Title, Rituals, and Land Use: The Heritage of a Nigerian Society

Among the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria, land is regarded as the source of human sustenance and the eternal sacred pot from where all plants and humans draw their powers of fertility and reproduction. The Igbo venerate land as an earth goddess. As a predominantly agrarian society, they not only deify land by instituting shrines in its honor, they also take titles that regulate ownership and use of land. This study examines the interface between title-taking, African indigenous religious rituals, and land use practices among the Nsukka Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria. In the study area, there is no taxonomical distinction between land and the earth goddess, and titles relating to land are laden with rituals whose meaning needs to be investigated. As a study in the axiology of the people, the study adopted participant observations and field investigations. It combines its findings with views in extant literature on Igbo worldview on land and land ownership and sifts the difference between the Nsukka Igbo and other Igbo people. The research is anchored on the theory of cultural peculiarity. This line of thought, it is hoped, would clarify some of the gray and contentious issues about rituals and inheritance in the study area. Such clarification would help reduce the tension between those who take such titles and those, for reasons of cultural barriers, do not have the right to do so.