No nation, race, tribe, community or society can move forward without a real grasp of its history. As human beings, we speak to the future in the accent of the past. The annual Ahiajoku Lecture Festival was instituted by the often-praised Chief Samuel Onunaka Mbakwe administration. It is unarguably the first real attempt by any government after the civil war to articulate Igbo world view and heritage into a festival. The first Ahiajoku Lecture was held on Friday, Nkwo, November 30, 1979 – just two months after the Mbakwe administration was sworn in on October 1, 1979.
So it is evident that the brains behind the lecture festival were at work even before the administration was sworn in. The Ahiajoku Lectures are usually thought-provoking; a product of intensive research and an excursion into Igbo cultural values, traditions and proud heritage. It is an affirmation of the ideals very dear to the Igbo nation. Every year the lecture is delivered by no less a person than a professor who must be of Igbo extraction chosen from any of the various disciplines of human knowledge.
Coming two months after the inauguration of the Chief Sam Mbakwe administration on October 1, 1979, many sceptics never gave the idea a life beyond that administration. Thirty five years after it commenced, the annual lecture series is still standing and waxing stronger. For many years after the Mbakwe administration, the lectures were held inside the Grasshoppers Handball pitch of the Dan Anyiam Stadium and inside marquee tents. However, help was to come just a few years ago. The Governor Ikedi Ohakim government took up the challenge to rebrand and reposition this unique lecture festival by awarding a contract for the construction of a befitting structure and monument which it aptly called the AHIAJOKU CONVENTION CENTRE. A massive building that can accommodate thousands of people at the same time, it is to the glory of the Ohakim administration that it conceived and brought the idea of the building to fruition. In 2009, the Ahiajoku Lecture Festival clocked thirty years. To celebrate it, the then Ministry of Culture and Tourism in collaboration with a consultant compiled all the lectures into a book. It is a trilogy of ten years per compendium. This compendium remains the first and most comprehensive compilation of the lectures into a book till date and can be bought from that ministry. It has become a veritable source of information and knowledge for students of African studies conducting research about the Igbos. The Ahiajoku Lecture Series enjoyed tremendous support from that administration until we got to where we are now.
Just recently during an inspection tour of the uncompleted (but in use) Ahiajoku Convention Centre site, Governor Rochas Okorocha decided to turn the hand of the clock backwards. Descending from an Olympian height, he launched a scathing and blistering attack on this annual intellectual festival. It was an unexpected attack from the governor of the host state of the festival. In a fit of anger, the governor erroneously described the name, Ahiajoku, as symbolizing a ‘’deity’’ and surprisingly claimed that Imolites have expressed dissatisfaction with it. If you are very good in reading the body language of his Excellency rightly since he came to power, then Ndi Imo have to brace up for either a name change of the festival (he has done a similar thing in the past) or an outright abandonment of it through non-funding until the expiration of his tenure. In preference, he has converted, rededicated and ceded the Ahiajoku Convention Centre monument to the Imo Chamber of Commerce, Trade and Industry (ICCTI). Not even the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, Trade and Industry, unarguably the most viable and vibrant in the whole nation, has an office space as gargantuan as this. Now let me ask: what is wrong with the present office space of the ICCTI located on Okigwe Road? It’s small and unbefitting? Are the members complaining about location or size?
As a keen follower of events in my dear state, I am not in the know that the governor at any time in the past conducted any vox pop on the appropriateness or otherwise of the name, Ahiajoku, before claiming that Ndi Imo are dissatisfied with it. For decades, I have followed the Ahiajoku Lecture Festival and I dare say without equivocation that neither the name nor the activities of the lecture festival are anything near a deity. In retrospect, there is no doubt in my mind that Governor Okorocha’s decision to rename the ACC is not a product of sound advice and wide consultations with those who should know. If he had consulted widely, the answer would have been a resounding ‘’please don’t hurt or destroy our pride and heritage as a people’’. The smear campaign against Ahiajoku is a justification of the governor’s lack of interest in the annual intellectual festival and an attempt to forcefully grab accommodation for the Imo Chamber of Commerce, Trade and Industry.
Let me say that the setting up of a chamber of commerce and industry in Nigeria is purely a private sector initiative. Government’s responsibility in a situation like this is to provide the enabling environment for the industries to take off and thrive. Now where are the industries the governor promised us during the election that brought him to power? Where is the much talked about sound economic base that is a prerequisite for industrial revolution? A chamber of industry is not made up of only a gargantuan building. There must be industries to employ the army of unengaged youths roaming the nooks and crannies of our state. If the government feels so enamoured with having a befitting office space for the chamber of commerce and industry, it could as well donate a land space and further assist with funds for its construction. Or it can renovate one of the several abandoned buildings belonging to her strewn all over the state capital and hand it over to the body.
It is laughable reading the statement credited to the governor in the print and online media calling Ahiajoku the name of a deity. The New International Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language (2004 Encyclopaedic Edition) defines a deity as a ‘’god, goddess or divine person’’. In the same vein, American born academic and anthropologist, Covington Scott Littleton (1933 – 2010) in his book, Gods, Goddesses And Mythology defines a deity as ‘’a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans but who interacts with humans positively or negatively in ways that carry human to new levels of consciousness beyond the grounded pre-occupations of life’’. In the light of these two authorities cited among many others, where lies the deity in the name, Ahiajoku? Is the Ahiajoku the governor referred to the same god or goddess mentioned here whose powers are greater than those of ordinary humans? Where is the location of the Ahiajoku shrine? Ndi Imo will need answers to these questions.
In the words of late Ambassador Gaius Kemjika Anoka (Chairman 1979 Ahiajoku Planning Committee), the man who first conceived the idea of the Pan-Igbo intellectual harvest celebrations and laboured very hard to bring it to fruition ‘’Ahiajoku is an Igbo conceptual reference to cultivation, fertility and harvest…Yam, being the prestige and culturally important crop of the Igbo people, its cultivation and harvesting are traditionally linked with Ahiajoku which is also variously called in Igbo land as Ufiejoku, Ifejioku, Njokuji, Ihinjoku, Ahajoku, Fijioku, Ajoku, Aja Njoku or Ajaamaja’’. Need I say more because the master has spoken? To rub it in, just recently, I saw a picture of Governor Okorocha in the papers at the annual Iri Iji Mbaise Festival sharing some joyful moments with the natives. Perhaps, his Excellency needs to juxtapose what he went to Mbaise to do with the name and explanation given above about Ahiajoku by the respected, late Ambassador G. K. Anoka (also an indigene of Mbaise). Is there any difference? As political leaders, let us all draw a line between what is culturally ours and playing to the gallery. I am sure that Ambassador Anoka will feel very uncomfortable in his grave because of the denigration going on now around Ahiajoku.
Let me state here that in all the 35 years of the Ahiajoku Lecture Festival, it has not at any time been associated with any occultism, ritualistic or idolatry activity. Its activities are conducted in the open and lately on global Nigerian television networks. It is on record that well known clergymen such as the late Rev. Fr. (Dr) Ifeanyi P. Anozie (former Commissioner in Imo State), Rev. Fr. (Dr) Theophilus Okere (former Rector of Seat of Wisdom Seminary, Owerri), Rev. Fr. (Professor) Izu. M. Onyeocha, Venerable D.C.A. Oguike, Rev. Canon (Dr) R. Maduka, Rev. J.O. Iroaganachi and Rev Canon E. E. Obilo and a host of others had at one time or the other participated in the planning committee of the Ahiajoku Lecture Festival. If there was anything un-Godly about the name and its activities, I am sure these men of God would have kept their distances from the lecture festival.
One thing you cannot take away from the Mbakwe administration is the intellectual content of that government. It had world class intellectuals and technocrats who knew their onions and articulated direction for it. Up to this day, the Mbakwe administration remains a model for successive governments in the state. We had people like the late Professor Adiele Afigbo, late Professor Martin Ijere, late Dr Ray Ofoegbu and Ambassador Gaius Kemjika Anoka etc. The list is endless. Together these men and women brought their brilliance, intelligence and administrative acumen to bear on governance in our dear state. So it was a big let down on their collective intelligence and that of all the Ahiajoku laureates when the governor dubbed Ahiajoku the name of a deity. It means that these men and women had all along associated themselves with a name and activity that is un-Godly. The annual Ahiajoku Lectures compel attention because of the calibre of intellectuals who deliver them. As a true son of Igbo land, I am compelled to read them because they talk about me. As Professor Aloy Ejiogu rightly put it ‘’a man who neither knows nor understands himself has little or no chance of survival even in the mildest of environments much less in a combative and competitive society such as ours. It is this knowledge of oneself right from the beginning of time that the Ahiajoku Lectures want to pass on to posterity as a priceless heritage’’.
When the Ikoro sounded on November 30, 1979, and late Professor M. J. C. Echeruo, the first Ahiajoku Lecturer and first Vice Chancellor of IMSU mounted the podium to delve into the topic, Aham Efule (A Matter of Identity), he traced the course of our cultural predicament to the present day and placed before us the challenge of re-establishing our Igbo identity. That challenge is still before us and cannot be wished away through impulsive decisions. Ndi Igbo remain grateful to all the Ahiajoku laureates (many have passed on) who devoted their time and energy researching into our values and heritage. The Ahiajoku Lecture Festival is a legacy of knowledge to posterity and Governor Okorocha must do all within his power to uphold this legacy. Ahiajoku survived the unpredictable days of the military even under governors/administrators who were not of Igbo extraction. It must not die under the watch of a civilian governor of Igbo extraction.
Let Ahiajoku be taken to a new height instead of receiving a footnote mention under the Rochas administration. Let us witness a return to its glorious years as the unique and flagship intellectual festival of the Nigeria’s South East. Let there be adequate and proper funding of the festival. Let us develop additional content for it and make it richer and more robust while retaining its original form. The present pitiable state of the highly entertaining annual Ozuruimo Cultural Festival must not befall it. Among states in Nigeria now, the vogue is to either sustain existing festivals or develop content for new ones to encourage cultural tourism. The present government tried to replace the 25-year old Ozuruimo Cultural Festival with the Imo Cultural Carnival but it is seriously lacking in content and organization compared to the Ozuruimo Cultural Festival that involves the 27 local government councils in the state. Accepted government wants to create an industrial base for the state, it must not loose sight of the things that make us Ndi Igbo. But for as long as this administration continues to show a lack of interest in things that are our core cultural values, so long will efforts to encourage cultural tourism in the state be a mirage. Long live Ahiajoku Lecture Festival.
Mr. Ralph Ahanonu is a Brand and Communication Consultant and can be reached through ralphzeroo@yahoo.com or 08033009130
