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.