EZENWANYI REPLIES AMADIOHA

Amadioha, Ike, god of all gods I salute you. You have refused to accept the supremacy of the white man’s gods yet you are guilty of the same arrogance. A great man once said that the Earth will know no peace until there is but one brotherhood of man. You are none of you greater than your creator the Almighty. None can claim to know the name of the Creator because they that know do not speak and they that speak do not know.

As for me I am the Lady of the River, a creature and servant like you, a servant of the Most High. They that revel in their own power are like the ancient one Lucifer who forgot that he was a mere creature and declared himself the Almighty’s equal. Because he turned his face away from the source of his glory he is in perpetual darkness. They that have ears listen.

You appear with awe and trepidation intimidating the puny humans and always asking for blood. You rule with fear, your subjects dread you; they have no faith because fear is the opposite of faith and that is why your people have abandoned your worship. They are afraid of your great anger so they go to worship the god of love and forgiveness because truly all have fallen short of glory all have sinned and need forgiveness.

No one is perfect not even the great Amadioha. Nowadays we would describe you as having a definite anger management problem and refer you for counseling with a shrink. At least it’s better than baptism and exorcism! The lesser god Ejiokwu and his consort Nwanyi Ocha of Umuaka had to suffer such indignity! They were called Peter and Paul! Now all the women of their village behave like men and the men like Peter are in denial!

Amadioha, the creature cannot claim to be the creator. You were supposed to give the Igbo-Nigerian people leadership and protection. Instead you became a blood thirsty ogre, a tyrant and a despot. You still ask for blood in a time and age when blood sacrifice has been rejected by all except a vicious and covert minority. From drinking the blood of goats and chickens the hunger for blood grows till even human blood is no longer enough to satiate your hunger, drunk on blood you make hideous faces and shed all compassion, frightening your subjects who scatter before your terrible presence. Only the mean desperados remain as your devotees feeding you more blood and warping your judgment further or why else would you dare to claim to be the God of Gods?

Even in the Igbo-Nigerian pantheon of gods the Almighty Creator’s supremacy is acknowledged and recognized! Chuku  is the Almighty Creator, not you. Do you claim His right because you have been given leasehold over Igbo-Nigeria? Do you claim divine leadership who is a mere appointee of the Most High? Do you forget by whose grace you are the mighty leader of the Igbo race? You even dare to ignore my rights as co-ruler of the Igbo-Nigerian people. Since when in Igbo history and culture have the women been so far removed from community governance?  The Igbo nation is truly drunk on Gin and Gunpowder and the wisdom of the wise has become like pearls thrown before swine. Amadioha you too stand accused of becoming like the white man.

The republican democracy you claim as yours (just like Lucifer claimed it was all his idea) wonderful though it may have been in the old subsistence economy cannot meet the needs of our people in this capitalist and materialistic age. Even the Greeks and the Romans abandoned Republican Democracy long ago! The Israeli’s gave up the rule of the judges for monarchy and then gave up monarchy for democracy. The world has moved on! All meta-narratives fail when they start to exclude and discriminate! Be it against man, woman or child! Be it based on race, ethnicity or gender. All civilizations fall that shed blood as sacrifice, and not out of necessity. But then that is Son of man for you, necessity is so relative there is no end to it and the killing and the death continues even in the new age. Compassion, love and mercy are weaknesses and guarantee exploitation.

It is written that they that cry that the olden days were good are foolish. Has the world stopped moving forward even for a day? Would you have us go back when the rest of the world is going forward? Do not become guilty of the intolerance that many have died to resist in others.


Amadioha have you not adapted to the modern age yet? If you have something to say then you must enter the mainstream as the sons and daughters of your rival Sango have done and that is why it would appear that they are still celebrated. That you consider him your rival at all suggests you are yet to accept that cooperation is more productive than competition. Obviously tribal rivalry is not a solely human peculiarity!

It is rivalry that leads the Igbo to waste resources on an ill defined project such as the Igbo-Nigerian Presidency. As you have rightly pointed out in politics you don’t get what you deserve but what you negotiate and to negotiate you must have leverage. What leverage does the Igbo-Nigerian nation have? This they must first define and articulate. They must identify their strengths and their weaknesses, and then they must consolidate them. Reconciliation is no big deal; everyone wants to be friends with the powerful and successful! We don’t need to beg, we need to make an attempt to improve our market value! Our leverage! The Igbo intelligentsia and the Igbo money bags need to cooperate not compete! And certainly not exploit each other!

Which is why your suggestion to ‘deal with’ Ngige is also not worthy of you. Would you have it said that the great Amadioha needed the puny humans to fight his battles? Ngige and Ubah both have disgraced the Igbo nation and for you to even suggest that you might be in support of either party is unworthy of your greatness. And to hear you refer to Ogwugwu as king breaks my heart! The shrines that the men of Aro used to overawe the Igbo nation into providing them with a steady supply of slaves for the America bound ships of horror are most certainly not kings! Wake up Amadioha, wake up great one! Shine your eye for you are in the thrall of knaves and brigands! Reject their blood offerings! Decline their bribes and pay offs! Remember your true heritage, a heritage that predates Gin and Gunpowder and their resultant madness. A heritage of Justice, where all were equal and had only to prove themselves in the cult of the Ikenga, the cult of the Right Hand, the cult of effort, hard work and personal excellence for the  benefit of the community of kin, Nwanne. Our community has grown now, it is all Nigeria.

Our children have excelled, in commerce, in engineering of all class, in social welfare and development, in administration, in storytelling. I could think of more if I had the time. And they are growing in other skills, in mastering the present form of government, which is neither democratic nor popular, in the art of semantics and mass communication, they are not becoming more oyibo they have always been more oyibo! Curious, technologically savvy (have you forgotten the Akwa blacksmiths that were your special devotees?) imaginative, innovative, humanist, hospitable, confident, industrious. Like the proverbial ants! The Igbo-Nigerians did not build kingdoms because kingdoms are always built on shed blood and violence; they built families, large families! No other Nigerian nation has as an elaborate system of consanguinity rules!

Indeed the Igbo quickly understood where the power was at in the new system; follow the money, without money there is no power! The memorized the Golden Rule of a Capitalist Marketocracy; he who has the money makes the rules. The intensity with which our people started to work and acquire capital in the post 1971 era is remarkable! In 35 years they have built mansions and factories and markets and schools and hospitals. They have started companies and institutions they have acquired assets, liquid and fixed at home and abroad, they are always the first to wear the latest fashions and drive the latest cars; were the entire Igbo nation to liquidate and withdraw their assets from around the country the Nigerian economy would stumble badly. All this they have achieved in 35 years and on twenty pounds and despite the constant and continuous efforts of forces public, private and spiritual to frustrate them! Come on give the kids a break! They took to capitalism like fish to water! And yet you say that of all our children you have hope in none! Surely that is a failure of parenting then, O mighty one! Understanding democracy is understanding the economic system that the democracy upholds, our children are consummate economists, they understand profit and loss and they understand markets. The women especially understand markets. Or do you think it is a coincidence that the biggest market on the West Coast, the Nigerian Stock Exchange, is headed by an Igbo-Nigerian woman?

I am the Lady of the River and the people who are yours and mine have profaned me too. I am Love but they have named me Lust! I am Beauty but they have named me Temptress! I am Compassion but they call me Cruel! I am Justice and they try to bribe me! Daily I am raped and abused, exploited and degenerated, stripped and plundered. I am a creature in the image and likeness of my Creator but they construct me in their image and likeness! Sometimes I rage at their insolence and punish the puny humans but always I forgive them. They know not what they do; they know only their hunger for bread and their addiction to Gin and Gunpowder which they fed to us too. Never mind, their ignorance cannot change my nature. Nor can it change yours my lord. We must show compassion to our children and use positive reinforcement to encourage them, it is the new way of parenting, and it is more effective than the old.

Amadioha, great lord of the Igbo’s; we used to rule together you and I, male and female together in harmony. Remember how I used to calm your temper and rage? How my cool hand at your brow smoothed away the frown lines and brought a smile to your face? Then our people were content and happy and they had balanced and tranquil lives but ever since you abandoned me and accused me of treachery our people know no peace. The white man came plundered our children, our resources, our treasures, our history, and our heritage in the great catastrophe and sowed the seeds of gender discord to keep us ‘distracted’ while he filled his treasure houses and destroyed ancient civilizations in the name of evangelism and he still exploits us today! And you are worried about what Omo Oduduwa your neighbor is doing to distract you.

The solution to all our problems is to heal the rift that has developed between man and woman not between tribes and nations. We need to heal the wounds in the family first before we can heal the nation for what is the nation but a collection of families? And if the families are sick can they not be likened to a cancerous growth that will kill the whole body? Families are sick because Igbo-Nigerian women who have always worked side by side with their men have been brainwashed to behave like the white woman hiding in the kitchen or the ladies room or lying prostrate in the master bedroom!  By excluding your women folk you have already halved your strength. What victory can you gain without them? In Igbo-Nigeria it is not done, Ezenwanyi must speak, she worked as hard as any man to build and maintain her kingdom, our kingdom, Ike.   The Almighty created everything in pairs, male and female.  ####

Copyright 2005