It's Igbo not Ibo

Dear Editor

Since I first read your magazine in 1999, my month begins in effect with my buying a copy of New African.  I am very grateful to New African for undauntedly bringing an African perspective to bear on its stories, articles and reports; and, by so doing, correcting centuries-old skewed opinions on Africa and Africans.

However, I was disappointed that the November 2006 issue of New African used the colonial English-created paternalistic name, “Ibo” to refer to the Igbo people of southeast Nigeria.

Igbo refers to the people and their language.  But “Ibo” appeared five times in Lindsay Barrett’s Presidential hopefuls seek ethnic relevance and once in Ejiroghene Barrett’s Nigeria, why the troubles in the Niger Delta.

This is all thanks to New African’s ignorance that “Ibo” was the result of the colonizers’ inability to pronounce the double-character Igbo “gb”—considered as one letter—hence opting for just a “b” instead.  What an arrogant and a patronizing way to treat a people’s name and disrespect them! Certainly, New African does not want to perpetuate this disrespect.

Also, I disagree with Dr Kumuyi’s opinion in his Nuggets in a Nutshell (NA, December 2006) that “Africa doesn’t need philosophers to rationalize her impregnable bunker of underdevelopment. It needs visionaries who could craft a vision of progress, tap into the continent's incredible wealth and engage its resilient people to birth a new continent.”  

If one considers the reflective and hermeneutical import of philosophy, it is unavoidable for every society to have those who reflect on the past and present, and interpret their implications for the future.  A leader with no sense of history ends up with a blurred vision, for, as an African proverb says: “He who does not know where he is coming from cannot know where he is going to.”  

The need for Africa to move forward necessarily includes the need to also acknowledge past and present wrongs done to Africa.  It is in acknowledging the past that Africa’s forward movement will be truly meaningful.

Thanks.

Chijioke Azuawusiefe
Nairobi, Kenya

New African magazine, February 2007
Reproduced on The Free Library by Farlex