ODO ONYEKA MA Thesis

ODO ONYEKA MA Thesis

ODO ONYEKA MA Thesis

 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background of the Study

One of the problems of the problems of governance structures of the present Igbo society is the myth of decenteredness which made organised British colonial governance system hard to penetrate Igbo land upon the contact of the West and the Igbo society. Most of such myths were constructed with a negative view point, as we read in Lambert Ejiofor. From history, we know that while the British Indirect Rule System prospered in the North and Western parts of Nigeria, it fails in South East because of her decentered political structure; and an attempt to restructure the governance system of the Easterners results in Aba Women’s Riot (Ejiofor 5). Secondly, internal heterogeneity of the Igbo people which may negate some aspects of my generalized assumptions constitutes a second limitation to this study. To that effect, Richard Dowdson’s (a British journalist and a supposed specialist in African issues) postulation about Africa becomes true of the Igbo world. In adapting his idea to studies on Igbo folk art, we observe that ‘every time you say: ‘‘[Igbo] is …,’’ the words crumble and break; from every generalization you must exclude at least five [communities] ’ (Dowden 10). This heterogeneity may be linguistic, ethical, social, and occupational.

Nevertheless, this study proposes to examine the representation of governance structures in selected Igbo folktales given that the tales are socially disinterested cultural products. Worthy of note is the fact that the structures of governance we will identify and analyse in the tales are not precise depiction of the contemporary structure of governance in Igbo societies. However, we deem it fit in this study to move from the real and existing traditional structures of governance in the Igbo societies to the representations and depictions of such structures in the selected Igbo tales. If this is accepted as a working hypothesis, then we take it from the historians: Osae, T.A. and Odunsi, A.T.O. that the Igbo constitute the most numerous single ethnic group among the people of South Eastern Nigeria. A known fact is that the Igbo historically were never organized into unified kingdoms like the Oyo and Benin that were centralized under a popular monarch.

 

ODO ONYEKA MA Thesis

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