When a baby chick ventures into the Village Square alone under the midday sun, it has volunteered to be snatched up as a snack by any hovering hawk. When a chick which does not venture into the Village Square, ignores the “kwom-kwom” calling sound of the mother hen, it is bound to get into the trouble sooner than later. Against the background of the foregoing, let those who are prancing all over the place today and threatening to redefine pristine Igbo cultural values, customs and tradition wake up to their folly.

It takes more than preposterous self-inflation and self-delusion to be a leader of subsisting value. Look at Agbogidi and several other traditional rulers in Igbo land. How do they come across to you? Now look at the would-wielders of un-nuanced leadership authority, as well as their major promoters. They are all demanding to be taken seriously, right?

Utter bunkum! Stupidity is stupidity, not a different approach to doing anything under the sun.

The following three factors seem to be partly responsible for the attempt to prop up a new-found, and fortunately still-born, excrescence and cultural monstrosity called Mayor Ndigbo: (1) Swollen egos that are threatening to get bigger than the national stadium in Abuja, even while the core of the habour nothing profound; (2) Some people’s false perception of their financial worth in the grand scheme of things, as well as their bankable social network and value in society outside the tiny worlds they have created and within which they are mini deities; and (3) A vaulting desire to preside over some kind of court of great significance, not minding if their Royal Stools bestride a sewer in some low-grade neighbourhood.

As our people are wont to say: “You do not give the title of Onu n-ekwuru Oha (spokesman of the People, or The Voice of the People) to a drunkard, or a stammerer”. The title of Ogbuagu (Leopard Killer) is not bestowed on the village coward.

The first thing I noted, on seeing the invitation card to the conferment of the title of Mayor Ndigbo on Chief Chidi Anaegbu, was the absence of any reference to the person, persons, group, or groups conferring the title/honour on the man. The second was the conspicuous display of the names of President Obasanjo and others, Obi of Onitsha and other traditional rulers, as well as the names of many state governors. How could this assembly agree to do such harm to Ndigbo, I wondered.

Allen Onyema, proprietor of Airpeace, was on the card as Chairman of the occasion. That people of repute and substance would gather for what seemed to me a vacuous and perfectly scandalous innovation.

No! I forwarded a soft copy of the invite to a very close and trusted friend of Onyema, along with this text: “Allen’s name is most probably being used for a scam here. He had better check it out”. The recipient of my text replied me thus: “I am aware. This is authentic. MAYOR NDIGBO LAGOS. By the entire Igbo community in Lagos. I will be at the event also”.

It all came across as a bit incomprehensible, even patently irresponsible and, anon, roundly cheap and ridiculous to me. I called another mutual friend and shared my concerns. I also brought up my once-expressed misgivings about Allen Onyema’s occasional choices for self projection over the years. I reiterated my view that such a well-meaning, and highly successful business man is badly in need of native guidance and sobriety on many issues. But that is a matter for another day.

Mayor Ndigbo kwa? Ejikwa m ogu o! Now that it has all gone burst, it seems like everyone is running for cover.

The questions for me are these: (1) Will this Mayor Ndigbo, based on this title conferred by persons of questionable ontological credentials, break the kolanut in the presence of any genuinely titled person even in Lagos? (2) Will the title give him precedence over anyone of his own kindred in his village, or in the city, at any official function when the question of who should break the kolanut arises? (3) Can a Mayor Ndigbo walk into the Council Metting of his own traditional ruler uninvited, based on this absolutely inconsequential title? Just asking.

Our people say that the fact that a bat can fly does not make it a bird. Our people also say that any reckless insect that gets too close to an open flame out of ignorance gets burnt to death or, at best, loses its flamboyant wings for good.  Thus de-winged, the insect ceases to fly. Not being able to fly, it becomes a crawling thing, and no longer a flying thing. Thus diminished, it ends up being eaten by a toad, a worm or a rodent.

Our people say that is the name you give your dog that people will call it. They say that it is how you present yourself that determines how your observers will rate you. They know, and say, that a full-bodied man who elects to walk with a limp has himself to blame if he is called a cripple, or if his name is not included in the list of those who can take part in a race.

The Igbo also say that anyone who enters the village square during a wrestling event without being prepared for a fight will find his back on the ground, sooner or later. He will have “defeat” recorded against his name, even if he argues later that he entered the arena by mistake. Do the Igbo not say that a woman who brings out a dreadful pot of bitter leaf soup cannot complain that her cooking condiments were not complete, since she was the one who brought out the culinary abomination for public inspection and enjoyment.

Part of the point being made here today is that there are Rules of Engagement in all things. There is also always be the right or wrong decibel of propriety and dignity for whatever anyone wants to do in the name of a people. The matter of Mayor Ndigbo would probably not have arisen if some people thought through the philosophical underpinnings of the serious business of the Kolanut ritual for group cohesion.

As was said here on February 14, 2014, “There is probably no greater forum for the display of the solemn, almost priestly, majesty of a mature Igbo elder than in the process of blessing and breaking a kolanut. I speak of ‘process’ here because there is the process of dealing with the kolanut and then there is ‘the fact’ of the breaking of the kolanut among the Igbo. That is why you have the Igbo saying: “When an old dibia (native doctor) makes an offering to the gods it is as if he is the handing over of the sacrifice to the spirits by one who is seeing them face to face”.

The core community values encapsulated in the ‘process’ of eating the kolanut are such that the person whose duty it is to break the kolanut does not just pick it up and break. He may begin by saying: “He who brings kolanut brings life’. To explain this common preface to the kolanut business in Igboland, we need only remember that when kolanut is served, no one eats it without first calling on the gods and the good ancestors for protection and guidance.

This means that the presence of the kolanut at a gathering is, first and foremost, an opportunity for prayers. The purpose of prayers is to strengthen life and the living. Therefore, to bring kolanut is actually to bring an opportunity for prayers, for humble appeal for guidance and for the strengthening of life and the living.

The living envisaged in the Igbo notion of community is always a ‘living together with one another in goodwill’. The person praying over the kolanut before breaking it will say: ‘He Who lives above, the Giver of life, protect us’. He will also say that the river should not dry up and that the fish should not lack water to swim in, thereby emphasizing the interdependence and reciprocity in nature.

Against the background of the foregoing, I invite Ndigbo to take a close, cool, calm and sober look at the concept of “Mayor Ndigbo”. Look at the Ikenga of the individuals concerned. While at it, remember that a man’s Ikenga tells you everything you need to know about him, because it is all etched on the Ikenga. An Ikenga that is mostly front-loaded with material success, business longevity and sociopolitical prominence may still lack the full ontological credentials to stand forth as embodying leadership qualities and not have its fundament challenged

When it is said, in the process of breaking the kolanut “Elders shall live and the young shall live”, or the one who says: “Our harvest shall be rich and none shall pray for the misfortune of another, lest his farm be the only patch of earth without rain” it is all about community of all things, in that broader, overarching notion of spiritual reciprocity.

There are quite a few things that the progenitors, and propagators, of the idea of Mayor Ndigbo most probably dd into think through. Who did they consult. How would Mayor Ndigbo stand before real traditional rulers? What messages are they conveying to the younger generation, with the invention of mayor Ndigbo? Will some Yoruba people in Ugwuoba, Onitsha, or Enugu metropolis choose for themselves a “Mayor” without recourse to their “Custodians of Value”, in the form of traditional and culture icons? Will Fulani, Ijaw, or Igbira people do the same.

These are the real questions for many who think that they are helping to advance Igbo interests, values and culture by all manner of excrescences.  They should remember the virtues of the kolanut ritual for the good of all and restrain themselves from taking domestic matters to the monthly village market.