The Civil Rights Movement in Colonial Igboland

Abstract

This article points out some of the inadequacies of past official measures to deal with the problems of social prejudice and discrimination against the Osu, the Ohu, and the other species of slavery which survived the legal abolition of the slave trade and slavery in Igboland. It also discusses the campaign by the Osu and Ohu to emancipate themselves, and to secure equal legal and social rights with freeborn, especially in respect of rights to land and freedom of choice in marriage. Indirectly, the paper illustrates the often overlooked limitations of legislation as an instrument of social policy, and raises questions about alternative policy approaches to this and similar problems of social inequality based on custom, tribe, caste and so on. For over half a century, government officials and humanitarian pressure groups deplored the institutions of Osu and Ohu among the Igbo, and sought by legislation and propaganda to eradicate the prejudice and stigma attached to them. But these institutions still persist in an insidious manner, sustained by culturally forced interbreeding and by other subtle forms of customary inhibitions. The terms Osu and Ohu are no longer in common use, and there are known instances of tolerance and of progressive assimilation, especially of the Ohu; but the idea remains, couched in various local pseudonyms and euphemisms meant to obscure reality and circumvent the legal sanctions against words spoken or published which impute that a person is an Osu, an Ohu ... or is subject to a legal or social disability or social stigma which is similar to or nearly similar to that borne by an Osu, an Ohu,l and so on. The main difficulty in discussing any form of social discrimination and inequality in Nigeria is the technical one that no such status exists in the eyes of the law. The partially suspended 1979 Constitution, like its antecedents, upholds unambiguously the principle of equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law, and deprecated in strong terms any form of prejudice, stigma, or discrimination based on place of origin, sex, religion,