Before the
16th century, the Igbo had an ideogram form of writing called “Nsibidi
ideograms” (“Nsibidi” is an ancient system of graphic communication
indigenous to the “Ejagham people of South-eastern Nigeria and
South-western Cameroon in the Cross River region”). This form of
writing was also used by other neighbouring people like the Ibibios and
the Efik. The form of writing was invented by the Ekoi people for
written communication. This form died out most likely due to the fact
that many of its users were members of secret societies such as Ekpe,
who then made “Nsibidi” a secret form of communication and did not want
to publicly discuss it.
(“Nsibidi”: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution
and Oraka (1983), the foundations of Igbo Studies, pp. 17, 13). The
first book to publish Igbo words was Geschichte der Mission der
Evangelischen Bruder auf den Carabischen (German: History of the
Evangelistic Mission of the Brothers in the Caribbean), published in
1777. Shortly afterwards, in 1789, the interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, featuring 79 Igbo words. The
narrative also illustrated various aspects of Igbo life in detail, based
on Olauah Equiano’s experiences in his hometown in Essaka (Oraka,
1983:21; Equiano & Olaudah, 1789: 9). In 1854, a German philologist
named Karl Richard Lepsius made a “Standard Alphabet” meant for all
languages of the world. In 1882, Britain enacted an educational
ordinance to direct the teaching of reading and writing only in
English. This temporarily inhibited the development of Igbo, along with
other languags of West Africa and this was after the Igbo culture had
been comprised by British imperialism in 1807, after slavery was
abolished. ‘Central Igbo’, the dialect form gaining widest acceptance,
is based on the dialect, of two members of the Ezinihitte group of Igbo
in Central Owerri Province between the towns of Owerri and Umuahia,
Eastern Nigeria. From its proposal as a literary form in 1939 by Dr.
Ida C. Ward, it was gradually accepted by missionaries, writers, and
publishers across the region. In 1972, the society for Promoting Igbo
Language and Culture (SPILC, a nationalist organization which saw
central Igbo as an imperialist exercise, set up a standardization
committee to extend central Igbo to be a more inclusive language.
Standard Igbo aims to cross-pollinate central Igbo with words from Igbo
dialects from outside the “Central” areas, and with the adoption of loan
words.
The wide variety of spoken dialects has made agreeing on a
standardized orthography and dialect of Igbo difficult. The controversy
over Igbo orthography began in 1927 when the International Institute of
African Languages and Cultures (IIALC) published a pamphlet called
“Practical Orthography of African Languages”. The consonants /kw/, /gw/
and /nw/ were added to represent Igbo sounds. The pamphlet used some
symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which brought a
controversy with the missionary society who had used Lepsius’ writing
for almost 70 years. In 1929, the Colonial Government Board of
Education tried to replace Lepsuis’ with the International Institute of
African Languages and Cultures’ Orthography. The Government, along with
Roman Catholic and Methodist Missionaries, accepted and adopted the new
orthography; however other protestant missionaries opposed it. A
standard orthography which is the current Onwu alphabet, a compromise
between the older Lepsius alphabet and a newer alphabet advocated by the
International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (IIALC) was
agreed to in 1962.