This Land of Chiefs
In Igboland today, everybody is a chief. This disturbing trend is partly traceable to the early 1990s when a group of nouveaux riches made up of largely very young people emerged in Igboland, no thanks to the 419 era ushered in by the excessive ‘liberalism' of the then military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Ever since then, there has been a proliferation of chiefs in the land. Every young man who thinks he has arrived wants his name to sound beyond the frontiers of his father's compound; he wants to be addressed as Igwekala I, Ebubedike II, Ugwuanariatuegwu III, Ikukuebumkpu Okaomee IV, and so on. And so he goes to the traditional ruler of his community with some money and comes out of the palace bearing a chieftaincy title, irrespective of his source of wealth, whether he has contributed anything to the development of his community or not, or whether he is of a questionable character, or even whether or not he constitutes a social nuisance. The more daring ones even go a step further to usurp the throne from sitting traditional rulers, thereby throwing hitherto peaceful communities into fratricidal wars.
On their part, some so-called traditional rulers (who, by the way, know nothing about tradition) now see chieftaincy conferment as a lifetime opportunity to squeeze out a few naira notes from title-hungry boys; after all, what really does it cost a traditional ruler to confer a chieftaincy title on an individual if not the simple act of placing a cap on his head, handing him a staff, and pronouncing a title on him? And it is the conferee that provides those items, mind you, not the palace. Sometimes some traditional rulers have been known to approach some of these wealthy young men to beg them to come and take chieftaincy titles. They have even extended their hands of fellowship (for want of a better word) to women who now bear Chief (Mrs), a hitherto-unheard-of phenomenon in Igboland. Do you blame them? They are hungry. What do they do if not to attend one political function after another while waiting for the federal allocation to the local government to arrive so that they can go and receive their monthly peanut from the local government chairman?
In yonder years, people who were conferred with chieftaincy title worked hard for it and earned it; they knew the value of what they had; they respected themselves and people also revered them. And for God's sake, chieftaincy ceremonies were not regular occurrences. But not anymore. Today, the so-called chiefs live in hotels and mess around with little girls young enough to be their granddaughters; some engage in street fights and other juvenile vices. Moreover, all anyone needs to do now to become a chief is to give the Eze some cash or write a cheque tonight, and by tomorrow morning he is already a chief. If care is not taken, the traditional ruler might even take the title to the recipient's house and give it to him there. Home service, you may call it.
This is not a joke. I know of one community in Imo State where the traditional ruler went from house to house in the dead of the night conferring chieftaincy titles on people because members of his cabinet were opposed to the proposed chieftaincy installation. He was less than 6 months on the throne then. There is another community where it is said that the traditional ruler is on 24-hour service once the issue concerns chieftaincy conferment. Call him up in the middle of the night and request to be made a chief; all he asks is: Are your cap and staff ready? If the answer is yes, he will tell you to light a candle and get ready to receive your title. Some time ago, one community in Mbaise, Imo State, invited a former Inspector General of Police to give him a chieftaincy title, and the IG sent someone to pick the title for him. Yes, because he attached no value to it; because he counted it as nothing but a fund-raising ceremony for the traditional ruler. That is how badly it has degenerated, and that is the extent to which our hard-earned cultural values have been bastardised.
And this has worsened since virtually every kindred in Igboland became an autonomous community with an autonomous traditional ruler, a development which has littered many parts of Igboland with the gunpowder of kingship tussle. In the absence of what to do, and with little or no known source of livelihood except the monthly handouts from the local government, these featherweight traditional rulers resort to dispensing chieftaincy titles like akara balls.
Today in many communities, chieftaincy award has become an annual event. The way it is going, in the next couple of years, every adult male in Igboland (or even children, because it is not beyond them to design chieftaincy titles for children of the wealthy) would be a chief, even those who don't want it. Already, some individuals boast of over ten chieftaincy titles given to them by different traditional rulers in different communities, and many more communities are ever willing to add more to them so long as they are ready to part with some cash. It is indeed worrisome.
Some time in 2009, Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State admonished traditional rulers and community leaders in the state to quit inviting him to receive chieftaincy titles in their communities but to channel the money they would have wasted on such frivolous ceremonies towards community development. Shortly after, he followed it up by proposing a bill which would ensure that all chieftaincy title certificates are endorsed by the relevant government agency and that all recipients of chieftaincy titles pay tax to government on such titles. The initiative was a way of checking the indiscriminate award of chieftaincy titles and the proliferation of chiefs in the state. However, that proposal ended up a stillbirth as nothing was heard about it thereafter.
My thinking is that beyond pious pronouncements, state governments in Igboland should take proactive measures to check this ugly trend if this vital aspect of our cultural heritage is to be preserved and safeguarded. For instance, they can enact a law stipulating the number of years' interval between one conferment and another (say, 5 years) in every community and instituting a process of checking the records of those being conferred with titles to ensure that those with questionable characters do not benefit, as well as stipulating stiff punishment for erring traditional rulers. But before the law can work, the governors themselves should start by relinquishing some of their numerous titles and desist from accepting more. Perhaps outside Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State who still bears the title Mr, every other governor in Igboland is a multiple chief. I stand to be corrected.
in the final analysis, there is no gainsaying that title taking is one of the core elements of the Igbo traditional society. Its preservation is not only necessary but also imperative.
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