Human history is filled with instances of the unification of peoples using various means that encourage congregating at arenas to discuss, and most importantly, to see each other.
The season we are in has, over time, consolidated into a culture where people return to their roots and mingle with their people left for a long time. It has become a unification and celebratory season.
EDDA, JOOKWA
I welcome all Edda sons and daughters back to their fatherland in peace. You are here because you believe in Edda and the future it holds.
You are here because you know that Edda needs you to move ahead and turn to the dream land we envisage.
May I tell you that there is no greater treasure Edda land has than you.
This land is called Edda because of you. If all of us were to migrate, and another band of people take over this space of land we occupy, they will rename it, and Edda ceases to be.
Therefore, what is called Edda is actually you
When you fail, Edda has failed
When you stand and say we can make Edda work, Edda works
Nde Edda, nu jookwa o
IN HISTORY
Edda, in the past, had
Atamata
Osisi Oma
Ububa
At those arenas we discussed, strategised, celebrated victories, punished deviance, and exhorted unity.
Even though the cultural growth of the time made Amaeta to Libolo, Akpughuru to Nguzu a journey of a day or more, they still had links with each other through such gatherings in order not to lose touch with the essence of their oneness.
Ironically, in today’s age, when people of these communities of Edda can discuss their plans without leaving their homes or dash off on vehicles and reach each other in less than an hour, Edda pulls apart like a continent under seismic forces.
Edda of today needs a rallying platform badly.
I want us to envisage a unified, peaceful, successful Edda where you return to and have to roll from one end to another without any reason to even leave Edda, because all the fun you need is right in Edda. That is possible only with unity that breeds peace.
STRENGTHS AND STRIDES
*Edda LGA name: Has been restored. All appreciation to Edda sons and daughters who pulled their weights to actualise that dream. Let the restoration of the Edda LGA name always serve as a sample of a common interest that defied individual political differences.
*Edda Identity: To the credit of about 23,560 Edda sons and daughters who appended their signatures to a common cause, we actualised a dream. It was a simple gesture that demonstrated that Edda can come together and attain a common good cause. Our brothers and sisters in the USA even took it to a higher level of getting their friends, even of Yoruba extraction, to send their signatures too. On the day of the public hearing, some Edda sons made sure we were physically represented to submit our signatures and make our voice heard.
*Nzuko Edda: This body has received an amazing revival and is hosting cultural carnivals to celebrate Edda culture at the branches. We want that spirit to be sustained nationwide. Recently, it was registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as a rallying platform for the Edda Clan. The registration was in actualisation of a history that started in 1963, as I was reliable informed.
*Elevations: A good number of Edda sons and daughters have lately attained prime growth in their careers and endeavours. It is gratifying.
*Edda Unity Trek: To cap it up for the year, here is the Edda Unity Trek, the first in Edda history. I followed the donations dashboard and was inspired by how the figures steadily grew every day, where on December 26 morning, 121 willing donors had polled a total of N20,586,211.20. And this is for a project that budgeted N10 million. It was doubled, and commendable.
So, if we can aggregate to get signatures, if we can rally to raise double the budgeted amount for a unity trek, that means fixing Edda is possible if we decide to tackle that.
WE HAD A SPOT
Edda used to be the spot for external attention in the days of yore. We had what attracted the world around us to us. In the documentation of Elizabeth Isichei in her book – The Igbo World, she referenced a writing of Dr. Cruickshank, a Scottish missionary and head of the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM), now the Presbyterian Church in Unwana, who described the Owutu market he visited in 1903. His wife, who accompanied him to the market, said she saw at the market the largest crowd of people in her life. They described meeting the Unwana natives who were at the market and greeted them because they already knew them.
Edda was a place where people recruited mercenary soldiers from. In one of such instances in 1901, two Aro brothers, Nwosu and Ufere Torti, deceived Eze Edda into sending him soldiers to fight their personal war for their business interest in Obegu. The backlash was the carnage the white man visited on Ekoli on November 1, 1901, a near genocidal attack. Even though acting in naivety, those mercenaries were men of skill.
Edda had the reputed Esim oracle at Amancho, where the world around sojourned to settle disputes.
Today, the world around us has attractions, but Edda lost its lustre. We need that back. We need to work towards attracting specialist hospitals, tertiary institutions, and industries that will revive the attraction Edda once had.
NOW IS THE TIME
This gathering is timely before the little nexus or fabric of inclusion that has been over-stretched by destructive forces completely snaps.
We need unity to grow
We need trekking and discussion to agree
We need sibling-hood to remain the same people
We need rediscovery to revive that ethos of:
*Edda adighi eme ife ifu ani
*Onye aghakwa nwanne ya
*Edda bu nge
We need talent development in tech, academia, sports, entertainment and all. Our generation celebrates every talent, and every aspect of life contributes to lifting Edda.
Let’s, over a timeline, produce Edda young men and women to feature in our national football teams and other sporting careers.
Let’s challenge and support Edda young people to be global entertainment icons
Let’s act towards having Edda sons and daughters etch their names in global tech enrichment
A PECULIAR HERITAGE
The Ikwu nne, Ikwu nna, umu nna, and ogo bound us into a single bundle of consanguinity and affinity, where people married within the locality for bonding and the preservation of their heritage and togetherness.
Edda is a sample for anthropology to study as a course.
We are the only people who wove their society in a way that a child is closely tied to the father’s and mother’s families.
A child inherits his father’s political, religious, and locality lineage
The same child is a legatee of the mother’s lineage’s economic heritage
Because of this, the Edda family celebrated the girl child to perpetuate the Ikwu nne lineage, the same way it craved for the boy child to perpetuate the father’s paternal line. Children of both sexes were cherished and dearly wanted. These features are unique to Edda and were the bonding forces.
DESTRUCTION SETS IN
How did the bonding start pulling apart?
It was when personal interests started overriding group interests
It was when we invented the delusion of individualism
There is a difference between a group and a crowd, even though both are made of human beings.
No society makes progress as a crowd because, whereas a group is close-knit, purposeful, intentional, has a goal, and is driven by strategy, a crowd is amorphous, disparate, not targeted, and fires blank because of the non-consolidation of forces.
No society thrives without leadership, and a society without unity can’t choose leaders. Therefore,
self-appointed rulers take over to dictate and ride the people like donkeys for their personal gains.
Even the hunter-gatherer bands had heads/leaders for hunting outings. When societies became sedentary, they consolidated into definite and institutionalised leadership units. The leaders led with the mandate of the people and achieved their purposes. Such a cultural setting gave rise to organised societies. Without a speck of doubt, Edda started with leadership that held the people together, protected their territories from incursion, invasion, interference, and conquest.
Why would Edda, when unity matters most, be wanting? We have to say enough. We have to rebuild and rekindle the old fire and work as a team at a time our being and existence is threatened from the four cardinal points, and when healthy competition among clans drives their growth through unity.
AGENDA SETTING
A major factor of disintegration in Edda is politics. This is where we need to do so much work. We urge politicians to apply caution. We need to checkmate divisive and hurtful politicking in Edda.
We call for positive politics. I always cite Uburu as an instance to remind Edda politicians that political differences must not manifest in fisticuffs, bloodshed, and destruction; otherwise, Uburu would have been burned down like Carthage when Umahi and Onu were bigwigs and in different parties. They rather competed on who grew their clan more. Why would Edda always be a boiling political conundrum?
We also suggest to the Council to introduce the posting of students of Edda to secondary schools outside their immediate communities, and host inter-school sports or competitive events for interaction. That was the trend in our primary and secondary school days.
People don’t trek or embark on assertive actions unless to bring in new ideas, a new intention, or a renewal of a fading lifestyle.
Edda trekking for unity means Edda is lacking in unity. That is a fact we can’t deny. However, we are not here to create unity in Edda, but to reinvent unity that has been seared, scarred, buffeted, and lacerated over time by the vagaries of personal selfish inclinations that took the better of us.
A people are only plundered when they don’t stand together, forge a common front, and speak in the same voice. There is no predator so fierce, powerful, and efficacious to prey on a band of weak individuals agglutinated by a purpose. We watch documentaries of how seemingly weak and helpless animals overpower lions, jackals, foxes, and other predators when they decide to fight back as a team.
In elementary chemistry, we were taught that the reason quicksilver forms bubbles on a surface when spilled is because the molecules have more cohesive than adhesive properties. Let us be an Edda modeled after quicksilver, always cohesive.
We have experimented with a scattered pattern and have seen the scars all over us. Let us, therefore, try something else – the opposite of disunity, to recover from being battered and shattered.
Unity brings progress because it gives room to joint effort, the sharing of ideas, the appreciation of each other, and the pooling of little efforts into a lump. Let us always remember the aziza bunch in our homes. Each broomstick is easily broken by even a year-old, but a bunch can never be broken by even an army of strong men.
DEVELOPMENT
Unity brings us together to discuss ways of making Edda better.
We throw a challenge to the Council Chairman to think ahead. Among the Igbo clans, we have an advantage of land space that is one of our major economic impetuses. Let us leverage this and attract development from the state and private investors. Let’s call the world to see our potential and also create the incentives.
Even places pressed for space, such as
*Japan, with about 11% to 15% habitable space, about 80% mountains, 67% forests, is non-habitable
*South Korea with 30% of the land space habitable, 70% of the land is mountains
*Western China is so challenged that apart from human inputs, it’s completely not habitable. This forced 94% of the population to live on about 20% of the land space
These people used planning, tech, ingenuity, etc to overcome.
*We urge for an Edda Physical and Urban Development Commission to map out development plans and spaces that will supervise structural development.
*Families that own lands should liaise with the Council on leases.
*Economic planning and development body should be thought of as important.
It is too late to sustain a haphazard development as if Edda doesn’t plan to grow and advance.
COMMENDATIONS
*To those Edda sons and daughters who have used their privileges to lift other Edda people, Chineke nde Edda must reward you kindly
*To the political leaders who have not used power as a means of conquest and subjugation, we appreciate you
*To those who have and still invest their time and ideas for Edda’s good, you shall remain a watered garden, luxuriant and rich like the forests on the mountains of Edda
*To the champions of this noble idea to bring Edda together, you shall remain rich and charming like the flatland and wetland fields of Edda
*To our political leaders who have been using their opportunities to make sure that in the governance of the state and the country, Edda is not left out, we thank you. We also urge you to do more
*To Edda businesspeople who have started seeing the need to bring their investments to Edda because Edda isn’t a desert, and isn’t a cemetery, but a fertile land for business investments, thank you. We want more of that in 2026
We shall return next season to a better Edda, where this Trek will become a part of Edda Identity
Photo Credit: Edda Parliament Fact
Being a speech delivered by Emewu is Director of Research, Institute of African Studies, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China at the inaugural Edda Unity Trk, December 29, 2025
