Ozikoroclan in the archive
Ohafia
Recorded in Abia. A place page gathers every related history, image, recording and document rather than opening only one article.
Connected writing
Histories about Ohafia
The archive links no published history to Ohafia 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 Ohafia
These are published records whose own words name Ohafia. A mention is not a history of Ohafia, which is why they are listed here rather than with the histories about it.
Read as: Ohafia, Ohaffia. 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 Ohafia
| Region | Abia |
|---|---|
| State | Abia |
| Local government | Ohafia |
| Division | Cross River Igbo |
| Ethnic group | Igbo |
| Recorded as | clan |
Ohafia is an Igbo clan of Abia State whose ancestral village is Elu-OHAFIA, the central settlement of the town, and whose twenty-six villages make it one of the largest clans in the old Bende country.
Ohafia's people were warriors, and they have never stopped saying so. The knitted leopard cap, okpu agu, is theirs; iri agha, the dance that retells a warrior's killing, is theirs; and the memory of the mercenary companies that fought for whichever town paid them is still the centre of how the clan describes itself.
Twenty-six villages make the clan, and Elu is the ancestral one — the first settlement, and the seat from which the rest are reckoned. Ebem holds the administration of the local government area today, and the Nigerian Army's 14 Brigade is based in the town.
The country is farmland: yam, cassava, melon and vegetables, with trade at the Amavo market, and blacksmithing and wood carving alongside it. The clan sits about fifty kilometres from Umuahia.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Ohafia" Forde & Jones (1950), The Ibo and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of South-Eastern Nigeria, Table XI and notes
Archive records
Photographs, oral testimony and documents connected to this community would appear here with provenance.
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