The Igbo people of Nigeria, who live in the eastern and southeastern parts of the country, make celebrations an important part of their cultures and traditions. The Igbo people gather to celebrate the harvest of new yams at the end of August’s rainy season in the form of a festival called Iwa Iji, which literally translates to “eating new yams.” In the various dialects spoken throughout the Igbo settlement, the new yam festival is also known as Onwa Aasa, Orurueshi, and so on.
One of the most well-known and celebrated festivals in Ndi Igbo (Igbo land) is the new yam festival, when Igbo sons and daughters from home and abroad gather to celebrate. Because the Igbo consider yams to be the chief and queen of all crops, it is considered taboo to sit on them or place heavy objects on them. As a result, yams are the first crop to be harvested. Following the harvest of the yams, the community is cleansed spiritually and physically, decorations are made, and intensive rehearsals of traditional dances are performed in preparation for the festival. Likewise, in the night prior to the new sweet potato celebration, old sweet potatoes are sold or discarded on the grounds that the celebration is completely celebrated exclusively with recently gathered sweet potatoes.
The new yam festival has brought a lot of development to Igbo land because it encourages agriculture, which has boosted the economy of many Igbo communities. It also portrayed Igbo society as primarily agrarian, with more than half of its population engaged in farming. As members of the Igbo ethnic group gather for the celebration, including their overseas children, the festival has also served as a means of uniting them.
In any case, in numerous Igbo people group, Iwa Iji or new sweet potato celebration goes on for not many days while in certain networks, it might keep going for possibly more than seven days. Before the villagers begin to eat on the first day of the new yam festival, the yams are publicly roasted and first offered to “Ohajoku,” the Igbo god of yam and earth. The king or an elderly member of the community performs the offering rite. Following this, there is yam eating, a variety of cultural dances, and opulent masquerade performances. During the festival, only yams and mmanu nri (palm oil) or the oil bean salad known as Ugba are served to attendees and guests.
Igbo traditional dance Very little is known about how the Igbo people’s new yam festival came to be. However, a common myth that is tied to the festival says that Igbo land was wiped out by a famine. The village priest then suggested to the king that his son be sacrificed in order to end the famine. After certain long stretches of dithering, the lord at last forfeited his child, Ohajoku, and covered him close to the castle. Hardly any days after the fact, the ruler found sweet potato ringlets growing from Ohajoku’s grave and uncovered it a half year after the fact just to find that his child’s body had gone to sweet potatoes. The villagers then divided the yams, and the famine gradually subsided. Since then, the new yam festival is held in honor of Ohajoku, who is regarded as the Igbo god of yam.
One of the most prominent and colorful festivals observed in Igbo land is without a doubt the new yam festival.