What Does Igbo Mean? - Onyeji Nnaji

 

In digging into the infinite past and future, the Igbo use Uwa-tu-uwa. It also refers to antiquity beyond imaginable dating. Uwa-tu-Uwa, when translated means “earth-to-earth. This concept is clearly different from time-to-time which in turn means site na-oge rue na-oge. The Igbo use the term Uwa-tu-Uwa to refer to the time when humanity gained entrance into this ecological earth. And to the Igbo, they existed since time immemorial simply referred to as Uwa-tu-Uwa. 

Osita Osadebe gave us clue of this in his renowned tract, "Ma nke- Ojo". Referring to  Uwa-tu-Uwa, Osadebe says, “Chukwu kere anyi gbo gbo (God created us ancient-time from ancient-time). And the inhabitants, referring to originality, always use three terms to show this. The terms are: Nwa-Afor, Nwa Diala and Ama-Ala translated to mean integral child or son-of-the-soil. Invariably, the Igbo tell his story as one who had been in time immemorial or a people representing the set of people who inhabited the planet earth before any other race and a people from whom the rest of the earth population timely emerged. Is this true about the Igbo? Our team of researchers has taken time to articulate sources to answer this question.     

Originally, the word Igbo is an amalgam of the morphemes Ndi Gbo, translated to mean “people of the ancient-time.” The amalgam resulted from the clipping of the two letters 'N' and 'D' and the combination of the lonely 'I' and the quasi doubly, 'Gbo'. Meanwhile, ordinarily the word Igbo refers to a people beyond the description of time, inhabiting the part of Africa which the ancient historians identified and marked as Biafra and the inhabitants known as the Yebo or Ebo(e). 

The Oldest book in Egypt titled, Egyptian Book of the Dead refer to the same name as "Yebo". Upon several mystic involvement that Egypt of old was known for, when asked the source of their mystery, they refer to two names: "Amenti", or Yebo. Amenti, when translated refers to the equivalent of "Ama nta".  Later tablet stones like Nag Hammadi refers to Igbo as "Eboe". 

            

The antiquity concept of the people credibly had offered the difficulties encountered in inferring a concrete and rigid explanation of the real ancient father of the Igbo race. Yet, antiquity still stands credible in the exact trace and eminent interpretation of the ancestral origin of the Igbo. And all that antiquity has to tell us is nothing different from Uwa-tu-Uwa which refers to the inhabitants as belonging to the prehistorical age. Other  ancient books replies  connected to this people. Readable among these ancient books include the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Nag Hammadi, Before the Pyramids, The Seventh Book of Moses, The Sacred Book of the East, Book of Histories by Herodotus, The Lost Book of Enki, The Emerald Tablets of Thoth, The Atlantean and many other books of ancient history including the Christian Bible and the Jewish Cabala.         

  

What we later found in the record of European colonial Nazists resulted from the ignorant reference to homeland by our brother, Olauda Ikwuano. Kidnapped by Igbo-speaking Itsekiri cannibals and sold to a European animist atuch tender age, Olauda stumbled upon the difficulty offered by childish stutteredness, said he was "Ibo". From him, the European adopted the term, Ibo for our precious motherland, Igbo.

Therefore, whether a history book records Ibo, Yebo, Eboe or Igbo,  the reader is not supposed to think far trying to decipher whom the document is talking about. They all refer to one people, the Igbo. Pertinent to historical discourse with respect to time, the use of any of those words will certainly asist in deducing the angle from where the narrative was sourced.

For details, refer to the book shown above.