Lawrence Nwimo, Awka
The people of Ezumeri, one of the four quarters in Oraifite community in Ekwusigo Local Government Area, Anambra State, have finally celebrated their long-awaited New Yam festival.
Ikengaonline reports that the New Yam Festival popularly known as Iri ji or Ifejioku is an annual cultural festival by the Igbo people held at the end of the rainy season in August and September.
As expected, the event which was held on Sunday witnessed a heavy presence of sons and daughters of the community who trooped to Obi Ezumeri to catch a glimpse of Odogwu Atu and other masquerades as they entertained guests at the event.
Speaking to journalists after performing the traditional cutting of the Ezumeri new yam at the Obi’s square, Obi of Ezumeri, Chief Christopher Obaa, said the celebration was a norm to bring the people together to display their cherished and rich culture and traditions.
According to him, the celebration is to thank the Almighty God for a bountiful harvest this year and for giving them the grace to witness another New Yam (Iri Ji) celebration.
He said the new yam festival is a very big occasion in Ezumeri land, adding that it is worth doing to show gratitude to the land and ancestors for protection and the successful completion of the year’s farming season.
Also speaking, illustrious sons of the community, High Chief Nnamdi Linus Ofiaeli, Chief Oseloka Offor, and Chief Sunday Enyiobi, said the festival is for the unity of the village.
“We use it to love ourselves. It was started by our forefathers and we grew to learn from them. We gather to eat our new yam and celebrate. It is done in every other place in Igboland and this helps to enthrone love and peaceful coexistence in our land,” they said.
For President-General of Ezumeri, Chief Obiora Offor, who spoke to newsmen earlier: “Our festival is called Ifejioku. As Igbo people, after farming and harvesting, we do a celebration of harvest called iri ji. Ezumeri as one united community celebrate our own and we have done all the necessary rituals to mark it.”
On the significance of new yam in his community, he said it is a kind of ritual respecting, thanking, and giving the land what belongs to it for the opportunity to cultivate and harvest.
He also said it is a way of reintroducing the formal communal living that the Igbo are known for and that the festival reminds them of the old tradition and how things are done in the land.
Speaking further, the PG reminded that agriculture remains a key sector in the Igbo economy, noting that without it, there will be no food in the land.
He commended the State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, for introducing programmes to boost agriculture in the state, urging the people to key into the governor’s plan for increased productivity in the state.
He maintained that the donation of palm oil and coconut seedlings to residents of the state will re-awaken the culture of coconut planting in the state, save the environment from erosion menace, and guarantee economic prosperity to the people.
He encouraged youth in the community and the larger society some of whom he said are struggling to earn a living to retract, look inwardly, and believe in the tradition. “What it requires is when the planting season comes, you do your own normal thing with your family; cultivate your yam and whenever it gets to harvest time, you harvest and celebrate with others,” he said.
