IGEDE AGBA NEW YAM FESTIVAL IN IGEDE, BENUE STATE, NIGERIA AT
GLANCE.
* 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
September. Consequently, Friday, Ihigile, September 1st, is the Igede Agba day
of this year (2017).
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, commensal, 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,
commensal 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
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Ali'Igede Ihio We-Are Nigeria-Pride

We Shall be there guys?

Igede and Idoma, our dearly beloved brothers maintaining our culture of New Yam Festival. Ndiigbo are truily a diverse bunch.

Igede ihiooooooo....

am actually idoma..we go chop poundoo together....






i love igede girls,them fine ghon,sabi cook die..

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