Our way of life was not undone by the sword, the gods or by
any means of violent force. Rather our downfall was at the hands of our very
own people, the people of Umofia who in their haste to embrace a foreign power,
tore apart the fragile fabric that held our society intact, shattering the
delicate harmony that had once existed among our people.
I was a great man among my people, and from the days of my
youth set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom the purpose and meaning behind
the practices and ways of my people; why we did what we did, whom we served and
what we hoped to gain. As such I hold to the belief that it was we valued most,
the hopes and fears we held dear, that led to our demise.
This notion should by now means serve as an abstraction for
we the Igbo are an open-book people, easily understood and interpreted. We are
also a stubborn and persistent people, many a time resistant to change. The
white man on the other hand is a far different story.
When the white man first came to our village with his
language and religion, he was seemingly innocent. Wooing the hearts of all he
planted the seeds from which to secure a long lasting hold over the young and
the naïve, till all in Umofia was under his spell. Those opposed to his will he
singled out and ostracized, using our fellow brother to carry out his will,
those grey Kotmas. In turn we turned on ourselves, we lost hold over what we
held most dear, the unity and fellowship between kinsmen. As the old proverbs
go it is the slow knife, the knife that takes its time, the knife that slips
quietly between the bones that is the knife that cuts the deepest. And this is why
it all fell apart, for dulled into a state of compliance and false security over
time we forsook our fundamental concepts and laws: unity and single-mindedness,
and divided…we fell.
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