Igbo
What language do the Igbo people speak?
How were Igbo communities organized before European colonization?
What was the Ekumeku?
What sparked the Nigerian Civil War?
Igbo, people living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria who speak Igbo, a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The Igbo may be grouped into the following main cultural divisions: northern, southern, western, eastern or Cross River, and northeastern. Before European colonization, the Igbo were not united as a single people but lived in autonomous local communities. By the mid-20th century, however, a sense of ethnic identity was strongly developed, and the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region of Nigeria tried to unilaterally secede from Nigeria in 1967 as the independent nation of Biafra. In the 2020s the Igbo population was estimated to be more than 35 million.
History
Precolonial and colonial history
Prior to the European colonization of the region, Igbo-speaking peoples were not politically or socially unified. Rather, Igbo lineages were organized in self-contained villages or federations of village communities, the latter of which averaged about 5,000 persons. Members of the group shared a common market and meeting place, a tutelary deity, and ancestral cults that supported a tradition of descent from a common ancestor or group of ancestors. Authority in the village group was vested in a council of lineage heads and influential and wealthy men. In the eastern regions these groups tended to form larger political units, including centralized kingdoms and states.
Major changes came to the region with the arrival of the Portuguese in the 15th century. Although Portuguese activities initially focused on the nearby kingdom of Benin, by the 17th and 18th centuries they had drawn the Igbo into various parts of the transatlantic slave trade. Particularly in the western and northern parts of Igboland, many people were enslaved and trafficked to the Americas. Igbo traders in the east and south worked by selling captives into slavery.
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At the turn of the 20th century, the British government began sending military expeditions into Igboland. These were met with armed resistance by multiple Igbo groups. It was particularly strong in western Igboland, where a series of wars were waged against the British. The Ekumeku, a warrior group in western Igboland formed to resist colonial rule, effectively utilized guerrilla tactics to attack the British. Their forces, which were drawn from hundreds of Igbo youth from all parts of the region, created many problems, but the British used forceful tactics and heavy armaments (destroying homes, farms, and roads) to prevail. By 1928 the Igbo were forced to pay taxes to the British. Igbo ethnic identity began to solidify in the face of this colonial encroachment and rule, and the Ekumeku became a great source of Igbo nationalism.
The changes in Igbo society about the turn of the 20th century were famously portrayed in Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart.
British governance in Nigeria (then called the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria) was characterized by indirect rule, in which local government was to be left in the hands of the traditional chiefs, subject to the guidance of European officers. Christianity, which had been brought to the region in the 19th century, was rapidly embraced by the Igbo under British rule, as was the Western education that British administrators encouraged. With conversion and acceptance of Western schooling came economic opportunities. A number of Igbo individuals came to fill positions in the colonial administration or for the missionary churches. Over the course of British rule, tensions grew between southern and northern Nigeria, as those in the largely animist south adopted Christianity and Western instruction more readily than those in the predominantly Muslim north.
Biafra, the Nigerian Civil War, and the aftermath
Nigeria gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. In the mid-1960s economic and political instability and ethnic friction characterized Nigerian public life. In the mostly Hausa north, resentment against the more prosperous, educated Igbo minority erupted into violence. In September 1966 some 10,000 to 30,000 Igbo people were massacred in the Northern Region, and perhaps 1,000,000 fled as refugees to the Igbo-dominated east. Non-Igbo individuals were then expelled from the Eastern Region.
Attempts to quell the violence were unsuccessful, and on May 30, 1967, the consultative assembly of the Eastern Region of Nigeria, under the leadership of Odumegwu Ojukwu, unilaterally declared the region an independent republic under the name Biafra. Fighting between Biafra and the Nigerian federal government, which did not recognize the region’s independence, began in July. Early in the conflict, known as the Nigerian Civil War, Biafran forces were successful. However, the numerically superior federal forces soon pressed Biafra’s boundaries inward. By 1968 it had lost its seaports and become landlocked; supplies could be brought in only by air. Starvation and disease followed.
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Biafra was not without support. It was recognized by Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia, and France sent weapons. Many countries supplied airlifts of food and medicine. Biafran forces proved unable to defeat federal troops, who ultimately routed them in a series of engagements in late December 1969 and early January 1970. Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire, and the remaining Biafran officers surrendered to the federal government on January 15, 1970. Biafra, on the point of total collapse, thereupon ceased to exist. An estimated 500,000 to 3,000,000 people were killed during the conflict.
Numerous homes in Igboland were destroyed during the civil war, along with hospitals and schools. Many Igbo individuals who had savings in hard currencies in Nigerian banks prior to the war were denied access to their funds, and they were compensated just £20 (about $48 in 1970; the equivalent of about £283 [$381] in 2026) per adult account holder. Employment discrimination further limited the economic opportunities of the Igbo people, and they became one of the poorest ethnic groups in the country in the early 1970s. The combination of devastated infrastructure, a growing population, and diminishing land availability in Igboland led to many Igbo individuals leaving the region. They are widely dispersed within Nigeria and across many different countries throughout the world.
Traditional lifeways
Most Igbo traditionally have been subsistence farmers, their staples being yams, cassava, and taro. The other crops they grow include corn (maize), melons, okra, pumpkins, and beans. Among those still engaged in agriculture, men are chiefly responsible for yam cultivation, women for other crops. Land is owned communally by kinship groups and is made available to individuals for farming and building. Some livestock, important as a source of prestige and for use in sacrifices, is kept. The principal exports are palm oil and palm kernels. Trading, local crafts, and wage labor also are important in the Igbo economy, and a high literacy rate has helped many Igbo to become civil servants and business entrepreneurs in the decades after Nigeria gained independence. It is notable that Igbo women engage in trade and are influential in local politics.
Except for in the northeast, Igboland is rainforest country. Most Igbo individuals in the region occupy villages of dispersed compounds, but in some areas villages are compact. The compound is typically a cluster of huts, each of which constitutes a separate household. Traditionally, the village was usually occupied by a patrilineage (umunna).
Religion
Traditional Igbo religion includes belief in a creator god (Chukwu or Chineke), an earth goddess (Ala), and numerous other deities and spirits as well as a belief in ancestors who protect their living descendants. Revelation of the will of the deities is sought by divination and oracles. Many Igbo are now Christians, some practicing a syncretic version of Christianity intermingled with Indigenous beliefs.