Item cultural and traditional heritage

06/11/2024

In those days before a woman goes to her husband's house, she will first live with her husband's parents to understand the way they do things. This is because marriage in Igbo culture is a contract between the two families and not two persons; husband and wife as we see today in the Western religion brought to us. This is one of the reasons why betrothing was practiced.
This is also one of the reasons the divorce rate was almost at zero percent in those days. Again, your wife wasn't for you to keep without a good relationship with your in-laws as we see today hence, the umu ada. This group called umu ada plays a vital role in check-mating excesses of both the women married into the family and also the men who married from that family. Chai! What a harmonized and balanced culture. The feminists should study the roles of umuada.

Peace be unto our ancestors who gave us these fine traditions. To show how precious and important women are in Igbo society. In ancient times women might have been brought back to their fathers' compound to be buried. This was to show the end of the marriage contract. Meanwhile, the offspring of the marriage are still very much connected to the mother's family even after the death of the mother. Hence, nwadiala,umurennem,nwa ada m, nnam ochie, ikwu nne, etc in different Igbo dialects. Instead of taking the deceased daughter back to the father's house for burial, it metamorphosed to burying her in her husband's compound with due consultation with the family of the deceased woman. But the woman's family must be the ones to dig the grave and also lower the casket in the case of my beautiful Item traditions. Chai! My ancestors are wise. In some Igbo communities, a plantain trunk would be buried in her father's house in exchange.

Let's be proud of our traditions, they were well articulated by our forebearers to bring peace, justice, balance, and harmony into our communities. Let us rediscover ourselves through the study of it.

-Prince Maduka N. Ogbonnaya-

16/10/2024

We have been studying other people's cultures for over two centuries and have almost lost our identity as a people. It's time we rediscover ourselves by studying our culture and traditions.

25/09/2024

Unfilial offspring throw every familial loyalty to the wind just to shift the blame on their ancestors for their inability to reach certain heights in life.

If there's anything like an ancestral curse, why not an ancestral blessing? Why must it be only a curse? Why not tap from the blessing instead of the curse? You still live in the very land they cleared, drink and bathe from the stream they found. Walk in the footpath they created and live in the homestead or the ancestral compound they made. You still have no shame in calling them evil. You cast and bind them. Yet you believe that " it is appointed once for someone to die and judgment follows". Why are you afraid of the forgotten dead and their power?

You lack dignity and honor if you are still bearing any title you inherited from them while castigating and demonizing them. You lack moral rights to judge them if you are still enjoying any inheritance from them.

You are still cultivating in the farmland they left for their offspring. My brothers and sisters, you are lost. You have no identity and you are committing the greatest disloyalty against yourself. Because you are in your father and your father is in you and bears his DNA. In other words, you are your ancestors. Have this in mind that one day you shall be called an ancestor too.

Right now you have denounced your ancestors because of fallacious accusations level against them by the foreigners. Even if they made some mistakes according to our modern standards is that enough to condemn their personality? How much more had the foreign ancestors you have adopted without proof that they have accepted you did in their time? How do you justify that, yet condemn your Father's? The only inheritance you have from your adopted foreign forefathers is the religious book in your hand and nothing more. You have studied this book for 200 years and have lost yourself for that long to the extent of the message of this book being your only export. Teaching it even to your teachers of centuries past. You know nothing of the ways of your fathers neither have you gained anything meaningful in the past 200 years you have followed the foreign culture nor have you been accepted by the owners of this culture as their brothers. You have been reduced to a laughing stock amongst the league of races because you do nothing for yourself except depend on and follow other races. You hate your own and love foreign things. You have loved your shackles so much that you look up to your slave master for salvation instead of looking inward and using your potential to gain your freedom. Africa who cursed you? Black race who has bewitched you?

Peradventure you are hell-bent on despising your ancestors, firstly leave all your inheritance and go to a faraway land, change your name, denounce any title you got from your ancestral lineage and never come back to the land of your wicked, evil, and demonic ancestors. But if you refuse to desert-like Abraham, believe me, the ancestral curse you so much believe in will be activated upon your head. However, if you wish to live a prosperous and peaceful life in the land of your ancestors you should abide by the culture and traditions.

Worthy of note, modernisation, and academic acquisition should not be the reason to jettison your culture and traditions. Culture is your identity while modernization is a global phenomenon that is not peculiar to a particular religion or custom. The most technologically and scientifically advanced countries and peoples of this world still maintain their culture and traditions. Why wouldn't you?

-Prince Maduka -

25/09/2024

The laws and decrees are being passed by the royal kindred(EKWO).

23/09/2024

23/09/2024

23/09/2024

22/09/2024

This marked the beginning of a new planting season. New laws are made, and decrees are passed that will govern the community for the traditional New Year.

22/09/2024

Igba Izu/ihu afia Amaokwe 2024(annual calendar of programmes).

15/09/2024

IHU AFIA / IGBA IZU AMAOKWE ITEM 2024

As custom demands, Ekwo(Prince), Nde Ugwu(Agbaeze), Nduato, Uke ji Ogoo, and the entire Amaokwe Item community will gather at the ancient ugba square on Saturday 21st September 2024 by 10 am to make laws and pass decrees that will govern the land in this traditional new year.

05/09/2024

05/09/2024

Eke mbō

05/09/2024

Welcome to Item cultural and traditional heritage page. On this page we will study and educate ourselves about our culture and traditions thereby rediscovering our lost identity as a people.