Social change: yam kings, clerks and new classes

J. Akuma-Kalu Njoku’s chapter, a case study of Akanu Ohafia in Abia State, shows how status changed. Before the Atlantic trade it rested on land, extraordinary service (igbo mkpa) and yam wealth. Titles included di nta (hunter), di mgba (wrestler), di ogu (warrior), dibia (diviner), ogbu ji (yam lord). A man became ogbu ji through four rituals of barn-building and feasting, the last of which required about 2,800 yams.

The Atlantic trade changed the incentives of Ohafia, where age grades were named after wars and men became raiders and escorts while women carried most farm labour. After abolition, the palm-oil economy turned some former slave dealers into agents for trading companies and raised the status of traders. The colonial era created clerks, teachers and clergy. Clothing changed, from the old ogodo and olokpo to European dress; Akanu Ohafia’s song “Ee Bekee” describes the pressure to stop wearing the old garments.

Akuma-Kalu Njoku’s conclusion is a call for “neo-Igbo traditionalism”, selective appropriation of the past, a view that is an advocacy position, not a neutral finding. Raphael Njoku’s own chapter on “neoliberal tradition” is similarly interpretive: it reads pre-colonial Igbo institutions as early forms of decentralization and deregulation. Readers should treat these as argued theses and not as consensus.