Ozikoro
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Eketekele

Recorded in Enugu. A place page gathers every related history, image, recording and document rather than opening only one article.

Connected writing

Histories about Eketekele

The archive links no published history to Eketekele yet. Its neighbours’ histories are not shown here, because a link to another community is not a history of this one.

Named in other records

Histories that mention Eketekele

No published record in this archive names Eketekele in its own words.

Read as: Eketekele. Counted where the name is written with a capital, because a lower-case occurrence of a name that is also an ordinary word is the word.

The record

What the archive holds for Eketekele

RegionEnugu
DivisionNorthern Igbo
Ethnic groupIgbo
Recorded assection

Its towns are Ofoko, Iheakpu and Iheaka. Two further small local communities are mentioned without being named, and the group is counted in the northern section of the eastern uplands.

That region shows heavy Igala influence: many lineages there carry Igala names, an Ama title system takes the place of the Ọzọ system, and Odo and Amaba 'dodo' cults are kept beside, or instead of, Mmo dances. Igala example is also credited with cotton cloth weaving and with circular baskets and calabash basins in place of the rectangular basket usual among the Igbo.

Afigbo collects the foundation stories of the group's village-groups — Ihohoro from a founder said to have come from Idah, Ihaka from a man whose father was called Oka Nandichie, Ihakpu from one Okara Ogbara — and reads them as claims to cultural descent from Nri and Idah, not as migration history, since the names of the Idah founder are themselves Igbo. He also reports that a 1934 officer was told the people called their titles Ama, yet described them as Ọzọ once pressed.

Afigbo rejects the reading of these legends as evidence of migration from Awka and Idah, which he says earlier scholars and administrators took at face value.

Sources

Forde & Jones (1950), The Ibo and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of South-Eastern Nigeria, pp. 28-30 and 33-36, Table II and notes; Afigbo (1981), Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture, pp. 72-73 and 84

Archive records

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