The “town union”—or “home town association” (Honey and Okafor 1998)—is a form of association widely known throughout Africa since the late colonial period. “Town union” is the generic term usually employed in and with regard to Igboland, and is used as such in this book. Specific unions are known under a variety of names, combining a reference to the locality or group with terms such as “clan,” “development,” “improvement,” or “progress(ive)” union or association. In Igboland, the town union constitutes only one, albeit a very important, form of association among the numerous levels on which associations are formed.

A few definitions and attempts at delimitation are necessary. The Igbo town union is an organization on the local level, reaching beyond the extended family or kinship group, but having a focus that is considerably narrower than that of an ethnic or pan-ethnic organization, which often has a federal character (such as the Ibo State Union up to 1966, for which see chapter 5).1 As the name implies, the town union usually applies to the organizational level of the village group or “town” (obodo). There are usually unions on the smaller levels of a town's constituent units, for example, village unions, which are somewhat less formally organized and, on the lowest level, may become identical with (regular) meetings on the village or extended family level. Today, in practice, the town union on the village group level usually forms the highest relevant level of associational activity in the Igbo local community.

The typical Igbo town union has a number of peculiar characteristics, as regards membership and purposes. It is, first, a general-purpose organization, claiming to organize and represent the community not only for specific goals and projects, but with regard to any social and political themes. As the common good and communal aspirations are understood to coalesce in the term “development,” the terms “town union” and “development union” may become largely synonymous, and numerous town unions indeed carry the term “development” as part of their name. Second, the Igbo town union is a general-membership association. This distinguishes it not only from more specific interest groups and professional associations (such as traders’ associations, farmers’ cooperative societies, etc.) but also from the more traditional associations such as age grade and women's groups that build crosscutting ties within a community largely defined by kinship relationships, but are not open to everybody.