An open letter by Edo United for Homeland Empowerment, to Igbo community leaders across Edo State, Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Edo State Traditional Council, The Speaker, Edo State House of Assembly.
Our attention has been drawn to a plan currently being hatched by a non-indigenous Igbo group, to create an Eze-Ndigbo chieftaincy title in Edo land.
The plan includes the installation of a chosen Igbo person that will bear that title, in violation of the existing Edo customs and traditions.
Regardless of whatever persuasive sentiment, or social-political factors engendering this ethnocentric zealousness and provincial behavior, we are appalled that a non Edo group, obviously in a subordinate position but which has never before been denied spatial or socioeconomic freedom, is engaging in covert acculturation activities to undermine Edo Traditional Sovereign Power.
We decry the phantom by settlers and ambitious political “barons” who rather than relish Edo peoples’ warm embrace and access to unlimited economic opportunities are hell bent on a crafty scheme to run a parallel and foreign traditional government in sovereign Edo Nation.
Not only do we find the inclination profoundly insolent and abrasive, it defies all social norms and xenophile for a settler’s group who enjoys the unsurpassed hospitality of Edo people, to embark on a reckless violation of the much cherished, time-tested, enviable and enduring Edo Traditions and Customs.
It is a well-known paradigm that territorial cultural hegemony and communal way of life, is a reality that takes precedence over individual and foreign dictates or desires.
United Nations’ Conventions 107 and 169 protect indigenous cultural autonomy and ways of life which includes language, customary and traditional laws.
And since the inclusion of those rights into United Nations charter, Edo people, historically known to be warlike, have never been tempted to deny any tribe of its tribal cultural endowments and rights.
Neither have the Igbo people in Edoland, been ever deprived of business ventures, nor socially relegated or stripped of their ethnic identity.
Records abound of Igbo proprietorship of many Higher Education Institutions, Hotels and Transportation companies in Benin City and several other parts of the state.
Though traditionally and culturally conservative, like some other tribes, Edo people are socially liberal and well known for their extreme hospitality, interethnic or tribal marriages, language and religious diversity and tolerance.
To that end, we would not tolerate minority cultural hegemony drive, or reverse cultural assimilation in Edo territory.
Common sense and respect for other people’s cultural values dictate that we succumb to the host cultural preeminence.
Assimilation has been endorsed by Anthropologists as a desirable thing to do if one must get along with the mainstream of a new found-home.
If we choose to leave the comfort of our place of origin to seek greener pasture elsewhere, we must be ready to shed some of our prides, and adjust or adapt to the new surroundings bearing in mind that culture smashes through tribal borders, trade routes and geographic zone.
There is no African monolithic culture. In Nigeria alone, there are many ethnic or tribal groups with their jurisdictional traditional culture and norms.
One is therefore doomed when trying to foment tribalism, segregation and cultural subversion in a non-indigenous territory.
It is therefore, distasteful and unrealistic to agitate for Eze-Ndigbo in Edoland when Edo people in Igboland have never demanded for the installation of an Edo Oba or Enogie in Igboland.
Why the sudden Igbo penchant or dream to insert or embed their cultural institution into Edo sovereign land and cultural sitting?
This curiosity begs the question for motives considering the already peaceful coexistence between the Igbos and Edo people in Edoland.
To assume that this ugly redline-crossing is not going to be problematic, is to be culturally vagabond, bereaved, or the individual has no concept of self or ethnic identity.
While we do not want to flounce much about in every non-quandary issue going on with the contemporary Igbo race, we must not ignore the unpalatable joke of this new Igbo cultural evangelism or penchant for reversing Edo history.
Though one is tempted to suggest that core and genuine Igbo people are not involved in this cultural appropriation shenanigan, we expect Igbo elder statesmen to call their discombobulated kinsmen to order before their selfish interest degenerates into ethnic or tribal confrontation.
One of the fundamental challenges facing humanity is how to ensure cooperation among groups and sacrifice for that sake.
Most brutal manners often exhibited against migrants or non-natives as manifested by decades of human history, are partly the result of human primate desire to overtake or denigrate indigenous sacred culture and homeland.
Edo cultural ethos and sacred land must not be subjected to horrible degradation again, as such is bound to exude the pain of British punitive expedition.
Though we need not to over emphasize or be jingoistic about Edoland being a melting pot, we however, must not fail to counsel non-indigenes about the danger in crossing Edo thin redline. .
One is unable to reconcile or believe that a people hitherto or currently subscribed to self-determination right is also engaged in bitter struggle to negate another ethnic or tribal group’s cultural sovereign rights.
What else can be more satiric than the ongoing Kanu-led Igbo self-determination struggle, when the activities of Igbo people in Edoland, are not only directly opposed to the principle but in collusion with the existentialism of other tribal autonomy vis- vis their cultural sovereignty?
The ambiguity and incongruence albeit obvious in these melodramas, is beyond obfuscation, self-deprecation and self-indictment.
Edo culture does not operate in vacuum. Known by historians as the cradle of civilization in Africa, Edo Tribal Nation has ageless historical cultural structure that has survived several abrasions including war, western civilization, religion merchants and immoral modernity.
Edo Chieftaincy institution is domestic, and locally jurisdictional. By far, the institution is not subject to Diasporic mobility nor the conferment of it, a product of political intrigues or mercantile bazar.
Unlike some domains, Edo Traditional Chiefs are sacred traditional ambassadors of Edo cultural heritage, and their primary responsibility is to uphold steadfastly Edo Cultural heritage and values.
Edo Chiefs and High Priests, are not a mere ceremonial portfolio, neither does their authority transverse nor transgress beyond Edo sovereign land.
Having saddled to uphold Edo cultural values and beliefs on behalf of the Oba in addition to keeping their respective community peaceful for all and sundry, their influence is however locally bound.
Wherefore they reside outside Edoland for whatever reasons, their influence and authority replaces not the traditional authority prevalence in their residential domains.
Chieftaincy titles or High Priesthood in Edoland are more than ornament galore, neck beads display, red capping and accolades for both Chiefs and wives in public appearances.
Most Edo Chiefs and Enogies are often products of divinity, hereditary, earned and rewards for bravery, patriotism, loyalty and gallantry, etc.
Chieftaincy in Edoland is not a social stratification emolument, rather, a traditional responsibility to fill the gap of Omo’n’Oba n’Edo and his other domain authorities.
In the interest of peace, mutual trust, investment prosperity and stability, we earnestly counsel those involved in cultural rejection or relegation scheme, to fiddle or dare no more the uncharted territory.
The decade’s long peace and understanding between the two tribes will not only snowball but take a downward trajectory if political interest peddlers in the name of ethnic cultural evangelism persist in foisting their homeland traditional culture upon host Edo tribe.
Signed by Frank Ekhator, a human rights activist and President of US-based Edo United for Homeland Empowerment. He was a frontline foot soldier during the prodemocracy struggle in Nigeria.
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