Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

The Igbo world is profoundly local and particular in her strict approach to varied customary laws and situations. The colonial agents stirringly atrophied and subsequently rendered extinct many vital aspects of Igbo traditional cherished cultural legacies. Based on ethnocentric concepts and beliefs, the European agents considered Igbo customary laws and values decadent, primitive and unprogressive. Owing to this condition, the researchers made frantic efforts to show that Igbo people are organized and civilized with their distinct system and approach to life. The motivation for the research was for the upliftment of the amiable tradition of the Igbo race which is more and more drifting into oblivion, or the abysmal chasm of neglect. The departure is subsequent upon the people’s persistent urge for western oriented kind of life, a situation that is discordant or at variance with the Igbo people’s cultural heritage and normal order of approach to things. The realms of deontology have therefore made it imperative for this kind of study to emerge. As qualitative research, the researchers adopted the primary and secondary sources of data collection and culture area approach for data analysis. As the older generation in the Igbo society, is passing to the great beyond, so also do the pre-literate sources of her cultural norms and values are being truncated and subsequently drifting more and more in the doldrums. It therefore, becomes necessarily mandatory, in order to stall further deterioration of these cultural beliefs and practices part of which being the ritual of cleansing and strict customary laws and situations.

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