Publisher Sunny Igboanugwo uses the timeless Igbo doctrine of onye-aghana-nwanneya to pass a message to 2-Face Idibia’s wife.
After the NYSC passing out ceremony at the Zaria Orientation Camp in Kaduna State in November 1988, I had no place to lay my head.
Some friends I made in camp were lucky to get instant accommodation. However, what I didn’t get in accommodation, I got in monetary terms. I received a generous allowance in lieu of accommodation from the company where I did my primary assignment.
had no accommodation but they
Ordinarily, it would have posed a problem that I had nowhere to lay my head. But it didn’t. Why? The Igbo culture took care of that.
I didn’t have to think twice about it because there were several people from my community in the town. I simply headed to the Nigerian Defence Academy, to the office of my town’s man, then a young lecturer at the premium military institution.
Expectedly, my visit was without warning. I neither wrote a letter nor telephoned him prior to that. I needed not to. The only credential and clearance I needed was that of our common affinity. We’re from the same community. Period.
Informed that he had a Youth Corps visitor from his village, he left everything he was doing to meet and make me welcome. There and then, he took over. My welfare had become his responsibility from that moment.
It didn’t matter that he was not my father or my guardian. It didn’t matter that we were not blood relations. All that mattered was the aforesaid affinity. From the moment of meeting, he assumed the role of father, elder brother, patron and mentor.
After welcoming me, he sent me to a house address in Malali GRA, an exclusive area in Kaduna city. Again, on getting there, his wife, also an academic, took over. She was on maternity leave, nursing a new baby.
She ushered me into a guest room, which she personally prepared and made ready, despite the wide gap in age and status. Here was a PhD holder sweeping the room and making the bed for a lowly corper! Family visitors are entitled to privileges a woman extends to her husband, outside her body.
I’m sure there was no communication between her and the husband. She didn’t even call to verify my identity. It was enough that “this is my husband’s brother.”
After freshning up and joining the rest of the young family in the living room, a hot delicious meal was on the table for me. It didn’t matter that this was a woman was already well established in the society. It didn’t matter that she was every bit a woman of class both in her personal achievement, her sheer elegance and other features that made her way out of my class. In fact, for all it was worth, I could easily occupy the position of a servant in the house. That ought to be my place in terms of comparison.
But then that would have defeated the essence of a well-established and acceptable norm, the major characteristic that captures the life of the Igbo people – the doctrine of onye aghana nwanneya.
Of course, it’s only the Igbo that understand the full meaning of this expression because it’s far deeper than being your brother’s keeper, which it connotes.
Now, by the time I finished eating my meal, my role in the house had begun. As I sat on the sofa, she placed the newborn in my laps as she retired to other chores. I had become family. It was now my duty to ensure that I took care of other roles while she did her wifely duties, including cooking and waiting on me as part of her husband’s family, which also placed me in the position of her husband.
This is the culture that is gradually dying. Nowadays, going to the office of this lecturer and expecting him to harbour and care for me would have been interpreted as “entitlement mentality.” Yes! Entitlement mentality is the new expression many modern couples prefer to hide under to shirk the responsibility the society entrusts on them, especially in the Igbo environment, where it has singularly accounted for the quantum leaps the people have made, that have made them the envy of the rest of their compatriots in Nigeria and beyond.
Why should I have gone there? Was he my father? Did he owe me anything? Didn’t he have his responsibility? Why should he sacrifice his comfort for me? These and numerous others would have been the question many are wont to ask today. It would even have been worse that I should expect the wife to descend so low as to wait on me, more or less wash the dishes thereafter.
If they didn’t extend welcoming hands to me, I would have borne the grudges today and supposed ‘ill-treatment’ therefrom would definitely have reached home and become a source of animosity at the extended family level. Yes! That treatment under the Igbo culture is a duty rather than a privilege.
Ironically, I’ve not paid them back for this wonderful reception. No one expects me repay them directly if they are not in need. I don’t have to. The only expectation is for me to pay it forward, to return the gesture to someone else. For the Igbos, it becomes an issue when I fail another person in similar need.
Many people have been wondering how the igbo people recovered so quickly from the devastating effects of the civil war. This is one of the biggest factors.
I came to Lagos in the mid 70s to witness it myself. I cannot count the number of people who came to crash in our one-room apartment back then at 14 Uzor Street in Ajegunle. Some of them were traders who came to buy goods or sell things in Lagos, whose only hotel was our house. Others were applicants who came to look for jobs, others artisans who came to establish their individual trades. Some were actually people of means that would readily share and make their contributions to the financial needs while others were indigent and needed to be fed and taken care of to the level of even transport fares. Yet everyone ate from the same pot without complaints.
This was not peculiar to my brother who rented the apartment. It was the standard.
There was another popular trailer driver whose generosity was something else. His home, a two-room affair, was the general rendezvous where virtually everyone converged. In fact it’s doubtful that a day would pass by without a new arrival at his home, including those who sought him out for just fun, being a jolly good fellow.
Today, most of the millionaires in Lagos from my community could trace their success to that man’s house at the same Uzor Street in Ajegunle. They made it themselves or their children did.
As it was in Lagos, so it was in other places. All you need to know is that one of your town’s men lived in Kano. You simply found your way to his house. You may sometimes arrive with your ‘last card’ knowing that you’ll be fixed up without questions. Surprisingly, it wouldn’t be that your host was so successful and had much to spare, or well-to-do. It’s just about the spirit of sharing. Sometimes, it’s the visitor that eventually hits it big and takes it from there.
Today, the me-and-my-family syndrome is trumpeted as the new paradigm. I see it as a disruptive and dangerous trend that is practically asphyxiating an otherwise, plural, robust and thriving culture with mutation and multiplicity as the byproduct. Painfully, some Igbo people have joined in trumpeting the obviously distasteful and totally reprehensible mantra.
Today, nuclear families are breaking down because a wife sees the husband’s family members as intruders. The house is set on fire because wives detest breathing the same air with husband’s siblings, talk less o sharing the same table.
People hardly forget selfless giving. Today, the wife of that generous trailer driver is pampered like a matriarch with everyone kowtowing to her wishes. All those she gave food without grudges compete with each other and her children to please her. London today to take a rest, US tomorrow for medical checkup – long after the death of her husband.
The other day, a friend of mine, told me that he wanted to send his younger sister home. Guess why? His pastor a that since he was getting married, he needed no interference in his new life. Thus, everyone had to give way so they could “study each other.” Do you know that he bought into such infantile gibberish? I asked what he wanted to study in the woman he had been ‘chopping’ regularly for years, only that they were not married. And why this a good reason to visit hardship on his sister, disrupt her education and impose a burden on his poor mother at home, hitherto relieved that a weight had been lifted off her weak shoulders?
My friend declared me an enemy. His said wife stopped greeting me while my friend kept his distance. This is how our society is crumbling. Meanwhile, it didn’t matter to my friend that one of the marks of success especially for a man is to take away some of the responsibilities of your parents including taking care of your siblings, relatives and even outsiders as much as you could.
Agreed, this doesn’t really work out all the time and many times, it has led to regrets. But is focusing on the negative outcomes a better option? At best, it’s a convenient way of living a lie.
Wisdom Macaulay
In the last 24 hours or so since Wisdom Macaulay, accused his younger sister, Annie Macaulay-Idibia of neglect. This is really the essence of this intervention. I hear many people screaming ENTITLEMENT MENTALITY on social media. What I see is a mindset focused on mundane things – money, cars, houses. For such people, I do not feel the more enduring elements of humanity – love, unity, charity. Apart from the initial shock, my next reaction watching the Wisdom Macaulay video was pity.
You don’t need to be a psychologist to know that that man is in trouble. His restlessness and darting eyes bear the tell-tale signs of a drug addict.
So, what do you do with someone in that state? What would help such a situation? condemnation? Naaah!
What do you think would have made more sense – Annie going public to list all she did for him, from paying his house rents, buying pants for his wife and Christmas clothes for the children? Or Annie telling the same audience she addressed immediately that this is a family affair?
Where I come from, there’s nothing you give to your brother or sister that they don’t deserve or are not entitled to. It’s like listing how much you gave to your parents.
Annie Idibia appears to see her public status as more important. Additionally acting on wrong advice, she is quick to choose the former option.
How sad! She forgets that tomorrow, the same audience will be pointing to the same man if his condition degenerates to outright madness, as “Annie’s brother.” The joke will be on her and image she seems too eager to protect.
So, to Annie, I say, it’s early yet. Pick up your brother, clean him up, pay for his rehabilitation in a good hospital and when he’s through, find him something to do. Also keep your eyes on him to ensure he doesn’t relapse. But above all, go on your knees to pray for him.
It’s too late to blame him at this period. The horse has already escaped from the stable. Drug addicts could do anything including killing people, which includes themselves.
Entitlement mentality is acceptable here. We’re not Oyibo. Yes! Wisdom is bad now. But, Wisdom is your blood, Wisdom is your brother, Wisdom is FAMILY! Good luck!
Sunny Igboanugwo – The Igbo doctrine of onye-aghana-nwanneya
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