The pre-1940s history, indigenous culture, and heritage of the Ìgbò and their neighbours.
This is likely Nwa Agụ, in Umuahia, the leopard Ọ̀kọ̀nkọ̀ mask worn by high ranking men as the emblem of the society. The costume's chequers represent leopard spots. The masker is signing (nsibidi?). Photo: G. I. Jones, c. 1930s. MAA Cambridge.
Uwaga Okeanya, aged c.90 (an Ọ̀kọ̀nkọ̀ priest), in Ogbodiuumwu [Ogbodiukwu?], Ụmụọpara, 12 August 1972
Chinua Achebe:
What I think is the basic problem of a ... country like Nigeria is really what you might call a "crisis in the soul." We have been subjected — we have subjected ourselves too — to this period during which we have accepted everything alien as good and practically everything local or native as inferior. I could give you illustrations of when I was growing up, the attitude of our parents, the Christian parents, to Nigerian dances, to Nigerian handicrafts; and the whole society during this period began to look down on itself, you see, and this was a very bad thing; and we haven't actually, even now with the independence, we still haven't got over this period [...] You see, a writer has a responsibility to try and stop this.
– Pieterse, C.; Duerden, D. (1972). "African Writers Talking". pp. 7-8.
Entry from the dictionary of the Igbo language centering around the Onicha and Asaba dialects, by British government colonial anthropologists Northcote Thomas, 1914.
Many views and suggestions were put forward and the matter was widely discussed before the war. Two years after the war a consensus was reached and since 1972 a new counting system has been in use. …
Perhaps we might be interested in how Igbo came by the names for the place values [the Igbo Standardisation Committee, headed by F. C. Ogbalu]. It did so without borrowing except from within the rich resources of its many dialects. It specialized the meanings of single non-sentential words in the different dialects, whose meanings for the higher numbers were until then rather vague. Thus:
puku (1,000) was 'uncountable’ in a number of the Central dialects.
nde (1,000,000) was 'uncountable' in a number of the Central dialects where ǹdè was known to be higher in value than puku.
ìjèri (1,000,000,000) represented 'uncountable' in a number of West Niger Igbo dialects.
In the case of nàrị (100) certain Igbo dialects, notably in the Nsukka and Aguleri areas of Anambra State, traditionally had this for 100. So, we adopted it but modified its spelling. As for zero we specialized efu (nothingness) and, in addition, borrowed but Igbonized the words nọọ̀tụ̀ and zirò, as synonyms.
– E. ‘Nọlue Emenanjọ (1985). “Language Engineering in Present-Day Igbo.” “In: West African languages in education: papers from the fifteenth West African Languages Congress.” p. 85.
It is extremely rare, unheard of and possibly, barring this instance, virtually impossible to find a masking tradition in west Africa that features a ‘heavy’ aggressive mask that is headed by women. A twist of tradition happened in the Izzi (northeastern Igbo) village group of Nkaliki in 1975 when the community oracle, Uke, asked Nkaliki women to organise and dance Ogbodo Enyi in honour of its work saving them from child-killing evil spirits. A woman in this picture is one of the women maskers of Nkaliki shot by Herbert Cole in 1983 dancing an Ogbodo Enyi mask amidst her female supporters. The mask is originally a men’s mask representing leadership and takes on aspects of an elephant (ogbodo enyi meaning ‘elephant spirit’) and is somewhat aggressive when worn by men.
The Ogbodo Enyi of the women’s society, although aesthetically similar to its male counterpart, is considered to be different from that of the male and the male and female maskers never appear in the same context. The female Ogbodo Enyi is embraced by the women of the community and it is worn by a woman who is selected by the ogbodo, like her male counterparts, through divination and a mask is commissioned by the women. Although a few younger men of the community do not acknowledge it, the female Ogbodo Enyi is well respected by the elders of the community and the male Ogbodo Enyi masker acknowledges female maskers during the males performance, a special occurrence since masks are usually separated from women. This is the only documented existence of a masking tradition headed by women in Igbo culture and probably Nigeria where masking traditions are usually exclusively male privileges from which women are largely barred. — Information summarised from Herbert Cole, Chike Aniakor (1984).
