A paper presented at the EnuguUSA Convention in Miami, FL, 2008, was titled, “Town Government: A Paradigm Shift in Community Development and Management.” One participant whispered that I could be stoned in Nigeria if I preached dismantling of Eze/Igwe institution. I was not against traditional leadership; my proposal was a more modern decentralized leadership structure comprising a democratic town government (mayor and community council) and a term-limited, age-tenured Eze as the first among equals (Ndinze) in a house of lords-like bicameral legislature. I took the gospel to Enugu in 2009 in support of Governor Sullivan Chime’s Visit Every Community (VEC) initiative. I presented the paper again at the 2013 Newark, NJ Convention.
The Eze/Igwe institution has metamorphosed in a million autonomous communities into agents of state-government controls. The growth has also ballooned in Igbo diaspora communities into random personal mansion-fiefdoms. Recently, under the leadership of the Obi Achebe n’Onitsha, the Eze/Igwe council “abolished” the use of “Eze Ndiigbo” abroad and recommended “Onyendu Ndiigbo”! The Forum of Southeast Academic Doctors (FOSAD) “strongly condemned the continued practice of self-acclaimed ‘Eze Ndigbo’ titles among members of the Igbo Diaspora, describing it as a distortion of traditional leadership structures.” These are unnecessary and unstudied reactions to the misguided xenophobic brouhaha in Ghana.
Some support that the Igbo in Ghana should stop using “Eze.” Why? ‘Eze’ does not mean ‘king.’ It means an accomplished expert, a sacred master, onyendu (a leader), onyeisi (head/chair/lord/president), or a cherished chief. Let’s educate, not make ignorance comfortable. Where ‘eze’ translates to ‘king,’ what is the crime? In Igbo society, a man is the king of his castle. We restate this refrain at kolanut communion: The king’s kolanut is in the king’s hand, and he who brings kolanut brings life. We are all kings. The Igbo have no “ezeigbo gburugburu”—a global king. Sarcastically when undelimited, “ezeigbo” may mean a megalomaniac.
There is no law in any society banning the use of the word ‘eze.’ Any Igbo group or person could use it to denote any association or community leadership and as a prefix for other relevant titles, positions, or names. An ezenzukọ (president of an association) is not confused with President Tinubu or Trump and impacts on no ‘king’ of any domain. The Igbo scientific spirituality, Ọdịnanị, does not encourage preaching or proselytizing. Onye na nke ya: To each his own in affluent native Bohemianism.
The problem here is inexplicable Igbophobia. Why pick on ‘eze’; why not ‘sarkin (Hausa for ‘king’) or ‘oba’ (Yoruba for ‘king’)? In Enugu, capital of the Igbo nation, Alhaji Abubakar Yusuf Sambo, born and raised in Enugu by an Adamawa father, is Sarkin Hausawa. Alhaji Abdulazeez Adebayo, a resident since 1979 from Osun, is Oba of the Yoruba. Similar situations obtain in other cities.
The false narrative of Igbo domination sticks like a sour Nazi propaganda. Ndiigbo do not dominate. They never invaded any group–big or small. They hustle. They work hard. They are one-entity expert entrepreneurs. Yes, there are some bad apples—as in every ethnic group, even among the Swiss in Vatican! Why others find it easy to tar Ndiigbo with the broad brush of one bad apple is the problem to address, not the use of a simple lexical item, “Eze”—a common Igbo name.
The Igbo had no king. They had no organized police force and no jails. They had no standing army and no organized religion. The Igbo are republicans. If “Eze” is what it will take to tame restless neighbors and announce that the Igbo nation has no more cheeks to offer, let there be all sorts of “eze” everywhere, worldwide: Ezemmụọ, Ezeanị, Ezeobodo, Ezenwaanyị, Ezentorobịa, Ezeike (Ikemba), Ezeahịa, Ezeụzụ, Ezenka, even Ezeigbo or Eze Ndiigbo!
We have tried explaining that the Igbo generally mean well for Africa and the world. We are tired. The remnant energy should be directed to marking Igbo haters and making sure they never forget fighting the Igbo for the rest of their natural lives. How? The blacksmith who does not know how to forge a gong should look at the tail of a kite for inspiration.
Long live all the ‘Eze’ worldwide. When we are tired of talking, we will retire to build our colonial-disrupted ethnic nations peacefully. Else, Buhari’s “baboons and dogs” will reign. We will all bleed. We will all die, eventually—just not on the same day. As our sages stated: “Ma á gbaghị ụzọ owele mgba, ọ naghị echi.” George Orwell nailed it in ‘Homage to Catalonia’: “There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”
#moe, 7.22.25
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