The creation of Igbo--net was borne out of the realization that before its inception on 17 August 1994, there existed no computer mailing list that was devoted exclusively to the discussion of issues on and about the Igbo people of West Africa as far as their culture, history, religion, art, literature, philosophy, science, etc.--in fact their contributions to civilization -- are concerned. Numbering nearly 20 million, and located in southeastern section of Nigeria, the Igbos have a long history, a rich culture rife with extensive oral literature and folklore, and a unique series of belief systems and philosophies. Traditionally, the Igbos have emphasized individual initiative (without losing the sense of community), which has sometimes been used as an explanation for their "success" and mobility. Simon Ottenberg, the renowned American anthropologist states:
I[g]bo culture can thus be characterized by its emphasis on individual achievement and initiative, alternative prestige goals and paths of action, a tendency toward equalitarian leadership, considerable incorporation of other peoples and cultures, a great deal of settlement and resettlement of individuals and small groups, and considerable cultural variation". "Yet paradoxically, of all Nigerian peoples, the I[g]bo have changed the least while changing the most. While many of the formal elements of the social, religious, economic, and political structure, such as lineages, family groups, age grades, and secret societies, have been modified through culture contact, many of the basic patterns of social behaviour, emphasis on alternative choices, and goals, achievement and competition, and the lack of strong autocratic authority, have survived and are a part of the newly developing culture. But basic patterns of social behaviour, of interpersonal relationships, have changed little (the most striking exception is probably the decline in the respect for seniority of age), though symbols of success replace old ones and new goals appear.
Along the same line, the eminent Igbo historian, A.E. Afigbo, states:
Though colonial rule [by the British] transformed Igbo society in many respects, it did not destroy the Igbo identity or cultural soul. The Igbo have remained 'Igbo' in their attitude to and style of life; that is, while changing they were able to preserve their 'ethnic essence' because they were astute enough to use in their own way, the new institutions and values introduced by colonialism.
Today, over 5 million Igbos are living outside of their ancestral homeland. Nearly 1 million of them are living, studying, and working in places as far away and as varied as North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Asia. With this large population of Igbos in the diaspora, along with a teeming population of international scholars whose research interests in one way or the other intersect aspects of the anthropology, sociology, history, culture, ethnology, religion, philosophy, politics, literature, science, etc. of the Igbos, the need for a mailing list to serve as a discussion forum for issues on and about the Igbos cannot be over-stated. It was on the above stated premise that igbo--net was created to serve as a discussion forum where all these people can be linked together through the miracle of the internet. With the internet, we can now reduce the physical distances separating our current respective places of abode to essential zeros... And this reality we should translate into meaningful exchange of ideas for the material, technological, social and cultural transformation of Igboland as soon as practicable, irrespective of the vicissitudes of the political climate in the geographical entity called Nigeria.
The present realities in Nigeria should serve to educate us as to the vision and the promise that was Biafra. Is there any wonder why some of those once comrade-in-arms that fought against those "restless" Biafrans have now turned against each other. What an irony! As ludicrous as the prevailing political dispensation in that country is today, we must not lose sight of the fact that the fundamental issues that led to that war have still not been resolved twenty seven years after the cessation of hostilities. The lives and properties of our people are still not very safe in certain places in Nigeria. It will be the height of extreme naivete for us to gloss over these facts.
I need not inform you that the future of Nigeria has been mortgaged to the whims and caprices of the feudalistic and parochial elements of the Hausa/Fulani oligarchy and their agents, the Nigerian Military establishment, whose stock-in-trade are coups and counter coups, graft, avarice, corruption, mediocrity, embezzlement, murder, mayhem, etc. Is there any wonder that nothing is working in that country? If Nigeria must sink in the bottomless sea like a drowning man with a heavy stone tied to his neck, must we as Igbo people also sink? Like our elders say, "it is only a stupid fly that accompanies the corpse to the grave." Your challenge as well as mine is to find a way to extricate our people from this dead albatross hanging on their necks!
The case for parallel development for all the various ethnic groups in that country cannot be overstated. We as Igbos could have been at least fifty years ahead of where we are today were it not for that accident of 1914: when disparate peoples were lumped together into what became Nigeria. Today, our people are living under one of the most heinous and one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Trepidation is rife in that country, and is dangling over the heads of our people like the swords of Damocles. Our challenge will be to untie the perilous threads holding these swords in place, while building and rebuilding bridges between us and our neighbors in Rivers, Cross River and Akwa Ibom States, whose destinies are clearly and intricately linked with ours.
It is our hope that the discussions that will emanate from this electronic forum will help to generate ideas for unifying Igboland -- from the northern frontiers of Nsukka to the southern frontiers of Ikwerre/Elele/Etche/Ahoada areas, from the western frontiers of Asaba/Agboh areas to the eastern frontiers of Arochukwu, etc. We hope to use the facilities of this forum to link up Igbo organizations in Africa, Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia, etc. that have access to Internet. Any resolutions we adopt as a group will be forwarded to the relevant institutions in Igboland.
We hope to be involved in the campaign for the expanded teaching of Igbo studies in more universities beyond our shores. We see this mailing list as an extension of the guiding principles of Igbo Improvement Unions of yore that were very instrumental in the building of many developmental projects throughout Igboland, before the advent of the Nigerian civil war. We see this mailing list also as a modern day version of the "Igbo Popular Market Literature" of yore that sprang up with the express purpose of disseminating the message on the printed matter to our people at a time when there were dearth shortages of such materials -- the era the pursuit of education as we know it today started in earnest in Igboland. During that period, it was recorded that people with barely six years of formal education wrote their "little" pamphlets on any imaginable topic -- all with the goal of spreading the good news of modern education to our people. That on the heels of these activities came the building of a plethora of schools all over Igboland was a testament to the activities of these individuals who felt obliged to share their little education as it were then with their people, in the simplest way they knew how. Unfortunately, the Nigerian civil war devastated the well-spring of this once flourishing civilization -- the same fate that was visited upon other Igbo institutions, edifices, etc.
Imagine the degree and extent to which the Igbo popular market literature could have developed if the civil war had not devastated it. Imagine how different the literary careers of our writers could have been. If a few of them were lucky to have escaped from the pogroms against our people in both the northern and western enclaves of Nigeria, certainly, fewer of them survived the civil war. And how about the pains of those Biafran scientists and engineers who made many ingenious devices and innovations, and at the end of the war were made to face the sad reality of not being able to work and produce for their people.
Imagine also if the "Nsibidi" scripts developed by the Igbos of the Cross River basin area long before any white man ever stepped his feet on our soil had been properly developed, and spread all through the length and breadth of Igboland, instead of restricting it only to the domain of secret societies. Perhaps these scripts could have been used to make Igbo language a written language long before the modern orthography of the language was developed. Perhaps we would have had better archival resource materials for many important epochs in our history than we currently do with our predilection to orature in everything pertaining to our past. Interestingly, the people who made better use of these scripts to a certain extent were our neighbors: the Efiks and the Ibibios. I am not even factoring in the effects of that worst of scourges -- the trade in human beings and misery: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Where would we be today as a people if we had not encountered these negative experiences?
Today, we are faced with a modern day version of that very scenario that our ancestors and members of their respective generations faced: a near total stagnation (if not destruction) of Igbo civilization; persistent superstitions that have no rational basis, but have rather tended to stifle the progress of our civilization; impoverished state of education in general; lack of meaningful technological advancement, moral decay, greed, corruption, ignorance, disease and an overwhelming poverty all through Igboland. This is a situation we must do something about! We have enough Igbo scientists and engineers and scholars and artisans, etc., who have the skills to tackle the afore- mentioned problems. We must not allow this mess to continue!
It is clearly within our means to join our strengths, taking sustenance from our rich culture and heritage of individual initiative, equalitarianism (the enduring essence of Igbo republican democracy), acceptance of change as a necessary and inevitable component of daily living, incorporation of the good aspects of other cultures that have had contacts with our people in the past; coupled with our exposure to the prevailing Western and Eastern civilizations -- to build a lasting and modern civilization in Igboland on the ashes and ruins of what the legacy of our experience in Nigeria has left us with.
The journey we must embark upon is not unique to us. It is a journey numerous others have embarked upon before our time. It was the same journey that took Pythagoras (circa 6 B.C.) to ancient Egypt, and when he came back he bequeathed to us via his people (the Greeks) his now famous theorem: the square of the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Remarkably, the ancient Egyptians built their pyramids on the basis of this theorem more than one thousand years before the birth of Pythagoras himself.
It was the same journey that Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonnaci (circa 1180-1250) took when he translated ancient Egyptian, Syrian and Greek scientific texts into Latin. When asked why he translated these works, he wrote:
All that was studied in Egypt, in Syria, in Greece... I investigated very carefully... I wanted to write a work of 15 chapters, with nothing capital left without a demonstration and this I did so that the science might be easily understood, and the Latin people should no longer be deprived of it.
This man was the main mathematical luminary in the whole of medieval Europe. He also gave us the infinite series that now bears his name: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34..., where each number (after the initial 1's) is defined as the sum of its two predecessors. This sequence turns up in many surprising places: biological systems, certain electrical circuitry, etc.; and its applications range from the growth of pineapple cells to the hereditary effects of brother-sister incest.
It was the same journey that the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo (ca. 1254-1324) took when he visited China and brought back the technology of the gun powder and spaghetti (never mind what the present day Italians will tell you) to the West. This was the same gun powder that was to be used some 570 years later, over a span of three decades, to completely subdue and pacify Igboland in the name of British colonialism, irrespective of the fact that our people had been working iron for at least 1000 years prior to that horrible encounter. But because their iron-making technology was very primitive, they were crushed by the very material they thought they had mastered. He that made the better mouse trap made the catch, and from thence has put our people in his "iron cage". It is for us to break this cage, and restore the dignity and sovereignty of our people!
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