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| General Ojukwu |
State-by-state, Igbos have been declaring full-day mourning, at various venues - cities and towns - in Ojukwu’s honour and appreciation of his sacrifices for the Igbo nation. And on such occasions, all Igbo businesses were shut down.
Meanwhile, such event was held in Ogun State recently. And all Igbos converged at pipeline open ground, Akute, a suburb of the state to pay their last respect to the late Biafran warlord.
Call it a carnival and you would not be wrong.
At the Akute venue, every participant got more than the value of time sacrificed to honour Ojukwu. There were entertainment vibes on display, live bands, colourful masquerades, acrobatic youths; just name it. And the Igbo spirit descended on the people.
Earlier in Imo State, the government had declared a special week of mourning in Ojukwu’s honour. Tagged: “Seven days for a hero”, it commenced on February 22, 2012, with series of activities to take place during the period.
Recall the Okorocha administration of had built the Ikemba Ojukwu Square, in his honour, even before he died. And different states it has lined up different programmes in same regard. Even the Rivers State government has held a public lecture on same note.
However, the unification brought about by the death of the Eze Igbo Gburugburu has even gone beyond Igbos. It has brought under one umbrella, the United Niger Delta, South-East and Middle Belt youths as they converged at late Ojukwu’s Nnewi residence, recently, for a special condolence and procession.
The group Coalitions of Nations and Organisations of Nigeria later held all-night meeting at the national secretariat of Ohaneze Ndi Igbo where they fashioned ways of effecting a formidable reunion of those ethnic nationalities.
The Akute event was not an all-night affair though, but it was action-packed. The masquerades were just awesome. And as one of the mourners who spoke to our reporter put it, “An Iroko has passed on and it was just desirable for an Iroko masquerade to mourn his departure” The colourful masquerade in question was somewhat, about the height of a storey duplex.
In Igboland, the iroko tree is considered the tallest among the family of trees. So, when a great man dies, rather than saying the individual has passed on, the elders would say that an Iroko has fallen. That would show the person stood out among others while alive, like an Iroko in the forest of trees. That was the case at Akute.
And the way the masquerade was hitting head on the ground, apparently in display of regret and sadness over Ojukwu’s demise, it would take a specialized medical guru to manage the kind of headache which could emanate from such exercise.
However, when Joe Nwokedi, a lawyer, read out the profile of the late Biafran war lord. Nwokedi, an author and social crusader is the Legal Adviser of the Akute Igbo union.
The people had prayed, eaten kolanuts and the rest. But the organizers chose to let them sip some knowledge and inspiration from Ojukwu’s profile, before letting them drink from the cocked bottles of alcoholic beverages.
In Igboland, it is a sort of taboo to hold any organized gathering without alcoholic drinks. Even where someone just died, before any one could say jack, some drinks would emerge from nowhere - at least the local gin, Ogogoro. And as it is shared round, you would notice old women taking a break from crying to have their share and then continue. An attempt to skip any of them, on grounds she is soaked in tears would only attract a rain of abuses or sharp pinching, as the case may be, from the person.
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