From IKECHUKWU NNADI, Nsukka
Emeritus Professor of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Prof. Damian Opata, has called on Ndigbo to use new yam (Iwa ji) festivals to promote yam cultivation.
Opata made the call in Nsukka in a keynote presentation on the theme “The Event, The Celebration and The Futures,” during the 2024 New Yam Festival organized by the Anambra People’s Assembly (APA) in UNN.
According to Prof. Opata, it is disheartening that many Igbo people do not know the rituals or the traditional processes involved in celebrating new yam, hence his call for use of the festival to promote the process and yam cultivation among the people.
“Every community in Igbo land should use the period of their new yam festival to promote yam cultivation as well as teach the young ones the rituals and processes involved in celebrating new yam,” Opata said.
“It is expected that every Igbo man should use the yam harvested from his farm to perform the new yam ritual, regrettably, what most people are doing these days is celebrating the new yam without knowing or observing the ritual process involved in it.
“It is abnormal that most men are using the yam they bought from the market to perform the new yam rituals.
“Igbo tradition demands that a man should use the yam harvested from his farm to celebrate new yam,” he said.
The emeritus professor, who displayed a yam he harvested from his farm, together with red oil, Nzu (white chalk), Odo (yellow powder), kola nut, and alligator pepper, with other objects which he narrated to the audience the symbolic role each plays in the process of performing new Yam rituals in his Lejja community, in a Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State, said:
“The new yam ritual and celebration is a remembrance of where you are coming from; it is a sign of mobilizing your identity and connecting with your roots, your ancestors and deities,”
He appealed to traditional rulers and other traditional institutions in Igboland to make it a point of duty to use the new Yam Festival of every community to educate the young generation that yam holds significant cultural, economic and social importance to the Igbo people and the need for everyone to cultivate it.
Opata commended the APA for promoting and upholding the Igbo-rich culture of the new yam festival, as well as finding him worthy to be their keynote speaker.
In his remarks, Prof. Florence Orabueze, the Founding President of APA, who spoke on the “Spiritual Significance of the New Yam Festival in Igbo Land,” noted that the new yam festival holds profound spiritual, cultural and religious significance for the Igbo people.
She listed some original insights into the festival’s spiritual implications to the Igbo in the past to include connection to the earth goddess, purification and cleansing, ancestor veneration, divination and prophecy, prayers and offerings, among others.
According to the APA Chairman who is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies at the UNN, noted that in the past, New Yam Festival was a time for census taking of all the adult male members of the community.
“The gods were praised and worshiped when there was an increment in the population of the community. They were also appealed to for intervention when there was a decrease in the population.
“During the new yam festival period, Igbo priests and diviners use various methods to communicate with the spirits and gain insight into the future, as well as community honouring their ancestors through offerings, prayers, and other rituals.
“Today, almost all of us here are Christians, and as we celebrate this year’s new yam festival, we should reaffirm to the Almighty God the values of egalitarianism, honesty, love, justice, selflessness, and compassion for others and our society in order to create and build a new peaceful world order,” Orabueze said.
According to Orabueze, APA is made of Anambra indigenes from the 13 local government areas that constituted the former Onitsha Area Provincial Council in Anambra State living and working in the UNN.
She urged members of the assembly to always remember the motto of Anambra State (The Light of the Nation) where they came from, adding that they should not allow the light in them to go out.
“Our daily action sound interaction should be guided by the principle of equity, fairness, and communalism in the proverb of ‘live and let live.’
Earlier in his remarks, Prof. C.C. Mbajiorgu, Department of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering, UNN, who Chaired the occasion commended APA for organizing the celebration of new Yam Festival every year, describing it as a good way of promoting the cultural heritage of the Igbp, urging other associations to emulate APA.
The occasion had HRH Igwe George Asadu, the traditional ruler of Ihe community in Nsukka LGA as the Royal Father of the day, and other dignitaries in attendance.
The highlights of the occasion were cutting and eating roasted yam.
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