By Ogbu Onah (Facebook wall November 2021)
A dirge, a death song. This is not palatable. What occasions this? I say Igede is the land of my birth. A land our ancestors on migration found and chose for permanent habitation. Cozy, breezy, and friendly climatic weather conditions. With mountainous altitudes and plains and hills. What a wonder of the world! With a people largely ignorant and apparently oblivious of the beauty of their land. A tourism destination. A potential City in the dark, landlocked with the people mired in extreme poverty and disease.
From the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western fringes of the land the people are ensconced in native and primitive villages shun of 21st century artifices. And then majority citizens finding solaces in cities and towns outside their dark enclaves, the land of my birth.
Still, for Igede, the land of my birth. For seasons the people dwell and bathe on swampy roads, and red dusts and earth. The great beauties of their belles hidden and covered in red dusts and swamp. The elites, social and political, despising their land of birth with none saying restore. The elites ferry their wards away out of the dark enclaves, most times preventing them from speaking their tongue as mark of escape from bondage. The parents go home to the villages in seasons for funerals, burials and local marriages. And won’t spend three nights and speed out away to modern environments, the lands of sojourn. No care for the raminants back home, the land of my birth.
Why not cry, the tears of my heart. My ancestors left in agony of abandonment. A beautiful heritage. The land of promise. But for now, Igede land a death song.
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