Ebeanaeje: 2007 and beyond

KWENU! Our culture, our future

Ebeanaeje: 2007 and beyond

M. O. ENE

New Jersey, USA

Ichie Noo Ụdala of Umuaga, aged c.102 (1973)

Thursday, December 7, 2006

PREAMBLE

The political situation in Nigeria has reached a point where the question is no longer who is running for what and on what platform. It is no longer ebe a(nyị) nọ; we know where we are. We know the condition of our people, the good, the not-so-good, the bad, and the not-so-bad. We know that the clamor for “our person, our place” and “our village, our villain,” and “our best, your worst” is driven by unmet expectations. The myopic concept of my-man-or-no-man is no longer tenable in a world where uneven development sticks out like a sad scar on a sore-infested skin. We have also reached a point in our national development where we must stop asking what we can do for our nation; rather, we must ask hard and uncomfortable questions: What has our nation done for us and what have we done for our community lately?

In essence, we have reached a point when we must sit back and ask a simple question: Ebee ka a na-eje? Or, as Latin has it, Quo vadis?

EBE A NA-EJE!

Stated simply and directly, we must head back with modern perspectives to our traditional system of government: ọha obodo, the concept of community—where the community is for all and all is for the community. It starts with the simplest form of human social arrangement, ụmụnna, where you are because the nearest and dearest reaffirm that you are, where openness and accountability are nonnegotiable, and where everyone contributes equitably to, and benefited appropriately from, the general good. Ụmụnna reinforces and sustains the principle of “ebe onye bi ka ọ na-awachi.” [Where one lives, there s/he thrives.] When these tongues of light and of good governance meet in a village (ogbe) setting, they form the basic unit of “obodo,” a standard community, a town, or what is currently known as “autonomous community.” “Obodo” is, therefore, a functional community. A collection of “obodo” in any political permutation -- be it development council, local government area, province, state, zone, or region -- becomes the most functional form of governance, a setup to which everyone contributes and from which everyone derives the associated socioeconomic and security benefits.

ỌHA OBODO (COMMUNITY COUNCIL)

We must start from somewhere to restructure every entity in Igboland to function and to function well. From 2007, let us strive to institute “ọha obodo” in every community. Each village elects a resident representative called “Nze” (someone who actually lives in the village), for a two-year term in office. Sitting allowances will be paid initially, function of the fiscal health of each community. Every indigene of the town, everyone who calls the community “home” -- regardless of where they reside, pays a token tax set by the council and approved in a general referendum on every “general return” year, the election year. A mayor called “Odoziobodo” or “Isinze”—if he also doubles as the chair or speaker of the community council (ọha obodo)—is elected from among the resident representatives or in a community-wide election respectively. S/he serves a maximum of two two-year terms. For a start, and to dovetail with the current constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the mayor (“Odoziobodo”) could be the town’s elected councilor at the constitutional local government area (LGA) council.

THE ROLE OF NDIEZE

The present “Eze” institution will be reconstituted as a court for codified, customary judicial matters or as a council-of-elders committee providing a power-balance between the town council of “Ndinze” and the mayor (“Odoziobodo”). The reformed body, made up of village heads or elders called “Ikenga” or “Ichie,” debate and vote on issues presided over by the eldest called “Ezeichie” or “Isiichie”—not “Igwe.” (The use of “Igwe” is a clever invention that confers the title of “Royal Highness” (Igwe) on a man for a lifelong and undemocratic reign over his kind, an anathema in ruggedly republican Igboland.) Any member of the community customary court (Ọgbakọ Obodo) resigns at 75 but could continue to chair “Ọgbakọ Ụmụnna” as the village eldest. Each community should decide how to make the community courts and community councils more effective by imposing term limits and defined impeachment clauses. The monarchical models of community control imposed on our communities by colonial and later anti-Igbo forces must be phased out gradually. No one should be crowned ruler for life; it is simply not tenable in republican Igboland.

While we must not be against the aspirations of anyone to be governor, gardener, or gamekeeper, we must restore the basic building blocks of our political roots. We have seen successive governments relate to communities only through their sons and daughters who emerge at the top of our faulty political playground. Within months, a concrete carbuncle rises in the middle of a virgin community land. Earthmoving vehicles move in and demolish sacred groves leading to the connected son’s or daughter’s compound and make way for a coal-tarred road in the middle of nowhere. Electric transformers surface from the city and poles litter the dirt community road leading to the macadamized road of the one whose bread has been buttered.

It does not stop here: Soon after the “grand opening” and the departure of dignitaries from Abuja and abroad, the rains return and the shaky structures begin to collapse and crumble on the community. The large house and the badly tarred road become erosion-instigators; the abandoned poles and wires attract vandals and criminals; and those whose houses are further removed suffer the consequence of personalized and misdirected “development.” By the time the next elections come around, thugs move in and terrorize every Okeke and Okonkwo so as to sustain the supposed powerbase of the connected son or daughter in Enugu or Abuja.

On the contrary, if we organize our communities as in the days of yore, any emerging politician will be a product of the community and will know that the system that threw him or her up can sink him or her in a flash flood of voters’ anger. Many Igbo communities are already at the forefront of “obodo” model of social structure. To this day, every adult who identifies with some community in Igboland still contributes monthly or annually, in some way, to the upkeep and development of the community s/he calls “hometown.” Every so-called “town development union” tries to outdo each other in development projects. Those who fall back when others are moving forward do not complain; they do what others are doing well: contribute funds, sponsor candidates, and develop their communities.

The question then is: Why not formalize the model with a sustainable community council answerable to ALL members of the community? In addition, the LGA will be compelled to disburse federal funds equitably to the community council for even development, especially in the provision of basic amenities, basic education, environmental protection, and security. In many states, local development councils have been created as substructures of LGAs. The “ọha obodo” model is therefore a further extension of existing exigencies. Besides, the new model will be a renaissance of an old-time system that sustained Igbo communities for centuries without guns and prisons before the colonists came to town with the fantasy of “paramount chiefs” and bureaucratic “district commissioners.”

FROM THE DISTANT PAST

The “ọha obodo” or community-council concept is not new; it was explained on June 19, 1973 by Ichie Noo Udala of Umuaga, in Udi LGA of Enugu State, aged c.102:

Before the white man came we had no chief that saw to the affairs of the town. But we had several institutions that helped us organize our activities. The government of this town was not vested in one man. …. In the olden days, each village had a person that we could now call a chief to head the town's political and administrative activities. This man was normally the oldest man of that village, and was called onye ishi ani. Within this village we have another man that heads the affairs of a 'lineage' or umunna called okenye umunna. During any cases affecting the whole town, the ndi ishi ani, village heads, would meet and discuss effectively the issues involved. They met as equals….

[From Igbo Worlds: Village Democracy: an Agbaja example, collected by E. N. Okechukwu]

In essence, we will only be revisiting an old republican system of good governance with more modern perspectives. We will be institutionalizing the existing town development unions or associations, which are sidelined and weakened by imposed monarchs that make up a tribe of phony rulers in a dysfunctional setup that is taking Alaigbo back to the dark ages… when others who came from the dark ages are moving to the age-old Igbo system as explained by the Umuaga elder.

Today, we have bits and pieces of crude and careless, Mickey Mouse “kingdoms” called “autonomous communities,” anachronistic apparels with so many holes that the blind can see through them. How did the proud people of Igboland, a people who instituted a master-servant model of management, wind up with countless communities where the only thing working is the Sunday meeting at “Igwe’s palace”? How could we as a people subject the welfare of our communities to the caprices of a largely unelected, lifelong puppet heads held on a fiscal string by sponsored state governments?

Here is the meat of the matter: We live in a democracy but we operate a servant-master society. Nonetheless, at this point, we should not occupy ourselves with the carved-out, cardboard kingdoms. Towns come in shapes and sizes; the important thing is how they are organized to be accountable to its inhabitants. New York City has one mayor and millions of people; in New Jersey, if you make a turn off any major road, you are in a different community complete with its functional community council! Every setup has its practical advantages and or disadvantages, so to each its own size and composition. The important thing is that the concept of community, “obodo,” thrives.

Unless we revisit and revaluate the concept of community, we cannot achieve the lofty ideas we all seem to be chasing, even if we assume the tenancy of state government houses or the presidency at Aso Rock, Abuja. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to be one of the high and mighty, but what does it profit a man who gains all the wealth in the world if there is no stable community in which his stupendously rich children will enjoy the pointless plunder? The gist of the gospel is simple: You cannot sit peacefully with elephantiasis of the scrotum; you must exercise the cyst. The cyst in this case is the inordinate ambition of politicians to whom the concept of community (“obodo”) is now old and odd. They reason: Why worry when I can build a castle and keep everyone out. Of course, by keeping everyone out, you keep yourself in -- in jail!

In a community based on “obodo” model, there are no jails, no formal police force, and no kings. “Obodo” -- the concept of community -- is exactly what many of us live in America, albeit colored by such social factors as of modern mass migration, differences in religion, varying ethnic and racial profiles, etc. Yet, the fundamental concept co-opts everyone into the principles of “ebe onye bi ka ọ na-awachi,” where every resident is offered the cover of community to produce and grow the community. Through taxes and ordinances in the management of the community, the principle of “onye wete, onye wete, akpa eju” is used to keep the community financially fluid and functional.

KA ALA DI MMA

With functional communities in place, the local government council will be responsive to its duties, and the state will in turn become a citadel of good governance, democracy dividends, and purposeful progress. One community at a time, the entire Igboland, that contiguous Igbo-speaking area I call “Aladimma,” will become the shinning light of good governance that will illuminate Nigeria, the ECOWAS region, and the entire continent of Africa. In essence, the bottom-line of the proposal is for prosperity, progress, and peace on earth: Ka ala dị mma.