By Onyinye Igwe
The Igbo tradition has exactly four market days, the four market days are Eke, Orie, Afor, Nkwo
The origin of the four market days is dated back to the beginning of the Igbo race, it all started when four men went to visit the king of the Nri kingdom, Eze Nrijiofor. They were strange and didn’t say a word upon their arrival. As is the Igbo tradition, visitors were presented with Oji, they did not accept or reject the Oji.
When they were asked to state their mission, they still didn’t say a word. Eze Nrijiofor was indeed a generous man as he prepared a place for the men to sleep. When darkness arose, he called his advisors and told them of the strange men that visited him, upon hearing the story, they sent a rat to raid the visitors resting place.
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Each visitor had a basket and so when the rat went nibbling on one, it caused the companions to cry out each other’s name in terror. At the dawn of the next morning, the Eze went in to see the strangers and called each of them by their names- Eke, Afor, Orie and Nkwo.
The visitors were astonished and they asked for water to wash their faces. Following this, they gave the Eze four earthen pots and asked him to place it facing the shrine, each pot was owned by each of the men and they said the pots were sent down by Chukwu.
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They instructed the Eze to use their names as the four market days in which they would be buying and selling. From thereon, the four market days became an emblem under which the people carried out business transactions.
Away from the little story…
Each community uses the market days a bit differently, some communities use Eke as the main market day while others use Afor as the main market day and it is the same for other days. Also, these market days are also used to observe special days in the Igbo land, for example, the yam festival is performed on the Eke market day.
The market days are not only used to represent days for business transactions, but children are also named after the days- Mgbeke, Nwafor, Mborie, Mbafor.
As said before and due to the fact that the market days each mean differently to various communities, one cannot specifically give an exact explanation to them. For example, some communities use Eke as the prime market day and Afor as the farming day, it all differs.
Thankfully, the Igbo community has kept to this tradition, modernization has done little to stop this tradition from seeing reality.
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