For one Saturday, the Civic Hall on Blackshots Lane, Grays, Essex, was transformed from a civic space into a vibrant cultural meeting point where history, identity and contemporary life converged. On 29 August 2026, members of Ogbako Ndi Igbo UK and Ireland, representing Igbo communities across the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, gathered for their biennial Iri Ji New Yam Festival.
The occasion was marked by colour, ceremony, music, traditional dress, food and fellowship. Yet beneath the visible celebration was a deeper cultural significance. The festival provided an opportunity for the Igbo community to reaffirm its connection to an ancestral tradition while negotiating what that tradition means within the realities of diaspora life.
At its core, Iri Ji is a celebration of harvest and thanksgiving. It marks the beginning of a new agricultural cycle and acknowledges the labour, abundance and communal values associated with the yam. Over time, the festival has become much more than an agricultural ceremony, serving as an important vehicle for preserving Igbo identity and cultural memory both in Nigeria and among Igbo communities around the world.
In Grays, that heritage was not treated as a relic of another era. It was actively expressed through participation. Traditions were brought into the present, shared across generations and given new meaning within a British setting.
The gathering of elders, community leaders, families, young people and cultural advocates reinforced the intergenerational nature of the celebration. Older generations carried memories of customs and traditions, while younger participants encountered those traditions in a communal and celebratory environment.
Central to the ceremony was the yam, whose significance in Igbo culture extends well beyond its agricultural and culinary value. It embodies ideas of labour, prosperity, gratitude, renewal and community. Its presentation and celebration therefore become symbolic acts of cultural continuity.
For an Igbo community living far from its ancestral homeland, this symbolism takes on an added dimension. The yam becomes a connection to home. The ceremony becomes a means of preserving memory. And the gathering itself becomes a powerful reminder that migration may change where people live, but it does not necessarily sever their relationship with who they are.
“We Must Keep Our Culture Alive”
For Chief Charles Ukandu, President of Ogbako Ndi Igbo UK, the festival represents precisely this responsibility.
“Iri Ji is more than a celebration of yam. It is a celebration of who we are. We are living in Britain, our children are growing up here, but we must ensure that they know where they come from and understand the values that shaped our people.”
Chief Ukandu's position carries particular institutional significance. Ogbako Ndi Igbo UK and Ireland is a formally registered organisation, with Ukandu listed as an active director, while its wider network includes leaders of major Igbo unions across Britain.
For him, therefore, the festival is not simply an annual social gathering.
It is cultural work.
“When our people gather like this, we are teaching without necessarily sitting in a classroom. A child sees the traditional clothing, hears the language, watches the dances, eats the food and asks questions. That child is learning identity.”
There is something particularly compelling about this understanding of cultural preservation. It does not imagine heritage as something that survives through books alone, It survives through participation. A child must see it, hear it, taste it. And, most importantly, feel that they belong to it.
A Festival That Crosses Generations
Among the most encouraging features of the gathering was the visible participation of younger members of the community.
The younger generation occupies an increasingly complicated cultural space. Many have grown up entirely or predominantly in Britain, navigating British social environments while inheriting Nigerian and specifically Igbo traditions through their families.
Iri Ji offers them an opportunity to encounter that inheritance collectively rather than privately.
One young participant Dr Chizoba Orji described the experience in deeply personal terms:
“For me, this is one of those moments where I feel connected to something bigger than myself. I was born and raised here, so events like this help me understand the parts of my identity that I may not experience every day.”
Another young attendee, Amarachukwu spoke about the festival less as a ceremony and more as an experience of belonging:
“I enjoy the food and the music, but I think what means the most to me is seeing everybody together. You realise that culture is not just what your parents tell you about. It is something you can actually participate in.”
Their observations reveal one of the festival's most significant achievements. Culture becomes stronger when it is experienced as something joyful. The younger participants were not being asked merely to preserve tradition out of obligation. They were being invited to enjoy it. And enjoyment is often the beginning of belonging.
The Yorkshire Connection
The festival's national character was also evident in the participation of leaders from Igbo organisations across the UK.
Among those present was Dr Emmanuel Nwofe, President of Igbo Union Yorkshire, an organisation whose stated mission includes cultural preservation, community support, youth development and maintaining Igbo identity while helping families thrive in Britain.
Nwofe described the festival as an important expression of unity among Igbo communities in Britain.
“Iri Ji reminds us that although we may live in different cities and belong to different local unions, there is something that connects us. We are one people with a shared history, shared values and a shared responsibility to preserve our culture.”
For Nwofe, the diaspora dimension adds another layer to the meaning of Iri Ji.
“When you celebrate this festival in the UK, you are doing two things at the same time. You are honouring the culture you inherited and showing the wider society that this culture is alive. It is not something that belongs only in Nigeria. It travels with the people.”
That idea was visible throughout the event. The festival did not attempt to recreate an Igbo village in Essex. Instead, it created something new: an Igbo cultural space within Britain.
Diaspora culture is not simply a replica of the homeland. It is a living culture adapting to a new environment while maintaining connections with its origins.
Professor Nnenna Oti and the Responsibility of Heritage
The keynote address by Professor Nnenna Oti provided an intellectual dimension to the celebrations.
Her contribution placed the festival within the broader question of cultural identity and the responsibilities of a people living away from their ancestral homeland.
“To thy own self, always be true. Culture is not merely what we inherit from those before us. It is what we choose to preserve, what we choose to transmit and what we choose to become, somebody has to do it and it can be you” Professor Oti told the gathering.
Her words resonated particularly strongly. A cultural tradition survives not simply because previous generations protected it, but because subsequent generations find meaning in carrying it forward.
Oti's keynote therefore transformed the celebration from nostalgia into responsibility.
“If our children know the language but do not understand the values, we have only preserved the surface. If they understand the values but have no connection to the stories, songs and traditions that carry those values, we have also lost something. We must give them both.”
That proposition captures the challenge confronting many diaspora communities. Preservation cannot mean freezing culture. It must mean making culture meaningful enough for the next generation to claim as its own.
Sen. Victor Umeh: A Celebration of Unity
As chairman of the occasion, Senator Victor Umeh brought another perspective to the gathering, emphasising the importance of unity and collective identity.
“A people who know where they come from will have greater confidence about where they are going,” Umeh remarked.
His message was consistent with the broader atmosphere of the event. The gathering was not simply about looking backwards. It was about strengthening relationships in the present and creating a foundation for the future.
“Our culture is one of the strongest things we can pass to our children. We should celebrate it with pride, but we must also ensure that our culture becomes a bridge, not a barrier, between generations and between communities.”
The comment is particularly relevant to the diaspora experience. Cultural identity can become divisive when treated as an exclusive possession. But when it becomes a bridge to history, community and understanding, it can enrich rather than isolate.
More Than Food and Festivity
There is a temptation to view cultural festivals primarily through their spectacle. The colours are attractive. The traditional clothing is striking. The food is memorable. The music and dance create excitement. But underneath these visible elements is a complex cultural architecture. Iri Ji carries ideas of gratitude, labour, abundance, family, community and renewal. Its agricultural origins remain important, but its meaning has expanded as Igbo people have established communities across the world.
An Artistic Expression of Identity
Viewed through the lens of arts and culture, the festival was also an expansive performance. The clothing, ceremonial gestures, music, dance, food, speeches and communal participation collectively formed a cultural artwork.
Unlike theatre performed on a conventional stage, there was no strict boundary between performer and audience. Everyone participated. The elder carried memory. The young person represented continuity. The musicians supplied rhythm. The dancers transformed heritage into movement. The speakers gave intellectual language to identity. And the yam remained at the centre, connecting all of these expressions. That is the particular strength of community festivals. They allow culture to be experienced through multiple artistic forms simultaneously.
The Future Is in the Young
Perhaps the most important image from the festival was not the ceremonial presentation or the speeches by dignitaries, It was the younger people watching, listening, dancing, asking questions, taking photographs, and participating. Their presence suggested that the future of Igbo culture in Britain does not necessarily depend upon attempting to reproduce the past exactly as it was.It depends upon giving younger people enough access to that past to enable them to reinterpret it for themselves.
As Nkiru put it:
“I think our generation will celebrate culture differently from our parents, but that doesn't mean we don't value it. We just need opportunities to experience it in a way that feels relevant to us.”
That may ultimately be the most important lesson of Iri Ji 2026. Culture survives when it is allowed to breathe.
Ogbako Ndi Igbo UK's 2026 Iri Ji festival in Grays was a celebration, but it was also an act of cultural preservation. It brought together generations, communities and geographical identities under one roof. For Chief Charles Ukandu, it represented responsibility. For Dr Emmanuel Nwofe, it represented unity. For Professor Nnenna Oti, it represented the responsibility to transmit not only traditions but the values behind them. For Senator Victor Umeh, it represented the strength that comes from knowing one's roots. And for the younger participants, it represented something perhaps even more fundamental: belonging.
In the end, the festival demonstrated that culture does not remain alive simply because people remember it. It remains alive because people gather around it. They sing it. They dance it. They cook it. They tell their stories. They teach it to their children.
And, once every two years in The UK and Northern Ireland, they come together to break the new yam and remind themselves that distance may change where a people live, but it does not have to change who they are.
Post a Comment