ịdụ mmadụ olu

by

Obododịmma ọha

The politics of otherness is conceived in Igbo thought as deploying secret strategies to make the other unknowingly reveal a plan that is hidden. One of these secret strategies is understood as  ịdụ mmadụ olu (or literally, “prodding one’s voice)! Why is a plan seen as “ voice”? Is it a culture that looks at things from the angle of sound or sense as an interface with the object of the sound linked to it. ịdụ mmadụ olu thus suggests an awareness that it is not everything that is openly stated something and one must dig deeper to find out more. Finding out more may be done with inferences made from what a subject says or through direct revelation through confession or exposure. We can see immediately that it is very relevant to indigenous intelligence gathering and that local Africans have always had interesting techniques of intelligence work that should not be ignored in fishing for Western ideas.

ịdụ mmadụ olu reminds one of a risky coil you only prod and it unwinds and comes careering out or an inducement to give out information. Whatever may be case, ịdụ mmadụ olu is a form of spying on the other's plans in order to know the most effective way to act. In other words, it feeds on discourse, on performed interaction, to  break through a barrier.

But it is also a skill and people scheming and making sure a subject does not suspect this prodding till the action forestalling it is taken. That is to say that some people are gifted with this researching with the other and fact-finding. It is like making one bear witness against oneself. Yes; the one doing the prodding is a sneaky researcher watching out for suggestives.

 I called it a skill, in fact, a life skill and manifestation of cleverness, because everyone is supposed to know when and how to carry it out or when someone else is prodding one’s voice to find something out. We are supposed, as rational humans, to have the intelligence to know when this prodding is being carried out and how to handle it. Indeed, it is an important training on discourse engagement one should get from one’s parents in the home. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that there is no training for certain areas of life like sexual life, discourse and discourse participation in the culture, etc. No! There is. The  training may be dispensed in the home, age-group meeting, the ụmụnna meeting (meeting of the kinsmen), farming practices, communal handling of mishap affecting a kinsperson (as when the roof of the house is blown off by the windstorm and must be immediately and collectively repaired), other communal tasks (like weeding and sweeping road networks and village square, etc. In that case, one who exempts self from such, maybe because of church activities or elite snobbishness, one is denying self a very vital form of cultural education not available in formal schooling!

It is an art of cleverness which ancient Igbo thinkers used in clandestine knowing. Implicitly, the prodders derive the information from inferences and not always from direct expression. In that case, the prodder must arm self with techniques of indirect investigation and not expect an easy catch. It gets even more risky and problematic if the person whose voice is being prodded is suspicious or on guard. In other words, both the prodder and the prodded have matching skills on prodding; you know what I know or as it said in Igbo: “Ihe nne gị gwara gị, nne nke m gwakwara a ya” (That thing your mother told you, my own mother also told me that); so, there is a dilemma. Both prodder and the prodded have had sound cultural education and share knowledge on prodding. So, relax! You are playing with a big boy!

Perhaps one should also comment on prodding and individual disposition and its implications for a wider societal experience. First, disposition. Prodders select their targets carefully as students of human behaviour. Any person who is given to voluptuousness when given a glass of wine is a sure specimen.That means prodding when the person is not on guard or has relaxed guard. What makes us relax our guard like tipsiness? Anyone that is tipsy has lost control of self, including the mouth. Just as the drunkard may vomit the excess wine, the drunkard can also vomit a plan through unguarded talk. So, prodders may want to work on their targets through the frothing cup.

Some people may however drink to excess and behave as if they have lost control. But, No! It is even that time that they are dangerous with their own prodding! Believe that they are drunk at your own risk. In other words, such people are merely acting, and which acting is more successful than the one that convinces us that it is natural or real? In other words, it fools us into thinking that fiction is reality!

Apart from drunkards who may be vulnerable, people who naturally talk a lot, or who are fond of praising their efforts, rua big risk of falling to prodders. When one talks a lot, one may not be monitoring what one has said or may not know when one has taken a dangerous plunge!There is always a precipice waiting for us in when we open our mouths, and what does a prodder want badly than for us to open our mouths? Prodders can even prod through close friends who would make us soften and open our mouths eventually. So; every close friend is actually a necessary risk!

People who boast or are angry are already given to unnecessary opening of the mouth. When they boast about themselves or want others to see what they possess, they are making themselves vulnerable. Angry people, too, lose control of their emotions and even say what they would later regret! Generally, it is dangerous to confide in people who talk or boast a lot. Just as taciturn people may also become targets, because the idea is their their closed mouths are hiding or shielding something. Let’s get that thing!

But as the Igbo say, A mara nwoke, amaghị uche ya (One may know a man, but may not know his thoughts). Indeed, one basic training on ultra-manhood in ancient Igbo culture is the keeping of secrets. That was why Igbo ancestors joined secret societies. Joining the mmanwụ society when one was of age  was an important training for every male child on the keeping of the sacred secret signification of the mmanwụ. In fact, ịma mmanwụ,  the initiation into the mmanwu, literally meant “knowing the mmanwụ”. And knowing the mmanwụ meant knowing the sacred secret signification of the mmanwụ. The knowledge of this clandestine semiotics of the mmanwụ is a means of discriminating between the initiate and the non-initiate, as I have observed in another blog article. Manhood and secrecy are therefore placed side-by-side in the culture. This explains one problem manhood touched by Western elitism is experiencing. Modern Western elitism makes a man live out his oneness with his wife and tells her everything for her to Delilah him when she wants. Using him as we use the remote controller is just a small thing. A man locked in embrace with his dear wife and who has lost his head in kissing her cannot wake up early and attend a village meeting or reach out for his egwugwu when bad people come in the night. By the way, why should he wake up? Are angels not on guard?

Obviously, prodding somebody to give it out has always had wider implications for society. From mask dancing to soldiery and defence of community, careless talker are a great risk. When the fate of society hangs on them or they are given leadership roles, the society is in big trouble. It is doubtful if the gains scored by Boko Haram terrorists are not started by insiders who are prodders about counter-plans. The mole may be an insider, but more dangerously a prodded. Further, if the prodded is susceptible, there is also a big problem. A clever prodder needs a vulnerable to succeed. 

 Indeed, as the Igbo say, “E meghee ọnụ, a hụ uche” (When the mouth is opened, we see what one is thinking). As I reflect on ịdụ mmadụ olu in my office, it dawns on me that , as we theorize discourse in today’s classroom, fascinated with Western theorists whose works we have read, we should try a little bit to localize discourse and explore trajectories that our students need to know as people growing up in African societies.