02/09/2024
Igede Traditional Rulers demand low-key 2024 Igede Agba celebration
The Igede Intermediate Area Traditional Council has called on Igede people to make the 2024 Igede Agba celebration low-key.
Igede Agba, a cultural-cum new yam festival marked in Oju/Obi Federal Constituency of Benue State by the Igede ethnic group worldwide and their friends annually, comes up on Wednesday, September 4.
In his goodwill message, His Royal Highness, Chief Oga Ero cp rtd, the Adirahu Ny'Igede, regretted that this year’s Igede Agba would not be celebrated with the usual fanfare and glamour because of the events of the recent past. He disclosed that the Traditional Council, in a meeting held on 27th August, 2024, resolved, among other things, that this year’s Igede Agba festival be celebrated in low-key to commiserate with Igede sons who lost their lives during the recent unfortunate communal crisis between neighbouring communities of Ukpila and Ohuhu as well as the raging border conflict between Ukpute and Bonta, leading to the closure of Oju-Awajir highway since July 2024.
"The council stressed that it will be foolhardy to engage in an elaborate celebration while the victims of the conflict such as widows, orphans, and other internally displaced persons languish in pains,' he explained.
While the celebration would be low keyed, he said, individuals and groups could hold their celebration in their homes devoid of the usual fanfare.
The First Class traditional ruler extended his paternal and fraternal greetings to all Igede people both at home and in the Diaspora and expressed his gratitude to God for his compassion, unprecedented and abundant grace over the lives of his people. He said these have propelled and sustained them to commemorate the annual event, the principal mantra of which is to unify the Agba descendants in celebrating the harvest of new yams, the king of crops in Igede kingdom.
He eulogized the Igede founding fathers for bequeathing to successive generations
