Dawn for Islam in Eastern Nigeria: A History of the Arrival of Islam in Igboland

312 Pages·2010·7.438 MB·English

by  Egodi Uchendu

ISLAMKUNDLICHE UNTERSUCHUNGEN • BAND 303
begründet
von Klaus Schwarz
herausgegeben
von Gerd Winkelhane
ISLAMKUNDLICHE UNTERSUCHUNGEN (cid:127) BAND 303
Egodi Uchendu
Dawn for Islam in Eastern Nigeria
A History of the Arrival of Islam in Igboland
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for the generous support to the production of this book.
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© 2011 by Klaus Schwarz Verlag GmbH Berlin
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DEDICATION
In memory of my father, Dr. (M.D.) Moses Ukasonwa Ozo (1925–2008),
to all who aspire to write the history of Islam in Eastern Nigeria,
and to all who provided information for this book.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................9
Illustrations .....................................................................................................................10
Preface .............................................................................................................................11
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................15
The Overview ........................................................................................................15
Sketching the Landscape ......................................................................................19
Religious Diversification ......................................................................................27
Igbo-Hausa Relations ............................................................................................28
Pattern of Religious Expansion in Nigeria .......................................................30
Conceptual Clarification ......................................................................................30
The Question of Numbers: Are Igbo Muslims Worth Studying? .................35
1. EASTERN NIGERIA BEFORE 1920 .........................................................................39
The Journey of Islam towards the Southeast ...................................................39
Earliest Inter-ethnic Contacts .............................................................................43
On the Trail of the Elephant Hunters ...............................................................50
The Organization of the Hunt ............................................................................58
Forms of Interaction with Migrants ...................................................................66
2. THE BEGINNINGS OF ISLAM IN IGBOLAND, 1920–1950 .................................73
The Case of Enugu Ezike .....................................................................................82
Islam in Ibagwa .....................................................................................................93
Women as Agents of Spread ...............................................................................95
Expansion of Strangers’ Settlements and Barriers to Proselytization .........97
3. THE EXPANSION OF ISLAM AFTER 1950 ..........................................................103
Post-1950 Developments ....................................................................................103
Extending Islam to Owerri ................................................................................105
The Enohia (Anohia) Awakening of 1958 ......................................................106
The Civil War Years ...........................................................................................113
Reconstruction and Rehabilitation: The Mbaise Affair ................................124
Extending Islam to Nsukka Town ...................................................................129
Enohia after the War ..........................................................................................131
Other New Grounds ...........................................................................................134
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4. C C :
ONTACTS AND ONVERSIONS
THE PROPAGATION OF ISLAM IN IGBOLAND ....................................................135
Hausa Traders and Cattle Markets ..................................................................136
The Igbo and Their Guests: Ambivalent Relations .......................................144
Migrants among Themselves ............................................................................151
Da‘wa and the Spread of Islam in Igboland ...................................................152
The State and Islamic Proselytization .............................................................160
Transnational Support for Da‘wa ....................................................................165
Igbo Muslims and Da‘wa ...................................................................................166
5. INTERROGATING CONVERSIONS TO ISLAM IN IGBOLAND ................................169
Motives for Conversions to Islam in Igboland ..............................................169
Women and Conversion ....................................................................................183
Conversion of Children to Islam ......................................................................186
Other Factors Contributing to Conversions in Igboland .............................191
6. “I , :”
T IS MY FAITH IT BELONGS TO ME
RESPONSES TO CONVERSIONS TO ISLAM ...........................................................196
Induction into Islam ............................................................................................196
The Benefits of Conversion ...............................................................................206
Responses to Conversions to Islam ..................................................................211
Reactions to Conversions from Outside Igboland .........................................222
7. MUSLIM–CHRISTIAN RELATIONS:
THE CHALLENGES OF COEXISTENCE IN A MIXED RELIGIOUS SOCIETY .......225
Juggling for a Niche in the Community .........................................................225
“Multiple people, multiple ignorance:”
Shari‘a Implementation in Nigeria ..............................................................238
Issues at the Core of the Shari‘a Dispute ........................................................244
Death of Igbo Muslims in the Riots .................................................................248
Further Insurrection and the Progress of Islam in Igboland .......................254
Suggestions for Lasting Peace in Nigeria .......................................................255
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................260
ANNEX ...........................................................................................................................264
INDEX .............................................................................................................................279
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Responses to this study were very supportive. Very many people were willing
to share the story of their conversion to Islam and also to provide other rele-
vant information contained in this work. I thank all my interviewees who al-
lowed their recollections to be reflected in these pages. For those who wished to
remain anonymous, I am equally grateful for their testimonies, for the warmth
of their reception and their remarkable patience in answering my queries. I also
thank all my research assistants—Calista, Kelechi, Nnennaya, and Obinna—
and some of my students in the Department of History and International Stud-
ies, University of Nigeria, who contributed to the fieldwork by selectively inter-
viewing contacts in various towns or informing me of such individuals. Our ef-
forts together ensured a reasonably wide coverage of Igboland and Eastern Ni-
geria that this study warranted, but more importantly the enthusiasm of my re-
search team was of considerable encouragement to me. Worth mentioning, too,
is the support of my University administration in approving the long research
leave that was devoted to this study.
I acknowledge the huge financial contributions of the following: Prof. C. N.
Uchendu, my husband, who sponsored the preliminary stages of the fieldwork
in 2003, and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in
Africa (CODESRIA), for its Advanced Research Fellowship Award that fin-
anced the field research from 2005 to 2006. The Alexander von Humboldt Stif-
tung (AvH) sponsored my twenty-eight months stay in Berlin, from June 2006
to September 2008, most of which were spent at Zentrum Moderner Orient
(ZMO), where this work was written, and an additional one year of research in
the Niger Delta region from October 2008 to September 2009. It further made a
generous printing allowance for this project.
To Jane Saidi, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Freitag, Dr. Marlies Janson, Dr. Chanfi
Ahmed, and Dr. Hassan Mwakamiko, my thanks for their warm friendship all
through my Berlin days and their useful remarks on various drafts of this book.
Katharina Zöller was indispensable to this project, producing and reproducing
all the illustrations in addition to other assistance rendered. I also benefitted
from the comments of Ishaq Al-Sulaimani, for which I express my thanks. My
children provided necessary and pleasant distractions that were part of the mem-
orable experience of my Berlin days. I acknowledge other contributions by per-
sons too numerous to mention toward the success of this project. I am however
responsible for flaws and errors of judgment wherever they occur in this book.
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MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1: Southern Nigeria Protectorate and its three provinces, 1916..........................20
Fig. 2: Igboland, east and west of the Niger River, and their neighbors..................22
Fig. 3: Nigeria’s tripartite units with major linguistic groups....................................40
Fig. 4: Hausa trade routes in the “pre-nineteenth” and “nineteenth” centuries......43
Fig. 5: Eastern Nigeria showing the five main ethnic groups....................................45
Fig. 6: Map of Igboland, east and west of river Niger, and their neighbors............46
Fig. 7: Elephant hunting sites in Eastern Nigeria.........................................................56
Fig. 8: Southern Nigeria showing the provinces in Eastern region by 1925 ...........60
Fig. 9: Strangers’ settlements in Eastern Nigeria between 1891 and 1920 ..............63
Fig. 10: Old Nsukka Division ............................................................................................74
Fig. 11: Shelton’s illustration of trade routes connecting Nsukka
with her neighbors ................................................................................................76
Fig. 12: Nsukka Local Government Area, 1986...............................................................81
Fig. 13: Strangers’ settlements and their economic engagements................................99
Fig. 14: Migration from Sokoto to Eastern Nigeria, 1954............................................104
Fig. 15: Ebonyi State showing Enohia in Afikpo North Local Government Area ....108
Fig. 16: Leaders of the Lokpanta cattle market.............................................................140
Fig. 17: A section of the cattle market............................................................................141
Fig. 18: A young female convert, Sarah Dike................................................................155
Fig. 19: Igbo converts learning to do ablution...............................................................158
Fig. 20: The turbaning of Mr. Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State........164
Fig. 21: Nigeria’s population distribution.......................................................................239
Fig. 22: Major riots with religious coloration, 2000–2006, and 2008....................258-59
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PREFACE
Writing on Religious Conversions
1
Rambo’s Understanding Religious Conversions more than any other work af-
firmed my determination to see the conversion to Islam of the Igbo of Eastern
(or Southeast) Nigeria from the perspective of the converts. Ambivalence best
describes Igbo reaction to Islam right until the present, reasons of which are
located in historical realities, most especially the frictions that surrounded ini-
tial contacts between some Igbo communities and early Muslim migrants from
Northern Nigeria to Igboland, and also in the circumstances leading up to the
Nigeria-Biafra war (the Nigerian Civil War) of 1967 to 1970. The war deepened
the post-independence divide between the Igbo and Hausa ethnic group. The
situation deteriorated in the face of the emerging reputation of Islam as a reli-
gion aspiring to world domination. It was little wonder that the civil war was
believed by the majority of Eastern Nigerians to be an attempt by the Muslim
Hausa ethnic group to enthrone Islam in that region of Nigeria in pursuance of
2
its agenda of global ascendancy. The post-war political and economic margin-
alization of the Igbo in response to their attempted secession from Nigeria from
1967 to 1970 and their recourse to arms in defense of their independence did not
3
ameliorate Igbo hostility to Islam but rather had the opposite effect. Other
reasons for which the Igbo ethnic group regarded Islam as an unacceptable
creed during its earliest appearance in the homeland would appear to come
second to the multi-level repercussion of the civil war.
At the early stages of my engagement with this research on the emergence
of Islam in Igboland I went through several intellectual cross-examinations. I
was intrigued by what possibly attracted some Igbo to the religion of a sup-
posedly rival ethnic group long criminalized as enemies of the Igbo ethnic na-
tion. Becoming impassive was the solution to potential ethnic bias. This resolve
1 L. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993); and “Anthropology and the Study of Conversion”, in The Anthropology of Reli-
gious Conversion, Andrew Buckser and Stephen Glazier (eds.), (New York: Rowman
and Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 211-222.
2 See text of the 1969 Ahiara Declaration of the defunct Republic of Biafra.
http://www. biafraland.com/Ahiara_declaration_1969.htm
3 Paul Obi-Ani, Post-Civil War Social and Economic Reconstruction of Igboland, 1970–
1983 (Enugu: Milkon Press, 1998); Onwuka Njoku, “A Synoptic Overview”, in Toyin
Falola (ed.), Igbo History and Society: The Essays of Adiele Afigbo (Trenton, NJ: Africa
World Press, 2005), 37.
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