We saw this interesting section in an article on Igbos by Onwuka, and decided to share. Read below:
An Igbo man with moderate resources and 2 sons and 3 daughters would rather
send the girls to school and send the boys to learn a trade or become apprentices.
Similarly, an Igbo man with primary or secondary school education would train his wife to obtain a university degree and postgraduate degrees.
The reasoning is this: The Igbo man believes that a man can survive and succeed without a university degree, but a woman will be disadvantaged without a degree; he believes that the man can do manual and menial jobs to succeed, but a woman should have a degree to help her do mental and white-collar jobs, because menial and manual jobs should not be for women.
(For example, traditionally an Igbo woman should not hew wood or pound food in a mortar – such hard work is reserved for men.)
Similarly, even though there are some cultural practices that reserve certain roles for men and women, the Igbo society encourages women to attain their best in life.
Fathers, brothers, husbands, etc, support women to rise to achieve their dreams.
A look at Nigeria will show this. It is not by coincidence that Igbos have produced a lot of top female political figures, intellectuals/acedemics, business leaders, and prominent individuals like Margaret Ekpo of the NCNC, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Dora Akunyili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Virgy Etiaba (Nigeria’s first female governor), Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, Oby Ezekwesili, Arunma Otteh, Stella Okoli, Onyeka Onwenu, Chimamanda Adichie, Mary Onyali, Chioma Ajunwa, Genevieve Nnaji, etc.
The Igbo ethnic group is not better than any other ethnic group. No ethnic group is better than the other.
But there are peculiar things many people don’t understand about the Igbos which lead them to make hasty and unfounded assumptions and generalisations.
Is he right?
