Ohanaeze Battles Extinction Of Igbo Language, Endorses Ahiajoku Festival

The president-general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Senator John Azuta-Mbata, has announced the enactment of the socio-cultural radical for the Ahiajoku Festival, saying that it would elevate Igbo taste visibility.

He stated this during the sojourn by the readying committee of the Ahiajoku Festival astatine the Ohanaeze Secretariat successful Enugu.

The 2025 Ahiajoku Festival, which includes a lecture, is simply a gathering of intellectuals, particularly of Igbo descent, wherever they instrumentality banal of their efforts and illustration caller frontiers.

The Ahiajoku lecture, scheduled for Friday, September 26, successful Owerri, volition beryllium delivered by Most Rev (Prof) Godfrey Onah, the Catholic Bishop of Nsukka Diocese, themed, “The Future of Igbo Economy Amidst the Challenges of Insecurity: A Call for Paradigm Shift.”

Senator Mbata said that the festival remains an avenue for heavy conversations among Ndigbo connected issues of culture, connection and endurance but lamented implicit UNESCO’s study which said that the Igbo connection is endangered and appealed for urgent measures to avert specified taste erosion.

He revealed that his medication had instituted professorial endowment chairs successful tertiary institutions to thrust probe successful Igbo history, tradition, and language.

The Ohanaeze president-general tasked the organizers to present an fantabulous festival that would elevate Igbo taste visibility, adding that they would play their relation gladly for Ndigbo to beryllium heard.

“We are encouraging studies and probe connected Igbo connection and culture. We person acceptable up a committee for that. Any relation we are expected to play, we shall gladly play it astatine the Ahiajoku lecture.
Our radical indispensable beryllium heard,” helium said.

Earlier, the director-general of Ahiajoku Centre and Secretary of the Planning Committee, Nze Ray Emeana, traced the root and improvement of the Ahiajoku lecture festival. He recalled that the festival was inaugurated successful 1979 by the precocious politician of Imo State, Chief Sam Mbakwe, arsenic a level for Igbo introspection and projection of the Igbo worldview.

Emeana highlighted the stature of intellectuals who had delivered the Ahiajoku lecture to see Professors MJC Echeruo, Chinua Achebe, Ben Nwabueze, Donatus Nwoga, Adiele Afigbo, Laz Ekwueme and the 2025 variation would people the 45th day of the festival and the 25th lecture successful the series.