Introduction
Over time, scholars of disabilities have focused on medical models and physical disfigurements as benchmarks for assessing disablement. Although physical impairments could lead to bodily damage, it was not the basis for determining disability in precolonial Mgbowo, one of the communities in northern Igboaland, Nigeria. The Mgbowo conceived disability as an act of deviation or attempts to disrupt social norms, relationships, kinship genealogy, and communal values, rather than a bodily disfigurement. As a result, regardless of one’s bodily formations, the community accommodated the physically impaired in the social and economic production, as long as they remained law-abiding, and their genealogy and kinship were not questionable (Iroka 2024). This attitude is still practiced in the community.
Furthermore, as part of this alternative conception of disability, members of the community whose kinship or genealogy are not tied to the ancestral or eponymous founders of the community are considered disabled, or rather, outsiders. They include the slave descendants, those whose forebears were adopted, and refugees. While they may be assimilated into the community through the traditional rite of Nmuru (rebirthing), they do not enjoy equal privilege and responsibility. They are not allowed to participate in some communal rituals, functions, and duties due to their impaired status as socially disabled. (Uche Obalike 2024). By contrast, all culturally approved bodies (even the physically impaired) contribute to the community’s reciprocal and interdependent economic and social activities.
Relying on Victor Finkelstein’s concept of attitudinal disability, or the idea that a given attitude towards an impaired body determines the perceived degree of disability of the body (Finkelstein 1980, 5), this blog post explores disability as an attitudinal reaction of the Mgbowo to behaviors, genealogies, kinships, persons, and acts considered deviant or immoral.
Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Mgbowo community in the winter of 2024 has revealed that precolonial or traditional Mgbowo culture imagined disability within the context of moral deviance, through specific actions, genealogical status, or behaviors, and not as particularly located in specific physical impairments. The perception of disability as indicative of moral deviance persisted among the Mgbowo until the first decade of the twentieth century, when British colonialism and medical imperialism imposed upon the Mgbowo the medical model of disability, which has consistently challenged, but has not succeeded in eroding the community’s conception of disability from the moral, rather than physical composition of the body. The idea of a moral imagination of disability suggests that the community imagines the body, mind, and actions of every member through the instituted moral norms, conduct, and values. Therefore, any actions considered antithetical to the instituted moralities and social values, such as incest, murder, stealing, and belonging to questionable kinship, were considered disabling. The imperially enforced medical model emphasized physical ability rather than the traditional conceptualization of moral uprightness as an index of disability among the Mgbowo.
Mgbowo Community: Land and People
The modern Mgbowo community is in southeastern Nigeria (Igboland) and is organized around five villages. Every village is constituted by kindred units who are exogamous and serve as federating units to the Village government. The shared ancestry, values, and exogamy embedded in the Mgbowo kinship system are markers of identity and belonging. In the precolonial period, kinship defined generational identities, affiliations, and relationships especially. Crucially, living outside this kinship system, due to exclusion because of socially unacceptable behavior, or affiliation with slavery, was considered social dislocation or disability. To be kinless was to be disabled for the Mgbowo because such persons would be denied every aspect of communal interactions, benefits, and privileges accrued through the kinship system. Regardless of one’s age or ability, incestuous members of the community were disabled from communal assemblies, markets, and religious grounds. More so, those adopted through the traditional rebirth of Nmuru were not permitted to lead the communal rites, such as kola nut rituals and prayers. At death, those found culpable of deviances such as murder, stealing, and poisoning were buried in the bushes, rather than in the homestead, which was the reserve of the upright men. Furthermore, during the festival of Oriri-Ali, a ritualized festival to celebrate the earth goddess – the bastion of morality – deviants were either forced out of the community. The community believed that the presence of deviants during such a ceremony would pollute the land (Esom 2024).
Source: Department of Geography, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Moral Imagination of Deviances as Disabilities among the Mgbowo of Igboland
Personhood among the Mgbowo was not based on physical ability, age, or strength but on the content of one’s character and obedience to the traditional norms and values of the community, which was seen to feed into the morality of the community. Deviating from those norms caused metaphysical disability. The traditional norms and values of the Mgbowo were collectively called Omelali. Omelali were derived from transgenerational traditions and actions of Mgowo forebears, which were passed through generations as oral tradition and culture. These Omelali were performative, institutional, and spiritual, and entirely ritualized and sacred, connected to pre-Christian deities and beliefs rooted in agricultural fertility, mutual-assistance, brotherhood, collective defense of the polity, ancestral worship, and performing the various religious rituals according to Mgbowo traditional calendar, such as the new yam festival (Iri ji), the Heroes (Iri Enwu), and the pacification of one’s god (Irorshi).
An earth goddess, Ali was considered the custodian of morality. Certain actions against her were paradigmatically deviant and thus potentially punishable by her. Major deviant or taboo behaviors included: female extra-marital infidelity, homicide, incest, rape, stealing (especially yams), war sabotage, and desecration of religious spaces and objects (Ibekairo 2024). Such acts of deviance were not peculiar to the Mgbowo, but were largely observed by the broader Igbo ethnic group with which they identify (Metuh 1985, 4; Arinze 1967, 30).
The punishments for such moral deviancy in the community included banishment, social discrimination, alienation, segregation, and in extreme cases, reparative murder. I believe that these acts can be seen as disabling, in the same way as the social model of disability locates disability in societal action rather than the impaired individual (Finkelstein 1980, 3).
Social or moral exclusion was synonymous with disability among the precolonial Mgbowo because they practiced living in closely knit communal environments where collectivism and kinship were the essence of living. Exclusion deprived the deviant individual of a core source of identity and belonging, as he became an alien in the community. Exile also meant being infantilized and ridiculed. Chinua Achebe, one of the foremost African writers who portrayed Igbo indigenous cultures and how they clashed with British colonialism, likened exile in precolonial Igbo to casting a fish onto a dry and sandy beach. This was because the exiled had cut ties with his communal folks and friends, the basis of Igbo humane living. Those exiled due to culpable homicide, adultery, and other crimes were considered deviants in their ancestral homelands. Exile was not only for personal atonement, but it was also an opportunity for communal cleansing and sanitization of the polluted lands while the culprit or deviant was away. (Achebe 1994, 121).
Moral deviants were disabled because their generational affiliation to kinship was stripped through alienation and punishment. Sometimes, the deviant could be allowed to make restitution and redeem themselves from moral pollution through ritual cleansing and appeasing of the gods. In Mgbowo, livestock were slaughtered before the deities, and appeals were made for the forgiveness of the offender. However, in extreme cases such as murder, the culprit could be asked to donate their child as a replacement for the deceased. In other extreme cases, special priests from the Nri (a priestly community in Igboland) were invited to remove (cleanse) the moral pollution. The Earth Spirit (Ala) and the ancestors were invoked to forgive the culprit. (Arinze 1967, 36). This sacrifice was expiatory or meant to remove an abomination, which the Igbo referred to as Ikpu Alu. The deviants, until they appeased the gods and performed the traditional cleansing, were no longer considered members of the community.
Whereas Nri Priests could sanitize polluted lands across Igboland, some communities like Mgbowo did not permit the reintegration of morally disabled fellows in extreme cases. The community considered such offenses, like homicide or incest, not ameliorable, being metaphysically infectious and causing an “untouchable” like caste status for future generations of the offender’s family (Iroka 2024).
Kinship was not only a mark of identity, but also a sense of ability. Regardless of physical impairment, an individual was allowed to participate in their kindred association and given all the necessary rights. Even the dead were considered members of the kindred, and meals and sacrifices were usually offered to them. Belonging and ability also extended beyond the land of the living, with morally good ancestors (ndi ichie, ndi gboo, ndi mbu) considered bona fide kin. In contrast, bad ones were not included in family prayers or sacrifices (Arinze 1967, 18).
In alignment with this moral understanding of disablement, among the Mgbowo, age was revered, and the aged, regardless of their frailty, were never associated with disability or inability to perform the roles required by their kinship group (Ibeaka 2024). Similarly, the psychosocially impaired in the community were not institutionalized but treated within households and were entitled to participate in rituals and religious ceremonies, and expected to be integrated into family units and continue family lines (in part to preserve inheritance rights (Iroka 2024). Individuals with sensory and stature impairments were similarly integrated without question (Arinze 1967, 72).
Observations of precolonial Mgbowo practice align with Jenifer Barclay’s argument that in some societies of precolonial Africa, individuals with body-minds that would be considered impaired or disabled in the present were instead linked to spiritual power, accorded a great deal of respect and social standing and thoroughly integrated into daily community life (Barclay 2017, 78). Moreover, the social integration of impaired people was also due to the communal organization of the precolonial Igboland economy. The physically disabled were “assisted” in cultivating lands through the mutual-aid and contributory/rotational labor systems of the Mgbowo and Igbo (Afigbo 1981, 130). Through these systems, called Ohe-Oru, families exchanged labor and services, thus allowing even the wealthiest members of a community to demonstrate productivity by doing the kind of work that fitted their abilities. Olaudah Equiano, the eighteenth-century Igbo freedom-seeker and memoirist, recalled both that everyone in his community was engaged in agriculture and suggested that deformity (as he saw it) was unknown to his people (Equiano 2007, 15). Equiano was likely exaggerating, but read with what we know of the Mgbowo in mind, he may have been expressing his understanding that every “morally” qualified person can be part of the community, spiritually, and economically—irrespective of physical impairment (Mutanga 2024, 4). Furthermore, precolonial Mgbowo and the broader Igbo society were built on mutual aid and assistance. Neighbors were considered part of the family, and whatever affected one was considered a collective tragedy or joy. The Igbo idea of Ogbenye (the wretched) connotes those to be helped by their neighbors. The collaborative nature of Igbo neighbors and the mutual assistance among the community members largely prevented those with impairments from falling into poverty. In his memoir, Equiano suggested that there were no beggars in his Igbo nation (Equiano 2007, 7). Again, with an attention to precolonial Igbo culture, this does not need to be taken at face value; instead, it suggests Equiano was attuned to the social assumption that those in need could find help among their kin and community without resort to begging on the streets, as he observed in England.
The communalism of the Mgbowo, and by extension the Igbo, allowed a high level of inclusion, and significantly less segregation of impaired bodies than in other cultures, particularly those with capitalist economies where individualism, physical ability, and the medical model of disability continue to determine ableness (Finkelstein 1980, 6; Oliver & Barnes 2012, 55; Barclay 2017, 78).
If impairment was not disabling, but exclusion or “social death” was, then we can then contemplate the place of slavery in precolonial Mgbowo and many Igbo communities, where the institution of slavery (Ohu) and a type of caste system (Osu) were used to mark the boundaries of social othering. Igbo slaves, regardless of their degree of social involvement and participation in the communities, were never considered bona fide members of it, living “disabled” lives outside Igbo society. The Osu, a group of people consecrated to the tutelary spirits and deities in the community, were considered outcasts and disqualified from several privileges, such as interacting with the Amadi (the freeborn) of the community. (Ezeanya 1967, 39; Nwaka 1985, 473). The kinless identity of the Ohu and the Osu had conferred morally disabled identities on them.
Conclusion
This summary departs from the usual academic discussions on physical disabilities and impairments. It has dived into the moral imagination of deviance as disability in a precolonial ethnic Igbo community. Among the Mgbowo, an able body was not sufficient for personhood (Livingston 2005, 2). The Mgbowo imagined disability not through conceptualizations of physical prowess but through behaviors that were considered deviant and antithetical to social stability. This departure from the physical shows the complexity of defining “disability” across time and space.
References
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Afigbo, Adiele. 1981. Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture. Oxford: University Press.
Arinze, Francis. 1967. Sacrifice in Igbo Religion. Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press.
Barclay, Jenifer. 2017. “Differently Abled: Africanism, Disability, and Power in the Age of Transatlantic Slavery,” in Jennifer Brynes and Jennifer Muller, eds. Bioarcheology of Impairment and Disability: Theoretical, Ethnohistorical, and Methodological Perspectives, 77- 94. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Equiano, Olaudah. 2007. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Moscow, Russia: Dodo Press.
Esom, Monica. 2024.c.89. Woman Leader. “Participation of the Physically Disabled in Socio-Cultural and Economic Activities of the Mgbowo.” Interview by Vitalis Nwashindu at Mgbowo Azunkwo Ndeaboh, Enugu State, Nigeria. December 30.
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Finkelstein, Victor. 1980. Attitude and Disabled People: Issues of Discussion. Washington: Rehabilitation Fund.
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Ibekairo, Anthony. 2024. c.60. Farmer. “The Cultural Effects of Moral Pollution in Mgbowo Community.” Interview by Vitalis Nwashindu at Mgbowo Azunkwo, Enugu State, Nigeria, December 16.
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Iroka, Boniface. 2024. c.60. Traditional Doctor/Healer. “Traditional Rituals against Deviancy in Mgbowo.” Interview by Vitalis Nwashindu at Mgbowo Azunkwo Ndeaboh, Enugu State, Nigeria. December 29.
Livingston, Julie. 2005. Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Mutanga, Oliver. 2024. Ubuntu Philosophy and Disabilities in Sub-Saharan Africa. London: Routledge.
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Obalike, Uche. 2024. c.72. Farmer. “Ritual Cleansing and Guidelines for Humane Living in Mgbowo.” Interview by Vitalis Nwashindu at Mgbowo Azunkwo Ndeaboh, Enugu State, Nigeria. December 30.
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Vitalis Nwashindu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research focuses on industrial disabilities, “deviance” in colonial Igboland, sexualities, and urban subalterns in British West Africa (Nigeria).
