Afikpo Igbo Essay

The Igbo of Nigeria: Afikpo Igbo

The Igbo of Nigeria were a horticultural tribe located in West Africa; within their tribal configuration, tribes called the Afikpo Igbo are present in more than twenty villages and have inhabited Eastern Nigeria. Each of these villages spoke a common language nonetheless each village remained autonomous and there was no collaborative structures that connected the 5 million Igbo people. When it comes to political organization the Afikpo Igbo people have a “dual-sex system” where both men and women collectively make decisions, settle disputes, and enforce penalties; however each group is segregated by sex and each controls its own domain of activity. Omu, which is considered the “mother of the community”, represents the women and the men are represented by obi, who

Nevertheless all subsistence and household activities were allocated by gender. Men typically harvested yams, fished from nearby rivers, made bamboo frames for houses and put the mud on the frames. Women planted and harvest all other crops, weeded their husbands yam garden, collected mud for the houses, process all the harvested crops, cared for the children, and sold produce and handicrafts at the regional markets. For the most part, the Afikpo culture sent mixed signal on egalitarianism but ideologies of gender equality between a woman and man created a sense of imbalance. Male dominance was verbalized and proclaimed by restrictions on women, polygyny, delegated gender roles, wife beating, and the overall submissive demeanor of a woman. Though a women’s generous contribution to the community was continuously undermined and emasculated, through their control over the villages’ economic exchange and the culture heavy reliance on the market economy, helped women establish independence and assert a certain sense of