Kalabari New Year Celebration: Call For Return To Culture

Saturday, 16th November, 2024, was a moment of joy and celebration in Kalabari Kingdom, of Ijaw nation in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria.
That day, sons and daughters of Kalabari gathered at Tema/Abalama Roundabout, Emohua/Kalabari Road, to mark an age-long cultural festival; “Kalabari New Year Calendar,” which begins every 16th of November.
It attracted chiefs, community/opinion leaders, women, youths as well as academicians, the media and other guests.
The day before the event, Friday, 15th November, was declared a sacred day; when Ekine Sekiapu group performed sacred ceremonies at Buguma, the ancestral headquarters of Kalabari Kingdom with their talking drums to usher in the festival.
The Chief Administrator of Kalabari Culture Clinic and Executive Director of Havids Centre for Environment, Mr. Harry Awolayeofori Mac Morrison, said Kalabari has a special calendar different from the Gregorian calendar. He said there are also the Russian, Ethiopian, and other calendars. “But today, November 16, 2024, is the First day of the New Year in Kalabari”.
Mac-Morrison said the cultural festival incorporates music, dances, storytelling, tree planting and a lot about the Kalabari culture, which is a way of celebrating unity, progress and joy of the Kalabari.
He acknowledged that the Kalabari people are Ijaw, with 33 communities. That informed the symbolic planting of 33 trees to represent the 33 communities in Kalabari land, explaining that the tree planting was for sustainability of the environment.
On the significance of the event to the lives of Kalabari people, Mac Morrison explained, “It talks about the rebirth for the unity and progress of Kalabari. A lot of Kalabari’s are people that have a lot of things and it is for them to reawaken their culture, unity and develop aged-long ceremony. But this is the first official ceremony that is marked globally. It surpasses more than a hundred years.
“There is a programme that symbolizes the end of the year, about which we are having some issues. Some Christians are saying we should stop the practice of the culture, and we are saying it is not all of the culture that is evil, we are going to showcase the good side of our culture and not the evil”.
He said the event will impact positively on the lives of Kalabari people especially the children, who might not have known that the Kalabari people have their own calendar. “Now, the awareness is there and would bring about unity, and the trees being planted for environmental sustainability would grow with children.
Mac-Morrison said they consulted traditional rulers, chiefs and other stakeholders in the various Kalabari communities who gave their blessing to the celebration of the New Year. He however said some of the people for religious reasons did not get along with the celebrations.
Talking about the importance of culture in the lives of the people, the Chief Admin of the Kalabari Culture Clinic, Mac-Morrison said, “We should preserve our culture and the aspect we are showcasing are the good aspect of our culture. Culture is the people; it tells of the people – our language, dressing, dance, talks of who you are, and these things cannot be wished away and so we are preserving them.”
He assured that it would be an annual event and that next year’s celebration would be more eventful.
One of the organizers of the event and award winning journalist, Ms. Ibiba Don Pedro, explained that the Kalabari New Year Day event is a cultural and traditional event, “a day that symbolizes rebirth, a return to traditional values, values that held our society together for centuries and up to this moment, values of our community awareness, and also about the need to return to the use, strengthening of our language, learning of our history, empowerment of community women, youth and so on.”
She noted that Kalabariland is one of those areas, where there is massive pollution caused by oil mining, with the deforestation of their mangrove forest and pollution of the rivers. She said they would use the day to reawaken the people to return the good values that held their society together all of these centuries.
“So, we are creating awareness about environmental challenges we face, our ruptured communities, a lot of abandoned communities basically; we need to come back, people have run away from their communities. They’ve lost their languages, lost touch with their roots,” she lamented.
Don Pedro, who is also the Chief Executive of Candour TV/Magazine and the Director of Niger Delta Women International Resources, Environment and Development Centre (ND-WIRE DEV CENT) said, “So, today’s event enables us to think, to reflect. We hope to make it bigger. We are just raising awareness about what needs to be done. World over, people are returning to their cultural values, to the things that held their society together, and discarding things that are not progressive. “What we’re about is using awareness, using knowledge and speaking about environmental regeneration by those who love the land”
She said, “Everybody has to return; our culture is our lives, is a way of life. Some people unfortunately are ashamed of their culture. They don’t want to speak their language, they don’t teach their children. Their children are lost in limbo, we want to return all of those values, anything that held us together that made sense.”
She pointed out that Indians, the Chinese speak their language, think in their language. And it is important that all should return to the things that keep them rooted, saying “When you love your language, your community, you feel good, you feel happy when you are going back to your community, and you want to make sure that those communities are sustainable. We need to move on; we need to embrace our culture in its entirety. For more than anything, we need to make sure that we built the society so that those who are coming behind us, the younger generation are proud to be Kalabari people, proud to be Ijaw people, proud to be Niger Delta people, proud of their communities, and working with others at home and all over the world to make them livable and sustainable, and decongest Port Harcourt.
Talking about the significance of tree planting, Ibiba Don-Pedro stated, “The environment is at the centre of our lives, environment is at the centre of our future, the environment is what’s going to sustain generations hundreds and thousands of years of Kalabari people, working within the Kalabari communities, making money within the Kalabari communities, eating Kalabari foods and building, using the available knowledge from ICT, and so on. We don’t all have to be farmers and fishermen, but we can be part of efforts to re-green the land.”
She said tree planting as captured in the Kalabari cultural celebration is all about planting economic trees that can empower women and youths to have sustainable incomes within the Kalabari territory. She added that the new year day was all about a season of celebration of revival, rebirth, return to the land, hence nobody else can do it better than those of them who love the land.
She sounded it clear. “We are not the only people that were colonized; our culture is not inferior to the British. Today is just the first time, and I am excited to be here. In subsequent editions it’s going to be bigger and better,” disclosing that they’ve got a lot of goodwill from people all over the world.
An elderly Kalabari woman who participated in the cultural festival, Madam Ibitoru Clinton-George, from Tema community, told newsmen that she was happy participating in the ceremony. She said the climate was always very hot on them as there are no trees to shade them, adding that they lack light, water and no good roads and bridges connecting them to the neighbouring communities, insisting that their suffering had gone beyond human endurance.
“This cultural event here today, is a welcome development in that it has made us to air our views on our situations,” she said, informing that they still display their cultural heritage like picking periwinkle, dancing, Iria, Iragbo, etc, as they help to bring about peace, unity, joy and development among people of their community.
Madam George called on the government to come to the aid of her Tema community and help them build the bridges to connect them to other communities to boost their local economy, noting that light and water are also very essential to them.
Also commenting was Bro Cele Francis from Buguma City in Asari-Toru Local Government Area. He noted, “We’re here today to mark the new year festival of Kalabari people different from the Gregorian calendar. Kalabari is part of Ijaw nation, and we have this 16th November, every year, as our new year.
“And this year specifically marked out for tree planting to cover for the deforestation that has happened in our land, occasioned by artisanal refineries and all that”.
He said they were already losing their mangrove forests, and so they want to change the narrative by planting trees, inculcating the idea of planting trees into their people, so that it will be a norm, and with time, whatever they have lost they would regain through the tree planting.
Bro Francis further added that they were not just looking at planting just any tree. Most of the trees planted are economic trees-fruits and all that will also help in terms of feeding the people, agriculture and economic ventures. But he said moving around is a major problem in the Kalabari area because of its riverine nature. “Kalabari areas are predominantly riverine, and so the greatest challenges we’re having is mobility, roads,” he said.
“If you look around here where we are having this event, behind me is Tema community. Tema community is one of the communities that make up Asari-Toru Local Government, and behind Tema community we have Ifoko community and just after Ifoko community you see Sangama, which leads to the central group axis which covers about six (6) communities.
“And behind me (Tema community), is a bridge that has been there for over 80 years, that has not seen governments attention. We’ve had issues of contracts being awarded, re-awarded and re-awarded again, but as we speak nothing has happened, and so, we’re using this opportunity to plead with the state government, federal government, and intervention agencies like NDDC, FERMA, and all that to come to the aid of our people.
“If this bridge is taken care of, it would ease movements for Tema people, the Ifoko people. And then God helps and a little bridge is crossed from Ifoko to Sangama, it would now connect the entire central group, and so it would help us economically, it would also help is open up the place for other industrial activities to take place.”
He also said the communities need electricity in their homes, and would also appreciate if government can assist in that area.
He described culture as a way of life of a people, adding that culture that is harmful should be done away with while the ones that are not harmful should be encouraged.
An illustrious son of Kalabari, Dr. Tonye Yepreye Benibo, who is a senior lecturer, Rivers State University, in History and International Diplomacy said that westernization came and eroded many parts of Kalabari culture.
“There are many things that the Portuguese, the Europeans came and met in Africa, and discovered that were even more advanced than they were. “Society was more advanced, they came and saw the Kalabari in about 1450. When they came, they saw the Kalabari society as advanced society.
“Our people were able to manage their unique area, we traded with the Portuguese; and most of the things we pronounce today are Portuguese.
“Our people had an interaction with the Europeans as early as 500 years ago, and the intention was mutual at that point in time,” he explained, saying that Kalabari people cannot now discard their culture.
According to Dr. Tonye Yeyepreye Benibo, “This aspect of our culture has been on for centuries. Before we met the white man, we had our own calendar, we had our ways of doing things. But when the White man came, he asked us to completely discard all of these things.”
Dr. Benibo carpeted Kalabari people who say ‘Oru is juju’, and argued that ‘Oru’ is the ancestor to Ijaw people. “I’m a pastor, I’m a clergy man; tradition is the way people did things in the past, they made mistakes and they corrected,” he pointed out. “Today we are lost; we don’t even know what we are.”
He said the Kalabari have their own form of writing just as Calabar have their own form of writing called “Insigbidi.”
According to him, as a people, Africa is a mess, insisting that why they tell students to go back to history is for them to understand who and what they are as Africans.
“Africans in the Diaspora are waiting for Africans in the motherland to tell them their past,” the university don said, noting that as a Christian, he would like to learn the Kalabari talking drums without going through or belonging to “Ekine Sekiapu” initiation.
“History is very essential. So, if we can provide as much history of our past, it can help us to navigate the future that we all desire,” he stressed.
He described Kalabari as an idea, a concept that their forefathers came together and built; and it is working.
“Kalabari is a nation, a federalism. It was a heterogeneous group who now became homogenous by reason of our accepting to be together,” he explained.
Speaking before embarking on the tree planting, Professor Okoronama A.F. Wokoma, expressed excitement on the occasion, saying it is worthwhile. He said they are planting 33 trees to represent 33 communities in Kalabari kingdom, adding that the trees they were planting were not just ordinary trees, they are economic trees that will benefit their society and some of them are of medicinal value that can also help the health of their people, and prayed God to bless Kalabari land.
Highlight of the event were launching of the Kalabari New Year Calendar, trees planting, traditional dancing and exhibition of numerous local Kalabari cuisine and others.