Igbo Sacrifice

“The Sacrifice” is set among the Igbo people of southern Nigeria in the years after the First World War. Neither the place nor the time of the story is explicitly stated anywhere in the story itself, but there are many clues. The term “warrant chief” as it is perhaps overused in the story is an indication of the Nigerian setting. The names of the characters identify them as Igbo. Since the implementation of indirect rule in southern Nigeria became official policy after the consolidation of southern and southern Nigeria under the colonial administration of Lord Frederick Lugard in 1914, we can ascertain that the story takes place at least after that date,

The wearing of “fez caps” by the forces of the colonial administration is taken from

The arrival of the soldiers in “The Sacrifice” is derived from the arrival in Achebe’s Umuarro of Winterbottom’s messenger. Falola’s Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria which I used to contextualize Arrow of God’s depiction of indirect rule was additionally important to understanding this system whose effects I sought to investigate.

The core component of the story’s premise comes from my reading of A.E. Afigbo’s Ropes of Sand. Afigbo’s mention of Igbo villages misunderstanding or distrusting the motives of the British in asking for leaders to be made into Warrant Chiefs, provided the colonial authorities with slaves or other undesirables instead believing they who would be killed or enslaved provided this story with its central

The names of Onyeukwu and Obika are taken directly from Njoku. Onyeukwu translates roughly to “honorable person,” while Obika is a name meaning “courageous.” The relevance of Onyeukwu name is evident in the story, but my choice of name for his son is a remnant of his once more prominent role in the story. The protagonist was also initially given an Igbo name Nsogbu, which translates roughly to “burdened,” but this name was lost when the perspective of the story shifted to first-person and I decided to make him a character with less concern for the others. Information I gleamed from Njoku’s descriptions of Igbo social customs are also evident in the text of the story, perhaps most prominently in the new warrant chief’s scolding of the elders for not showing proper hospitality through the presentation of kola-nut, a ritual which Njoku describes in detail. Additionally I benefited immensely from Njoku’s collection of Igbo proverbs in an appendix to his work. While I eventually choose to not directly insert any of them into the body of the story, I read and reread them to influence my writing style for this story and to gain a better perspective of how my characters might have seen the