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Iri Ji or Iwa Ji, the annual Igbo New Yam Festival, is the ‘Big Deal’, something to look forward to from one festival to the next. It is both communal harvest thanksgiving as well as a somewhat spiritual Unity Festival, like communion accompanying the harvest of first fruits.
As old as the Igbo Race, Iri Ji has been celebrated by this industrious, missionary, imperialist, trading, educational and farming people, who have given the West African sub-region some of its biggest yam farmers in history. At various times and in different parts of the diverse communities of Ndi Igbo, the new yam rites were marked in March, at the start of the planting season. It was then more of Ike ji, which is the “tying”or planting of new yam. There is still Ikeji in March, but most Igbo communities, both at home and ‘abroad’, now celebrate the arrival of new yam in September each year. Some communities celebrate at the end of August.
This year, we attended a festival which we had heard pleasant accounts of, especially in the year MTN had sponsored the cultural fiesta.Iri Ji Ndike Festival is a week-long affair that climaxes in the colourful, cultural community feast on the expansive grounds of the Ndikelionwu Town Hall on the first Saturday in September every year. The week-long festival begins on the last Sunday in August, with a nondenominational Thanksgiving Service. This rotates among the various churches in the town, also famous for its 107 years old St. Margaret’s Church which sent missionaries out to towns in the South-East and South-South in the last two centuries.
The week-long festival features Youth events, Seminars/workshops on topics like small-scale business, improved agriculture, cottage industries, educational development, health care and entrepreneurship. A visitor had mentioned that Iri Ji Ndike Festival was the first he attended where people came together and everybody actually ate the traditional roasted yam and sauce, instead of packed snacks and catered food in communities where people were afraid of being poisoned.
Of extra significance is the fact that the King of Ndikelionwu, a renown novelist and culture promoter, is himself a global cultural and literary icon. His Majesty Eze Prof. Chukwuemeka Ike, OFR, NNOM, Ugwu Aro, Ikelionwu XI, is the father figure, beloved Eze Ndikelionwu and Chief Celebrant at the festival. Ikelionwu XI is widely commended for the infectious peace, unity and remarkable development over the years he has reigned over Ndike, an Aro Kingdom that once stretched through Awka to Onitsha.
Ndikelionwu which has been in its present location for over three hundred years, is today a shadow of its glory at a mere 25-square kilometres and a 2009 population guesstimate of over 400,000, most of whom live outside. The festival grand finale is an unforgettable blend of music, dance, Ida Iya, Itu Ona Umuada, Igba Mgba (traditional wrestling), poetry, story-telling, Mmonwu (masquerades), choral music, Akuko Uwa, exhibition of agricultural produce, the keenly contested Yam Farmer of the Year prize and much more! The end of one festival keeps you eagerly looking forward to the next.
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