Obiefuna Onyekachi on the Last Ofala of Igwe Ezeokoli 2nd of Nnobi

Chief Obiefuna Leonard Onyekachi on 8th April 2018 wrote as seen below;

On this day 15 years ago, the pillar of peace and progress in Nnobi, Igwe #Ezeokoli II, joined his ancestors...
The commercial news commentary below was aired on Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) Radio & TV towards the end of his burial ceremonies that took place in December 2003. He will be forever missed!
THE LAST OFALA FESTIVAL OF IGWE EDMOND CHUKWUEMEKA EZEOKOLI THE SECOND OF NNOBI.
Few dates stand memorable in the contemporary history of Nnobi in Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra Stale. In chronological order, the second day of November 1912 heralded the arrival of an infant, Edmond Chukwuemeka Ezeokoli, to the family of Igwe Solomon Ezebube Ezeokoli, while the 30th day of July 1957 was the date of his installation as Igwe Nnobi to succeed his father.

Another date was 8th April, 2003 when at about 4:45 pm , the traditional ruler quietly and peacefully joined his ancestors at the age of ninety-one years. But the greatest was the 31st day of December 2003, when the royal father celebrated his last Ofala festival in his palace at Nnobi.

As the son of a well-informed paramount chief, Edmond had the opportunity to attend the best educational institutions available. After his primary education, he gained admission into Hope Waddel Training Institute Calabar. He was however withdrawn after the first year and sent to the famous Dennis Memorial Grammar School (DMGS) Onitsha.
As a man of immense influence and authority, Edmond’s father, Igwe Solomon Ezeokoli, wanted his children to take part in national competitions. Young Edmond was therefore made to sit for a national competitive admission examination into King’s College Lagos after his second year at DMGS Onitsha. Having passed the examination, he was admitted to Kings College where he eventually completed his secondary education in flying colours.
Edmond began his public service career as a second-class clerk in the office of the Commissioner for Colonies, Lagos. With the formation of the Zikist Movement at that time, he was appointed secretary to the movement, an office that prepared him for higher responsibility. He was later appointed the first chairman, Local Education Authority, Asaba Divisional Council.
It is often said that great minds discuss events while small minds discuss personalities. The young Edmond, right from his childhood always discussed events that made history. He nursed the ambition of making history and worked hard to distinguish himself among his equals. With his enviable record in the public service, coupled with his exemplary military performance during the second world war which earned him the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major (Warrant Officer Two), there was no doubt in the minds of all Nnobi indigenes that Edmond was a highly eligible candidate for the position of traditional ruler of Nnobi.
The demise of Igwe Solomon Ezeokoli paved way for the search for a worthy successor to the Igweship stool of Nnobi. Like the biblical King David, Edmond was sought out in the distant town of Agbor in the then Midwest in preference to his other brothers and was crowned Igwe Nnobi on July 30, 1957 at the age of forty-five.
Igwe Edmond Ezeokoli the Second distinguished himself as a royal father soon after installation by being appointed chairman Idemili Traditional Rulers Council and member of the Anambra State Council of Chiefs.
In recognition of his vast knowledge of igbo customs and tradition, the old Anambra State Government appointed him a member of the State Customary Law Manual Drafting Committee in 1977. In the same year, he was appointed President of Nnobi Customary Court.
His long reign as Igwe Nnobi witnessed giant strides in community development culminating in the establishment of two secondary schools, a modern market, a post office, a general hospital and a magistrate court. He was also credited with the successful abolition of the Osu caste system in Nnobi in 1971 and the reconciliation of all warring factions in the town to achieve lasting peace after six years of turbulent communal crisis.
It is worthy of note that Igwe Ezeokoli was a traditional ruler of immense reputation and also a courageous soldier of Christ. He was a devout Christian who worked tirelessly in the Lord’s vineyard as an organist at Saint Simon’s Anglican Church Nnobi and the moving force behind the elevation of Nnobi parish to an Archdeaconry headquarters.
The departed traditional ruler was diocesan merit award winner, a recipient of many other awards and a member of many professional bodies.
This giant, hero and soldier has translated into eternal glory. Fare thee well, Igwe.
#IgweNnobi #IgweEzeokoli
(ONYEKACHI OBIEFUNA).
Source: Facebook.

Male Daughters, Female Husbands: A Tribute To Nnobi by Rudolf Okonkwo

In an African Studies Quarterly paper titled "Domestic, Regional and International Protection of Women Against Discrimination: Constraints and Possibilities," Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome made references to Ifi Amadiume's book, "Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in African Society." In the book, Amadiume talked about the culture in Nnobi where childless women acquire 'wives' who bear children for them. These women are referred to as female husbands. By bearing children through this form of arrangement, the women gain power and status within the society - power and status childlessness would have denied them.

There are also those referred to as male daughters. These are women designated not to marry but to stay at their parents' home and have kids. This usually happens when a couple has no male child. The daughter in effect becomes the male daughter. She sacrifices the chance to go out and marry. She stays at her parents' home to have babies with the hope of giving birth to a male child who would inherit the parents' property and continue to uphold the family name and maintain the lineage.

In his book, "The Liberty of Man and Other Essays" His Royal Highness, Igwe Edmond Ezeokoli II of Nnobi, wrote about the propitiation and abolition of Osu caste system in Nnobi. He narrated his personal effort that led to the severance of the Osu from the deities that once held them sway and the integration of the former victims into the mainstream Nnobi society. The ceremony performed on December 30, 1971, was led by the Chief Priest of Idemili Nnobi and was witnessed by traditional rulers of neighboring towns and the 3000 year-old ancient OFO IDEMILI. After Nnobi, neighboring towns like Umuoji, Awka-Etiti, and Oba followed the Nnobi example.

This was the progressive and liberal Nnobi that I was born in, but more importantly, the Nnobi that was born in me. For the first fifteen years of my life, I had no sense of allegiance to any other constituted authority than that of my hometown. During the 70s, my family spent seven years living in Ogbunike, specifically at the staff quarters of Women's Training College (WTC) Ogbunike where my Dad was teaching. One summer in the early 80s, I spent my vacation in Makurdi where my aunt lived. In all those travels, never did the center of my worldview shift away from Nnobi. Until I began to fill forms for West African School Certificate (WASC) and Joint Admission and Examination Board (JAMB), nothing made me think I could leave Nnobi.

Nnobi was more than a physical home for me. It was my spiritual home. It was a place where my ancestors lived. More importantly, it was a place where my grandfather made his mark. I came back to Nnobi in the late 70s and I was eager to absorb my heritage. I finished my primary school at the famous Nnobi Central School and went on to the irreplaceable Nnobi High School. It was during the fun-filled 80s and there was really nothing like home. The richness of Nnobi became my riches, the politics became my politics and the flavor also became mine. I was a consummate Nnobian before I left Nnobi.

When I left Nnobi for the Federal University of Technology, Akure, where I beheld Nigeria, I found that Nnobi had prepared me for what I saw. In more ways than one, Nnobi is a mini - Nigeria. Nnobi is divided into three main villages - Ngo, Awuda and Ebenesi. One group could easily take the place of the Igbo, the other the Hausa-Fulani and the third the Yoruba. Within these villages are politics and issues that closely resemble the Nigerian experience. In recent years, Awuda had been threatening to secede from Nnobi. And one of its prominent sons has been fighting to become the Igwe many years before the ruling Igwe Edmond Ezeokoli II joined his ancestors.

I come from Ndam. It is one of the three clans in Ngo village. The others are Umuegbu, and Umuagu. Ndam has no school, no post office and no road. Ndam has one kindergarten where kids spend their day singing "aka-beke-gbue…" Ndam is at the boarder with Alor. Most of its landscape is being swallowed by gullies. Buildings are falling in and families are being displaced. The official masquerade of Ndam is called Nkwasi Nkwa. When translated, it means something that pushes down obstacles. The obstacles facing Nnobi are seemingly beyond what Nkwasi Nkwa can push away.

Nnobi has three major institutions - the Catholic Church as represented by Madonna Catholic Church, the Anglican Church as represented by St. Simon's Church, and Chief Zebrudaya Okolo Igwe Nwogbo, alias 4: 30. The Catholic and Anglican Churches are our own Muslim and Christian divide. The Catholic Church would excommunicate a member who allowed his or her daughter to marry an Anglican. Mere walking into an Anglican church would bar a catholic from receiving communion until he or she undergoes "opipia". The Catholics run the Boys Scout while the Anglicans run the Boys Brigade. Catholic mothers join the Mambo dance while the Anglican mothers join the Awelenma dance.

Surrounding Nnobi and sharing the same Idemili tropical rain forest are towns like Nnokwa, Alor, Uke, Awka Etiti and Nnewi. Just like South Africa is when compared to Nigeria in the continent of Africa, Nnewi towers above Nnobi in our side of Anambra. But like any one would tell you, it is in Nnobi that the potentials are. But why is Nnobi the town that is struggling the most? Why is Nnobi with lots of educated citizens the one that is still battling with issues of fundamental development? Why are the roads to Nnobi one of the worst in Idemili Local Government Area? Why are Nnobi intellectuals like Dr. Edwin Madunagu uninterested in the fate of Nnobi? Why are Nnobi businessmen and women agonizing at the bottom of their class? How shall we return Nnobi to its glorious days when it brought Christianity, Western education and modernization to its neighbors?

These are the questions Nnobi people all over the globe are beginning to ask. Those at home recently resorted to the burning of all the shrines of their forefathers with the hope of chasing away evil spirits which they blamed for Nnobi failures. Nnobians in the USA will try to answer these same questions when they meet at the first Nnobi-USA General Meeting slated for July 4th weekend in Minnesota. There participants will try to reawaken in themselves the meaning of the Abalukwu Nnobi symbol - a man carrying an elephant on his head and crushing a lion with his feet.

It is in the star of Nnobi for each generation to confront the challenges of their time and triumph. Usually, it begins with a gathering like the one planned for Independence Day weekend in Minnesota. Though Nigeria may not want its National Conference yet, but Nnobi, my Nnobi, is well on its way.
Written by by Rudolf Okonkwo.

Some History About Nnobi - The Holy Land By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

Nnobi: The Making of a Holy Land By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo.

In the dead of night, when the crickets were chirping the loudest and the rays of midnight stars were struggling to penetrate the canopy made by leaves of cashew and palm trees, he marched along the dusty road connecting Nnobi to Alor.

The weight of his feet hitting the red soil rattled wild rabbits in their holes. In the vast Nnobi-Alor forest, encroaching both sides of the road were valleys made by gully erosion.  He chanted songs of soldiers on cross country race, pausing to hear the echoes of his voice married in a remix with the chattering of forest monkeys. Smell of decaying leaves mixed with the latest deposits by flood water along the gullies crawled through his nose.  Old women who knew him when he was just a student at Dennis Memorial Grammar School (DMGS), Onitsha, cracked open their family compound hardwood doors to peep out. One woman who was bold enough to walk outside at that time of the night asked him, “Nna a, don’t you fear the night?” His answer was as crisp as the creases of his shirt. “There’s no fear.”

That was before he joined the then Lt. Col. T. J. Aguiyi-Ironsi’s 5 Queens Nigeria Regiment (5QNR) to Congo on the 1960 United Nations’ peace mission.

I became aware of him when I got admitted into Nnobi High School. I discovered that one of the school hostels was named after him. Others were named after people like former Governor General of Nigeria, Patterson and former Premier of Eastern region, M.I. Okpara. So, I felt he must have done something to deserve that honor. But I hardly asked. And we didn’t read about him in history books. The second time him name came up was when my brother applied for admission into the Nigerian Defense Academy. The trepidation that followed his interest in joining the army was attributed to the fate that befell Lt. Ezeugbana.

On Saturday February 4, 1961, Lt. Ezeugbana died in a gun battle with soldiers loyal to Patrice Lumumba in the Kivu province in Eastern Congo. His platoon was defending the UN barrack in the city. The circumstance of his death was not disclosed, at least not to his folks. His body was not brought back home. The young ones who remembered his funeral always noted that a stem of banana plant was laid inside a coffin in place of his body. The consensus was that if he had not died in the Congo, he would have died in the crises surrounding the 1966 coup and the war that followed. He was that kind of a soldier, they said, the Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu type.

The one who did not go to the Congo or die in the 1966 crisis is Major Humphrey Chukwuka, one of the famous Five Majors that planned the infamous January 14, 1966 coup. I don’t remember when I first found out that he was from Nnobi. But the first reporting assignment I went to as a new reporter for May Ellen Ezekiel’s Classique magazine was to visit the Sandhurst-trained soldier in Enugu for an interview. For a while, the time I spent with him at his home in Enugu was the biggest thrill of my life. I was not just in the midst of a historical individual, this one was a son of Nnobi. Lt. Col. Humphrey Chukwuka, as he insisted I must address him, didn’t discuss on record anything about the 1966 coup with me. Despite all my efforts, he insisted that he had moved on beyond that. But he spoke for hours on Nigeria.

As a student at Nnobi, I watched in amazement as thousands of pilgrims descend on my home town to mark Passover. Marching barefooted along the major streets of Nnobi, these pilgrims from across the world feted Rev. Michael Amakeze, popularly known as Prophet Musa. He was the General Overseer of the Holy Sabbath Christ the King Mission, now called Community of Yahweh Worldwide.  Long before anyone heard about Prophet T. B. Joshua, he saw tomorrow, for those who believed. His followers referred to Nnobi as a holy land. Since a prophet is not recognized in his home town, most of us paid no mind to Musa. Then at Chinua Achebe’s 70th birthday at Bard College in upstate New York, I was introduced as a son of Nnobi to a professor who came to the celebration from Germany. Immediately, the professor, a follower of Rev. Amakeze prostrated. “You are from a holy land,” the professor said.

At the very least, everybody’s hometown should be a holy land.

After years of keeping a date with Dr. Eddie Madunagu’s column on Thursdays at the Guardian newspaper, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the mathematician, scholar, polemist, Marxist theorist and the last socialist in Nigeria is from Nnobi. Those days that I spent at the Guardian with Eddie (as he is popularly known), I learned something about how the environment surrounding one’s formative years influences the dialectics of his souls.

Even during the pre-colonial era, Nnobi played a role in the advancement of the Igbo cosmology, including the science of the dibia Igbo and the culture surrounding the Igbo worldview. Professor Ifi Amadiume, celebrated anthropologist, essayist and a daughter of Nnobi captured an aspect of that in her seminal work, "Male Daughter, Female Husband: Gender and Sex in an African Society." 

In show business, Chika Okpala, Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo, alias 4: 30, of the famed New Masquerade, comedian extraordinaire leads a roll call that includes Gospel Musician, Gozie Okeke, of the Akanchawa fame.

At one point in the 1990s, there were three Nnobi-born Vice Chancellors/Deputy Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities. Leading the pack was Prof. O.G. Oba, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Owerri (1992-1999). In religious arena, Most Reverend Owen Nwokolo, is the Bishop on the Niger, the Anglican Bishop of Onitsha Diocese. Ret. Rev. Samuel C. Chukwuka was the recent retired Anglican Bishop of Isuikwuato/Umunnochi Diocese.

In medicine, Dr. Ferdinand Ofodile is a world renowned plastic surgeon and inventor with patents right to some of the most innovative fixtures for plastic surgery, the most popular of which is the nasal implant for rhinoplasty named Ofodile Implant. He is also a retired professor of Medicine at Columbia University

The first time I saw myself as a conscious being was at Ogbunike where my father was a teacher. We were strangers in Ogbunike but whenever we visited Nnobi, my siblings and I were expatriate children. We were pampered and adored but it was the lure of Nnobi that engrossed me. Before I knew a thing about Nigeria, Nnobi was the place that earned my allegiance. For a while it was the only government I knew. Its values became my values and its politics and heroes mine.

Nnobi in so many ways is like Nigeria- a mini-Nigeria. It’s essentially divided into three villages, Ngo, Awuda and Ebenesi. During the colonial era and the few years after, Nnobi was rising and thriving under the guardianship of the Great Igwe Ezeokoli, a traditional surgeon, educationist, celebrated King and the man who brought Christianity to Idemili. In those years of yonder, Nnobi was like Singapore or Malaysia, projecting confidence and inspiring the neighbors. In the last few years, it has dealt with tussle over kingship, an attempted breakaway village, denominational divisions and charges of marginalization of one section or another in developmental projects.  In the cause of the crises, it has seen its neighbors leave it in the dust. While Innoson Motors is producing cars in Nnewi and Ojoto is the headquarters of Idemili South, Nnobi is still searching for its place.

Across the globe there are moves to reawaken the true meaning of the Abalukwu Nnobi symbol - a man carrying an elephant on his head and crushing a lion with his feet. This generation of Nnobi people, like other great generations before it, is poised to confront the challenges of their time and triumph. Usually, it begins with a gathering.

On June 20, the people of Nnobi in North America will gather in Atlanta to again begin to contribute their quota in the ongoing renaissance at Nnobi, a rebirth that will restore Nnobi’s status as a holy land.
Written by; Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo.