The Osu Caste System In Igboland: A Challenge To The Igbo

Christian
Nobody living today in Igboland of Eastern Nigeria can claim to be a living witness to the origin
of the Osu Caste
ystem in Igboland, an ugly dichotomy that tends to make some
people inferior before their ilk, although in some Igbo communities like Ngwa, Osu does not
exist as everybody is nwa afo, son of the soil.
Osu, by traditional definition, is somebody offered as sacrifice to or dedicated to a god or an idol.
(Ozo Evuruaja, 1975). Another variety of the caste is Ume which means predicament or bad
destiny. Ohu is a man owned by his fellow man. From what we have heard and read in the books,
osu, a creation of man, was not there in the beginning of the Igbo nation known by many as an
offshoot of Gad, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, who himself was neither an osu nor a diala the
funny appendage the so-called free-borns attach to themselves.
Osu may mean different things to different people. Osu literally means prodigy, expertise, hence,
a consummate farmer is named Osuji, a perfect diviner is called Osuagwu. In Ngor-Okpala
where I come from, people answer Nwosu, like Henry Nwosu of the Green Eagles fame, an
innocuous name that even confers dignity on the bearer.
But if you call somebody nwa osu, you have courted trouble for yourself because you are giving
him a derogatory appellation capable of reducing his self esteem. Osu, in this sense, is the
universally accepted Igbo term for a caste of its people, dedicated from time immemorial to
everlasting ownership of a specific deity whose properties they equally inherit and pass unto
their own offspring. Even though by this esoteric relationship, they are richly left like Basanios
Portia, their children of today are in revolt against the tag, though not against the inheritance.
Equally in modern times, my little research into the Osu-Diala quagmire, reveals that osus and
their creators, the dialas interact in everything except in marriage. Socially, osus are denied the
Ozo, the Nze and Eze titles, being regarded as an inferior stock, foreigners in their own lands,
and this is a human rights issue.
People were made osu by various ways. A majority was offered to deities as human sacrifices
and in their service, they propagated and raised a family of osus. Others were people on the run
either from danger or from their crimes who were conscripted into the osu caste. Some were
courageous young fellows who opposed the evil machinations of the elders of the land who
either conspired to sell them into slavery or offer them to the deities and they became osu.
Perhaps some of us critics of today would have been made chief osus or sold out as slaves to the
Caribbean Islands to gnaw our teeth at plantain and sugar cane stems had we existed then.
There are also people whose children become osu because the deity whose priests they are ask
them to take osu wives, yet there are others who out of gluttony for the property of the deity and
perhaps the incessant cock and goat delicacies around its shrine, choose to become osu.
In days past, osus were subjected to various forms of dehumanizing treatments including
discrimination in the buying of their goods in the market, forcing them to grow very long and
dirty hairs, and as Chinua Achebe reported in Things Fall Apart, giving them separate seats in the
church.
When one looks at the making of an osu, one can easily identify the deceit and fallacy in it. Osu
is mans inhumanity to man created by a cult of wicked elders in order to intimidate the less
privileged. Since it is linked to gods which most of us have today rejected, at least, in public, the
osu cult ought not to be sustained by a supposedly learned and a civilized Christian society like

our Igboland.
Belief in other gods is idolatory. These gods, Ekwensu Umukaje, Amadioha Ozuzu, Obila
Umuchem, Ala Umudim, Ekwelaru Nworie, Okija Deity, etc, to which the osus are dedicated are
the same gods which Prophet Isaiah told us were dead as they had dysfunctional sense organs. If
these gods are lifeless, they cannot own properties, let alone human beings created in the image
of God. So, this makes the Osu Caste System a charade, and to believe that anybody is osu is to
propagate the dignity of the deity to which the osu is dedicated, hence a sin against the First
Commandment of God.
Many Igbo Christians say that the Osu Caste System is a cultural matter into which the Church
should not dabble. Some say that with time, everybody will forget it. The truth is that there is a
loud Osu-Diala dichotomy in Igboland today. The truth is that osu is not a cultural matter. It is
rather, a despicable and an atrocious feudal heritage which we ought to have done away with
when we stopped killing twins and children who cut the upper teeth first. It is perhaps, our
peoples penchant to subjugate others that has sustained this monster.
By virtues of the traditional laws, we all are now osu having eaten together and perhaps had
sexual unions with osus, apart from even taking osu blood in the process of medical blood
transfusion. So, what are we talking about? Why should you deny a man saved by an osu blood
an osu wife when he is ready to marry?
The most problematic issue about the Osu Caste System is that it is a one-way traffic, an osu will
contaminate a diala and both he and their offspring become osu, but no diala can liberate an osu,
no matter how highly placed. What this means is that in the next hundred years or so, every
Igboman will become an osu, what with the compulsive co-habitation of our sons and daughters
in the higher institution since our governments cannot build separate hostels for our male and
female children in school.
In 1956, Igbo legislators in the Eastern House of Assembly, Enugu abrogated the then common
practice of referring people to as osus. The fine imposed made people have some restraints in the
public expression of the word, osu. But it is mere fantasy as even today, 58 years after the law,
people of substance in Igboland are denied titles and positions they deserve just because of the
lame osu tag while riff-raffs, school dropouts and criminals cart these away. I believe that with
our knowledge of the fallacy in the Osu caste creation by our ignorant ancestors, we can do
something to stem the tidal but latent wave of mistrust, suspicion and antagonism raging on in
Igboland between the osus and the dialas before an open caste war erupts in our already civil war
ravaged and politically divided Igboland.
I believe we can end the Osu-Diala dichotomy by educating our children on its frivolity and its
tendency to destroy rather than build Igboland. A negative tradition created osu. A positive one
alone can abrogate it. The Osu Caste System has become a challenge to the Igbo intellectual. No
progressive people can allow a matter as frivolous as the Osu Caste System distract them from
confronting the challenges from outside. We repeatedly claim that Igbos are hated by their
neighbours and like the Israelis, ought to be bonded together in a fraternal union, but their
selfishness, avarice and of course, the Osu-Diala divide cause frictions in all their endeavours,
hence their inability to make any collective progress. We are at the national conference fighting
marginalization by other Nigerian tribes yet we perpetuate the worst type of marginalization
against ourselves.
The Igbo intellectual must take up the crusade of liberating Igboland from the slavery of the Osu
Caste System which has humiliated our people. I know one brilliant professor when we were in
the university who had vowed to die a bachelor in order not to beget children who would face the

same humiliation he faced as osu, and so did he die. There is no Igbo family today which has not
suffered one Osu-related embarrassment or another, and in fact there is hardly one Igbo family
today that has no grand-son or grand-daughter today growing in their homes illegitimately
because they were repatriated from their homes together with their mothers on discovery that
they had an osu lineage, no matter how faint. What of broken marriages, broken promises,
broken ambitions, broken homes, all because of Osu? We owe it to posterity to end this
humiliating Osu Caste System in Igboland now or we shall pay for it in the near future!
I challenge the Igbo intellectual to educate our traditional rulers and elders on the need to stop
the Osu-Diala divide and cleanse Igboland from this self-inflicted virus. Our governors
themselves must show concern in correcting this degrading abnormality which some selfish
ancestors imposed on our land. Our governors are now the custodians of our administration and
culture. They now hold and control our moneys, from the state, local government to autonomous
communities. They now appoint traditional rulers over our people and only those they like have
civil and political influence in our land today. And of course, Section 42, Subsection 2 of the
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, by which they were sworn in says that no
citizen of Nigeria shall be subjected to any disability or deprivation merely by reason of
circumstances of his birth. I therefore see no reason why our governors should not be at the
forefront of the battle against the Osu Caste System in Igboland since they are the defenders of
our constitution!
They Igbo intellectual should hold periodic discussions and seminars on the Osu Caste System.
They can ask our traditional rulers in totality, to set out a Day of Freedom for all osus and umes
in Igboland, a day when like the dedication of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by all
Catholic Bishops of the world in the early eighties which preceded the ignominious capitulation
of Communism all osus and umes inIgboland would be set free!
Our traditional rulers would then, in their respective communities, at an agreed period of time,
hold a plebiscite on what cleansing rituals to perform for whatever sin committed by or curse
imposed on the fore-bearers of the osu caste which is now about to contaminate the entire Igbo
stock. This is very simple to do. We have 15 Senatorial Zones in the entire South East and each
has a chairman of traditional rulers. By the time these 15 Ezes and perhaps, their secretaries ( i e,
30 Igbo ezes) meet for six months, they will have struck at a solution to free our people of this
social captivity. The Church can always be party to this ab initio, so that pagan rituals do not find
their ways into the cleansing process.
As a follow up, on the agreed liberation day, Igbowide, each traditional ruler who still has
eligible bachelor or spinster children would give one out symbolically to an opposite caste in
marriage as a demonstration of his faith in the cleansing ritual. Then the bishops of Igboland who
are the custodians of the new faith which the Igboman now claims to have embraced can be
asked to impose ecclesiastical sanctions like denial of the sacraments and even excommunication
on whosever that clings to the old social order declared dead by the owners of the land. With the
so-called osus Igbo in the South East, freed, all other Igbo osus in diaspora, whether in Delta,
Rivers or Akwa Ibom States, etc, or even overseas, will suffer liberation from the Osu Caste
System by telepathy.
Unless this cleansing ritual is done now to end this Igbo plague, I am afraid no institution, human
of divine, can expect or force anybody into allowing his children consciously enter the intricate
Osu-Diala web in the name of Christian marriage as our private experiences already are not
glorious.
His Grace, Dr Anthony Obinna, Catholic Archbishop of Owerri has in recent times, devoted

much energy to the invigoration of the Osu-Diala debate in order to arouse the sensibilities of the
Igbo Christian intellectual to the enormity of evil embedded in the Osu Caste System so as to
make them join him to destroy it. I have always identified with the oppressed all my life since I
have serially suffered oppression all my life. I therefore use this write-up as another volley of
bullets on the chest of the despicable Osu Caste System which is bringing the Igboman to
ridicule.
Of course, these were the views I canvassed in a 2006 seminar at the Whelan Research Academy
for Culture, WRACC, on the Osu-Diala Divide in Igboland and I still canvass them today as one
way to end this social aberration, although at that same seminar, Eze Emmanuel Njemanze of
Owerri advocated silence on the matter for it to die a natural death. I did not believe him that
day. I still do not believe him today.
(Dr Madugba, a Public Health physician, poet and human rights activist lives in Owerri).