By Stephen Onimisi Obajaja, Esq.
The clement weather, the rocks/hills, the vegetation, the social and cultural festivals and annual family gatherings which encompasses communal activities like the famed “iya anda” at this time of the year is unbeatable. The joy of meeting old friends, family and making new acquaintances knows no bounds. It is what makes Igarra one of the most beautiful places on earth to holiday and spend the yuletide season especially if you were born there.
In the midst of this beauty however, is a festering sore – family “schism” – which has continued to be promoted by those who profit from chaos, men who put profit before people, people who make light of tears and blood so long as it feathers their nests.
There is the popular Ekuochi festival amongst the Igarra people and their kin, the Igbirra people of Kogi State. This festival as originally conceived was essentially a night of ritual and drama where the various custodians perform and entertain anyone who braves the yuletide cold and stays up all night to partake in the festivities bar the female folks who are forbidden to even have a glimpse or dare listen to the songs even in their locked down bedrooms.
In the past, the custodians used the night as an opportunity to point out and speak out against the ills in society no matter whose ox is gored and that was a good thing as traces of pure hatred and maligning of character was rare. Those songs of yore were deep, humorous and one could learn a thing or two about proper communal ethics and morals from listening to them.
Gradually the utility of this good thing became questionable as division crept in and the custodians and their supporters became divided and performed along parallel family lines and the opportunity afforded to point out and proffer solutions to ills in society is now used as a principal tool to haul wholesale insults on all and sundry and to further fuel the fire of family “schism” in Igarra.
I was in Igarra as I am wont to do this yuletide and for deep personal reasons as well. What I saw and heard in the Ekuochi festival of the last yuletide really rankles. It grieved the heart and hurt the soul. The songs I heard from both sides of the divide should not be repeated anywhere in the world. The things they said about many Igarra elites and their families whether true or false should not be heard amongst civilized human beings even in private, how much more dramatizing it in the public glare: Haba!. Igarra people!!
Community leaders, religious leaders, political leaders, captains of industry, Igarra entrepreneurs, the famous, the rich, the poor, hitherto revered late leading lights of society, the professionally accomplished amongst us and just about every cadre of Igarra society was torched by these acerbic songs and display. No one was spared.
The irony was not lost on me though when I saw cousins, friends, confidants and sundry beneficiaries of the good will of these so abused men sashaying and gyrating to the often mesmeric rhythm of the musical drums that accompany and give life to these acerbic songs. How do they go back home and live and eat and drink with these same people and then still ask them for help whilst at it?
How we have never sat down to consider that the person(s) who “cursed” the Igarra people must be close to a “god” or that the most potent charm ever made in these parts was used to enchant the Igarra people? Otherwise how do you explain the Igarra question? These are people who freely date and marry across family divide, these are people who take no note of family divide when they forge close friendships, these are people who commonly celebrate grand festivals and have the same culture and traditions and yet this “schism” which threatens their corporate existence has refused to go away or even abate in the face of better education and larger enlightenment.
It needs to become a thesis of study how the Igarra people became the modern day caricature of the Roman Emperor, Nero Claudius Ceasar Augustus Germanicus who fiddled whilst Rome burned. How is it possible that after so many years the Igarra people still do not see the larger picture?
There is so much squalor, poverty, disease and lack of basic amenities around us. Crime is rife, political brigandage and general underdevelopment stares us in the face and no one is bothered about that. Government presence is almost nonexistent in the LGA and that does not prick our conscience. How many Doctors or other health practitioners are in the LGA? What is our capacity to respond to any form of emergency? There is a small campus of a small Polytechnic only in name. What are the Igarra people doing about that?
We have Ojirama dam and there is no portable water in the LGA. That dam was commissioned in 1975 to serve the water and irrigation needs of the whole LGA and parts of Owan and Etsako land. What are we doing about it? The Igarra people can go weeks and months without water and electricity and there would not be as much as a whimper but whip up “anda” sentiments and you marvel at how fleas are drawn to mammals.
It is a frenzy but it shows me one positive – which is that the Igarra people at least have the energy to pursue causes – imagine if that were a noble and edifying cause for the good of all Igarra people?
If we are not determined to self – destruct, we must reflect on the issues of the last yuletide otherwise we run an unintended risk of losing what we do already have and I immediately see three such risks –
On the morning of January 4th, 2025 when I left the town center to return home, I overheard two Igbirra people conversing and they were apprehensive given the acerbic songs they had heard and to paraphrase, one of them made the point that if half of the abuse we haul at each other in Igarra was dared in Igbirra land, Okene would burn.
If Igarra does burn, we would have brought it upon ourselves
Ekuochi is an age long revered festival. An ancient spectacle that has survived till modern times. It is a festival everyone loves to keep but if the abuse continues and things get out of hand who would stop the government from acting in the interest of peace to proscribe it?
Those who enjoy unfettered freedom should be careful not to lose it because that is what the custodians and their supporters enjoy. Our world is evolving and people are now obviously more willing to stretch the elastic bands of our laws. Times were when it was notoriously hard to prosecute and tame online abusers. That is now chicken and chips. In the same vein I fear the day will come soon when a wealthy, influential and strong headed individual would insist on testing our laws on criminal defamation against these custodians and their supporters if he feels hard done by with any or many of the dramatized abusive songs directed at him and his family.
May any of these never happen, but we all have to get responsible and take the message of responsibility to our various homes and families. It is a long haul and we know that the average Igarra man anticipates and prepares for the Ekuochi festival with brio and gusto for a year. The end of 2025 and January 2026 when we rinse and repeat is already here. We know things can be different. Let us determine that it will be different next time (a)round.
May God heal and bless the Igarra people.
Stephen Onimisi Obajaja Esq. is a lawyer, writer, policy and public affairs analyst and he is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the John Adebisi Obajaja Foundation whose main object is “to particularly support posthumous and educationally disadvantaged children, orphans, the poor and the less privileged in society”.
