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BEING IGBO AND MUSLIM: THE IGBO OF SOUTH-EASTERN NIGERIA AND CONVERSIONS TO ISLAM, 1930s TO RECENT TIMES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2010

EGODI UCHENDU
EGODI UCHENDU
Affiliation:
University of Nigeria, Nsukka
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Abstract

Amid assumptions of a hegemonic Igbo Christian identity, conversions to Islam began in the late 1930s in the Igbo territory of south-east Nigeria – the only region in the country that was not touched by the nineteenth-century Islamic jihad and subsequent efforts to extend the borders of Islam in Nigeria. Four decades after the emergence of Islam in the Igbo homeland, and with the mixed blessings of a civil war, Igboland began to manifest clear evidence of indigenous Muslim presence. A key aspect of this article is how one can be both Igbo and Muslim. It considers the complex interplay of religious and ethnic identities of Igbo Muslims (including the mapping of religious values onto ethnic ones) until the 1990s, when Igbo Muslims began to disentangle ethnicity from religion, a development that owes much to the progress of Islamic education in Igboland and the emergence of Igbo Muslim scholars and clerics. Igbo reactions to conversions to Islam and the perceived threat of these conversions to Igbo Christian identity also receive some attention in this article.

Keywords

NigeriaIgboconversionIslam
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 63 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 The restructuring of Nigeria into six geopolitical zones in 1999 was designed to address lingering administrative and political irregularities in the country arising from the unequal and disputed colonial regional structure that defined Nigerian politics for over half a century. Under the current geopolitical zone structure, the Igbo communities of Rivers State (Ikwerre, Elele, and others) and Delta State (Anioma), both located in the new south-south geopolitical zone, are excluded from this discussion.

2 I. R. A. Ozigbo, A History of Igboland in the Twentieth Century (Enugu, 1999), 5; S. Ottenberg, ‘Reflections on Igbo culture and society’ (unpublished manuscript, 2006), 9–10.

3 C. Nnorom, ‘Islam in Igboland: lessons in history’, unpublished paper presented at the conference on Igbo Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1–2 April 2003.

4 Ottenberg, ‘Reflections on Igbo culture’, 9–10.

5 Interview with Garba Oheme, b. c.1908, Enugu Ezike, May 2003.

6 Interview with Sheikh A. Idoko, b. 1958 (‘born into Islam’), Chief Imam of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka mosque, Nsukka, June 2003; interview with Sheikh Idris Al Hassan, b. 1959, self-described Muslim missionary and Director of the Islamic Centre in Enugu, Enugu, May 2003; interview with Dauda Ojobe, b. 1928 (converted to Islam in 1971), Enugu Ezike, May 2003; and interview with Mallam Ahmed Omeje, b. c.1936 (became a Muslim in his childhood), Ibagwa, May 2003. All persons ‘born into Islam’ were born to Muslim parents or to fathers who were Muslims at the time of their birth.

I was directed to Garba Oheme by Sheikhs Idoko and Al Hassan. Speaking with Oheme weeks later, he declared: ‘I joined Islam in 1937 … Your research on Islam needs me. No person in Nsukka will tell you how it started. I am the first in Nsukka Division to join Islam.’

7 Interview with Alhaji Mutalib, b. 1940, Ibagwa, May 2003; interview with Imam Ibrahim Eze, b. c.1938 (‘born into Islam’), Chief Imam, Nsukka town central mosque, Nsukka, March 2003; and interview with Mallam Ahmed Omeje. Hausa is used in this article to refer widely to migrants from northern Nigeria except when otherwise stated.

8 Ottenberg, S., ‘A Moslem Igbo village’, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 42 (1971), 231–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Interviews with Dauda Ojobe, Imam Ibrahim Eze, and Mallam Ahmed Omeje.

10 Akoshile, M. and Umunna, I., ‘Igbo Muslims: their trials and triumphs’, Citizen, 4 (1993), 10–19Google Scholar. A more reliable figure, compiled by a Pakistani Muslim author using figures provided by Muslim religious leaders in Igboland, placed the number of Igbo Muslims in 1984 at 3450: A. Doi, Islam in Nigeria (Zaria, 1984), 182. A trebling of numbers in just six years is indeed unrealistic.

11 Anthony, D., ‘Islam does not belong to them: ethnic and religious identities among male Igbo converts in Hausaland’, Africa, 70 (2000), 422CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ottenberg, ‘Reflections on Igbo culture’, 11.

13 This was mentioned in interviews with Imam Ibrahim Eze and Sheikh Al Hassan (a Ghanaian Muslim missionary to Igboland), and in an interview with Alhaji Musa Ani, b. 1955 (converted to Islam in 1975), Secretary of the Islamic Center in Enugu, Enugu, May 2003.

14 See Lofland, J. and Stark, R., ‘Becoming a world-saver: a theory of conversion to a deviant perspective’, American Sociological Review, 30 (1965), 862CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horton, R., ‘African conversion’, Africa, 41 (1971), 85–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fisher, H., ‘Conversion reconsidered: some historical aspects of religious conversion in black Africa’, Africa, 43 (1973), 27–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and L. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, 1993).

15 Interview with Nathan Okeke, b. 1969, Kaduna, Jan. 2006 (Nathan later left Islam and re-embraced Christianity). Women's conversions are not made public: they are private affairs that occur in the private space of the home (interview with Hajia Khadija Essen, b. 1954, Uyo, May 2009; interview with Mrs Amina Ihuoma Kundi, b. 1980, Port Harcourt, May 2009).

16 Interviews with Sheihk Idoko, Imam Ibrahim Eze, Alhaji Musa Ani, and Nathan Okeke.

17 Doi, Islam in Nigeria, 177.

18 Fisher, ‘Conversion reconsidered’, 33.

19 Anthony, ‘Islam does not belong to them’, 436, records the case of Senator Arthur Nzeribe, whose much publicized conversion – scheduled to take place at the Emir's palace in Kano in December 1989 – did not occur because Nzeribe did not attend. I came across another Igbo who, despite pre-conversion training in Islamic knowledge also did not appear at the mosque where his conversion ceremony was to take place. See further in ibid. 422–41.

20 Interview with Imam Ibrahim Eze.

21 Interview with Mrs Hawakwunu Josephine Okoroafor, b. 1946, Inyi, Aug. 2005 (Hawakwunu became a Christian after her marriage in 1963).

22 Salamone, F. A., ‘Becoming Hausa: ethnic identity change and its implications for the study of ethnic pluralism and stratification’, Africa, 45 (1975), 417CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Imam Hassan Ome Musa, b. c.1947 (‘born into Islam’), a tailor and the imam of Obukpa mosque, Obukpa, May 2003.

24 Interview with Imam Ibrahim Eze.

25 C. K. Meek, The Northern Tribes of Nigeria: An Ethnographical Account of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria Together with a Report on the 1921 Decennial Census, Vol. I (London, 1925), 44–5.

26 The best example of this group is Alhaji Idris Okonkwo Eze, b. 1953 (became a Muslim in 1964), a tailor, interviewed at Nsukka, May 2003. Alhaji Eze joined his elder brother, Imam Ibrahim Eze, in Islam when he lived with him.

27 Interview with Mrs Ramatu Mohammed Omeje, b. c.1928 (became a Muslim as a young girl, following her marriage to a Muslim), Enugu Ezike, June 2003. The reference to ‘when there was no school’ suggests that her birth would have taken place in the late 1920s in her home community of Enugu Ezike. The first school in her village was established in 1930.

28 Interview with Sheikh Idoko.

29 Interview with Alhaji Musa Ani.

30 In May 2003, when I visited the school, the building was in ruins, lacking doors and windows and with neither pupils nor teachers but occupied by roving domestic animals.

31 ‘Islamic school to be built in Enugu’, New Nigerian Newspaper, 15 March 1973, 2.

32 J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 2000), 190–91.

33 Interview with Nathan Okeke. Tudunwada is one of the exclusive Muslim residential areas in Kaduna city, Kaduna State. The 2000 Sharia crisis in Kaduna State redefined settlement patterns in Kaduna, clearly demarcating Muslim areas from non-Muslim areas and limiting interpersonal contacts between Muslims and non-Muslims.

34 Interview with Alhaji Musa Ani. Aboki is one of the Igbo terms for Hausa Muslims.

35 Igbo Muslim leaders on occasion compared their religious zeal with that manifested by early Hausa Muslim migrants to Igboland many decades ago. In their opinion Hausa Muslim migrants were primarily interested in trade and thus left the task of missionary work to Nupe Muslims who were themselves Islamized by Fulani reformers of the nineteenth century. It would appear that where the Nupe stopped, the Igbo have taken over, considering it their responsibility to advertise Islam in their home areas.

36 Doi, Islam in Nigeria, 177.

37 Hausanization here refers to the process of adopting Hausa Muslim culture by Igbo converts to Islam.

38 These terms were picked out during interviews with Igbo Muslims.

39 Interview with Mrs Memuna Eze, b. 1958 of Muslim parents, Nsukka, March 2003.

40 The most eloquent proponent of this view is Alhaji Musa Ani.

41 Anthony, ‘Islam does not belong to them’, 426–32, 436.

42 M. Last, ‘Some economic aspects of conversion in Hausaland (Nigeria)’, in N. Levtzion (ed.), Conversion to Islam (New York, 1979), 236.

43 Interview with Nathan Okeke; interview with Mr Joe Odo, b. 1953, Enugu, Nov. 2003.

44 Interviews with Imam Ibrahim Eze, Alhaji Idris Okonkwo Eze, Imam Hassan Ome, Mallam Ahmed Omeje, Garba Oheme, Dauda Ojobe. Also interview with Adam Usman, b. c.1953 (‘born into Islam’), Nsukka, May 2003; interview with Chief Abubakar Bello, Sarkin Hausawa of Aba, Aba, July 2003; interview with Ibrahim Agbedo, b. 1951, Enugu Ezike, Jan. 2004. See also V. K. Johnson, ‘Intelligence report on the people of Enugu Ezike, Nsukka Division’, File OP 1071/ONDIST 12/1/709 (Oct. 1934), National Archives, Enugu.

45 Interview with Sheikh Haroun Aja, b. 1958 (‘born into Islam’), Islamic instructor, Abakaliki, Sept. 2003; interview with Hajia Sayatu Aja, b. 1960, daughter of Sheikh Ibrahim Nwagui and President of the Young Muslim Women Association, Abakaliki, Sept. 2003; and interview with Sheikh Obini Ekpe, b. 1958, lecturer, Abakiliki, Jan. 2004. See also Ottenberg, ‘A Muslim Igbo village’, 231–59.

46 Interview with Mallam Isa Ugiri, b. 1926 (converted to Islam in 1966), imam, Aboh Mbaise, Jan. 2006; interview with Mr I. Ala, b. 1941 (converted to Islam in 1975 as Mallam Usman, recanted in 1987 and joined the Igbo religion), Mbaise, Feb. 2006; and interview with Mallam Isa Ekeji, b. 1938 (converted to Islam in 1974), Mbaise, Feb. 2006. According to Mallam Isa Ugiri, Islam started to decline in the town a few years after it was introduced, ‘when there was no more fund to finance the people to Mecca’.

47 Interview with Alhaji Mutui, b. 1936 (converted to Islam in 1982), Public Relations Officer for the Islamic Center at Enugu, Enugu, May 2003; also interview with Engr. Yahaya Dutse, b. 1967, Port Harcourt, May 2009.

48 Interviews with Sheikh Ekpe, Sheikh Idoko, Sheikh Aja, and Mallam Ekeji; also interview with Sheik Abugu, b. c.1959 (‘born into Islam’), Amufie, May 2003.

49 Saudi Arabia Information Resource website, http://www.saudinf.com/main/k312.htm (accessed 18 November 2009).

50 See O. Kane, Muslim Modernity in Post-colonial Nigeria: A Study of the Society for the Removal of Innovation and Reinstatement of Tradition (Leiden, 2003); P. Bascio, Defeating Islamic Terrorism: The Wahhabi Factor (Boston, MA, 2007), 55; D. Gold, Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports a New Global Terrorism (Washington, DC, 2003), 75; and P. Lilley, Dirty Dealing: The Untold Truth about Global Money Laundering, International Crime and Terrorism (London, 2003), 137. Other relevant publications include Islamic Supreme Council of America, ‘An open letter to concerned Americans’, FrontPageMagazine.com, 11 July 2002; ‘The World Muslim League: Agent of Wahhabi propagation in Europe’, TerrorismMonitor, 9 (2005); ‘Islamic extremism on the rise in Nigeria’, TerrorismMonitor, 20 (2005).

51 The following interviews revealed just a few of those who are unenthusiastic about the implementation of sharia law in Igboland: interview with Ismaila Ngwu, b. 1971 (converted to Islam in 1985, following a vision in which a man in a turban appeared to him), radio mechanic, Amaoda, Sept. 2003; interview with Miss Sefiyat Abdullahi, b. 1977, Assistant Director of an Islamic nursery school, Nsukka, Sept. 2003; interview with Mr Inusa, Alor agu, Oct. 2003; interview with Alhaji Sani Ibrahim, b. 1957 (converted to Islam in 1985 as prerequisite for marriage to a Muslim woman), tailor, Amaji, Sept. 2003. Alhaji Ibrahim gave this testimony about his conversion: ‘I wanted to marry a lady I loved dearly. There is no other way you can marry a Muslim without converting to their religion. Another thing is that I liked their religion and their language. I left my religion for hers because she cannot leave hers for mine. It is against their religion.’

52 Interview with Awudu Munagoro, b. 1946, Nnewi, March 2006.

53 Interview with Alfa Jamir Abdukareem, b. 1970 (converted to Islam in 1986), Aba, Sept. 2003.

54 Interview with Sheikh Idoko.

55 Interview with Sheikh Al Hassan.

56 Interview with Alhaji Mutui.

57 Fisher, ‘Conversion reconsidered’, 32.

58 Those who expressed clear admiration for Islam in Igboland were few, but positive opinions included: interview with Vincent Okezie, b. c.1936, retired teacher, Ezinifite, Feb. 2006; interview with J. C. Igwe, b. 1969, banker, Port Harcourt, Oct. 2003. Mr Igwe observed: ‘Islam is good but the only area I do not agree with them is that they like fighting and shedding blood unnecessarily and believe it is not evil.’

59 One such person is Nathan Okeke, known among his friends as ‘Alhaji’, who lived for many years in northern Nigeria and had Muslims among his business associates. When the current principal of the Islamic primary school in Enugu contemplated taking up employment with the Islamic Centre some years back, it was Mr Okeke that she requested to speak with, to convince her husband that taking up an appointment with an Islamic establishment was not synonymous with conversion to Islam and therefore not a threat to her faith: interview with Mrs C. Okolie, b. 1963, Enugu, May 2003.

60 S. Johnson, The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (London, 1921), 288.

61 For a detailed account of Igbo and Hausa relations in northern Nigeria from 1966 onwards, see D. Anthony, Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power, and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966 to 1986 (Oxford, 2002). For discussions of military brutality on the Igbo during the Nigeria–Biafra War, see J. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War (London, 1972); and D. Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations (New York, 1987). Muslims of northern Nigerian origin and also Igbo Muslims now try to refute claims of Hausa brutality to the Igbo during the war by insisting that Christian and other non-Muslim soldiers also fought in the different units of the Nigerian army that overran Biafra. They argue that these other soldiers were responsible for the supposed atrocities against the Igbo and not the Hausa. They add, also, that the head of state who prosecuted the war against Biafra was a Christian. Published accounts on the Nigeria–Biafra War by foreign and Nigerian authors show that there is indeed some truth in Igbo claims of Hausa brutality during the civil war. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that wars are not civilized events and there is no gentleman on a battlefield.

62 D. van den Bersselaar, In Search of Igbo Identity: Language, Culture and Politics in Nigeria, 1900–1966 (Leiden, 1998).

63 Ottenberg, ‘Reflections’, 11.

64 Kane, Muslim Modernity, 92–100.

65 Interview with Chief F. A. Ibe, b. 1941, Mbano, Oct. 2003; interview with Chief P. E. Nwainyinya, b. 1951, Abakaliki, Oct. 2003; and interview with J. C. Igwe.

66 O. Ojukwu, The Ahiara Declaration: The Principles of the Biafran Revolution (Umuahia, 1969).

67 Interviews with Dauda Ojobe, Mallam Omeje, Imam Ibrahim Eze, Sheikh Aja, and Alhaji Mutui. Ojobe, Eze, and Mutui all fought on the Biafran side. Eze was the only known Muslim Igbo who fought for Biafra, although he relinquished his Muslim names for that purpose. Ojobe was involved in the state persecution of Muslim indigenes. He narrated the arrest and imprisonment of some Hausa women who accompanied their husbands and children back to Owerri from northern Nigeria in 1966. Mallam Omeje was arrested by the Biafran authorities and, with many other Muslims of Nsukka Division, came under pressure to recant. The Nigeria–Biafra War pitched Igbo society against the emerging Igbo Muslim community, then an insignificant minority.

68 Interview with Alhaji Omar Farouk, b. 1949 (converted to Islam in 1989), Secretary General of Rivers State Islamic Council, Port Harcourt, May 2009.

69 Mahdi Adamu, The Hausa Factor in West African History (Zaria, 1978); Anthony, ‘Islam does not belong to them’, 422–41.

70 Anthony, ‘Islam does not belong to them’, 426–32.

71 Interview with S. Nwabueze, b. 1955, Ukpani, Feb. 2006.

72 Interview with Imam Ibrahim Eze.

73 Interview with C. Ogbodo, b. 1971, Nkanu, Sept. 2003.

74 Interview with Mrs C. Okolie.

75 Interview with Mrs Asmau Shittu, b. 1969 (‘born into Islam’), Nsukka, May 2003; interview with Adam Usman.

76 Interview with Alhaji Mutui. Alhaji's story appears well known to persons close to him. I heard aspects of it in separate interviews with his son and two of his acquaintances. Alakuba is an onomatopoeic term. Literally, it means ‘to be beaten up by the ground’. It is, however, used in reference to the Muslim prayer pattern of touching their foreheads on the floor, which the Igbo ridicule, describing them as people who ‘hit the head on the ground’.

77 Ibid.

78 Interview with Harun Eze, b. 1979 (‘born into Islam’), President of the Muslim Students Society, University of Abuja, Abuja, Sept. 2005. At the time of interview, Eze was a third-year law student at the University of Abuja.

79 This interviewee, born in 1963, spoke on the condition of anonymity. The interview was held in Lagos in Feb. 2006. The interviewee, who described herself as ‘both a Christian and a Muslim’, narrated the circumstances of her conversion. She converted to Islam in 1997, when she married her second husband, a Hausa Muslim. An underlying reason for the marriage was her need to gain employment with the Nigerian Customs and she was able to do so through the influence of her Hausa Muslim husband.

80 Interview with Dauda Ojobe.

81 Interview with Alhaji Mutui.

82 See, for example, http://www.ekwenche.org and http://www.emeagwali.com (accessed 18 November 2009).

83 Interview with Alhaji Sani Ibrahim.

84 The Encyclopedia of Islam, CD-ROM edition (Leiden, 2004).

85 Interview with Mrs Hawakwunu Okoroafor.

86 Interview with John Ade, b. 1971, Ijebu Ode, Oct. 2003.

87 Interview with Mallam Mohammed Ibeh, b. 1959 (converted to Islam in 1996), mosque keeper, Nguru, Mbaise, Jan. 2006.

88 Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 2.