JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

There is a spiral of confusion generated in Igboland by the apparent mixture of the nomenclature of the supreme being of Igbo religious thought and the anti-social deeds believed to have been inspired by a such supreme being. Before the emergence of IPOB and social media, the purity of the supreme being of Igbo religious thought was never in doubt. The supreme being God was generally identified as Chukwu or Chukwu Okike with other variables like Chineke or Olisa in different dialects. Christianity came and finding that name in the oral tradition of the people, adopted it as the proper equivalent of the Christian name for God. For deception for economic, cultural, religious, and political advantages as shall be shown, the people of Aro nicknamed their oracle Chukwu abiama. With its destruction by the British in 1901-02, the influence of Christianity and the passage of time, the name Chukwu abiama was almost forgotten until its resurgence thanks to IPOB and the social media propagating the hybrid version Chukwu Okike Abiama. By applying a multidimensional approach which includes ethnological and exegetical methods of analysis of the data, with special emphasis on historicity, this paper aims at dismantling the assumptions which present the hybrid version of god Chukwu Okike Abiama as the supreme being of Igbo religious thought.