Posts

OFO N' OGU

Image
OFO (SACRED SYMBOL OF TRUTH, PIETY, POWER, AND AUTHORITY)   The Ofo holy stick is from a tree known as DETARIUM ELASTICA, the material and mystical symbol of truth, purity, justice and authority. It was introduced by Igbo forbearers as a symbol of the spirituality of the Igbo nation; and as a mark of sincerity and truthfulness, hence not everybody held the Ofo in the olden days. From immemorial, Igbo people had a close relationship with the God head, the Supreme God, Chukwu Abiama. Each Igbo group had a symbol that connects them with the spirit of their ancestors and with the God head. That is the Ofo. Ofo, the holy stick, an insignia for truthfulness, justice and sincerity is always in the custody of the eldest person in a clan during adjudication to demonstrate that the bearer would not thwart justice. It was the exclusive right of the oldest person in the clan or community; thus people across Igbo communities accepted the judgment from an Ofo bearer as the truth and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

AFA IN IGBO LAND

                        AFA IN IGBO                      (IFA IN YORUBA) An extract from the book ‘Oghe Peoples and Culture’: By Chief (Hon) Ndu Oliver Kanayo (Ezedinaobi). The Afa, (Igbo) and Ifa (Yoruba) divination system is a set of divination acts of seeking after knowledge of the future or hidden things by a Dibia (Igbo) and Babalawo (Yoruba) to create and make use of set of rules to communicate with the gods so as to solve people's problems. Afa in Igboland, and particularly in Oghe is a system of enquiry into the land of the unknown; of looking into the future to see which seed will grow and which will not. Through ‘igba-afa’, the Dibia could find out the solution to man’s problems, and find out the root cause of an action or an undesirable situation. In Igboland, and Oghe in particular, the dibia mediate between the people and the gods, and therefore are consulted i...
Post a Comment
Read more

IGBO CALENDAR

 IGBO CALENDAR (IGU IZU, ONWA N AFO IGBO) Our lives are bound up with the calendar. We use it to plan our future: the annual round of work, meetings, appointments, holidays, birthdays and all of the other events in life, including events of the coming year: public holidays, religious festivals, weekends, the waxing and waning of the moon. The calendar helps us to look back, too. The historian looks back to 1945 or 1812 or 1066. They seem to be just numbers, but we know instinctively that they are more than that, for each event, public or personal, great or small, has a day and a month and a year which fixes its place in time. Our calendar can trace its roots back over 6,000 years to ancient Egypt. Its story features Julius Caesar, the council of Nicaea (which gave us the Nicene Creed), a small Russian monk called Denis the Venerable Bede and Pope Gregory XIII. JULIAN CALENDAR: The Julian calendar was a calendar system based on 365.25 day year, put in place in 46BC by Roman Emperor,...
Post a Comment
Read more
                                                                                                                                                      OZO TITLE (ECHI-CHI) AN EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK ‘OGHE PEOPLES AND CULTURE E-BOOK BY Chief (Hon) Ndu Oliver Kanayo (Ezedinaobi) Dip. Telecom (S/W Engr.), HND Acc, MBA Acc, ACM. Former Administrator, Ezeagu North Development Council. Phone: 08039572901 Email: nduoliverkanayo@gmail.com Ozo is the oldest and highest title in Igboland. Initiation into the aristocratic Nze na Ozo society marks the person as nobility. They sometimes bear the Ichi facial scarifications, described b...
Post a Comment
Read more
 TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE ON IGBO NATION AN EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK ‘OGHE PEOPLES AND CULTURE E-BOOK BY Chief (Hon) Ndu Oliver Kanayo (Ezedinaobi) Dip. Telecom (S/W Engr.), HND Acc, MBA Acc, ACM. Former Administrator, Ezeagu North Development Council. Phone: 08039572901 Email: nduoliverkanayo@gmail.com Over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were put on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade was likely the most costly in human life of all long-distance global migrations. The first Africans forced to work in the New World left from Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, not from Africa. The first voyage carrying enslaved people direct from Africa to the Americas were brought by the Spanish in 1526.   The number of people carried off from Africa reached 30,000 per year in the 1690s and 85,000 per year a century later. More than ei...
Post a Comment
Read more