Ututu

Ututu is an Igbo clan of Arochukwu local government area in Abia State, named for Mazi Otutu Ezema, who led the first settlers to Amaeke. Its nineteen villages are grouped in four zones, and it is a confederacy rather than a single descent group.

Ututu takes its name from its founder. Mazi Otutu Ezema brought the first settlers to Amaeke-Ututu, and the migration is remembered as happening in the same period as those of Ohafia and Abam — the same wave of movement that carried the Cross River Igbo into their present country.

The clan is a confederacy, not one lineage: the early families descended from Cheke Ukwu at Abuma Ututu, the Akpa who came as mercenaries from the east of the Cross River, and neighbours like the Ukwa who had come up from Ibibio country. They hold together as Ututu and keep their own villages.

Nineteen villages make it, in four zones: Abuma, Amaebem, Amaeke, Amakofia, Amankwu, Amasa, Amatiti, Amodu, Eziama, Nkpakpi, Obiagwulu, Obiakang, Obiene, Obijoma, Obiluoko, Ohomja, Ubila, Ugwuogo and Ukwuakwu. Amaeke is the ancestral one.

Ututu shares boundaries with Ihechiowa and with Arochukwu, and the ties that matter most to it are with those neighbours and with the Cross River country behind them.

The old religion is still visible in the clan: the shrine of Obasi Ututu and the offor that goes with it, and the Izu Ututu festival, a thanksgiving to Obasi Ututu at the end of the yam-planting year. Village affairs are settled by compound elders at the nkuma etiti ogo, the village hearthstones; the affairs of the whole clan belong to the Eze Ututu and his council of seven, the Akpa Asaa.