OHAZURUME: The Philosophy and Practice of Decision Making and Consensus Building among the Ndigbo of Nigeria

Abstract

This paper studies the OHAZURUME philosophy and practice of decision making and consensus building among the Ndigbos (the Igbos) of Nigeria. OHAZURUME, which literarily means ‘it is the communal will; is a, philosophy and practice that ensures that decisions are easily accepted because of its collective properties. Because the issue is decided collectively by the ‘oha’ [the people], no individual can upturn it. OHAZURUME draws from the overall ‘ohaka’[the community is supreme] philosophy and is predicated on the conditions that the matter is tabled openly for discussion, that EVERYBODY is allowed to contribute and that the preponderance of public opinion is upheld as the communal judgment. This paper adopts the participant observation and interview methods and identifies a simple, Nine-stage process of OHAZURUME and establishes that as in other decentralized systems, individual rights and views are respected; individuals accept and respect the communal interest; dissent is accommodated; there is direct participation in decision making and every eligible male has equal right. The paper also undertakes a comparative analysis and discovers that OHAZURUME shares the basic features of other consensus building models like Japanese, Quaker, and CODM, which include group ownership of decisions, participation, and respect for dissention. The paper avers that the key attraction of OHAZURUME is its simplicity. The implication of this study, especially for an international audience is that it develops and articulates a new management concept and practice, enlarges the consensus literature, identifies management philosophies and practices from other climes and expands the dimensions to comparative management.

Igbo Culture and the Development of Modern Management Theory

“…Motivation is essentially the process of attaining corporate objectives by meeting the requirements or wants of certain employees. Work motivation, according to Kulik, 1999 in Muo and Oghojafor (2012), may be thought of as a collection of internal and external influences that start off a person's behaviour linked to their job and then define its form, direction, intensity, and length. The idea is relevant to the workplace and takes into account both internal and external variables that might affect how an individual behaves at work.…”

Ending Gender Discrimination in Succession to Traditional Ruler-ship in Nigeria

“…The Edo people of Midwest Nigeria mainly practised the system of male primogeniture (Edo, 2008). Among the Igbo people of Southeast Nigeria, gerontocracy appeared to have been prevalent (Onyeozili & Ebbe, 2012, Muo & Oghojafor, 2012. The eldest man in the community usually emerged as head of a council, but often without the overriding and commanding force of a king.…”

Traditional Management Philosophies and Practises: The Case of the Esans of Edo State of Nigeria

“…It is a human natural sense of duty and system that has driven the development of economies and its activities for as long as the existence of human history. Osuntokun in Muo & Oghojafor (2012) stated that it is assumed that before the recent development of management theories in contemporary present-day countries, particularly the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the world "merely muddled through without much thought about means and ends of human endeavours as well as goals and aspirations and a strategy to attain them". This assumption/belief is worse in relation to the part of Africa that is south of the Sahara Desert where studies on management theories and philosophies are few compared to other regions of the world (Steers, Sanchez-Runde & Nardon, 2010).…”

“…In the Centralised system, leadership is "organised under well entrenched highly structured political authority, a political sovereign backed by law enforcement agency and habitually obeyed by the people". In the Decentralized system, control is by the dynamics of clanship where there is the existence of a complex set of rules of conduct which have been long in existence and enforced by heads of fragmented units or sections and in very serious cases, by unprompted community action (ECA, 2007;Otumfuo, 2004in Muo & Oghojafor, 2012. The Esans of Ekpoma in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State, with the existence of an organised "well-entrenched highly structured political authority" under a political sovereign is one of the peoples who practise the centralised (chieftaincy-based) system of management leadership.…”