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This website is created
and maintained by:
John C. McCall
Department
of Anthropology
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
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This
website is
devoted to basic information about Ohafia, Nigeria. Scroll down for a
brief description of Ohafia and a bibliography. To learn more about
Ohafia's people and culture follow the links below.
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A Brief Description of
Ohafia
The Ohafia are an
Igbo speaking people who live in a region of about 100 square miles
located west of the Cross River in Southeastern Nigeria. On these
rolling hills twenty-six villages are found, the smallest are comprised
of only a few households. The largest is the village of Akanu, the
population of which was estimated by Phillip Nsugbe (1974:8) in the
mid-sixties to be around 12,000. The ancestral capital of Ohafia is the
centrally located village of Elu. The old part of Elu centers on the
site where Udumeze, the founder, first built his fire. This is where
the shrine of the paramount lineage can be found. The village has now
grown to meet its neighbor villages Ebem and Amaekpu. They
now comprise a composite area known as Isiama which has a population
even greater than Akanu.
Ohafia is part
of
the Ohafia Local Government Area (LGA) which also includes Abiriba and
Nkporo. In the 1940s Ohafia was divided into four local units: Isiama,
Ania, Okamu and Ohafor. Within a few years these units were officially
constituted as local council areas for regional government purposes.
(Nsugbe
1974:35) Since that time, two more local council areas have split off
from the original four. The southern section of Isiama is now
designated:
Ebem-Oha and the village of Okon has become independent of Okamu and is
known as Okon-Aku. As a result of the departure of Okon, Okamu was
renamed
Amaukwu. Ohafia proper is now made up of six local council areas which,
along with Abiriba and Nkporo, constitute the eight "autonomous
communities"
of the Ohafia LGA.
While ritual
sanctions have preserved a few patches of virgin forest, nearly all of
the arable
land in Ohafia is devoted to cultivation. Locally grown yams, cassava,
maize, and beans form the core of the Ohafia diet. The traditional
system
of shifting cultivation requires that land be left fallow for seven
years
after primary cultivation. Thus, most of the countryside is covered
with
scrubby new growth providing natural restoration of soil fertility.
Wild
animals abound in this dense foliage and hunters provide much of the
meat
eaten in Ohafia. Other protein sources include local fish as well as
various
sea foods brought from the coast by market women. Some domesticated
goats
and chickens are raised but these are generally reserved for special
occasions.
Ohafia people
can
be found all over the world and in every imaginable profession. While
many have found success in places far from Ohafia, most retain a bond
to their ancestral home. Those who reside in Ohafia are as industrious
as their brothers and sisters who have moved away. Ohafia women are
hardworking
farmers and many of those who work as clerks, teachers, civil servants
and in other professions also perform some farm work. This reflects a
work ethic that celebrates a fundamental pride in farming. But it also
reveals a practical outlook recognizing that farming provides insurance
against the instability of the Nigerian economy. Ohafia men are also
active
in a wide variety of professions but, in general, they devote less time
to agricultural labor than women. Land tenure is based on a system of
double unilineal descent. Most agricultural land is held by the
matrilineal descent groups while residential property and some gardens
close to the
villages are held by patrilineages.
The Ohafia
Warrior
Tradition
Prior to the
colonial
period the ancestors of the Ohafia people were renowned as mighty
warriors.
This aspect of Ohafia's history remains fundamental to the Ohafia
people's
sense of identity. The warrior's cap (okpu agu or "leopard
cap")
is ubiquitous in Ohafia and is recognized all over Nigeria as a marker
of Ohafia citizenship. The Ohafia warrior tradition and its role in the
constitution of Ohafia identity is explicitly embodied in the
performance
of iri agha -- the Ohafia War Dance
. The warrior identity is deeply ingrained in Ohafia cultural practice
and the process of acquiring deep knowledge of the warrior tradition
begins
in early childhood
.
Some References on Ohafia
Arua, A. O.
Azuonye,
Chukwuma.
1974. The
Narrative War Songs of the Ohafia Igbo: A Critical Analysis of their
Characteristic Features in Relation to their Social Function. Ph.D.
Dissertation.
University of London.
1983.
"Stability and Change in the Performances of Ohafia Igbo Singers of
Tales."
Research in African Literatures. 14(3):332-380.
1990. "Kaalu
Igirigiri: an Ohafia Igbo Singer of Tales." The Oral Performance in
Africa. I. Okpewho (ed.) Ibadan: Spectrum Books.
Jones, G. I.
1937. "Ohafia
Obu Houses" Nigerian Field . 6(2):77-79.
1986. Annual
reports of Bende Division, south eastern Nigeria, 1905-1912, with a
commentary. Cambridge: University of Cambridge African Studies
Centre-Cambridge
African Occasional Papers 2.
McCall, John C.
2000. Dancing
Histories: Heuristic Ethnography with the Ohafia Igbo.
Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press
1992. The
Ohafia
War Dance as Lived Experience: History and Identity in a Nigerian
Community. Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington.
1993. "Making
Peace with Agwu." Anthropology and Humanism. 18(2): 56-66.
1993. "Dancing
the Past: Experiencing Historical Knowledge in Ohafia, Nigeria." Passages:
A Chronicle of the Humanities. 4(1): 8-9.
1995.
"Rethinking Ancestors in Africa." Africa. 65(2): 256-270. (pdf)
1996.
"Portrait of a Brave Woman." American Anthropologist. 98(1). (pdf)
Ndukwe, Obuba
1971. "The
Age-Groups in Ibo-land" Contributions to the Study of Ibo Society
and Culture in Nigeria. Prague: University of 17th November of
Prague, Sbornik
studentsky practi, cislo 2.
Njoku, Onwuka N.
2000. Ohafia:
A Heroic Igbo Society. Ebem Ohafia: Kalu Oyeoku.
Nsugbe, Philip O.
Nzekwu, Onuora
Uche, A. K.
1960. Custom
and practice in Ohafia. Aba, Nigeria: Research Institute of
African
Religions Press.
Uma, Eze O.
1989. Factors
in Ohafia History. Elu, Ohafia, Nigeria: SKA Press.
