Ndi Neni in Anaocha council area will, tomorrow, Saturday, August 10, 2019, celebrate the Iri ji festival. As usual, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Tonimas Nigeria Limited, Dr. Anthony Obiagbaoso, Enukeme, JP OON, the Traditional Prime Minister (Onowu) of the community will celebrate the festival in grand style at Umudioka Arts and Cultural Centre, Neni.

Although in some communities the festival is only marked by eating the new yam, however, in Neni, Dr. Enukeme adds a different colour to the age-old celebration. In such occasion, Onowu Neni always wipe the tears of widows, the helpless and the down trodden. Thus, there will be various competitions.

Dr. Enukeme has not only used the Iri ji festival of Neni to attract visitors of state, national and international importance but has also used the event to showcase Neni to global attention. In fact, this year’s Iriji festival will draw the sons and daughters of Neni at home and in the Diaspora to renew their communal ties and reaffirm their brotherhood and rekindle in them a burning patriotism for community development.

Dr. Anthony Enukeme (OON), the Traditional Prime Minister of Neni and President, State Council of Traditional Prime Ministers, will also use the occasion to revive Igbo cultural heritage and encourage farmers to boost agricultural production.

This is apart from using his company, Tonimas Nigeria Limited, to offer employment to over ten thousand people. Dr. Enukeme has equally constructed and tarred many feeder roads in his community, in addition to offering scholarships to indigent but brilliant students in Neni.

One of the most important and cherished cultural festivals in Igbo land is the New Yam Festival. It is usually celebrated between August and October. The essence of the New Yam Festival is to thank God for bountiful harvests. The festival also heralds the dawn of the harvest season and provides the milieu for social gathering for their people, both at home and in the Diaspora.

New Yam is culturally rooted in Igbo land where wealth is measured by yam. Wealth of a man in those days was valued on the number of yams a man had in his barn. In fact, the size of a person’s ban conveyed an air of his wealth and social importance. One so endowed ate with kings and preferential treatment was given to such people in communal events.

An influential farmer, like Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, always ensured his visitors had full measure of pounded yam in his house during New Yam Festivals. Such were occasions when visitors could not see their neighbours dining with them, because of the mound of yam fufu placed before them until parts of it were leveled with busy hands.

The yam, pounded alone with an Nsala Soup, garnished with goat meat and Utazi leaves is the much sought after in very important occasions like New Yam festivals, birth days and naming ceremonies. This goes to show how important yam is in the menu of such occasions.

The new yam is harvested earlier in August in some hinter lands. For the riverine communities of Anambra East and West, Ayamelum and parts of Ihiala Local Government Areas, the New Yam is primarily harvested in June because of the flood season. This presupposes that the planting season for those communities normally begins from November of every year to ensure the rapid growth of yams before the harvest in June of the next year.

As a sacred crop, the New Yam is not eaten like other crops, as there is always a cultural approval or an announcement by the oldest man in the community or the proponents of customs and tradition in such communities or traditional heads. After all said and done, the New Yam Festival has come to stay.

In fact, Igbos in various land celebrate the festival with gusto. This is the more reason why the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, in partnership with Traditional Rulers in Igboland and some other cultural proponents, especially Traditional Prime Ministers should make the New Yam Festival a tourist destination that can earn foreign exchange for the South East geopolitical zone.

The New Yam festival is not diabolic; it is simply the Igbo man’s way of thanking the Almighty God for a good harvest, as well as sustaining the life of farmers. The festival should, therefore, be sustained as it still remains one of the foremost traditional and most grounded cultural exports in Igboland. 

Affluent individuals across Igboland should emulate Dr. Anthony Enukeme, Onowu Neni in making New Yam Festival a remarkable event.  Iriji Neni 2019, here we come!

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