HISTORY OF THE IGBOS

HISTORY                                                                                                                                        

The Igbo are the second largest group of people living in southern Nigeria. They are socially and culturally diverse, consisting of many subgroups. Although they live in scattered groups of villages, they all speak one language.

The Igbo have no common traditional story of their origins. Historians have proposed two major theories of Igbo origins. One claims the existence of a core area, or "nuclear Igboland." The other claims that the Igbo are descended from waves of immigrants from the north and the west who arrived in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Three of these are the Nri, Nzam, and Anam.

European contact with the Igbo began with the arrival of the Portuguese in the mid-fifteenth century. At first the Europeans confined themselves to slave trade on the Niger Coast. At this point, the main item of commerce provided by the Igbo was slaves, many of whom were sent to the New World. After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, British companies pushed beyond the coastal areas and aggressively pursued control of the interior. The Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, created in 1900, included Igboland. Until 1960, Nigeria remained a British colony, and the Igbo were British subjects. On October 1, 1960, Nigeria became an independent nation structured as a federation of states. 

 Known as Ṇ́dị́ Ìgbò in the Igbo language and sometimes identified by their respective Igboid dialects or subgroupings, such the Anioma and the Ngwa, the culture of the Igbos has been shaped primarily by Igboland's rainforest climate, its historic trades, ancient migration folklore and social ties with its neighbours as well as far-flung trading and political allies and lately with the Europeans through colonization and the entire Western World through globalization. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects.The Igbo homeland is almost surrounded on all sides by other ethnic peoples of southern and central Nigeria namely, the Ijaw, Edo, Isoko, Ogoni, Igala, Tiv, Yako, Idoma, and Ibibio.

 The Igbo language belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. It is part of the Kwa subfamily. A complicated system of high and low tones indicates differences in meaning and grammatical relationships. There are a wide range of dialects.

Here are a few Igbo expressions:

English	Igbo
Hello, how are you?	Keku ka imelo?
What is your name?	Kedu ahagi?
Thank you	Ndewo

The traditional Igbo economy depends on root-crop farming. Yams, cassava and taro are the chief root crops. There is a division of labor according to gender. Men clear the bush and plant the yams with the help of the women and the children. Following the planting of yams, plots are allocated to the women individually. Each woman plants other crops in the spaces between the yams and also on the slopes of hills. Trading is an old occupation among the Igbo. The marketplace has become an important source of livelihood. An increasing number of Igbo are now engaged in wage labor. Growing cities, expanding road construction, new industries, and oil exploration are creating many job opportunities.

IGBO KWENU !!!