Imo and the proliferation of kings, by Ugo Egbujo
In Imo state, every family can become an autonomous community. It wasn’t always so. Perhaps at some point, somebody saw atomisation as development. Every square foot is now an ancient kingdom. So the state is now a conglomeration of fragments of communities called autonomous communities. As a result, every neighbourhood has an Eze. Some of them govern from the United States.
With kings come cabinets. Every Eze goes about minting chiefs to fatten his clout. Nearly everyone is now a chief. They probably know it has lost all significance. But they persist in distributing the red caps and feathers. Positions once reserved for excellence, industry and valour are now on the shelf for all comers for a small fee.
Though the traditional institutions are largely relics and still exist more for nostalgia, history and ceremony than governance, this bastardisation is damaging a threadbare moral fabric. If the debasement of what is left of the traditional institution was only serviced egos and provided sentimental relief, it might have been endured. But it has had a telling effect on society
Every drug dealer, every yahoo yahoo boy who dupes some mugu in Brazil or Vietnam, comes home to assemble the ummunna. At that point, money doesn’t just talk, it swears. Bob Dylan was right. At the sight of a goat and some bottles of beer, elders gather to honour the call of the little village thief who left home the year before. He tells them he has gone and conquered. No questions are asked. In front of living money, the elders are chickens and sheep. They pour libation, drink and belch. He tells them he wants a chieftaincy title. They chorus their approval. He goes to the Eze and gives him what he eats. The Eze approves his request without consulting the gods. The new chief picks for himself one of the self-aggrandizing titles he had fantasized about when he used to loiter about in the village. The date is fixed. He plans to shake the village. He has arrived. The gods stay aloof, perhaps drunk on stolen wine
A literal idiot becomes a role model for the youth. At every opportunity, he gathers people to eat, mocking hard work and artisanry with their exhibitionism. In return, they offer him obeisance, laugh loudly and dredge up his enemies for verbal crucifixion. Swimming in the vortex of the whirling adulation, he regales them with his exploits in foreign land. In the end, he admonishes them not to be dull. What he says doesn’t matter. The youths are attentive; they all want to be like him. Their life ambition is to get rich overnight and catch the cruise ship of vainglory. The only apprenticeship that delivers that readily now is Yahoo Yahoo and drug dealing. And perhaps politics, if one can find a godfather. Old things, like taboos, have passed away. Good name is still perhaps better than riches but it’s now cheap and easy to buy. The good man is the notice-me-philanthropist, the man who builds a church, the man who sponsors football matches, and the man who smuggles youths into the drug trade in Malaysia. Every politician is a very good man. While the ummunna fellowship lasts, gun-rotting policemen hang at all corners, protecting and dignifying the smooth criminal, who is now called a high chief.
With the Eze’s cabinet brimming with conspicuously shady and dissolute characters, decent people have no incentive to participate. Where they convince themselves to take a title to help revamp the institution from within or to satisfy their parents, they cannot initiate any reforms because they are a miserable minority. The traditional institution gathers human rust and suffers progressive degeneration. The mingling of a few decent people with the horde of money bags rather than curb only legitimises the perfidy. The devaluation is relentless and with it comes the normalization of deviance.
In Imo many communities can no longer speak out against evil. They can’t condemn Yahoo Yahoo in the open because their ozos and ndi ichie are jobmen. They can bark against psychotropic drugs and prostitution. But they can’t speak boldly against drug trafficking. They have by the changes to their value system, directly or indirectly, licensed their youths to pursue ‘ego mbute’ by all means. In most communities, an advance fee fraud committed against a lovesick woman in Vietnam isn’t considered evil.
In Imo, we used to believe that whatever a man sowed he shall reap. We used to believe that evil didn’t pay because it ultimately brought great misfortune. We used to believe that stolen money shouldn’t be used to train children because it would contaminate their destinies. We used to say that blood was strong and must not be shed unlawfully. We believed that if a community condoned evil, evil would consume it. These and other beliefs made us industrious and honest and made us our brothers’ keepers. Now these beliefs all but seem obsolete
Recently a community in Imo sought to restore its tattered moral fabric. It wanted to banish evil from its land. The youths felt their progress and longevity were being hampered by the surge of evil in their community. They beseeched the elders to approach the native gods to rouse them. They want the gods to resume active and ruthless vigilante duties. After an initial hesitation, the village elders yielded to the demand of the youths.
On the day appointed, the elders of the clans congregate at the village square to entreat the local gods. And before restless cameras, they reached new covenants. Soon after the rites, the video clips went viral, and the youths went berserk. The elders had asked the spirits of the land not to treat with leniency any cases of theft, rape, fraud, land grabbing, murder etc committed by all sons and daughters of their land. That was all. The youths were bemused. They accused the elders of seeking to wipe out the young, wondering why they left the curses so open-ended. They had expected the elders to know that the gods should only react if the evil was perpetrated against a member of the community and not against strangers and foreigners. The elders couldn’t tell the youths that evil was evil. They succumbed and reversed the incantations
Imo is a good example of the wanton fragmentation of communities leading to the bastardisation of the traditional institution and subsequent trivialisation of communal honours. But Imo is not special. The other states in Igbo land are similarly afflicted to varying degrees. This scourge is ravaging the entire country in different ways. Granted many states have preserved their centuries-old empires and kingdoms intact; nevertheless, the voracious appetite for titles and cheap recognition has degraded our national value system. No region is free from traditional glorification without moral evaluation. Every politician and money bag, of all tribes, is a traditional title holder. The Imo malady is a national disease.
A cursory glance at the country, the list of holders of its national honours, the clamour for state creation, the multiplicity of ministries, the duplication of agencies, the industrialization of awards, the mushrooming of churches and NGOs, the sale appointments and postings, will indicate a troubling prognosis.
Only a complete reset can salvage this country.
