WHERE are the historical roots of the Ijebu and the Igbo? For a Nigerian researcher, Dr. Fatai Ayisa Olasupo, these roots are firmly located in the Middle East, precisely Israel. Olasupo who is a senior lecturer at the Department of Local Government Studies, Faculty of Administration, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife in Osun State, wrote […]
Each year growing number of our African American brothers and sisters are reclaiming their Igbo heritage, thanks to the incredible DNA project by our sister Ada Naja Chinyere Njoku and her group. Chinyere has traced her heritage back to Ala Igbo, and several years ago was reunited back with her Igbo family through an incredible […]
Akuma-Kalu Njoku, Ph.D., a diligent and soft-spoken man, is a Professor of Folklore Studies and Anthropology. In many ways, Prof. Njoku’s intimate insights and unique knowledge of Igbo ethno-folkflores and tradition –especially the historical foundations and sites of the Arochukwu/Ohafia/Bende region of the Igbo nation, have set him part, in my view, as the major resource […]
Motivated by the desire to take Igbo New Yam Festival to greater heights, Chinedu Idezuna has renamed the fiesta in Lagos as Eko Oni Baje New Yam and Beach Festival. Spicing it with other theatrics in addition to the aquatic splendor of Lagos State, the new name is to create a wider audience and acceptance […]
Olaudah Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa, was an African slave, who later became an author, whose 1789 autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, was influential in ending the slave trade in Europe. As a young boy in Nigeria, Equiano was captured with his sister. During his life as a slave, Equiano […]
Across Igboland and among the Igbo of Nigeria in the Diaspora, the month of
August, as it is now, is gladdened with the celebration of New Yam called iwaji
and irijiohuru. This is best pictured in the framing of the ceremony by Chinua
Achebe’s work as far back as in the 1950s.As Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
(1958) describes it: “The pounded yam dish placed in front of the partakers of the
festival was as big as a mountain. People had to eat their way through it all night
and it was only during the following day when the pounded yam “mountain” had
gone down that people on one side recognized and greeted their family members
on the other side of the dish for the first time."
