• Ebonyi community hosts arts, culture festival, seeks UNESCO recognitio
From Uchenna Inya, Abakaliki
Ehugbo, an ancient town in the southern part of Ebonyi State, popularly known as Afikpo, is synonymous with culture and tradition. The town has continued to preserve its cultural heritage despite the strong influence of foreign religions and westernization.
Afikpo sons and daughters have, over the years, consistently staged different cultural programmes to keep the culture and tradition of the area alive.
Another of such events was the 2024 Arts and Culture Festival, christened, Afikpo Cultural Arts Festival, which featured printing, sculpture, photography, food and dance.
The programme held at the Ndibe sprawling premises of environment and culture enthusiast, Chief Ewah Otu Eleri, had as theme “Iko Okochi: Reclaiming the Afikpo cultural heritage, friendship, love, celebration, peace and unity.”
The forest setting, coupled with an expansive lawn, gave a picturesque ambience of a natural gallery. The chirpings of the birds, which flew around and the monkeys and squirrels that crisscrossed the lawns, further provided an unadulterated environment. Of a truth, there could not have been a better venue.
A retired director in the Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Mrs. Ugo Uyah Agada, who delivered the keynote speech, described the event as epochal.
She commended the organiser and initiator of the festival for ensuring that it endured these past years. She said that his effort in preserving Afikpo culture was timely owing to globalization, which was eroding everything, including culture and tradition.
“In the late ’90s when I used to lead researchers to visit Afikpo to record one of our events and festivals and so on, I saw a living culture, a vibrant culture, a culture that was accepting civilization with one hand while it was guarding jealously its inheritance. But it is no longer the situation today, it is greatly eroded but, timely, our people have intervened,” she said.
Agada regretted that the Iko Okochi festival and other festivals in the area, which served as unifying factor in ancient times, were no longer as strong as they used to be. She urged Afikpo people to strengthen and uphold them for future generations.
She explained that the Iko Okochi was a symbol of friendship and love, which cemented society and bound the people together.
She recommended heritage culture in the community for tourists to be coming to see who the people are.
“Many expert authorities have identified cultures as the gold mine for developing countries because tourists now like to spend their holiday where the cultures are still intact or where there is existence of a specific local culture,” she stated.
The organiser, Eleri, could not agree less. He declared that the culture and arts of the community are the gold mine of the people.
According to him, while most communities are looking for opportunities to break through in a globalized and competitive world, the people of Afikpo already have skills, arts and culture that have made them very unique.
He promised to continue to host the cultural event to ensure that the culture of the community was preserved and taken to the world.
“The culture and arts of Afikpo people are the gold mine of our people, the way and life of our people that is so predictable that builds into it integrity, creativity. competitiveness and as you can see today, we brought people together.
“We brought the young and the old, we brought printing, sculpture, photography, digital printing designs and all that, all in one space. In a space that brings culture and arts to the people and not confining it to an air-conditioned space but to a natural environment where nature interfaces with culture and arts to project a new life into our community and our competitiveness.
“So, we are very happy today. We brought Mrs. Ugo Uyah Agada, a former director of Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, as keynote speaker. We have Molokwu Azikiwe, who has risen in the culture of Onitsha people where his father, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Owelle of Onitsha, grew up, and here we have the young and the old, we have the low and the high all coming together to use our culture to project us to the world.
“We want to be global; we want to project our people to the global scene. Our competition is not within Nigeria, our competition is the world. So, we want to take Afikpo culture to the world,” he enthused.
Chief Molokwu Azikiwe, son of Nigeria’s first President, who attended the event, lamented that some of the cultures of the community were dying.
He pointed out that a song by the womenfolk used to announce that a woman was in labour, which used to enable her get assistance from her fellow women, was no longer sung in the community.
He called for continued traditional circumcision of all men in the community, describing it as rite of passage and what defines a man in society.
Azikiwe said: “Culture is the way we are, it is our way of life. We cannot separate ourselves from culture, it is what defines who we are, it is what defines what we do and our way of life.
“Before the advent of religion and other things, our culture existed, our forefathers practiced our culture and that is what defines who we are and what we are and the way we live our lives and we cannot do without it. It is an integral part of our everyday life and we must sustain it.
“It is sad that there are some aspects of our culture that are disappearing and dying and we shouldn’t let it to be so. We need to protect it because it is who we are.
“Someone told me that Afikpo people no longer sing a song to herald the birth of a baby whenever a baby is born. That song signified to the community that a lady is giving birth and it signified that all women should come around and help the lady to deliver. It is part of who we are and it is not something we should just let go.
“Religion came after our culture and it is also an integral part of our life and we need to finish together, they are integral parts of us, we cannot separate the two. We have to find a way to practice both and keep the community and our culture going.
“Men should continue to be circumcised, it is rite of passage and it is what defines a man. I am glad that my mother insisted that I and my younger brother came to Afikpo and were circumcised. I am a member of Ekpuketo age grade in this Afikpo.”
In a chat with Daily Sun, one of the stakeholders of the area, Chief Charles Abani, further harped on one of the dying aspects of Afikpo culture.
He observed that only two persons are currently holding the most revered traditional title of Omuzue in Afikpo, a situation he said was worrisome.
He, therefore, called for more persons to be given the title to ensure that it does not die permanently as it is already doing.
He noted that culture and identity were not in conflict with religion and enjoined the people not to allow religion kill Afikpo cultures.
Abani promised to ensure that Afikpo was given global recognition in intangible culture, which he said must happen before he dies.
“We recognise god, we recognize the Almighty even in our local culture, but we need to modernise it a bit. So, we need the younger generation to join us.
“Because I work in the U.S., I will assist what we are doing here, which is intangible culture, to ensure it doesn’t go into extinction. So, we have to protect it.
“I want to commend Ewa Otu Eleri and members of the Afikpo Arts Forum for documenting our intangible culture. There is a UN institution called UNESCO and we have already started the process that will ensure that what we are doing, all our cultures and traditions, will be recognised globally as intangible culture in the world, not just here in Ehugbo.
“The late Professor Otternberg, an American anthropologist started that journey here and documented our culture which made people to know that a place like Ehugbo exists in the world but we need that certificate of recognition from UNESCO,” he said.