Responses to Dympna Ugwu-Oju

Abstract

Thank you so much for bringing this article to our attention. Dympna Ugwu-Oju is at it again! The Newsweek piece seems to be a follow up on her book, What Will My Mother Say: A Tribal African Girl Comes to Age in America (let me not even comment on her use of the word “tribe”). In What Will my Mother Say... Dympna Ugwu-Oju documents the life stories of three generations of Aku women—her grandmother, mother and herself.

“Tribe” and its derivatives were coined by Westerners as a label for “primitive” peoples. Thus they talk/write of the “ethnic” (never “tribal”) Serbs. “Tribe” is a relic of the untenable Western hierarchical structuring of humanity, ranging from the “civilized” Westerners to the “primitive others.” On this account, Africanists have since moved away from using “tribe” in referring to African peoples, a shift which Dympna Ugwu-Oju has totally missed.

I wish to add something that might be of some interest to the discussion on Dympna Ugwu-Oju. Just a little story. In Nimo town of Njikoka Local Government Area there is an age-old tradition that allows the women to beat up their men! Yes, I witnessed it, and made further enquiries.

Thank you for bringing up this matter. You may like to know that we also had a similar women’s tradition in my town, Umueze II, Ehime-Mbano. I think it was the “Umuada” - daughters married outside the community - who would come home to humiliate (What was it called?) their brothers who are proven to be abusive to their wives. I know that it was in force in my childhood days. I don’t know what became of it. I have even forgotten what it was called. I would be glad if someone can refresh my memory on this.