Introduction;
On the 4th of January 2025 men and women of all walks of life trooped down to the ancient town of Aguleri in Anambra East local government area to share in the joy and the blessings of the 125th Ovala Odibendi ceremony as organised by the athletic, physically fit His Royal Majesty Eze Idigo V (Ezeudo).
It was code named; Ovala Odibendi 2024 – Living the heritage, connecting to our roots.
The event was such a colourful event that the guests were adequately entertained with some traditional performances of great quality. The high point of this day’s event was the conferment of Chieftaincy titles on not more than fifteen (15) selected beneficiaries who have by this act become naturalized Aguleri indigenes.
The Idigo Royal Dynasty
This royal dynasty is reputed to have ruled the people of the culturally rich Aguleri community for the past one century and a quarter effectively. They are also said to have the longest serving traditional institution dynasty in the entire Igbo land. This is a claim that we are studying to ascertain its veracity but in all of this one thing is clear, if the Idigo royal family have not carried themselves with honour and total service to ndi Aguleri, it would have been difficult to sustain this record of leadership effectively over the years without full blown crisis.
Aguleri ancient community is being presently ruled by His Royal Majesty Eze Idigo V, Ezeudo Igwe Aguleri. He is Dr. Micheal Chukwuneme Idigo by name, a Dental Surgeon and an alumni of University of Nigeria Enugu campus. He is married to Ocheze Aguleri Okwesilieze Dr. Mrs. Mediatrix Idigo a freshly minted PhD holder from Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu University Igbariam Anambra State.
Reading his Royal Highness’ address to his subject for this event, you could see a man and a cabinet that seems deliberate about leading their people with all that they have got with the aim of making Aguleri a truly safe place to live, trade and a prosperous community for all.
The Igwe’s cardinal principals of focus, vision and wisdom as it pertains to leadership of his subjects speaks a lot to the schematic approach of the traditional ruler to leading his subjects in Aguleri. Beyond that he also stated clearly that he leads with the cardinal philosophies of availability, accessibility and affability he is on course by default to lead to the best of his ability.
Indeed, His Royal Highness column on Ikolo Ovala magazine vol. 2 No. 6 is worth being looked at by every Aguleri son, daughter and resident no matter whatever part of the world they may live in.
His Royal Majesty’s thought of making Aguleri youths locally relevant and globally competitive amidst the vices most of them are involved with speaks to what it should be when it comes to engaging our youths for the right reasons beyond using them for political thuggery, revenue task force or quenching the sexual appetites of some of the elites who often thrive in the under development of our various communities.
Ikolo – Official Ovala Magazine
While we were at the event soaking up the beautiful cultural performances by the people of Aguleri to entertain their guests, a 160 paged magazine was shared to the guests who had come for the Ovala Odibendi festival. Ikolo Ovala magazine vol. 2 No. 6 is a rich scholarly document that every lover of credible information would find useful because of the quality of the publications.
One thing you must appreciate about Ikolo Ovala magazine is that the commitment of the editorial team to churn out something of great quality was very visible although there are still rooms for improvement on the quality of editing of the magazine in subsequent years to come. They should know that it is possible for them to get to a stage where there would be no single grammatical or typographical errors in the publications.
However, we must commend the editorial team for a great job done with the publishing of that magazine. In a few glances, one could learn so much about the people of Aguleri, the Idigo royal dynasty and the culture of the people which makes them unique and distinct in the scheme of things.
This magazine should be deliberately made available to schools, churches and traditional institutions in Aguleri and beyond with the aim of making the constituents know more about their histories and the people who by naturalisation are now Aguleri sons and daughters by extension. They should leverage on the recent directive by the Presidency to bring back history to our schools to arm their wards with the right history of ndi Aguleri.
Youth Empowerment in Aguleri and Community service.
During our painstaking study of Ikolo Ovala Magazine Vol. 2 No. 6 some pages were of exceptional interest to our blog because of the impact it would have on the youths. The pages are 25 and 57 respectively.
These are the pages where Mezie Idigo Education Foundation which offers scholarships to ndi Aguleri in the fields of Accountancy and related courses irrespective of gender and Dr. Edith Ejoh Memorial Scholarship which offers university scholarship to only females with scholarly interest in Medicine and Education related courses with either their paternal or maternal immediate ancestry traceable to Aguleri ancient kingdom are published.
We are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that assisting worthy youths to get education by offering them well-structured scholarships is one way to transform the society massively.
The foundations offering scholarships should also endeavor to make sure that there are well spelt out criteria to renew these scholarships at the end of each academic session so as to have that serve as a catalyst for these undergraduates to work very hard in other to come out tops in their classes as their only bargaining chip for the renewal of the scholarship.
They must do all within their power to avoid making such scholarship supports a one-off support, rather it should be systematically implemented with the aim of making the lives of the beneficiaries better through education.
Aguleri royal kingdom should also partner with these scholarship foundations to have these undergraduates of Aguleri origin on scholarship volunteer to assist with certain tasks in the community, when necessary, especially those that would need the knowledge they have gone to school to acquire in the service of their various communities.
Other privileged Aguleri sons and daughters could explore the area of the economy like commercial agriculture or vocational trainings to sponsor willing youths.
Chieftaincy title recipients
Owing to the spate of abuse of the conferment of chieftaincy titles by some traditional institutions in South-eastern Nigeria to just anyone who can afford to pay for it without due recourse to their reputation in the society, the once revered act of being a chieftaincy title holder is no longer being seen as a big deal anymore to most people.
This explains why recently, once you introduce yourself as a chief you are asked of which traditional institution conferred such title on you as the traditional institutions notorious for giving titles to the highest bidders are known too so many.
While we maynot be privy to how these recipients were arrived at, it is worthy to note that there are quite some reputable names in the list of people that were conferred with various chieftaincy titles in the 2024 ovala festival. This gives so much credibility to the process even as we wish that they continue to improve on their criteria for selection of recipients of the chieftaincy title.
For some strange reasons our inquiries about the Aguleri ancient kingdom’s selection process for the conferment of their chieftaincy title is known to have some merits worth being commended as this explains why core civil servants were among the recipients of this year’s chieftaincy title.
Conferment of Ugodiebube Aguleri on Barr. Mrs. Theodora Okwy Igwegbe mni. as one of the chieftaincy titles recipients.
Having taken time to do our search on one of the chieftaincy title recipients – Barr. Mrs. Theodora Igwegbe mni (current Head of service, Anambra state civil service) who is blessed to be the wife of erudite Prof. Anthony O Igwegbe a renowned scholar, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and former Chief Medical Director of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching hospital Nnewi happens to be one of the people we chose to beam our searchlight closely on.
The successes she has recorded in her civil service career journey from her early days down to this moment that she has attained the height of the Head of service speaks volume for the Nteje born civil servant and the interest of the Aguleri royal dynasty in rewarding exceptional people with such recognitions.
With the many reforms being experienced in the state civil service under the leadership of Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo as the governor of Anambra state, it becomes clear to anyone trying to research on the head of service that only a skilled and hardworking head of service can transform these laudable reforms of the governor into workable solutions.
On a closer interrogation, we were informed that the head of service is bereaved at the moment and that explains why indeed there was no much publicity from her team about the event.
However, we congratulate the few privileged ones to have been honoured by the Aguleri royal dynasty for their service to the state and nation at large. It is commendable to have people earn such titles rather than having them sold to highest bidders.
Improvement projects
While we acknowledge the extensive quality of work put into making the 125th Ovala festival a success, we must also state there would always be rooms for improvements on some areas of the event. Some areas of improvement are highlighted below.
- The publisher who produced the magazine did a good job with the printing of the magazine but that could still be greatly improved upon. Unfortunately, too, there has to be a lot of work done on subsequent publications in terms of binding the magazine properly. Quality of the magazine should be the watchword over any other consideration.
- The pavilions where the guests sat during the ovala festival ceremony was unbearably hot due to the weather and the corrugated iron sheets used. In the years to come, there should be adequate provisions for fans, or the roofing sheets have to be padded adequately to prevent direct transmission of heat to the guests sitting under it.
- As for the beneficiaries of the scholarships, their phone numbers alongside their email address for each of the beneficiaries should be published to further authenticate the quality of what they are doing with the foundations.
- Owing to our reality of being in the digital age, there should be efforts by the palace to leverage social media influencers mainly of Aguleri origin to promote the cultural events in Aguleri and also to share the soft copy of the yearly published Ikolo magazine. It is being speculated that Chief Osita Chidoka held a lecture during the weeklong Ovala festival, the video content should be shared with an Aguleri watermark.
- The Ikolo Ovala magazine vol. 2 No. 6 is rich and should be pushed out deliberately to organizations like UNESCO and their likes to grant this great event the requisite visibility at international spaces.
Commendation
It is necessary for our esteemed readers whom we have so many regards for to understand that these opinions shared on the Ovala Odibendi Aguleri were products of observations as seen on the 4th of January 2025 during the festival and products of extensive scholarly research done.
While it is worthy of note to acknowledge the Igwe and his cabinet members who made the event a success, anyone who attended that function on the said day cannot afford to not have noticed a sizeable man who was all over the place just to make sure that things flowed as it had been planned despite him wearing a white outfit.
On closer interrogation of some guests present at the event, we were informed that the man in question was the former Commissioner of works in Anambra State and the Ovala Odibendi planning committee chairman.
When we further asked of his name, we were told that he bears Engr. Marcel Ifejiofor FNSE (Anukanu Aguleri). When we tried to pronounce his name as Engr. Marcel Ivejiofor, we were told that his had an “f” instead of the Aguleri trademark “v”.
Having learnt that this planning committee Chairman lost his beloved wife and mother of his kids, Dr. Mrs. Ada Ifejiofor in the past year 2024 we sincerely felt for the Chairman as it pertains to the type of trauma the man would have been going through at the moment but yet chose to show up in such a phenomenal way for the event.
Mr. Chairman of Ovala Odibendi, kindly take a bow for being physically present, getting visibly involved with your team members just to make sure that the flow of the event was smooth. Your scholarly address published in the magazine is rich and worth being commended.
Conclusion
It is very necessary that every son and daughter of Igbo land take a critical look at this Ikolo Ovala magazine vol. 2 No. 6 which captures a lot about ndi Aguleri with the aim to learn a bit more about the people and what their tradition means to them. Aguleri community seem to be a people that prioritizes the letter “v” over “f” as is seen in their words.
We must at all times uphold the beautiful things about our culture, traditions and customs. This remains the only way we can make our society better while retaining our identity.
As we conclude, let the rich and influential in our Igbo societies endeavor to read page 153 of the Ikolo Ovala magazine vol. 2 No. 6 edition where Bishop Isizoh urged the elites in Aguleri to build more of industries and not mansions.
Congratulations to those who were privileged to have been conferred with Chieftaincy titles in Aguleri. Indeed, the cultural heritage of ndi Aguleri is worth being celebrated and merchandised with the right tools and proper engagement.