The Igbo community in Abuja gathered this week for the New Yam Festival, filling the Nigerian capital with roasted yam, drumming and traditional attire far from the south-eastern homeland the tradition comes from. For the Igbo, the day marks more than a harvest; it is a ceremony that connects a Pan-Nigerian diaspora back to land, ancestors and a farming calendar that predates the country itself.
Known variously as Iri Ji, Iwa Ji or Ihejioku depending on the community, the festival traditionally begins with a designated custodian of culture ceremonially tasting the first yam before anyone else in the community is permitted to eat it. Communities in the Igbo homeland of Anambra state hold the same ritual every August and September, with the yam regarded as the “king of crops” — a symbol of wealth, resilience and the dignity of labour rather than simply a staple food. Eating new yam before the ceremony is considered a serious breach of custom.
In Abuja, the celebration was organised by the Igbo Youth Association and drew Igbo men, women and youth alongside people from other Nigerian ethnic groups, turning a homeland tradition into something staged for a diaspora audience instead. “We are here today to celebrate our New Yam Festival. The Igbo youths in Abuja organised this event for us,” said Kalu Omechia, patron of the Igbo Youth Association in Garki, Abuja. Sunday Igwe, the association’s vice president, said the scale of the gathering was unusual: “For someone like me, I have been outside my state for more than 20 years and I have never experienced the New Yam Festival, so that is why we came together to hold this one.”
The festival’s organisers this year were largely Gen Z Igbo youth, a detail that mattered to some attendees given ongoing concern about whether younger, more urbanised generations are drifting from the culture. Chisom Ejimba, who attended the celebration, said she had expected the opposite: “When I heard that it is being coordinated by the very Gen Z we talk about… I was really impressed. So I think the Igbo culture is something that will not fade soon because the young ones are growing to emulate.” Chiyere Odawolo, another attendee, framed the Abuja event specifically as proof the tradition travels: “Recognising the culture outside Igbo land, like we are in Abuja and bringing the culture to Abuja, that is a reminder that Igbo still exist.”
The Igbo are one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups, and similar New Yam celebrations take place annually not just across southeastern Nigeria but among Igbo communities as far away as Houston, Minnesota, Germany and Qatar — a tradition that has become as much a diaspora export as a homeland ritual. Afrikeye continues to track cultural stories like this one in our AMA coverage.
