CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The Igbos are traditionally village people, with social system comprising hundreds of small clans and villages. Among than, it is the family, the title holders, the village head etc that carryout the administrative functions of the society (Okoye, 1980:4). There have been many attempts to trace the origin of the Igbos, but none of that was very successful. In other words, where the Igbos migrated from has not been proved beyond reasonable double. The ancestry of the Igbos has bothered many people for a long time. Many historians, philosophers, sociologists, archaeologists and anthropologist have raised a lot of dust on this issue. A lot of views have been proffered but yet the origin of the Igbos remained a mirage. The Igbo people occupy the southern part mid western and Delta regions of Nigeria. Their areas is bounded on the east by the Ibibio people, on the south west by the Ijaw, extending to the confines of Benin with Igbos as the outpost. The northern boundary is Idoma in the Northem Nigeria. What could be specially defined as the traditional government and politics in Igbo society comes on areas of over 15,800 square miles with a population of more than thirty (30) million (Anyanwu and Aguwa 1993:4). The Igbo land rises in the north to the Agwu-Uduka hills which run in a south-north direction. There are no impenetrable mountain barriers or large expenses of water or desert throughout the Igbo setting. The Igbos inhabit Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo Abia, Ahoada area of River state as well on the account of their migratory behaviour, Igbo people are found all over the world where they settled, live and behave as son of the soil (Anyanwa and Aguwa 1999:5). At this stage, we shall explore in all these areas of Igbo land, if there had existed traditional government and politics because the administrative system in Igbo society have been variously labeled as accephallous, stateless or republican. This implies that the Igbo communities do not have first person of the society entrusted with administrative functions, and equally lacks formal structures of government with a hierarchical organization based on bureaucratically and systematized administration. Infact, the problem scholars have experienced in providing a simple characterization for the political culture of the Igbo underscores the complexities of the system as well as the fact that the Igbo culture area is not uniform. In terms of lie erogeneity or complexity, the Igbo culture area had been subdivided into five units with features of internal differentiations within each unit. Thus we have:

1. Northern or Onitsha Igbo including Nri,Awka, Enugu and Onitsha.
2. Southern or Owerri Igbo including Isuma, Uratta, Ikwerre, Ohuhu, Ngwa and Isu.

iii. Western Igbo including north and southern Ika, Kwala and River line Igbo.

1. Eastern or cross river Igbo including Abam, Ohafia and Ara.
2. North-eastern Igbo or Ogu Uku including the Igbo of Abakiliki and Afikpo (Founde and James 1962:10) with the above, it remains unrealistic in terms of political culture to attempt a characterization of the entire Igbo linguistic and culture area. The three types of stateless structures distinguished by Horton of agricultural communities are to be found among the Igbos namely.
3. Seminary: linage system among a few central Igbo communities.
4. The dispersed territorially defined community.
5. The large compact village type.

The prevalence of these forms of non-contrasted form of political system among the Igbo has given the false impression that the Igbo can be legitimately characterized as accephallous.

So this research work is aimed at studying the traditional government and political system of Okposi in Ohaozara, Ebonyi state so as to put forward the fact that the traditional government and politics in Igbo society is structural and can be studied via structural analytical approach which disproves the impression that traditional government and politics in Igbo society is generally stateless, accephallous or republican inn nature.