It is known by different names across Igboland, Iri Ji, Onwa Asaa, Iwa Ji, or Orurueshi, etc. It is one Igbo tradition that has refused to be sunken by the emergence of Christianity, especially the kind that treats everything traditional as heathen. The new yam festival is up there with the top two or three annual festivals in most Igbo communities.
First, it is noteworthy that the new yam festival is not just celebrated in Igboland, several communities in West Africa mark this great festival under different names. The origin of this festival cannot be traced to any particular tribe or country. Each tribe has a unique story of how the new yam festival came to be and its significance in their culture.
For the Igbo people of southeastern and its environs, Nigeria, the history and significance of the New Yam festival are like an institution that has been weathered by the storm yet holds forth.
In the coming months, Igbo communities both home and abroad will be up in a frenzy about the New Yam Festival, are you wondering what is the background story, here you have it.
The story of its beginning
Stories abound on the subject of how the Ney Yam festival came to be, one of the stories that have proven popular is the myth of Eze Nri.
Once upon an ancient time, people were dying, men and women, young and old, plants withered, waters dried up and animals died in droves. A prolonged and severe famine was ravishing the land.
The people cried out to their king to find a way out of this disaster. Eze Nri had sleepless nights over the famine that plagued Igboland, which was a communal unit then, in the quest for the solution. He was told to kill his two children by the oracle.
After killing his two children Ahiajoku and Ada, he sliced their bodies into smaller pieces and buried them. A few days or six months later, depending on the version you have heard, plants started growing from the molds where their body parts were buried. When Eze and his people harvested them, they found yams and cocoyam from them.
This was how Ahiajoku became the god of yam, and Ada the goddess of cocoyam.
In some Igbo mythology, however, the deity of yam is a goddess named Ahia Njoku, represented by an effigy against the walls of barns and shrines.
The yam saved the people from the famine, thus, it became something of reverence. The reverence of the yam transcended from just been a staple crop to something that is celebrated, children were named after the crop, and rites were observed to honor it.
The New Yam Festival And Its Essence
Traditional Igbo people are agrarian by nature. Yams are the first crops to be harvested and an important crop in the culture of the people. The New Yam Festival symbolizes/upholds the importance of the food crop in their socio-cultural life.
Even though the essence of the festival has been watered down over the years, the enthusiasm and efforts put into the preparation of the event remain the same albeit a notch lower. The pomp and the glamour attached to it both in diaspora and home attract attention.
Today the New Yam Festival is celebrated in honor of Ahiajoku (Ajoku, Njoku, Ajokwuji) across all Igboland. In some communities, it is taboo to eat yam before the festival, hence it is called ‘Iri Ji’ which translates to ‘eating yam’.
In some other communities, it heralds the completion of the harvesting season and the beginning of a new year, it is also a time to thank the gods and ancestors for keeping them and thus why it is called “Onwa Asaa” in some quarters.
The festival is a celebration of the importance of yam in the socio-cultural lives of the people of the community. It was described as the crowning ceremony of the year. The new yam is evidence of a good life with accomplishments.
Some people trace the origin of the festival from the Arochukwu community, because of the influence they wield in Igboland at that time, the practice spread to other Igbo communities.
There is no specific day in the year that is set aside for the festival, every year, the Igwe or the Chief Priest consults with the gods/ancestors before fixing a day for the New Yam Festival. In some communities, the celebration lasts for a whole week or just a day.
Importance Of The Kola Nut In Igboland
After the announcement of the festival date, it is followed up by the cleansing period. The cleansing period is the time where they seek the face of the goods, ridding the land of anything that is considered unholy including people who had indulged in one atrocity or the other.
In some communities, during this period fighting or anything that will disturb the peace of the community is tabooed to avoid the wrath of the gods.
It is believed that a spiritual body cleansing is required for the coming new year, children are specially prepared for a ritual body wash called imacha ahu iri ji mmiri. It involves bathing them with plants such as fresh grass, Ogirishi leaves (newbouldia laevis), Omu (young palm tendril).
It was a great sacrilege to Ala to eat new yam before the festival in the old Igbo era. A day before the Iri Ji, all old yams are consumed or discarded, only new dishes of yam are served at the festival.
It is an atmosphere of colors on the day of the festival, different rituals and recreational activities take the order of the day.
After the breaking of the customary Kolanut as in any Igbo occasion, the Igwe or chief priest takes the first bite of the roasted yam presented before offering to the gods. He pours libation and offers thanksgiving to the gods for a successful harvest and year. After the rites, the new yams are now sanctified for eating by the villagers.
Every household in turns performs its own rites, presenting four to eight yams for prayers. After the prayers, the head of the household cuts off small parts of the yam at the ends as a token to Ahiajoku. The other parts of the yams are cooked with palm oil and chicken as the body and blood of Ahiajoku.
Despite the little or non-substantial history backing up the celebration of the new yam festival, the culture continues to thrive, it answers the question to varying degrees of satisfaction, “what does this mean to Igbo people?”
In a sum, the New Yam Festival embodies the Igbo philosophy that informs how they approach life: pragmatic, religious, and appreciative.
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