SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND INDIGENOUS EPISTEMOLOGY IN IGBO ORAL TRADITIONS: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

This research examines the role of Igbo oral traditions in shaping indigenous conceptions of self-knowledge and epistemology. Drawing on proverbs, folk narratives, myths, and traditional performances, it situates Igbo thought within a holistic, relational, and performative worldview. Despite the richness of these traditions, dominant Western epistemological models continue to marginalize indigenous African knowledge systems by privileging written texts and individualistic conceptions of the self. This has resulted in the inadequate recognition of Igbo oral traditions as rigorous philosophical sources for understanding identity and knowledge. The research is anchored on analytical and hermeneutical methods. Selected oral forms and their representations in classical Igbo literature are examined using insights from African epistemological and performance theories. The findings reveal that Igbo self-knowledge is constituted through five interrelated dimensions: spiritual identity (chi), moral character (agwa), communal belonging (umunna), ancestral continuity (ndichie), and cosmological order (Ala and Ofo). These dimensions are embedded in oral traditions that function as living archives of ethical instruction, cultural memory, and social regulation. The study concludes that Igbo oral traditions represent a coherent and systematic indigenous epistemology that challenges Western individualistic and rationalist models of selfhood. It argues that self-knowledge in Igbo thought emerges through continuous alignment with community, destiny, and cosmic order, thereby affirming oral traditions as legitimate and rigorous sources of epistemic, ethical, and anthropological knowledge in African philosophy.