IGBO LOA: Ancient God of Nigerian Igbos Alive in Haiti as The Caribbean Celebrates Igbo Day

Adeyinka Olaiya, Haiti/

It’s not only for the purpose of literature but for the recognition of the culture, tradition and religion of the Igbo people that Chinua Achebe, a notable romance novelist celebrate the tribe in most of his novels.

During this year’s seasonal celebration of the Igbo Day in Haiti, a country situated around the Caribbean Island, the Haitian god attributed to the Nigerian Igbos called Igbo Loa or Ibo Loa was appeased in accordance with the culture and tradition of the people of the eastern part of Nigeria.

Though history has it that some Igbo people, victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, had committed mass suicide drowning in the Atlantic Ocean as they protested against the slave trade.

The powerful story of the slavery signalled strong resistance of the captured Igbos in 1803 when they all matched into the marshy waters of Dunbar Creek committing mass suicide. This has actually marked the very important part of the African American folklore that describes the incidence as the first ever march for freedom by the African people captured and transported to the Americas as slaves.

According to what Roswell King, the white overseer who was nearby the Butler plantation at the time of the incidence wrote of the occurrence, he and another witness by name Patterson had helped to rescue the bodies of the Igbo rebels drowned in the sea. They were able to account for 75 drowned bodies of the Igbo slaves, but only 13 bodies were recovered thus making it difficult to account for the total number of the Igbos that actually committed the mass suicide

The presence of the Igbo culture through the worship of Igbo Loa from the Igbo land in the Caribbean has actually confirmed the incidence as factual. The accounts of Roswell King and Patterson has proven against the doubts of a number of historians who disagreed with the facts of the history. Modern scientific methods were used in the post-80s to reconstruct the incidence and facts were finally derived from the researches

Just as the Yoruba culture and tradition trends in Brazil and  in some part of Latin American countries, the Igbo culture and tradition also trends in various parts of the Americas, from the Central, Caribbean to the North American countries including the United States of America. Several of the deities, gods in the Caribbean are named after the culture and tradition of the Igbo people of Nigeria.

The Haitians attributes their religious culture to those of the Igbo people of Nigeria. They appease the “Ibo Loa” the deity originally believed to have come from the descendants of the Ndigbos from Nigeria, the western part of Africa. The voodoos having a clear mix of the beliefs of the African people is of a great religious practices in Haiti and in many of the Caribbean Islands. Vodun “meaning spirit in Fon and Ewe languages “is practiced by the Fon people of Benin and the Southern and Central Togo; as well as in Ghana and Nigeria.

During this year’s seasonal celebration of the Igbo Loa deity, the Incantation in Igbo language took over the scenario, the Igwes from the Igbo Shrine in Haiti appeased the souls of the dead Igbo heroes singing in Igbo language, the spirit of the dead African and Igbo slaves, heroes were honored with dances, songs and rituals.

Loa, in the Haitian beliefs represents gods while the Igbo Loa is the god of the Igbos just as it is of several Loas in Haiti, the Vodoo Loas from Benin and Ghana and some other parts of the West African region

In the 80s and early 90s, the acceptance of the Yoruba religion came influencing the Haitian beliefs with the sudden introduction of Olorun “Almighty God” as Olowoun in the practice of Voodoo, Igbo Loa and several other African traditional religion in Haiti, this Supreme being in the Yoruba traditional belief is present practically in all the African religion in the Americas.

According to the Haitian Igbo Loa high priest, Akan Dendê, “the Igbos around the globe should look up to Haiti and the Caribbean for the expansion of the Igbo tradition; let us all worship what our forefathers left behind here in Haiti”.

Haiti, formerly Hayti, is one of the countries in the Caribbean discovered by the navigator Christopher Columbus in 1492 in the region of the Western Atlantic Ocean that later became the Caribbean from 1697. The country had its independence in 1804 making it the second country in the Americas to obtain its independence just after the United States of America. The population of the country is having practically all African slaves thus practising African traditional religion, voodoo with Catholic influences. The name Hayti was derived from the indigenous Arawak place named Ayti ‘mountainous land’. The official language is French

According to history, the first king of independent Haiti was a former slave of Igbo descent. Henry Christophe, who is revered as a hero among the Haitians. Born in 1767 as a former slave of Bambara ethnicity of West Africa and believed to be of Igbo descent, he was a military leader in the Haitian revolution 1791-1804 that ended both slavery and French colonial rule. He later became president and king of the young nation.

The Igbo culture and tradition trends in the Caribbean. The West Africans were distributed as slaves in the 16th and 19th century to countries like Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Belize. The original Igbo people captured from the Bight of Biafra, Bonny and the Port in Calabar amounted to over 14 per cent of the entire slaves brought to the Caribbean.

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