There was once a belief that the Igbo man had no concept of time. According to Anayo Benjamin Ossai in his work, Time in Igbo Cosmology: The Ritual and Its Value, he gave an example from Achebe’s novel, Arrow of God, when he reiterated a conversation between two Europeans, Captain Winterbottom and Tony Clerk. In that conversation, they stated that the Igbos have no idea of time, but this is not the case. The Igbo community has always had an idea of time, albeit very different from the concept of time understood by the Europeans. Their’s is characterised by a keen awareness of their environment, with spiritual beliefs intertwined with their experience of time.

The Igbo community has always had a clever way of understanding what goes on around them. The day starts with the cock crowing in the morning and ends when the chickens return to roost. It’s a cycle of repeating the same event repeatedly that gave the Igbo community an understanding that their idea of time moves in a cyclical fashion. But calculating time started from dedicating the market days to their ancestors, deities, and other spiritual forces that are believed to always be present with them.

It can be seen in another depiction from Anayo’s paper when he reiterated the Igbo traditional ritual that involves the head of an Igbo family – normally the father – saying the morning prayer ritual, IgoOfoUtutu, every morning before the day begins: he takes the kola nut in his right hand and raises it to the sky¹. He invokes Chineke, God first, then he touches the ground and invokes Ala, the mother earth, before he starts to invoke NdiMmuo, the spirits, Nnannaa ha, the ancestors, and the forefathers.

Understanding the Origin

The Igbo people are recognised for adhering to their religion. Politics, socioeconomic lives, and community relationships among the Igbo people have always had a spiritual undertone, as does the Igbo man's concept of time. The origins of the IguAro Igbo, or Igbo calendar, are difficult to establish, although some believe they stem from Eri, the sky-born founder of the kingdom of Nri, embarking on a long quest to uncover the mysteries of time. Throughout his voyage, he encountered and acknowledged four spirits. He took note of their names, which were used to identify the days of the week in the Igbo community. However, some research has a different story to tell.

According to Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu’s work, Igbo-African Market Days and the Conservation of the Eco-system, Igbo market days were first introduced into Igboland during the reign of Eze Nrijiofor (1300 – 1390 BCE)⁶. At the time, Eze was the king of the kingdom of Nri, Eze Nri (the rulers of the Nri kingdom were known as religious figures with divine authority and mystic powers), and he was visited by four strangers who pretended to be deaf and dumb. All four of them were carrying a basket, and he offered them a kola nut in response to their visit (a customary traditional belief in the Igbo community that involves presenting kola nuts to visitors), but they didn’t utter a word to him.

In the end, they stayed at his palace that night without being turned out. However, during the night, a soothsayer of Eze sent a rat to their room, and the rat nibbled at each of their baskets at certain intervals in the night, inciting each one of them to wake up and comment on the other’s basket by calling out their names. This continued into the night until each of them commented on their companions’ baskets. 

The next morning, Eze came into their room with a kola nut and addressed each of them by name, shocking them and prompting them to tell him who they were. They each gave him earthen pots to keep in the Nri shrine, stating that it was a gift from Chukwu (the supreme god in the Igbo traditional religion) and permission to use their names to represent the market days of the Igbo people. There could be additional tales of another origin, but neither of these eliminated the religious significance of the four market days.

The market days were thus used to represent the socio-economic activities of the Igbo people, mark rituals that were specifically meant for that market day and keep in touch with the invisible beings that were known to perpetually dwell amongst them. In chronological order, they were known as Eke, Orie, Afor and Nkwo, and they gave rise to the IguAro Igbo, or Igbo calendar which is known to have four days in a week, seven weeks in a month and approximately thirteen months (some communities count a total of twelve months per year) in a year, with the addition of one day known in some Igbo communities as Amaghi Aha (I do not know the name).

The Dibia (native doctor) is given the job of keeping the knowledge of these practices as well as counting the passage of time and recording what the spirits say or want on a specific market day. They are known as the mediators between the human world and the spirit world⁸, and the members of the Igbo community usually consult them at the shrine of their community deity when they need a consultation. In terms of calculating time, an example can be seen in Anthony’s paper when he reiterated a passage in Arrow of God stating that Ezeulu, the chief priest (dibia) and one of the religious and political leaders of his community, kept in touch with time by eating one sacred yam every month from a bamboo platform he had built specifically for the task.

Understanding the Cyclical Nature of the Igbo’s Perception of Time

The Igbo calendar is based on the movement of the moon, in which every month is determined by the number of times the moon, Onwa, appears in the sky. In ancient Igbo traditions, understanding the movement of the moon was done by a select group of spiritually inclined dibias, and it was originally linked to understanding the sacred Aniga’s shell, or turtle’s shell, which is said to carry cosmic intelligence that is passed down through generations and can only be understood and decoded by spiritually gifted dibias⁹. Ancestors of the ancient Igbo traditions used the turtle’s shell as a structural framework and a beginning point for counting the number of times the moon revolved around the Earth. Observing and counting the number of scutes in its shell allowed Igbo ancestors to look up into the sky and determine when the new moon would rise.

xThe moon was seen as a cosmic clock that kept Igbo ancestors attuned to the energy of Ala, Earth⁹. To people who thrive in agriculture, spiritual practices, and harmony, Ala was seen as the most respected cosmic force in Igbo spirituality⁹. Rituals surrounding birth and death are intricately tied to Ala and, by extension, the moon⁹, and there is a consensus that Ala resonates with the rhythm of the moon while the moon draws its vitality from the sun⁹. This general understanding helped Igbo ancestors plan or determine when to perform rituals, plant new crops, or engage in various communal events⁹.

Outside of using the moon to calculate the passage of time, the Igbo ancestors have also observed their surroundings and calculated time based on that as well. These calculations were done within the lunar calendar, and they could be divided into two:

1. Human times⁶

• Individual times⁶
• Collective/community times⁶

2. Ecological times⁶

The individual times refer to those transitional moments that are used to calculate the life span of an individual⁶; for example, determining the age of a child by watching for when they start crawling or walking, while collective times refer to those moments that are marked by events that the whole community partakes in⁶. Events like New Yam Festivals are normally used to trace back what happened at a particular period or when another event could take place in the future. 

Ecological times refer to the different seasons that help determine what ritual or religious activity would take place. For example, the Igbo ancestors were predominantly farmers, and religious activities such as onwa olu (period of farming) and onwa ir iji (the yam festival period) were used to determine when they would go to the farm.

These time periods were supported by little events that the Igbo ancestors observed, such as the length of a shadow in the afternoon (ehihie) or when the cock crows in the morning. They were wrapped into a ball of time since each phenomenon was constant: the sun's repeating movement, the never-ending cycle of the seasons, and human life and death. It gave rise to the belief that time progresses in a cyclical pattern.

Recurring Patterns in History

The connection of the Igbo man to his ancestors has always helped the community to keep in touch and remember their history. To them, history has always been a guide to understanding the various phenomena that have occurred in the past and trying to avoid the same mistakes while also trying to honour their ancestors. That is why there are various phenomena that have been classified as either taboos or venerated as something worth celebrating in the Igbo community.

1. Afterlife and reincarnation: The afterlife and reincarnation are a major part of the Igbo man’s spiritual beliefs. Their deceased ancestors are seen as guardians and protectors of the lineage they had been born into while they were alive, and there’s a belief that their ancestors have a heavy influence on what happens in the physical world. Occasionally, these ancestors are said to reincarnate into these families, and this is known as ilo-uwa.
2. Ogbanje: Ogbanje is also a reincarnating spirit, but it is generally known as a vengeful or evil reincarnating spirit. It is said to deliberately reincarnate only to cause misfortune in a family. They are known to die an early death, sometimes within hours after birth or years, only to come back and repeat the same cycle. The cycle can be stopped by employing the help of a chief priest (dibia) to look for its iyi-uwa (a stone that hinders its return to the physical world and to the targeted family) and destroying it. The stone is normally hidden deep in the ground within the compound of the targeted family.
3. Osu caste system: Osu are a group of people whose ancestors are known to belong to a particular deity or god. They are usually bound to serve in the shrines of this deity, and any relationship and, sometimes, social interaction with the main Igbo community members is forbidden.

Conclusion

The Igbo man's understanding of time has always been consistent with his spiritual beliefs. Understanding that the ancestors of the Igbo people were able to determine time from a few recurrent events in their surroundings is highly commendable, especially given that they had no previous encounter with anything relating to time. Time is structured in such a way that it is very abstract and unnoticeable, but following the journey of the Igbo man’s understanding of time, his subjective views were created from his viewpoint. For example, when he points out the differences between afternoon and evening simply by observing the length of a person's shadow, he projects the understanding that time can be felt. This extraordinary fit has supplied more historical records of the knowledge of time, collected and preserved the Igbo community's view of time, and given birth to various studies trying to understand how the ancient Igbo people perceived time.

Referencing

1. Anayo Benjamin Ossai, “Time in Igbo cosmology: The ritual & its values,” OGIRISI: a New Journal of African Studies 12, no. S1 (2016): 54-67, Doi: 10.4314/og.v12is1.4.
2. Barack Okaka Obama, “IgboMarket Days and Traditional Calendar: An analysis of How IgboPeople Counted Days and Months,” Aguleri History, March 27, 2025, https://www.omtchannel.com.ng/2025/03/igbo-market-days-and-traditional.html.
3. Chinenye Esther Onuoha and Chinedu Uchechukwu, “The Metaphorical Expression of Time in Igbo,” Cogent Arts & Humanities 9, no. 1 (2022): 2131067, Doi:10.1080/23311983.2022.2131067.
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6. Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu, “Igbo-African Market Days & the Conservation of the Eco-System,” in African Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Systems: Religion, Philosophy and the Environment, edited by Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse UK, 2021), 41-55.
7. “Kingdom of Nri,” Wikipedia, last modified May 21, 2025, accessed May 23, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Nri.
8. “Odinala,” Wikipedia, last modified May 25, 2025, accessed May 26, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odinala.
9. Victoria Ezechukwu-Nwagwu, “Why Igbo Market Days May Never Go Extinct,” FunTimes Magazine, March 11, 2025, https://funtimesmagazine.com/why-igbo-market-days-may-never-go-extinct.
10. Oma, “Ògụ́àfọ̀ Ị̀gbò: Igbo Lunar Calendar Explained with Symbolic Details for Odinani Practitioners!” Oma’s Garden, accessed May 23, 2025, https://sloaneangelou.blog/igbo-lunar-calender.