PHILOSOPHY AND PRAXIS

Burial of relatives especially one’s parents is the most demanding of all cultural responsibilities tradition places on the shoulders of typical Africans and the Igbo in particular. This responsibility is such that the fate of the dead and their offspring is believed to be dependent on how well or otherwise it is carried out. The problem is that the burial makes alarming material demands irrespective of whether the one performing it can afford such material demands or not. This places huge liability on the bereaved and sometimes causes postponement of several burials resulting in accumulation of relatives yet to be buried. A critical analysis of the issue exposes a link between the expensive burial with a cosmology that does not demarcate the physical world from the spiritual, in which the dead in the spiritual world still possess physical attributes and perform bodily functions. This portrays material expenditures at burial as amassing of wealth for the dead in the spiritual world. The difficulties people pass through to meet this obligation and the belief in misfortune visiting those unable to meet up with it motivated this exposition. There is need for cosmological reorientation of the Igbo to fine-tune their worldview in line with contemporary knowledge and practices. Achieving this is a bold step to the amelioration of the burden people carry in the burial of their loved ones in Igbo land.

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