"Onitsha is such a phenomenon. ...
Onitsha is an Igbo town which claims Benin
origin. If we are to believe historians, this claim is not very well
founded. But what really matters is that Onitsha feels different from the peoples and places in its vicinity. And it
is different. It sits at the
crossroads of the world. It has two faces—a Benin face and an Igbo face—and can
see the four directions.... Its
market, which had assembled originally on one of the four days of the Igbo
week, had likewise grown ‘big eyes’ and engulfed every day in the sky....
Because it sees everything, Onitsha has come to
distrust single-mindedness. It can be opposite things at once. It was both a
cradle of Christianity in Igboland and a veritable fortress of ‘pagan’
revanchism. Many hinterland peoples ... would
often say with a sad shake of the head that an Onitsha man had too much of the
world in him to make a good Christian.
There is a story about one of the earliest
converts in Onitsha at the turn of the century who did so well in the new faith
that the Church Missionary Society decided to send him to England for higher
studies and ordination. While in England he quickly lost the faith that took
him there and returned to Onitsha where he obstructed the work of
evangelization by his nefarious example. Why did the church preach so
vehemently against heathen titles, he asked? What were all those knights and
barons and dukes if not hierarchies of ozo?
He took all the titles he could find and died a pagan.
