The Osu Caste Discrimination in Igboland

The Osu Caste Discrimination in Igboland
Author: Victor Dike
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0595459218

Why is the Osu caste system, a form of discrimination, still deep-seated in Igboland? Are the civil and human rights of the Osu not being violated? How does the system affect global perception on Igbo culture and her civilization? The Osu Caste Discrimination in Igboland: Impact on Igbo Culture and Civilization, which is sequel to The Osu Caste System in Igboland: A Challenge for Nigerian Democracy, describes the pain, grief and agony of those groaning under the Osu caste system in Igboland. The system ascribes an inferior Osu status to the group and limits their social interaction, marriage contracts and relationship of love with the Diala. Consequently, their daily lives are tormented by the associated Osu stigma, which hinders their social mobility and progress. Any person reading this book should reflect critically on the issue and join hands to dismantle the system for justice, fairness and social progress.

No Longer at Ease

No Longer at Ease
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Heinemann
Total Pages: 164
Release: 1987
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780435905286

Obi Okenkwo, a Nigerian country boy, is determined to make it in the city. Educated in England, he has new, refined tastes which eventually conflict with his good resolutions and lead to his downfall.

Love and Stigma the Outcast System

Love and Stigma the Outcast System
Author: Sir Adolphus O.M. Ekejiuba, KSJI
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2015-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1514408260

The Outcast System occurs in Africa and India. In Nigeria, outcasts are called Osu. As freeborn, myself, I was brought up to see the outcast as lower class humans. Our culture made it an abomination to have any relationships with them. I was forbidden from marrying from their stock. They could not hold some traditional titles and were never appointed Traditional Rulers. These fell apart when I saw blood donation by an outcast. The thoughts as to who would use the blood he donated bordered me. After some reflections and applying Scientific, Religious and Sociological knowledge, I concluded that the Outcast System is baseless, instituted in ignorance and being perpetuated in ignorance. To illustrate, I told the pitiable story of what would happen if a freeborn tries to marry an outcast. This book will make the readers worldwide abandon the System without coercion or force of law.

Studies in Ibo Political Systems

Studies in Ibo Political Systems
Author: Ikenna Nzimiro
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0520325168

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1994-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385474547

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Efuru

Efuru
Author: Flora Nwapa
Publisher: Waveland Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2013-10-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1478613270

Appearing in 1966, Efuru was the first internationally published book, in English, by a Nigerian woman. Flora Nwapa (1931–1993) sets her story in a small village in colonial West Africa as she describes the youth, marriage, motherhood, and eventual personal epiphany of a young woman in rural Nigeria. The respected and beautiful protagonist, an independent-minded Ibo woman named Efuru, wishes to be a mother. Her eventual tragedy is that she is not able to marry or raise children successfully. Alone and childless, Efuru realizes she surely must have a higher calling and goes to the lake goddess of her tribe, Uhamiri, to discover the path she must follow. The work, a rich exploration of Nigerian village life and values, offers a realistic picture of gender issues in a patriarchal society as well as the struggles of a nation exploited by colonialism.

Broken Back Axle

Broken Back Axle
Author: Obi N. Ignatius Ebbe
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2010-10-21
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1453573623

When a country's army headquarters that is commissioned to deafeat the enemy becomes an indisputable agent of the enemey, defeat of the country is inevitable. This book is about ethnic dynamics and conflict in a multi-ethnic federation where one ethnic group sets out to eliminate an economically and academically domination one by a pogrom. The pogrom led to the secession of the oppressed ethnic group along with its minority elements in the region. In effect, a Civil War ensued. The oppressed and secessionist ethnic group, the Igbos, had the wherewithal to defeat the federal forces within three weeks, but they were internally defeated by a culture of segregation. The culturally segregated class secretly allied with the federal forces to crush the secessionist region- Biafra. The author lays down, in describing the modue operandi of the segregated class- (saboteurs), his nerve-racking experiences in the battlefiled where bonafide Biafran soldiers were hunted by their fellow comrades. Unfortunately, they did not know that they were being hunted by those they had no reason to fear. Some lucky and sincere Biafran soldiers came to know what was happening when the war was virtually over. But many did not survive the acts of sabotage. They perished in the hands of their fellow comrades. The author prescribes manifest nullification of all forms of overt and covert cultural segregation in Igbo culture for the ethnic survival. On the whole, the book demonstrates a convergence of conflict sociology, cultural anthropology, plotical history, military science, ethos of mysticism, spiritualism, and mystic philosophy in an amazing story.