Death in Igbo, African Culture

In  African  religious  culture,  life  does  not  end  with  death  but  continues  in  another  realm.  Many  Africans  believe  that  death  does  not  completely bring about the end of life, but only affect its condition.   Africans believe that anyone who dies, must be given proper traditional funeral ceremony to ease passage to the great beyond and guarantee everlasting rest to the dead.

For the Igbos, life is a continuing cyclic process. Death is not the end station of human life. They believe in the survival of the human person after death and in ancestors as the living dead. Belief in life-after-death is a feature of Igbo religious belief system. In the Igbo Nation, full burial rites are accorded to the dead, in order to prevent the disturbances from the dead, not minding the cost implications on the living

  This has made death and fame to form a relationship as was noted when studying the funeral of celebrities in the West.. It is believed that if this particular ceremony is omitted the dead will not have a smooth journey to the great beyond rather he/she could come back in visions as ghosts to disturb the living until such a time when they would complete the send-off ceremony, which is the burial rite. With this assertion, it is not enough  burying  the  dead  especially  full  grown  adults  in  the  Igbo  nation  but  other  rites  are accorded to the dead to ensure their complete transition to the ancestral world. “Death begins to concern  the  now,  not  the  hereafter;  it  becomes  ephemeral,  today‟s  news,  tomorrow‟s  fish-and- wrapping [as the British colloquialism has it]” 

Recognition  of  after-death  is  not  only  of  Igbo origin  but also has  western  origin. It  is  a  spiritual  event  of  which  animal  sacrifice,  poetry,  dance  and  music combined into a  form  of  drama.  It  is  the ceremony  which  the first  son  is  obliged  to sponsor,  in order to assure that his deceased father receives the final rest, by offering oblation and honour to him and his ancestors. Varying igbo scholars opine that one of the greatest fears among the Igbo is to die and be thrown into the evil  forest, receiving  no burial rites. For  them, this calamity means being banned from the company of the ancestors, an outcast of the other side of life follows death. This  symbolizes  total  rejection  and  excommunication  by  both  the  living  and  the  dead.   It is also a popular belief that the ancestors – those who live well spent lives, die in socially approved ways, and are given correct burial rites – exists in one of those worlds of the dead which mirror the world of the living. The living honours them with sacrifices. Igbos talk of a good death as belonging to those who lived a good life, they see it as natural death in ripe old age, these groups are accorded funeral  rites  appropriate to their  status  to enable them  to reach  the ancestral  land, where they believed they continue a life similar to their earthly life and eventually are allowed to reincarnate. The ancestors watch over the living and are periodically reincarnated unlike unhappy spirits who died bad deaths.

It is imperative to note at this point that, the criteria for choosing who to be given a befitting burial defers. It is believed that for a man or woman to be regarded as having received full funeral rites from his people and the community, a cow must have been slaughtered for him or her after death by his or her beloved ones. This further informs that in the case of a man, the meat from the killed cow is shared by members of the kindred while in the case of a woman the meat is shared by the members of her father‟s kindred and not the kindred of her husband. In many parts of Igboland, before a man‟s corpse is buried, a goat and or a cow, or horse (Inyinya), according to the children‟s or relatives‟ financial position and mostly  dependent  on  the man‟s  status in  the society,  is  slaughtered.  Furthermore, it is not uncommon to find the Igbo people performing the second burial rites, so as to send forth  the  dead  home  to  join  the  ancestors  and  be  accepted  as  part  of  them. This accounts  for  the  reason  why  corpses  of  those  who  died  in  foreign  lands  are  most  of  the  time, brought  home  and  buried  among  their  ancestors,  mostly  when  a  full  grown  adult  dies.  Such deaths are also celebrated during the funeral ceremony with much merriment and entertainments. The purpose is to enable for an easy passage to ancestorhood. The existence of the ancestors from the world view of Igbo people, have brought about the issue of Igbu-effi which is seen as a passage rite into ancestorhood or proper transition of the adult Igbo man. Igbu-effi simply means "killing of cow during funeral ceremony in Igboland‟. The type of cow used for this ritual is Muturu Cattle (bostaurus). This study looks at the idea of Igbu-effi and the politics of after-death in the Igbo cosmology. The study had an in-depth study on the origin of Igbu-effi in Igboland, the various processes involved in carrying out this unique custom, and the various  implications  of  the  practice  to  both  the  living  and  the  dead.  Finally  it  looked  at  the various  reactions  and   attitudes  of  people   towards   Igbu-effi,  particularly  at  this  time  that Christianity  and  Modernity  have  affected  the  practice.  The  Igbo  people  are  one  of  the  most dynamic  but  with  unique  culture  and  tradition.  The  tradition  is  unique  to  the  Igbo  Nation  in which a spiritual transition is done for the dead owing to the belief in after-life and in the transition to ancestorhood.