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The Ezza of Ebonyi say their father Ezekuna left them a festival to keep his children at peace. Every year it starts with kola, pepper paste and the last of the old yam.
Ask an Ezza person in Ebonyi where they come from and you'll probably hear one name: Ezekuna. The New Telegraph described the Ezza as the descendants of Ezekuna, first son of a man called Ekumenyi. Their ancestral home is Onueke, in what's now Ezza South Local Government Area. But you won't only find them there. There are Ezza communities in every senatorial zone of Ebonyi, and the paper listed Enugu, Benue, Kogi, Ondo, Ogun, Cross River and Anambra states as well.
The paper called them itinerant farmers and warriors. It was careful about the warrior part, and so are the Ezza. They have, the article said, "no history of forcible conquest". They describe themselves instead as a people who stepped in to defend weaker minority groups. It's a reputation they're proud of, and they connect it to something older.
Many Ezza believe their name is in the Bible, spelt Ezer. They point to 1 Chronicles 12, where fighters join David in the wilderness at Ziklag to help him against Saul's army. The passage calls them "mighty men of valour, whose faces were like faces of lions, and who were as swift as gazelles on the mountains". Nobody can prove the link, and the paper reported it as a belief, which is the right way to hold it. What it shows is how the Ezza like to see themselves: brave, quick, and on the side of the weak.
Ezekuna had one wife, Anyigor. The communities said to descend from their children have names like Amana, Amaezekwe, Ameka, Amudo, Amuzu, Ekka, Inyere, Nkkomoro, Nsokora, Ogboji, Okoffia, Umuoghara, Umuezeoka and Umuezekoha. To keep all those future generations getting along, the story goes, Ezekuna started a festival.
That festival is Okeaku, which means "great wealth". Across Igboland, July to September is new yam season, and every clan has its own name for the feast: Ojiji in Izzi, Nefioha in Ikwo, Ikeji in Ehugbo. For the Ezza it's Okeaku, and it does two jobs at once. It's the first eating of the new yam, and it's also New Year's Day. In 2020 it fell on 4 August. By the end of that August, the paper reckoned, more than three-quarters of the 31 clans in Ebonyi had already held their own new yam feasts, so Okeaku sits in the middle of a whole season of them. Ngwuta called it a celebration of farming, industry and hard work, which makes sense for a people the paper described as farmers first. Yam, as the article put it, is the king of crops in Igboland.
It starts on the morning of Orie, a day in the Igbo market week. People greet each other with good wishes for the new year. Each family head receives gifts from his wife or wives, his grown children and other relatives. He prays for them and blesses kola nuts, which everyone eats with a special pepper paste called uza ukpara.
Then comes the moment that gives the festival its meaning. When the kola is finished, the man shares out what's left of the old yam and some palm kernels. This is called nsa aku. In the hungry months, which the Ezza call unwu, old yam, palm kernels and small snacks called echa are rationed. Eating the last of them together means the lean time is over and the time of plenty has come. After that the women cook special dishes, the men find good palm wine, and the rest of the day is for eating.
Okeaku doesn't end on the first day. The rest of the first week, the days called Awho, Nkwo and Eke, is for visiting. People go to their in-laws, to the poor and to elders, and pay their respects to those in authority.
The next Orie, the first day of the second week, is called Orie Mbi-Eka, and it's the grand finale. It begins quietly. In the morning people go out to their farms to check on them and pull up weeds that have come up between the crops. This light work has its own name, mbi-eka ewu. By noon everyone is home for food and drink. In the afternoon they head out to the village squares to meet friends and relatives and watch cultural displays.
Monday Eze, from Ezza Effium, told the paper the festival is also a time of stock-taking. "Okeaku is a festival of love and peace," he said, "a period of reconciliation when wrongs are forgiven and broken relationships are mended." The traditional Prime Minister of Ezza Ezekuna, Nwali Ngwuta, said much the same in his 2020 message. He told people to use the time to make amends, and added a line any family would recognise: "Do not look for troubles where they are not."
Underneath the speeches, the idea is simple. A man with a lot of children wanted them to keep coming home, eating together and forgiving each other once a year. Centuries later, the Ezza are spread across at least eight states, and the festival still calls them back.
