The history of Ukwa/Ngwa people Volume 1 represents the ultimate in-depth data of Ukwa/Ngwa people long walk to freedom nay, to capture political power in their political space. A factual inside account of the events and circumstances which had made this journey a tortuous one and brought it to scorn and despise mostly in its citadel commercial town of Aba. This is rendered in a vivid detail by the author blazing a trail which would, sooner or later, provoke reactions conveying confirmation, disputation, clarification or expansion of information as contained herein. In the potpourri of endless books written on Ukwa/Ngwa history, this book is no doubt unique in its most illuminating treatment of privileged information recapturing the historical genesis of the Ukwa/Ngwa origin, long trek to Aba and its attendant development which had elicited disproportionate feelings among sojourners.
This book analyzes the history of the Ngwa-Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria in time perspective. It begins with an evaluation of the methodologies used in studying the so-called stateless societies and goes on to discuss the origin of the Ngwa and their socio-political organization. Subsequent chapters examine local and regional trade networks as well as the roles Okonko title society, the Aro and other oracular specialists played during slavery and legitimate commerce. Also discussed are the production and marketing of palm produce and the sequence of events that contributed to the Aba Women's Revolt of 1929. The final chapter uses the Ngwa example to highlight the diverse changes that occurred in Igbo mini states during the periods under review.
Let My People Live reengages the narrative of Exodus through a critical, life-affirming Africana hermeneutic that seeks to create and sustain a vision of not just the survival but the thriving of Black communities. While the field of biblical studies has habitually divided "objective" interpretations from culturally informed ones, Kenneth Ngwa argues that doing interpretive work through an activist, culturally grounded lens rightly recognizes how communities of readers actively shape the priorities of any biblical interpretation. In the Africana context, communities whose identities were made disposable by the forces of empire and colonialism—both in Africa and in the African diaspora across the globe—likewise suffered the stripping away of the right to interpretation, of both sacred texts and of themselves. Ngwa shows how an Africana approach to the biblical text can intervene in this narrative of breakage, as a mode of resistance. By emphasizing the irreducible life force and resources nurtured in the Africana community, which have always preceded colonial oppression, the Africana hermeneutic is able to stretch from the past into the future to sustain and support generations to come. Ngwa reimagines the Exodus story through this framework, elaborating the motifs of the narrative as they are shaped by Africana interpretative values and approaches that identify three animating threats in the story: erasure (undermining the community's very existence), alienation (separating from the space of home and from the ecosystem), and singularity (holding up the individual over the collective). He argues that what he calls "badass womanism"—an intergenerational and interregional life force and epistemology of the people embodied in the midwives, Miriam, the Egyptian princess, and other female figures in the story—have challenged these threats. He shows how badass womanist triple consciousness creates, and is informed by, communal approaches to hermeneutics that emphasize survival over erasure, integration over alienation, and multiplicity over singularity. This triple consciousness surfaces throughout the Exodus narrative and informs the narrative portraits of other characters, including Moses and Yahweh. As the Hebrew people navigate the exodus journey, Ngwa investigates how these forces of oppression and resistance shift and take new shapes across the geographies of Egypt, the wilderness, and the mountain area preceding their passage into the promised land. For Africana, these geographies also represent colonial, global, and imperial sites where new subjectivities and epistemologies develop.
This s an Igbo History book that has the first time told of how the people of the South East and the South South Zones are Igbo. These are the Edo, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, the Ijaw, the Ogoni, the Ika, the Opobo, the Efik, the Anang, the Ibibio, the Ogoja the Obubra, the Owerri, the Anambra, the Udi, the Ezeagu, the Nkanu, the Nsukka, the Akpoto, the Izza the Izzi, the Ikwo, the Ngwa, the Andoni, the Ikwerre, the Ndokki and others are all Igbo. Every family in the South East and South South owe it a duty to book for copies of this book for their children at home and abroad.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption and an ailing economy. Toyin Falola, a leading historian intimately acquainted with the region, and Matthew Heaton, who has worked extensively on African science and culture, combine their expertise to explain the context to Nigeria's recent troubles through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past, and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria's history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense, but unrealized, potential.
This edited collection, written by eleven leading specialists, examines the nineteenth-century commercial transition in West Africa: the ending of the Atlantic slave trade and the development of alternative forms of 'legitimate' trade, mainly in vegetable products. Approaching the subject from an African, rather than a European or American, perspective, the case studies consider the effects of transition on the African societies involved. They offer significant insights into the history of pre-colonial Africa and the slave trade, the origins of European imperialism, and longer-term issues of economic development in Africa.
Although numerous studies have been made of the Western educated political elite of colonial Nigeria in particular, and of Africa in general, very few have approached the study from a perspective that analyzes the impacts of indigenous institutions on the lives, values, and ideas of these individuals. This book is about the diachronic impact of indigenous and Western agencies in the upbringing, socialization, and careers of the colonial Igbo political elite of southeastern Nigeria. The thesis argues that the new elite manifests the continuity of traditions and culture and therefore their leadership values and the impact they brought on African society cannot be fully understood without looking closely at their lived experiences in those indigenous institutions where African life coheres. The key has been to explore this question at the level of biography, set in the context of a carefully reconstructed social history of the particular local communities surrounding the elite figures. It starts from an understanding of their family and village life, and moves forward striving to balance the familiar account of these individuals in public life, with an account of the ongoing influences from family, kinship, age grades, marriage and gender roles, secret societies, the church, local leaders and others. The result is not only a model of a new approach to African elite history, but also an argument about how to understand these emergent leaders and their peers as individuals who shared with their fellow Africans a dynamic and complex set of values that evolved over the six decades of colonialism.
This ground-breaking volume examines the presentation and role of children in the ancient world, and specifically in ancient Jewish and Christian texts. With carefully commissioned chapters that follow chronological and canonical progression, a sequential reading of this book enables deeper appreciation of how understandings of children change over time. Divided into four sections, this handbook first offers an overview of key methodological approaches employed in the study of children in the biblical world, and the texts at hand. Three further sections examine crucial texts in which children or discussions of childhood are featured; presented along chronological lines, with sections on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Intertestamental Literature, and the New Testament and Early Christian Apocrypha. Relevant not only to biblical studies but also cross-disciplinary scholars interested in children in antiquity.
