Igede Agba: What you need to know about the rich cultural heritage of the Igede people of Benue State

* What makes people identical through life is the accumulated set of identity they carries with them. Identity is an important concept from the perspective of cultural development and heritage. Renewal of Igede cultural identity emphasizes the need to preserve, protect, restore, revive, observe and honour all

forms of inherited cultural diversity which are reasons among others for Igede Agba New Yam Festival.

* Participation in Igede Agba New Yam Festival among Igede people is a strong means of identity formation and produces a collective consciousness.

* The Igede nation is an ethnic group united by Agba progenitor, culture and language inhabiting the territory of Igede land and in Diaspora. Igede is the language the people speak, and the name of the ethnic group found majorly in Oju and Obi Local Government Areas of Benue State. A number of them are also found in Gwer and Konshisha Local Government Areas of Benue State; and Cross River and Ebonyi States. The people collectively commemorate Agba, their ancestral father via the event of New Yam Festival as a way of perpetuating and propagating their heritage.

* There are certain disciplines, rules and procedures for doing the Igede Agba festival. By adopting such disciplines, an Igede man is tuned up with his physical and mental capabilities in line with the heritage and etiquettes of the traditional beliefs.

Obeying festive rules is a tool to keep the body and mind actively engaged in some noble pursuits. Accordingly, harvesting of new yams before its free declaration is a big taboo in the region under the tradition of Akpang (gods of the land) divinity. The rites of the new yam eating express the people’s appreciation and renewal with OHE (God) for making the harvest of farm yields possible and successful. Various villages make yam declaration earliest about a month or latest a week prior to the Igede Agba celebration.

Thereafter new yams can be harvested freely. It is important to obey the avowal of Akpang, and in this case a new yam deserves a respect for cultural heritage achieved through dedication, disciplines, rules and purification performances.

The main essence of this practice is to prevent the people from eaten up their yams before there are fully mature. It is also believed that Akpang has the power to thwart and avert evil doers and their activities in the society so that they would not live to see the new yams. This performance marks the harvest of the new yam and as such new yam is not eaten until due rite is accorded and performed. The rite of this deity is carried out in the month of August when the new yam might have matured for commerce and consumption.

The Akpang never permit anyone in the land to eat (bring home) new yam without first of all observing the performance rites of the land. These are employed to create a sacramental space and contact with the Earth gods to cleanse, bless, protect and keep the land as well as prayers for buffer yields.

Nowadays, it is shocked that this aspect of Igede traditional discipline is being acutely eroded by influence of globalisation and westernization.

* Igede Agba New Yam Festival is also called Igede-Day or Igede Agba. Whatever the name among the three means the same thing having equal cultural connotations. It is celebrated with background knowledge of its significance which rekindles the heritage, etiquette and strengthens beliefs of the people. The New Yam Festival is such a highly appealing event to the extent that all other neighborhood tribes do aware and pay visit. This is a development that shows how dynamic cultures are embraced for change and continuity. It is a forum for the people to unite to contribute in spheres of cultural, educational, economic, social, moral and political developments. It is celebrated in commemoration of the progenitor of the Igede people just as the celebration of Christmas, Easter Holidays by the Christians and the seven sacred annual feasts of the old covenant in the bible including Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Weeks Pentecost, Trumpet, Days of Atonement and Tabernacles It is in the like of these events that Igede Agba festival is being celebrated.

* Yam (Iju) is the chief crop in Igede land identified with a rich Igede cultural identity and heritage. That is why it is being used as the fundamental crop to celebrate Igede Agba. But why New Yam Festival is highly pronounced in Igede nation even more than other yam producing communities is best explained to mean how the people cherish, treasure, adore and farm the crop as a key staple commodity with a masculine fanfare.

* Igede Agba New Yam Festival involves a plethora of complex ideas, thoughts, religions, culture and experience of Igede history and activities over a long period of time. The festival is observed annually on the first Ihigile market day in the Month of September. The date alternates between the 1st and 5th of

Ihigile market day is a very good day, a peaceful day when matters are best handled. Additionally, the Ihigile market day is the most remarkable day among all the rest of the market days (Ihio, Ihiobilla, Ihiejwo, and Ihiokwu) in Igedeland. This explains why only significant events and proceedings such as

community meetings, funeral and burial rites, marriages, child naming among others are held on this day.

* Igede Agba is highly respected by the Igede people. In the day in which the communities celebrate the new yam festival, meetings and marriages are withheld as well as funerals. Serving food during the new yam festival is lavished on dishes of yam since the festival is symbolic of the abundance of the

produce. Enough yam is cooked such that no matter how heavily guests and family members may eat, there is always enough at the end of the day. It is in this sense, a season of merriment, generosity, exchange of gifts, awards, displays, commensally, abundance and hanging out together.

* Today, culture diplomats from Igede residing in urban centers celebrate new yam with equal amount of curiosity and zeal to re-engage their life-world and cosmological values.

* The event of New Yam Festival uses yam, often produce, as its central and fundamental food. Yam which is the most important crop item in the locality is

iconic which makes the celebration colourful. The pounded yam dish is being used as the core food of the festival, as the festival is emblematic of the abundance of the produce. Chickens, goats and cows are slaughtered and prepared with delicious soup precisely Ogbonor (Oho’Ono bali Ibehi) to transport

pounded yam to the abdomen destination.

* The Festival is a time of peace, reunion, reconciliation, share and cleanliness.

No one eats alone on this day. With the coming of the month of August, marks the preparation for the grand Igede Agba Festival; and the time and mood of preparation is uniform from one autonomous village setting to another.

* Friends and well-wishers come together to dine and wine together on this cultural day. For this reason, as part of the preparations, it is mandatory to clear the foot path that links to neighbour’s house. Compounds, pathways, and grimy sites are cleared and kept clean for indigenes and visitors to have a feel of the geographical beauty of the community. The whole community arenas experience the best of its cleanliness and physical features as an important part of the meaning of the festival also. This implies you are welcome to visit or branch and eat. Exchange of gifts and food is done with enthusiasm and joy.

* The rite of new yam is to re-enact a bounty harvest and wealth for the celebrants. It is customary that family members wash hands in one bowl or calabash and eat together on the Igede Agba day. The tradition of washing hands mutually in one bowl or calabash by the family constituents is a long established promise which is an agreement or pledge to remain united, and not to harbour bad feelings against each other.

Eating together gives Igede people the chance to communicate and build relationships. It is also a great chance for children to learn the art of making conversation and listening to others.

* The relevance is captured in seeing the new yam festival as a tradition, and one of which culminates the end of a yam farming cycle and the beginning of another. That is perhaps why in Igede cultural setting, invitation to the festival is open to all and sundry-friends, neighbours, kins, relations, acquaintances, in-laws, etc.

* The carnival mood and graciousness at extending invitations and welcoming every visitor, means that there is plenty of food to enjoy as opposed to lack of food in the past months.

* Celebrating the New yam feast is common with men, women and children’s cultural dance, in addition to group eating (epwedii), fashion display, role reversals, masquerades, beauty contest (Adiya), drinking of wine, folklores, commensally and reciprocity all of which are synonymous with the Igede Agba in

Igede life and culture.

Typically, Igede Agba Festival provides a heritage of dances, feasting, renewal of kinship alliances, as well as marks the end of one agricultural season with a harvest to express gratitude and thanksgiving to the society, gods, friends and relations.

This has always been a means of uniting Igede communities through celebrations of harvests and giving thanks for a plentiful growing season. Igede Agba serves to meet special needs, as well as to provide entertainment. The time of celebration offers a sense of belonging for religious, social and geographical groups. It focuses on ethnic topics seek to inform Igede youths of their traditions. It provides means of unity among Families (Ugbiyegwu), Lineages (Imwuahu), Village settings (Epweji), and Clans (Upwuma). It is also a forum for the youths to fine mates. The day is symbolic of enjoyment after the cultivation of season, and the plenty is shared with friends and well-wishers. The festival is a pageant of displayed jubilation, exaltation, gratification and community apparition.

* The annual new yam culture offers the Igede people a wonderful opportunity to exhibit their hospitality with enough food and drinks. It enables them to enjoy merriment and spiritual rebirth together. It instills the spirit of love, charity, generosity and good-will among the people. Its significance lies in the beginning of yam harvest to prevent shortage of food. This is because having food in abundance gives hope for survival.

* Furthermore, new yam festival reminds Igede people of their cultural heritage which promotes spiritual rebirth.

It is imperative to inform the readers that Igede Agba New Festival is not a fetish event but a thanksgiving ceremony to the Sky-God (Ohe Oluhye and the Earth-god (Ohe Oleji) for a good harvest and further prayers for next farming season.

* Our heritage should be embraced, renewed, conserved, preserved and revitalized in the most efficient way for tourist attraction, national and  International recognition.

* Globalization is brain washing. There is discernible change in attitudes among our youth due to globalization. More so, the atrocities happening these days are as a result of people abandoning culture and traditions that checkmate evil doing in the society.

* Today, people marry their relations because they are ignorant of cultural and traditional implications. The younger generation now feels they know more than the elders. People have deviated from our culture, our ways of life. Taboos and sacrileges are no longer observed as they were in the past, our dress codes are in question. Millennium child-rearing and upbringing has taken a different dimension.

PS: When culture and traditions are observed, it brings sanity, blessings for the people; boosts crop yield, sustainable development and people now live happily and hopefully.

Culture and traditions promote peace and unity in communities and that is why leaders, youths and adults in any society must understand the culture and traditions of the people.

HAPPY IGEDE AGBA SEASON.

IT’S A SEASON OF LOVE AND SHARE.

Our culture is what we stand for!!!

# OurCultureOurPride

Source: Igede Ohio Page