Oyibo in Igbo Thought

By

Obododimma Oha

Oyibo (called oyinbo in Yoruba) is a label that refers to the White person and sometimes to Europeans. As humans they have moved around and have had contact with Igbo people. How are they perceived by Igbo people or what does this signification suggest to Igbo people? Given that this is mainly a case of semiotics of complexion and understanding of cultural behaviour, oyibo in Igbo thought is worth looking at. People who bear some complexional similarity to the White people, like the albinos, are also referred to as oyibo, even though the differences are clear and White people also have albinos among them. This is a comparative idea in the expression; in the generalization of the term to albinos and other fair complexioned people.

The language mostly spoken by Europeans and other White people, particularly English, is also referred to as oyibo. O na-asuru m oyibo in Igbo is often an identification of the subject’s language as English. But, indeed, Igbo people did not historically have contact first with European speakers of English. They rather had contact with Portuguese explorers, whom they referred to as Potokiri, a corruption of “Portuguese” obviously. The Portuguese explorers must have used gesticulations and vocal signs to identify themselves to the Igbo people as “Portuguese,” and this sounded like Potokiri to the ears of the addressees.

In our village in those days, this oyibo reference was further generalized out of ignorance. Those of us who didn’t have much formal education referred to even Igbo language spoken in the big cities like Onitsha and Aba as oyibo. Onitsha and Aba dialects spoken to those of us in the local areas was “oyibo” and somebody who said: “O na-asuru m oyibo” might be referring to the city Igbo that was considered superior or was used in showing off!

Now, you can see how “oyibo” as a concept has started applying to many things and to resemblances. That obviously speaks about the need for enlightenment (which eventually came to the local Igbo areas) and the tendency to call city Igbo oyibo has started dying gradually.

With these clarifications, I then come to the way some (if not many) Igbo view “oyibo,” based on ways of life associated with them. The first, and perhaps the most important, is the mystification of oyibo, based on the scientific or technological objects associated with the White person, or general admiration secretly or openly expressed about the White people and their ways. Along this line, the oyibo is sometimes represented in Igbo discourse as follows:

(1)  Oyibo bu agbara.  (The White person is a deity)

Or, Oyibo bu mmuo. (The White person is a spirit)

As a matter of fact, oyibo is not a deity but a mortal that can think. That oyibo has made an airplane and can fly better than birds, and is looking for ways of exploring deep space, or is doing other amazing scientific or technological wonders, is because of this interest in thinking. Black people and Igbo people think, too, and can point to other amazing things they have brought into human experience. Africans, for instance, can explore and exploit spiritual powers to harm others, something often called ogwu or juju. One also expects them to use this ogwu to chase away dictatorial governments, deal with crooks,  foster development, etc. Must juju be in the service of the negative or will such a power be there and evil will be on the increase?

Igbo people that look at a technological equipment and exclaim, “Oyibo bu agbara” are overwhelmed obviously, but ought to know that such a statement requires them to find out how oyibo is agbara and whether they too can be agbara, or are already agbara. Indeed, we are all agbara and when people discover that scientific thinking is superior to magic, they would give the honour to science to whom it is due.

The Oyibo bu agbara promotes an inferiority complexity because it implicitly places the White above the Black or the Green! This complex needs to be dealt with as an undesirable in Igbo discourse, especially among local people who have not had much formal education as shown above. Indeed, one problem this brings up is the fact that the highly educated or enlightened person in Africa is still separated from local life. Formal school education and enlightenment ought to touch lives in local areas in Africa and become a useful complement to local knowledge. It should not keep a distance from local knowledge. When last did the highly educated persons attend their cultural shows or meetings or demonstrate their closeness to the African life they often theorize? The truth is that many highly educated Igbo are not even members of their town union meetings. They say they cannot withstand the business people and their ways! Then, why pontificate about your African community as a knower when you are that distant? Indeed, many Africans who present African life to the world do not know much about it, or they base their ideas on what they can only remember, on unreliable memory. Remembrance of things and places distant to us is considered sufficiently fictional to impress the outside and keep us on our jobs!

With this vexation off my chest, I need to address the second representation of oyibo in Igbo discourse. The oyibo is perceived as delicate and highly demanding of other humans. This is evident in the expression:

(2)  O bu ozu oyibo (Ozu nwa onyeocha); e bulie ya elu, “No! No! No!”; e budaa ya ala, “No! No! No!” (The person is a corpse of the White person. If lifted, it complains and says flatly, “No! No! No!; if put down, it still complains and says, “No! No! No!”

The impression is that oyibo is delicate; thinks too highly of themselves and hard to please. One has to keep adoring or worshiping them for them to be pleased! But the entity, oyibo, making such a difficult demand (They cannot be kept in the air, even they want to punish the carrier) is only corpses, dead bodies (maybe due their own wrong assumptions!). In other words, they are already on the way to depreciation and would be a waste.

 Further, the voice of the oyibo is inside our reporting (colonized’s) voice, which is a very good signification of inevitable hybridity. We are not the same, even in expression, since encountering oyibo. In fact, part of us is already oyibo! We are also oyibo! The voice of oyibo (in English, the language of superiority and power) complains: “No! No! No!” We are only reporters of our affliction, and have to retain oyiboness in expression: “No! No! No!”

I suspect that the origin of this expression is the practice of Black servants being made to carry White colonialists seated in chairs, especially District Commissioners. The District Commissioners (Nwa DC) in their bonnets and white tunics, were considered lords and had to be carried to their destinations. In that way, superiority is even visualized and impressed upon the senses of the colonized people. The Nwa DC was considered special, a celebrity, and his visit was God himself visiting. The local Africans were happy in their ignorance. Oh, how often ignorance makes us happy and to keep our places? Interestingly, even the carriers considered themselves superior to other Africans who did not have that “wonderful” opportunity. To be nearer the oppressor and to eat his shit was and has always been seen as a privilege and a training in the business of oppression!

Perhaps deriving from the understanding of the oyibo as the superior is the  metaphorization of the term when it is used in referring to a fellow Black person who is understood as very clean or  whose ways are straightforward. I suspect that this derives from the regard of the real oyibo as the ideal and the superior. The Black oyibo may be an African American or a highly educated African whose ways are positively different. In this case, the person is, ironically, also understood as a cultural outsider.

In-between the extreme deification of the White persons due to technological wonders associated with them and the perception of White people as a burden one cannot put down or somebody who is hard to please and continues to ask to be worshiped are series of satires showing understandings and misunderstandings in the Black-White relationship. The oyibo maybe caricatured, as in women’s satirical performances during the funerals of elderly people, as a simpleton or as a weakling. The oyibo complexion maybe mimicked through a whitened mask or way of walking in which the hidden toes are their handicap. Further, because oyibo people are understood simpletons and Blacks are considered wiser – even outwitting oyibo as tricksters like mbe the tortoise – their reasoning may be very shallow and they could easily be cheated. Generally, the oyibo is one of the mumu (Nigerian pidgin expression for an incurable simpleton or fool) around. Since the oyibo is a fool, what stops the oyibo actor from displaying laughable, stupid acts in the performance? Also, that cultural performance has been chosen to ridicule the force that claims superiority tells us that the behavior of oyibo is considered better when we stand aside and laugh at their expense.

Oyibo, in fact, is one of the ambivalent figures in Igbo thought. The oyibo baffle us with the art of their science, their own juju, but are also our cultural victims in our acts of laughing at the other. Who deserves to be laughed at, to be ridiculed, as a way of fighting back, than the arrogant and the dominant?