Atrocities: Here you will find some examples of how Osu Caste Discrimination function among Igbo people (Tearing Ndiigbo Appart).

My name is Chima M. Amadi (from stop-osu.com). We have received bundles of complimentary mails from interested people around the world, expressing their surprises and at the same time support for Stop Osu Solidarity Foundation. To all these people and to all others who are going to discover or to join this foundation: I personally want to say, thank you.

Let us join hands - gradually, but in every small way to first educate ourselves and ultimately liberate over 5 million Igbo men and women treated with unbearable social inequality like permanent strangers in the land of their fore-fathers, without rights and respect in the only place they could call home. The culture of a people affects their life, we all know that people make mistakes, but responsible people try to correct their mistakes.

"There comes a time when people get tired.. tired of being segregated and humiliated, tired of being kicked around by brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative than to protest." Martin Luther king, Jr."

We realised that some people out there - Igbos and non Igbos alike, do not understand or perhaps do not know the extent of the miserable situation and the permanent psychological injury inflicted on these innocent people discriminated by their own people like criminals. I call this mean and primitive because it always reminds me of the sin of Adam and Eve. Somebody called it "Igbos and their practice of inherited sin." It is evident that under Osu Caste System, millions of Igbo people often ask themselves the inevitable question "Am I an Igbo man...?" today. Well, every person can make up his mind; we are talking about our cultures and tradition in (Alaigbo) Igbo land.

For those beautiful people out there, who think, that Osu Caste System is no longer prevalent and relevant and therefore not an issue in our modern Igbo society, I want you to understand that Osu cultural practice is regrettably alive and even more than ever before. The whole of the Igbo folk should be ashamed of this.

Sadly, most Igbo people simply avoid this issue on the surface and some (among them clergy men and women) are even proud each time they successfully (in one way or the other) humiliate the next Igbo man labelled Osu and thereby reinstate the primitive argument......

•Like a catholic clergy who led the opposition that a Christian mother from his family should be buried in the husband's compound. He claimed that even when a member of his family tolerated this lady for years, in the way of the tradition, she (even as a corpse) remains Osu. With his kinsmen, he organised the removal of the corpse while the lady lay in state. This opposition was met by a counter plan by the children of the woman who organised an army of maternal relations to keep vigil and security over the corpse of their mother.

•Osu Caste system prohibits love relationship and inter-marriage between "Diala" and "Osu". The Osu is expected to marry only within the same labelled Osu group and the Diala only from Diala group. In certain communities such as Oruku in Enugu State, any Diala who associated with Osu pays a fine of 1000 Naira - defined by the Diala association of the area and marriage is taboo. In Oruku, the Osu operate their own market and even in the Church, appointment of Osu to any position of authority is extremely discouraged.

•The Osu caste system is a form of discrimination that discourages and prevents freedom of association and the stigma associated the system is unbearable. In Ifakala community near Owerri Imo State, UNESCO water project was abandoned in the late 1980s till today because the Dialas complained that the project was located on Osu land.

•The Osu discrimination is alive and persists in all corners of Igbo land. From Nanka, Agolo, Ifite Ora village in Nawgu, Akpu village, Abagana, Aniocha, Oyi, Orumba, Idemili, Aguata and some part of Nnewi and Ozubulu among others in Anambra State. Actually, the Osu Caste System in practice, is still very active in all corners of Igbo land, even when most people shy away from discussing it. The problem therefore becomes a sleeping giant. And this is where we believe a lot of job has to be done if anybody is seriously going to make a progress towards its possible eradication.
Please, help us tell more people about this Site, you may have helped redeem a miserable soul in
a small Igbo village.

•Osu practice is very prevalent in Ukwu Ube in Nkwerre LGA, Umuaka categorised one of its villages (Obinwanne formally Amafor) "Osu". In Mbaise, Mbano and Owerri, Osu Caste is just a quite giant, also known in Amankwo Amaeke and Umuezealaije Ogwa in Mbaitoli LGA among others in Imo State.

•The people of Umuode in Nkanu East LGA are believed to be the descendants of Osu and like in other areas, have limited social interactions. No matter their status, the people from Umuode like all the people labelled Osu the whole of Igbo land are not allowed on merit to attain positions because "normally", the Diala will not allow that to happen.

•In Anambra State, it is evident that renowned Igbo families (names withheld), have sold all their property and migrated to Benin in Bendel State and to other Nigerian cities, just to curb the Osu status inflicted on them by their Igbo brothers and sisters. One of such families traced to Uromi in Bendel State on interview, vowed never to return to Alaigbo (Igbo land) again. He told the story of unbearable misery under Osu in his home town and concluded that his action to finally leave his home was to save his children the experience he went through. For those who do not understand, we are talking here in the present.

•Osu has caused communal clashes in clans of Umuawuka and Emii in Owerri LGA, Imo State. Like in Umuode in Enugu state, the Osu of Umuaka in Imo state revolted against the system in the late 1980s. Their youths physically assaulted a couple of Diala women with the intension of transforming them to Osu and the Diala responded with counter forces - the result was blood shed and lost of lives. Over 60 of such incidents have been reported in Imo State alone since 1979.

•In Isi ala Mbano the Osu and Diala do not inter-marry but they live together. In such situation, it is common to hear people say "these are our slaves". The implication is that the Osu (like in Isi ala Mbano) is not allowed to attain chieftaincy titles.

•In Imo state, a pathetic story of a twenty seven year old daughter of a catechist touched everybody with a soul. The girl broke down in tears in a courtroom and told how her father hold her legs and her mother her hands while a native doctor perform a crude abortion to remove a foetus the parents called "an Osu baby" and in the process, destroyed her womb permanently.

•In Enugu State, Mr Ede (a Commissioner) was allegedly dismissed from Office because he protested the way the Enugu State government handled the Osu crises in Oruku community.

•A pastor in Imo State who on discovering that his wife is labelled Osu, drove her and baby away and married a new wife. He found it necessary to tell the congregation that "church is church and culture is culture".

•Another catholic clergy supported his family who were determined to disown their son for his engagement and marriage plans with a girl labelled Osu. The catholic reverend told his brother.. "Do what your parents said". His brother refused and is today happily married but unable to return home with his Osu wife.

•Also in Imo State a young man was brutally beaten and kidnapped by his family members on the eve of his traditional wedding and another was arrested through the instigation and mechanization of his family a day before his Church-wedding. Both cases predicated on the Osu/Diala problem.

•A true story of how an Igbo Osu successful business man given a chieftaincy title turned catastrophe for a whole town, made newspaper headlines. The Dialas in the town regarded his elevation as an abomination and BELIEVED that the gods would punish their town with hunger and sickness. They revolted and ask him to step down. On refusal, the town was engulfed in a sudden violent crisis - blood shed. When the matter was brought to a court, the Judge ruled that to put a stop on further blood shed and ultimately for peace in the community, the Osu chief must step down.

It is true that very few so-called Diala want to participate in the discussion of the Osu problem. Even among those who do, majority pretend, but hide under the guise of culture and tradition anyway to perpetuate discrimination without conscience in their own cities and villages in every important occasion when it mattered the most. There is an aura of supremacy, which one part of Igbo population (same black people) feel over the other in the exercise of Osu/Diala problem. But the truth is; such people lie to themselves because to all Igbo people, to our progress and development, Osu Caste discrimination is a negative boomerang.

Most normal Igbo Diala people, who read this, may probably have never reflected on the fact that they, under Osu and Diala dilemma belong to the dreaded social "Oppressor" group, where I believe they really don't want to belong.

The Igbo people who support Osu are neither so mean and wicked that they don't really care about the misery of the subjugated nor the people called Osu are so used to permanent ascribed status and inflicted inequality that they have resigned to fate they cannot change. Are the Igbo supporters of Osu, wicked? Should the sons, daughters and the descendants of Igbo farmers (for example), remain farmers after hundreds and thousands of years? Where are the exemplary Igbo men and women, when the Osu Caste System tears us further and further apart? Under Osu caste system, why do the Igbos abide to a very negative way of life?

"All human beings are born equal and imbued by their creator with certain inalienable rights."

The Igbo people under Osu discrimination make this fundamental natural endowment impossible and at the same time expect, take and enjoy such inalienable rights from other people wherever they go. Are we Igbos really lovely people?

"One, who cannot change the fabric of his thought, will never be able to change the reality and therefore will never make any progress."

Are the Igbo people so used to primitive tradition that they are afraid of a change? If you are not an Osu, would you allow your son or daughter to marry an Osu? Who is Osu? What made him or her remain an Osu till today? These are the questions facing every Igbo man in a modern world changing very rapidly.

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