off, bragging. isa-ifi: a ceremony. If a wife had been separated from her husband for some time and were then to be re-united with him, this ceremony would be held to ascertain that she had not been unfaithful to him during the time of their separation. iyi-uwa: a special kind of stone which forms the link between an ogbanje and the spirit world. Only if the iyi-uwa were discovered and destroyed would the child not die. jigida: a string of waist beads. kotma: court messenger. The word is not of Igbo origin but is a corruption of “court messenger.” kwenu: a shout of approval and greeting. ndichie: elders. nna ayi: our father. nno: welcome. nso-ani: a religious offence of a kind abhorred by everyone, literally earth’s taboo. nza: a very small bird. obi: the large living quarters of the head of the family. obodo dike: the land of the brave. ocbu: murder or manslaughter. ogbanje: a changeling; a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn. It is almost impossible to bring up an ogbanje child without it dying, unless its iyi-uwa is first found and destroyed.

Dear Black Man (Poem) ***** I love you because you make me feel things that I have never felt before. You erase my pain and you bring me so much gain. You embrace me and hide me in your well built African and manly body. You make me want to never look at other bodies. I love how you cut your hair. I love to feel your love in the air. The texture of your hair, so beautiful, so artistic. Your beautiful smile, so amazing; it reminds me of hiding places. You walk like you own the world; at least, I assure you that you own mine and the rest of my words. Black Man, you are beautiful. Your skin tone is so dark, it makes me want to bark. Please allow me to run my hands on the hills of that skin. You are handsome, my amazing king. The way you speak your language. The way you speak your Xhosa. Your Hausa. Your Zulu. Your Kituba. Your Tswana. Your Lingala. Your Venda. Your Gadomba. Your Tsonga. Your Shona. Your Bateke. Your Ga. Your Sotho. Your Igbo. Your eyes. Black Man, your eyes tell me a story never heard before. You teach me; from your wisdom, I learn. From your strength, I know 'I can'. Black Man, they enslaved you because they found you intimidating. But today, they look for you to be their mate in dating. You look at my stretchmarks with an eye of an artist. You appreciate my big behind with no judgement. You kiss my big lips with love. And in my big thighs, you hide. You love me when I have no hair. You love me when I have fake hair. Black Man, I thought of you and I wrote to you. All hail the Black king! From your Black Woman, (with African curves) .

Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.

Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said. “They don’t become black until they go to America or come to the U.K.,” she said. “It is then that they become black.

Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said.

We mostly spoke English; Igbo was for mimicking relatives and for saying painful things.

So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo [a language spoken in Nigeria] word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is “nkali.” It's a noun that loosely translates to “to be greater than another.” Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story . . .

Never forget your home as you sojourn in foreign lands my son. We’ve waited for your return to our beautiful land where winds still whistle your name and wooden gongs pronounce you a worthy son of your ancestors daily. That soulful journey to our mystical river to cleanse your naked feet is in the journal of your life written by your forebears. As it’s written, the full moon will guide you through the narrow path to your destination. You'll arrive at a special place where your ancestors will witness your transformation into a Shaman, a spiritual healer you’re destined to become. On the appointed day, as your name travels throughout our land, choice palm wines will find worthy palates to celebrate your soulful return. As your ancestors had written in the book of promises about your return before the last moon of the year, African sun will massage your skin during the day and harmattan wind will fan you to sleep at night. Hurry back home my son.

Every Religion says humanity can’t live, share, create and evolve meaningfully without their beliefs and creeds. I say it is a very big LIE. The foundation of the lie is religion saying humanity is nothing without their respective beliefs, doctrines, and creeds. This lie has disrupted the development of humans for so many years now, that is why humanity is yet to understand how powerful they are. We have tried developing religion; can we try developing HUMANITY? When we focus and what brings us together; Humanity and understand that we don’t have any problem with Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba, then we see our diversity and differences become one of our greatest catalysts to growth. I ask again, can we still be humans? Your Humanity is enough and my humanity is enough. Let us embrace it to the fullest.

Your smile tells me you have arrived at your God's appointed life destination where even you a belated princess will thrive

It’s that time of the year when I yearn to reunite with my soul, that hapless wanderer. That part of me which resides in an exalted state in the ancient kingdom of Ojoto. A place where my beloved soul saunters unchecked, whispering my name in the quietness of the night, whistling same with the wind, and yelling it during thunderstorms. Since my prolonged absence, it mumbles and sobs for me, a titular truant.

On that momentous day of my first return to my grandfather’s place in Ojoto after many years of my sojourn in America, I was lost in my thought until a light wind blew across the pedestrian path in a wooded area where I stood, caressing the trees’ leaves and small branches. The stubborn leaves swerved in all directions like untrained dancers learning to strut after consuming palm-wine from large calabash jugs. Looking up, I watched weakened leaves snapped off and gained their freedom from primordial trees. A liberation dance followed in the dense air above me before the leaves set down. Listening to beautiful sounds made by birds converging around me, as if they were singing for the newly liberated leaves, I found myself lost in the wonderment of nature. What I experienced had drawn me back to that exhilarating place for mental respite each time I returned home.

[The ọgbanje are] creatures of God with powers over mortals. … They are not subject to the laws of justice and have no moral scruples, causing harm without justification. —C. Chukwuemeka Mbaegbu, The Ultimate Being in Igbo Ontology

But I cannot participate, because Igbo culture privileges men and only the male members of the extended family can attend the meetings where major family decisions are taken.

The Igbo are not starry-eyed about the world. Their poetry does not celebrate romantic love. They have a proverb, which my wife detests, in which a woman is supposed to say that she does not insist that she be loved by her husband as long as he puts out yams for lunch every afternoon. What a drab outlook for the woman! But wait, how does the man fare? An old villager once told me (not in a proverb but from real life): “My favorite soup is egusi. So I order my wife never to give me egusi soup in this house. And so she makes egusi every evening!” This is then the picture: The woman forgoes love for lunch; the man tells a lie for his supper! Marriage is tough; it is bigger than any man or woman. So the Igbo do not ask you to meet it head-on with a placard, nor do they ask you to turn around and run away. They ask you to find a way to cope. Cowardice? You don’t know the Igbo.

The Igbo are not starry-eyed about the world. Their poetry does not celebrate romantic love. They have a proverb, which my wife detests, in which a woman is supposed to say that she does not insist that she be loved by her husband as long as he puts out yams for lunch every afternoon. What a drab outlook for the woman! But wait, how does the man fare? An old villager once told me (not in a proverb but from real life): “My favorite soup is egusi. So I order my wife never to give me egusi soup in this house. And so she makes egusi every evening!” This is then the picture: The woman forgoes love for lunch; the man tells a lie for his supper! Marriage is tough; it is bigger than any man or woman. So the Igbo do not ask you to meet it head-on with a placard, nor do they ask you to turn around and run away. They ask you to find a way to cope. Cowardice? You don’t know the Igbo. Colonial rule was stronger than any marriage.

Who is Genereux Philip? My full name is Genereux Uwabunkonye Philip, and I am from the Igbo Tribe of Imo state, Nigeria.

Who is Genereux Philip? People frequently ask me for my full name and state of origin; my name is Genereux Uwabunkonye Philip, and I am from Imo State, Nigeria. I'm from the IGBO tribe.

Sometimes 40 seconds is enough.

So I see people mocking my usage of patois… or Jamaican creole which is a form of pidgin created from Afrikaan, Spanish and English languages. This is a Jamaican page by a Jamaican author. The person in the video is Jamaican. It’s common for people to think English is an indication of intelligence albeit only 20% of the world’s population speaks English and only 5% are native English speakers. I mean English itself is a creole of sorts with words from Celtic, Slavic and Latin languages.. Smartest people in the world are Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Indians) their native languages are Hindi, Mandarin and Creole Cantonese. Swahili and Igbo are big creole languages in Africa. Linguistic discrimination is not even warranted based on how languages are developed. Glottophobics are as bad as racist with their linguicism. English is just a superstrate language due to Anglo- Saxon colonization and the British empire… English is still a superstrate because of large English speaking populations such as America, England, South Africa, Nigeria and Canada.

rebel soldiers. Whereas only 250 “new” slaves, most of them Igbo, participated in the rebellion of 1815, already in 1824, 1,200 slaves from plantations took part in an uprising. By Christmas of 1831, this number had risen to 20,000, and the rebellion included creoles. Ideologically, it prefigured the rise of a culturally complex “nationalism” in Jamaica, whose more recent manifestations include the Rastafari movement, based on Ethiopian traditions but with completely modern cultural components including reggae. Despite its defeat, then, the rebellion sealed the fate of slaveholders in Jamaica, and paved the way for eventual abolition.

Hausa, Urdu, Yoruba, Arabic, Efik, German, Igbo, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, even one written in a language Chichi called Nsibidi. “Can you read N—

We didn't do anything illegal, all we ever did was exist as IGBO PEOPLE.

The absence of paramount kings ruling over large areas was encapsulated by the maxim 'Igbo amaghi eze' (the Igbo knows no king). In a culture without a paramount king, admission to a title society was a status symbol and evidence of achievement. Admiss- ion was remarkably democratic. Every male adult was eligible so long as they could demonstrate high achievements in their life- time. Such titles were rarely hereditary and there were few or no qualifications for them other than achievement or money. A man could gain a title simply by raising funds and paying for it. These titles incentivised achievement and provided upward social mobility. Hence, having an honorific title in Igboland did not necessarily make the title-holder a political ruler

Africans are not black," she said. "They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. . . They don't become black until they go to America or come to the U.K. . . It is then that they become black.

John Couper and Thomas Spalding, two slave merchants, purchased captured Nigerians for $100 apiece and put them on a slave ship called the Wanderer in 1803. From it, the captives were unloaded and then loaded onto another ship, called the York, to take them to Saint Simons, where several sprawling plantations awaited them. The story goes that seventy-five slaves rebelled and drowned their captors. Once the ship reached Dunbar Creek, the Africans were singing as they marched ashore and, following their chief’s command, entered the marshy waters and drowned themselves. Some say that the Africans’ souls flew back to Africa. The Igbo Landing has been so

We are educated for whatever sake. For Nigeria to move forward, we must stop comparison and ignore religious views in dealing with sensitive issues that can make or mar our Country's existence. Evil, evil is evil, coming from either of the geopolitical regions. We were humans before we choose our religion.

That night the Mother of the Spirits walked the length and breadth of the clan, weeping for her murdered son. It was a terrible night. Not even the oldest man in Umuofia had ever heard such a strange and fearful sound, and it was never to be heard again. It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming—its own death.

At times it is beneficial for us to renew our pledge to our sovereignty and allegiance to our country while disavowing schizoid polity.

But his mannered English bothered her as she got older, because it was costume, his shield against insecurity. He was haunted by what he did not have—a postgraduate degree, an upper-middle-class life—and so his affected words became his armor. She preferred it when he spoke Igbo; it was the only time he seemed unconscious of his own anxieties.

Tienen una energía desbordante, de veras, pero me temo que muy poca higiene». Le explicó que los hausas del norte eran gente muy digna, los igbos eran ariscos y amantes del dinero, y los yorubas eran sobre todo alegres aunque también muy aduladores. Los sábados por la noche, al mostrarle a las multitudes vestidas con prendas llamativas que bailaban frente a los toldos callejeros iluminados, le decía: «Ahí los tienes. Los yorubas se endeudan hasta la médula con tal de montar estas fiestas».

You know there are no black people in Africa.... Africans are not black, she said, They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, an that is who they are....They do not become black until they go to America or come to the UK." she said, It is then that they become black.

Le monde est comme un masque qui danse : pour bien le voir, il ne faut pas rester au même endroit.

Know when to make your final bow and appreciate the applause from your admirers. After all, you can’t remain in the same status year after year with nothing new to offer. When you choose to remain stagnant and expect cheers, all that is left for you are jeers.

the words of encouragement which the bedbug was said to have spoken to her children when hot water was poured on them all. She told them not to lose heart because whatever was hot must in the end turn cold.

META ONYE DI MMA ENYI MAKA OLULU.

But it was rumoured by the wise of Igodomigodo that Ogiso Igodo did not die, but bearing hard the humiliation of Elegbara, he had gone into Igbo Eda, the sacred forest of Olodumare wherein the powers of the earth were buried. It was said that as he could not be admitted into the abode of the gods, he besought Olodumare for the power of dominion over the earth. But Olodumare, mistaking his request, turned Ogiso Igodo into a tree whose root went deep into the earth’s core. Nurtured by the earth’s magma, the tree bore no fruits, and its leaves were red like flame, and bitter and poisonous, like the soul of Ogiso Igodo. And to this day, men who seek the powers of the earth bow to the tree and tap from its pitch and drain the bitterness of Igodo into their soul, and the powers they wield are cruel and merciless.

The absence of paramount kings ruling over large areas was encapsulated by the maxim 'Igbo amaghi eze' (the Igbo knows no king). In a culture without a paramount king, admission to a title society was a status symbol and evidence of achievement. Admission was remarkably democratic. Every male adult was eligible so long as they could demonstrate high achievements in their lifetime. Such titles were rarely hereditary and there were few or no qualifications for them other than achievement or money. A man could gain a title simply by raising funds and paying for it. These titles incentivised achievement and provided upward social mobility. Hence, having an honorific title in Igboland did not necessarily make the title-holder a political ruler

You can't truly call yourself an artist if you have an aversion to colors.