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Theme Of Igodo In Nigeria

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Andy Amenechi’s 1699-frame Igodo, one of Nigeria’s most popular epics, recounts the heroics of seven brave men on the hunt for the hidden knife in the hills of Amadioha – the god of thunder – that takes them through dangerous jungles and evil forests to save their clan that was plagued by extinction. At the end only one man – Igodo – survives the test of time, and saves the entire clan of Umuoka from extinction, making him the hero of the film. Igodo is an intergenerational story that can only be told by the men who lived it and also by the dibias – the diviners, the cultic priests, who see into the seeds of time and interpret the secret world of the spirits.
Collective memory amongst the Igbo of Nigeria, like in the Mandé-Malinke cultures of French West Africa, is also the preserve of an institution – the dibias – who can pass it on from one generation to another. The dibia, like the griot, is an inherited office from father to son. Igodo, as an epic, is a wonderful blend of collective memory and ritual divinations in the lives of …show more content…

Ihukumere, (meaning – great things have happened to us), was born in the full blast of thunder and the potents of the heavens, and was immediately taken by the chief priest to be offered to Amadioha, the god of thunder. The astral powers already favoured Ihukumere from his childhood, and that courted the jealousy of the village elders who accused his father of having bribed the chief priest for proclaiming him the next Egue – king of the land. That jealousy eventually materialized in a planned and organized murder of the entire family of Ihukumere. The young boy Ihukumere was lucky to flee, and was found by a hunter of another village called Umuoka, who took him into his home and trained him to be a wonderful marksman and successful

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