As, Bs and Cs of and Insights into the Osu Caste (Cult) System in Igboland

~ Onye gbuwa achara, onye gbuwa. Onye akpola ibe ya onye ikoli?

The cult of A, B, C - abomination, bigotry and calamity: The osu caste system was a primordial criminal justice system instituted to check deviance in the Igbo society. It was the capital punishment for gross misconduct or great crimes, if the slave took shed or refuge in a shrine. There were several ways that anybody could become an outcast including unwittingly passing the night at a shrine or in the home of an outcast in Igboland. The system comprised consecrated slaves who took oaths in the shrines, seeking protection from the deity against any assailant and death for any grievous or gross crime committed against humanity; or as a victim of war. Pathological thieves, murderers and suspects/convicts of other atrocities/vice such as conspiracy/disobedience, were the primary members of the osu/umeh caste system of many Igbo societies. Naturally, the secondary members of that caste were those who were captured from other cities or communities and made slaves as spoils of war. Today, do you know some people who wouldn't stop lying (or committing other atrocities) and you wondered if they were born with a bad gene? While this has no relationship with the osu/umeh caste system, my opinion is that it can have a correlation as many of them enjoy tribal immunity that affords them their vices.

Pic credit: guardian.ng

While the thieves and prostitutes were almost always sold into slavery the murderers were executed by the community. Fore knowledge of the plan of the community against them to kill them or sell those into slavery necessitated the flight to the shrine in search of refuge. In most of Igboland, osu was the name given to shrine slaves in many Igbo communities while they were also called umeh in others. Osu was different from ohu who was the house slave in those Igbo communities. The osu was made a living dead for running away from the law and seeking amnesty from the deity, thus subverting justice. Whilst amnesty was given to them they didn’t enjoy acquittal – they didn’t have freedom of association with the community any longer. Their plight after being sworn or given to the deity was akin to that of the Biblical scapegoat that was given all the pestilences, diseases and troubles of Israel and driven into the wilderness.They suffer(ed) relegation in most Igbo cities that practiced the ethos or culture. However, for being a resident of the shrine, the slave called osu/umeh heard nearly all the town or village secrets; learnt the signs and symbols, crucial information and ethos from patrons and/or the chief priests. To the past osu/umeh, everything was symbolic and their posterity has carried on with the tradition of symbolism even in modern life. Today, they are often the unknown enemy within families, marriages, communities, societies, states and the country. They are often the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Are they sworn to perpetual conspiracy? The seven S's of the osu caste system were: slavery, superstition, sabotage, scandal/sacrilege, secrecy, savagery and sorcery.

As, Bs, are Cs, thus:

The As were: atrocity, aggression, ambivalence, accountability, abomination, animosity, antagonism, and arrogance, among others.

The Bs were: bigotry, brutality, bestiality, baggage, blackmail and belligerence, etc.

The Cs included: canker, calamity, conspiracy, controversy, consecration, conflict, corruption, crime and curse, etc.

The osu wandered around the villages, male and female, like the scapegoat, often in tattered clothing because they were unkempt. For work, sustenance and providence, they tended the grounds of the shrine, providing service to the priests and/or priestesses. They kept the livestock of the shrine and ran other errands as assigned by the officials. The osu was kept an enemy of the society/state. They didn’t mingle with the freeborn called the diala or nwadiala who were the custodians of the Igbo society. The osu didn’t take titles; they were forbidden to do so in many communities. They didn’t fetch water from the same stream or on the same day as the freeborn. They didn’t shop from the same market or at the same time as diala. Osu and diala didn’t inter-marry. Those that couldn't sleep in the shrine slept in the marketplace as urchins. The outcasts were a menace in the society often fomenting trouble at every turn and they were always ignored for their lack of decorum. If hungry, the osu would snatch or steal any assistance from a victim who was forced to not seek revenge. The osu was branded, often with part of the body mutilated, usually an ear or a finger cut off. Nobody would beat an outcast nor cause him bodily harm for it was abomination to do so or let their blood touch the ground. Anybody who did so in the past would become osu themselves. When an osu or umeh became very notorious he or she was taken away from the community and executed and the god(s) appeased with an adult male or female cow.

Osu was a (cultural) heritage, passing from parent to offspring. The advent of Christianity changed the discrimination against the osu. They were pardoned or granted amnesty by the white man. Unfortunately, many offspring/posterity of osu or umeh thought the amnesty to be acquittal and many have remained obnoxious and gone scot-free. Today, many who had a heritage of the osu caste system are in positions of authority in Nigeria and around the world. They have infiltrated the University system presumably including JAMB (the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board) and give fake admission to undeserving candidates, thus entrenching corruption. They are in the banking system leading to failed banks and a failed economy. They might have colluded with criminals as officers and men of the armed forces including the police. They could have even gone abroad to sell our sovereignty. They embezzled public funds as politicians, destroyed academia as scholars. Today, many of them justify prostitution, promiscuity and lack of accountability by often saying, ‘Every woman is ashewo’ or ‘nobody is perfect.’

The Nigerian osu/umeh are drug warlords, are members of secret societies, engage in corruption and usurpation. They are usurers, engage in money laundering, money doubling and other dubious economic practices. They are never removed from cults because of their heritage and association with the shrine and esoteric manipulations. Many are engaged in black magic, voodoo, sorcery, and clairvoyance. Many are members of orthodox churches such as the Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, etc and engage in fetish worship of humans and objects of symbolism. To what extent the osu are removed from ancestral curses is unknown to me. They have transferred evil from their pagan past into pagan modern life. They still visit with witch doctors around where they live. I never wondered where a witch doctor was located but once I accompanied an associate to a weird place where she had alleged lived a man who would sell rabbits to her for rearing. I wouldn’t have considered such a place a shrine. Fortunately, the man, the alleged rabbit farmer, wasn’t in and we left. I wouldn’t know if Ms Phil Ngozi Nwoko was able to start her rabbit farm as that was near the end of our first degree in Ibadan in 2004.

Those who were of or practised the osu cult could cast spells on other often suspecting people, lie maliciously against anybody holding them to standards they wouldn’t hold themselves to. In modern existence, they enjoy double standard. While you mayn’t discuss their past, the osu harnessed and leveraged it all to the fullest. They are often not executed for crimes that call for the capital punishment such as murder, drug trafficking/peddling or some other heinous crimes against humanity because they are very connected to very important personalities in today’s Nigeria. The osu caste system may have started the modern cult of networking. They were informants and traded secrets from one shrine to another. Possibly, those who practise modern witchcraft must have roots in the osu caste system of Igboland. Many are modern witches, often practicing Wicca and belonging to esoteric secret societies such as the Rosicrucian Order, the freemasonry, possibly Hari Krishna etc. They are familiar with other modern Heathenry often shrouded in Christianity and associated with Europe including the Scandinavian. They are useful to many a conspiracy. They are the trouble in the land while they enjoy anonymity and amnesty. While not all osu are trouble makers, many of them enjoy notoriety because they are feared in their neighbourhoods and networks.

Since the osu/umeh clans are no longer marked nor bear body deformations it would be hard to note any member of the cult or system. However, their surnames are often a giveaway or tell-tale. Some of their names would include Nwosu, Osuagwu, Osuji, Osuala, Osunjaba, Osuagbara, etc. Others include Umeh, Umeji, Umezurike, etc. Many of those people are pastors and in fact peaceful members of the society. Those names have tarried as have some character traits associated with them. The modern osu feel entitled to other people’s property justifying it with one alibi or another. They must be the reasons items of clothing belonging to other students went missing in the halls of residence of the University of Ibadan. They must have taken such to deposit at shrines or voodoo huts for their black magic. My room with my roommate’s was burgled at 3 Fadeyi Street, Bodija, Ibadan and many of our clothing stolen by the burglars in 2001. I wonder what the burglars did with my clothing and those of my roommate. Perhaps they went to a pagan shrine like the Okija shrine or such and deposited them there. I also suspect that the workings of the Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries could work off this pagan ethos. Many students went through their deliverance (or initiation) rites. I didn’t consult them for information about the University or my future. I did visit the MFM but this was several years later in far away Boston, Massachusetts, USA in 2009. I still have personal effects missing including clothing the last being a Nokia torch cell phone on Easter Monday probably celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the theft in Ibadan, while the villain ashewo is still a mother and free as air. Modern day osu are wealthy having found favour with the White Man and engaging in enriching criminal activities. The diala thought the white man a pest and an intruder who invaded his community and changed his ways in the name of modernization or civilization.

The Nigerian civil service is replete with the osu who destroyed the service and indeed the Nigerian society. They are saboteur and conspirators. They are traitors and tyrants. But this is a blanket exposition as every osu was different as the deities were diverse, the umeh being more vicious slave. Igbo names suggest family history, origin, rank in the society, or wealth. As the proverb goes, ‘ngwere nile dotere afo n’ala; amaghi nke afo oruru na-eme.’ The stomach of every lizard is on the ground, nobody knows the one nursing a stomach ache, so it is with the Igbo society when it comes to the issue of osu.  Beyond name there’s no telling between osu and diala in the present Igbo society. Hence, the society suffers because of interference from the West and in Nigeria from Yoruba who gave osu access to free education without recourse to accountability. Except for humiliation and dehumanization, osu wasn’t destroyed intellectually. He has participated in every political dispensation and in the University of Ibadan, in student union government. As the foremost institution of higher education, UI must have a long history of interaction with the Igbo osu caste especially with the dichotomy between them and other students.

I knew nobody who identified himself or herself as osu while I studied at the University of Ibadan. Most offspring of osu didn’t admit to their heritage. In fact, I didn’t get any orientation about the caste system from my family nuclear or extended till date. I wasn’t in the know of many ethos or attitudes that were commonplace and crucial for survival as a student of the University of Ibadan or Igboland apart from the unrealistic and stupid ethos of virginity. Since the osu caste system was proscribed by legislation and discrimination against them was possibly against the law, not much was said about it to my hearing. Apart from Ms Phil Ngozi Nwoko, who told me that she hailed from Umuosu, Isiala Ngwa North I never associated any village with the osu caste system. Yet she informed me that her village wasn’t an osu village even though its name would suggest so. I chose to believe her. However, she told me that her kinsmen could marry their kinswomen and I thought that was strange in Ngwaland. She told me, though, that they revered the ram (evula in Ngwa dialect or ebula/ebule in others) and never ate its meat, which gave them the additional name Umuosoebula.

It must be noted that while osu/umeh caste was unique to the Igbo society of Nigeria other Nigerian societies had pagan cults that found their way into the University of Ibadan through their student and lecturer/worker populations. I wasn’t aware of measures instituted by the authorities to ward off persecution from the marauding osu who stalked others, colluded with lecturers, non academic staff and other students. Even after graduation, some of those undesirable elements have continued to stalk other students into the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). In them are some of the canker that has continued to spread and destroy the intellectual strength, growth and development of Nigeria. Many are bigoted and invincible. During my NYSC in Ibadan, I would consider my three roommates osu, in retrospect. They all had degrees of perversion that I considered extraordinary. One from Agenebode, called Teresa Agbugui did no visible work in her office, gossiped all day with the Nigerian Air Force officers and went out nearly all nights to do whatever was best known to her. She loved money more than a greedy Igbo man.

She was probably Igbo but spoke pidgin all through the corps exercise. I ate her meal once, towards the end of the corps, a tasteless plate of white rice and Yoruba styled pepper stew. I endured her until I recently found her vindictive and malicious because I had travelled to the United States. She hardly called her roommate by name only calling her ‘my roommate’ to my hearing. But she was the officers’ favourite, whom she entertained throughout that year.

Her roommate told me her own name was Ijeoma Iwuchukwu. She was single and cooked most of all four of us, I was the least cook in our flat. She was queer, brought a man to sleep in the room she shared with her roommate Ms Agbugui. I thought that was the sleaziest thing a single woman would do, probably to cure her roommate if she made lesbian passes at her at night. The man stayed in the flat for nearly a week, bathing naked in our bathroom and using our toilet; such entitlement. Ms Iwuchukwu surrounded her bed with cocoyam. I wouldn’t know why and I thought that was the most brazen experience of my life since the University of Ibadan. She bathed outside most nights even when the bathroom wasn’t in use, probably some voodoo practice/doctrine or whatever.

My roommate, one Mrs Mabel Ezeobi, was called Madam by the other corps members. She was the canker, gossiping and sharing confidences with Ms Agbugui while I was away. She was the old mama who came to see it all at over 30 years like Theresa Agbugui. She had 5 children, probably six and left them in Onitsha in order to do Ajuwaya for Nigeria. She was in love with two gospel singers, Paul Nwokocha and Gozie Okeke. And for one fiscal year, she hijacked my Trident radio cassette player because the socket in the bedroom was by her bed. I couldn’t believe what I had to endure for Igbo people. I stomached her presence as much as possible but eventually elected to learn a skill at a nearby Lalupon, which was a pagan Yoruba community by Ile Igbon. There was no reason why that NYSC should exist for anybody. I wasn’t accustomed to such idolatry as exhibited in that compound or such pagan consideration as Ms Iwuchukwu did with her cocoyam. If there were rats in the kitchen, didn’t she have her wardrobe which was under lock and key to safe keep them? Till date, I wouldn’t know the significance of that practice. All three women were probably mothers or even mothers and might have lived with men but only Mabel would let me know being the closest to me. The other two, Iwuchukwu and especially the beggarly Agbugui didn’t let the cat out of the bag; they didn’t talk about having any children. For Teresa, it was her brother in the USA, her brother in Port Harcourt or her sister in Abuja, all siblings or her mother in Agenobode. One Mrs Ajimati married in her village not in a husband’s village but she would start later to hint at an imminent marriage to one Tony Ameh from Agenebode. Such craftiness was alien to me and I wasn’t interested in prying for any information. I was the most naïve of the lot, probably still the most naïve person known to anybody. While all that information about those women was then insignificant, it has become a canker worm to me. They lie to people who choose not to verify any information about me but capitalize on such for decision making. Tufiakwa!

Many young osu of the University of Ibadan were probably those students who were absent from classes. Were they asked not to come or did they leave us the osu there and went about their profitable business? Laugh out loud. There was no way to tell but it wasn’t really hard to do school yet some preferred recreation. They stalked unsuspecting contemporaries through residents of Ibadan, competing for whatever wasn’t known to me. They were political aspirants but wouldn’t want to do the leg work but would buy fame along the way. They knew all the Alhajis of Ibadan and often made jokes of their sexual trysts with them. Many of their young women wore provocative wears to the classroom and around the campus. Some could be the menacing harlots and prostitutes in the big cities of Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt and Abuja and around the world including UAE, Italy, Netherlands, USA, UK etc. They parade the whole country looking for skeletons in other people’s cupboards awaiting the future. Why anybody would be up to such mischief was strange to me. I think that one man whom I saw for over a year was in that category. He was the weirdest visitor to any woman’s house. I would highlight more about him in another post. He, according to him, was from Umunede and spoke so much about his pagan village in connection to everything he did or failed to do. He must be osu or just interested in and practised heathenry or paganism. He was the perfect example of ‘chandum’ or charms. I thought he was being cautious but I now loathe him for being such a waste of my time. He counted on using me whenever he was in the ditch. But who cares? He stuck around me in order to furnish gossip about me to Aba, Umuahia, Lagos, Abuja and around the world. He probably was in the gang that burgled my room on Fadeyi Street yet he never confessed nor apologized to me. In Lagos State, the osu are vicious armed robbers but so could be anybody including the diala. A desperado was a desperate and wicked creature of habit.

The osu kept secrets and played the spy to gather intelligence in the community. Many made it look like it was their job to monitor your activities/movement all around the UI campus. They were your course mates, roommates and rogue associates/friends which could lead one to suffer paranoia. One person that I’m wont to call osu still stalks me till date and keeps moving close to me in Osisioma, Aba in Abia State. I think the woman who called herself Ms Chinwe (Chinweobi) Nwaguru of Umuaduru in Ngwa must suffer mental illness or thinks it her right to go everywhere that I have been. She could be the perfect member of the cult of the merry go round, preferring to sleep with every man known to me some of them mere acquaintances of mine. She probably poisoned people’s notion of me. Many of them are the perfect example of associating with or belonging to all the cults mentioned here for their love of gossip and bigotry. I am not in any pact with anybody and don’t understand her modus operandi. What has second class lower degree in Adult Education got to do with my second class upper degree in Igbo? I thought Adult Ed was the more fashionable degree. They weren’t people whom I invited to join me at school yet they camped around or with me as pests, pilfering from me like rats, proliferating like cockroaches and doing harm to me and probably to others for four years or as long as they wished.  I have come to assign the aftermath of the osu crises into two ethos hinging on heritage or acceptance/conviction of the past. Perhaps those attitudes came from how one got one’s oral history and felt about it. It depended on whether one got acquainted with the oral history of amnesty or that of acquittal. Those who chose amnesty as their heritage are remorseful and strive to be law-abiding while those who chose acquittal as their heritage are defiant, recalcitrant and entitled to their rogue lifestyle. Most osu who were the enemy given to shrines as spoils of wars have strived to return to their origin. Others who were asylum seekers at the shrines have nowhere to return.

Nowadays, due to the amnesty granted to outcasts, which is akin to a commissioned jailbreak in modern terms, many have mingled with the osu/umeh cult and have taken up their mentality. They are bold and brave, even brazen but full of effrontery or temerity. They like the ohu of Igboland view themselves as the victim of society and never the culprit. Since, the offspring of osu/umeh weren’t the direct suspects/convicts or villains/perverts of the crimes committed in primordial times, were they to continue in penury and/or victim hood? No. However, the only truth that must be told in comparative terms is that those who suffered capital punishment in modern times didn’t live to have offspring osu or not. Many states in the United States of America (or around the world even in China) still administer the death penalty, which kills the convict of premeditated murder, treason and other felonies. Thus, maltreating the offspring of osu/umeh convincingly removed their DNA from the immediate and just Igbo society. What would amount to atrocity or vice in modern times? Such acts and vice as prostitution, promiscuity, greed, incest, malice, bestiality, homosexuality/sodomy, deviance. conspiracy, cannibalism, murder, treason, blackmail, perversion, etc., could be the crimes for any offender to face the full wrath of the law or become osu/umeh. Usually, anybody caught in those acts could be executed as stated by the laws of the past. Defiance and deference often led to seeking refuge in the occult shrine of the community where they couldn’t eat their cake and have it. The absence of body marks on Igbo osu and umeh in modern society makes it a cult of abomination and the abominable if it perpetuates. They are at home in modern Nigeria where corruption is rife. They suffer an atrocious sense of entitlement that defies common sense. They put themselves in your debt without letting on. They are modern day bigots and voodoo priests and priestesses, an evil prototype of Catholic paganism. Were they really liberated from evil? God forbid. While discrimination has been removed from the osu/umeh, was their rehabilitation and re-orientation complete and free of indulgence? To me, osu/umeh caste system has left being a cultural heritage to becoming a mentality enjoyed by all who love impunity. Many are still of the shrine even if they aren’t in the shrine anymore. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. For the Catholic Church and the pagan sanctity of osu/umeh life, they do not engage in abortion. Many do not marry to have children, having left such consideration for the diala whom society mandates to marry before raising a family. I don’t think that the church forbids osu/umeh to marry and/or have children in wedlock. They breed in their droves and many have found their way into higher education including the University of Ibadan (UI), warts, canker, mischief and all. It is not the job of Nigerian universities and other schools to tackle youth unemployment and over population except in proper engagement of legitimate studentships.

JAMB should have warned unsuspecting candidates that the university education was a haven of bastards, stalkers, schemers, scammers, harlots, heathens, witches, malicious/vindictive liars, magicians, pagans, thieves, gamblers, hypocrites, burglars, prostitutes, homosexuals/lesbians and the untouchable who feared nobody and kept no boundaries while masquerading as undergraduate and even postgraduate students. The burden of proof is on the osu and umeh (even the ohu, the house slaves) to vindicate themselves of all primordial and even present accusations of willful wickedness by living above board. While the University allows freedoms associated with human rights, it's no place to practice wiles associated with tribe. Were you born with a bad gene? If so, must others be in the know? Did or does the osu caste system have any dealings with the Opus Dei?