News

Owei Takes Birinimigha In Marriage

Published

6 years ago

November 22, 2019

Owei and his new wife in the middle

Freetown Pereama, the Grandmaster of Ijaw music in one of his albums sings, paraphrase: ‘izon mo oniye mo, oniye mo, oniye mo, kemetubo pagha yẹ ere nanagha egberi gbolo de yẹ; keme tubo pagha tubọ zigha ye egberi gbolo dé ye…’ Meaning: Ijaw and their ways of doing things/thinking, a man born to this world, he is not married as when due (matured), Ijaw will be called names, talk about him and owe all sort of erroneous beliefs about him; a man born into this world, he does not bear a child, Ijaw will call him all sort of names…

This lyrics may have perhaps prompted Owei Akpfagha to have approached Birinimigha of the Ekperu family, Taribo community of Ebijaw ward six, Odigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State, to ask her hands in a relationship and she said yes and so, the relationship matured to marriage.

Consequently, the next song of joy that must have probably filled Owei’s mouth is Pereama’s album ‘GOOD WIFE’. He must have sang Taribor otu/abu bo, Okubananaegbe Feruferu bo, Millionaire Muje bo, Double Chief Saidu Ogoba bo, Double Chief Adeyemi Ogoba bo, High Chief Ebi Akpofagha woni ye, I have seen my true love;I have seen my soulmate, Birinimigha Ekperu, na she be my true love na she I go marry.

Not want to go by the way being practised by some persons particularly in this part of the country, the Akpofagha family push for date for the traditional marriage wherein the Bride-price is paid. It is worth noting that Owei has royal blood flowing in his vein hence the family partucularly High Chief Ebi wouldn’t probably want the family name soiled through ‘credit’ marriage or say ‘marry, bear children and pay later’, as it is common with some people. Consequently, November 9, 2019, was fixed for the traditional marriage between Owei Akpofagha and Birinimigha Ekperu.

The_Ijaw_Traditional_Marriage_Proper

As early 11:00am of the D-Day, the family had converged on Akpofagha’s compound, Taribor community, to get the Ikor (Bride-Price) as it being called, paid. As usual, and as the tradition of this set of Ijaw speaking people requires, two men were chosen as messengers while elders in the family sit back to send them to the Bride family whom at the other end of the family had converged on the compound of the father to the Ayoro (Bride) to receive the Ikor. At this point, bargaining through these two messengers were done, and it was only when, in the course of the message, a question or request was beyond the messengers’ capacity to handle that the elders assigned other olders ones to go to the other family to bargain further. After the exchange of messages between the two families and all the requires bills paid, the Ayoro (Bride) was called by her family for questioning.

She was accompanied by some women from Owei’s family while her faced covered. At this juncture, some of the questions her family might have probably ask her are: if she was ready for the marriage; was she coerced/forced to marry him; if she was ready to stay in the husband’s house no matter what may.

She was thereafter brought back to the groom’s family. It was after this stage that the Tumo-tumo came in. Tumo-tumo is the stage the whole family of the Groom and well-wishers formerly accompanied the Bride and Groom to the Bride’s family whom in turn welcomed them. Owei and Birinimigha were accompanied to his wife home with drumming, singing and dancing while two young ladies (one for Owei and one for his wife) cover them with umbrella. Literally, the umbrellas too were dancing to the drums and the melodious Ijaw songs. The dancing and singing continued until they entered the room wherein the waiting bride family members were to welcome them.

Immediately they entered the waiting room came the next which the most glamouring stage. When the new couple got to the seating of the family, they (couple) sat on the mat apparently prepared for them in the middle of the people. Thereafter the drumming and dancing stopped for another level of dance. At this juncture, two young ladies who tied Igburu (rapper) came out to dance Awigiri/Owigiri. As the tradition requires at this stage, the ladies danced to three different occasions before the Bride family formerly welcomed them and there after moved to the next stage. The first dance to songs is ‘tugha’ (bonus or not counted) before they danced to other three songs to make it compete.

After this stage, dried gin was brought by one of the messengers for the Bride father which he used to pray and gave to the couple to drink. Here the Groom served his father in-law with a glass of gin which he prayed on and poured on the floor. He served him another which he used to pray for the husband and wife and then handed the glass of the dried gin to the Groom who received it on his knees and drank and gave to his new wife. Worth noting, he stands to his feet before handing down the glass of drink to his new wife whom on her knees received it.

Next after the series of prayers was the first assignment for the new groom to the In-laws. His father in-law gave him the bottle of dried gin to serve the family and he started from the person at the immediate left of his father in-law and the serving went clockwise untill it got to his father in-law who is the last person to be served. He served both young and old and those from his family who were sitted while on his knees. He crawled from one person to another to serve. One important thing to note, the bottle of drink he started with must not get exhausted during the process of servicing until it (the wurutu/bottom of the drink) gets to his father in-law. If it gets exhausted in the course of serving, he has to purchase another dried gin and start, but Owei case was not so. He excelled in this by serving everybody successful to make sure the bottom drink got to his father in-law. He was hailed for successfully carrying out his first assignment. The in-law thereafter prayed for him with the drink before the event moved to the next stage.

The next stage is one of the crucial stage for the couple partucularly the Bride; it is a stage for advice and counseling from the family. The first thing the Bride father did was to remind his daughter that there are forbidden things binding a woman as far as the Ijaw tradition is concerned, saying such things are known to all and sundry, he stopped there but Double Chief Saidu Ogoba urged him to mention/list the ‘tonyes’ (forbidden things) for people particularly the younger generation to learn that after all, learning is a continuous exercise. He made mention of few. Interested in knowing such? Listen to King Robert Ebizimor (now late) Amatonye song. All what he mentioned can be found King Ebizimor’s ‘Amamaton-tonye.’ The family there after poured out pieces of advice one after the other, both male and female, all bothering on how to stay pieceful with her husband, family members and all that will make her a good wife in her husband home and before her husband family.

She was thereafter handed to the Groom family and in dancing and singing they danced back to their home and the party continued till dawn.

Happy married life to a brother, Owei Akpofagha and his new wife.

Joseph Ebitibi Kanjo, a journalist, critist and affairs analyst writes from Taribor community.

News

OPINION: Gumi And His Terrorists

Published

9 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Editor

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News

OPINION: Christmas And A Motherless Child

Published

10 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

If we were Christian in my family, Christmas would have been for us a mixture of joy, mourning and remembrance. But still, it is. When others celebrate Christmas, I mourn my mother. We call it celebration of life; it is a forever act that undie the dead. She died just before dawn on December 24, 2005. But she lived long enough such that even I, her second to the last child, enjoyed her nurture for over forty years. She died happy and fulfilled. She was extremely lucky; she even knew when to die.

A mother’s death strips her child naked. With a mother’s exit, the moon pauses its movement of hope; morning stops arriving with its proper voice. For me, since it happened 20 years ago, dawn still breaks as forever, but nothing raps my door to announce a new day and the time for prayers; no mother again chants my oríkì. No one, again, softly drops ‘Atanda’ by my door before sunrise. Nothing sounds the way it used to. No one again wets the ground for the child before the sun fully unfurls its rays.

History and literature, from Rousseau’s idealisation of the “good mother” to Darwin’s notion of “innate maternal instincts,” framed motherhood narrowly; yet she inhabited it fully. She bore and reared in very inclement weather; she thought and questioned, endured and, quietly, shaped lives in her care beyond the ordinary. She was a princess who knew she was a princess. Like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s princess in ‘A Little Princess’, her voice – outer and inner – shouted an insistence that “whatever comes cannot alter one thing.” Even if she wasn’t a princess in costume, she was forever “a princess inside.” The princesshood in her inheritance ensures that her father’s one vote trumps and upturns the 16 votes cast by multi-colour butterflies who thought themselves bird.

Sometimes quiet, sometimes shrill, she showed in herself that the true measure of a woman lies in the fullness of her humanity, the strength of her mind and character, and the depth of her influence. She embodied all these with grace until her final breath.

Geography teaches us that harmattan is dry, cold, hash, unfriendly wind. The harmattan haze of Christmas is metaphor for the blur the child who misses their mother feel. It hurts. The day breaks daily with silence performing the duty the mother once did. What this child feels is hurting silence where her song caressed. In the harshness of the hush, the child remembers how mornings were once gold, how a day felt owned simply because she announced it. Without her, time still moves, but it no longer rises to meet the child with its promise of warmth.

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When a mother dies, her child’s gold goes to rust and dust. Because a mother is the cusp that scoops to fill her child’s potholes, in her death something essential goes missing. And it is final. Everything that was a given is no longer to be taken for granted; nothing is henceforth granted; everything now makes bold demands, even illness speaks a new language. Fever comes creepy and no one reads the child’s body before they speak. Across the wall at night, other women sing their children to sleep, the tune that reaches the motherless is far from the familiar; it is unfaithful.

A child without a mother is what I liken to walking helplessly in a windy rain. No umbrella, whatever its reach and promise, is useful. Again, living is war. When wronged, or terrified by life, the child who has no mother discovers how far they can walk without refuge; they daily face bombs without bunkers.

For the one without a mother, each victory, each success; each survival; every loss, every defeat, asks for a sharer and a witness who is no longer seated where she used to.

Winning can be very tasteless. It is a very bad irony. The muse says that when a child is motherless, joy, when it appears, arrives incomplete; good news, when it comes, comes and pauses at the lips – in search of mother, the one person it is meant for.

Motherhood and its echo teach that a mother’s loss, like a father’s, is erasure, loss, negation, unpresence. It is permanence of loss of love and security.

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The child remembers that in their mum’s lines were elegant, restrained refinements that moved from the gently lyrical to the aphoristic. But they are no more. The old sure shoulder to lean on has slipped away, thinning into memory.

The orphan learns early that those who say, “I will be your mother,” are not always mothers, and those who say, “I will be your father,” are rarely fathers. For the orphan, it is a cold, cold-blooded world.

And yet, the child soon finds out that the mother’s exit has not emptied the world; it has simply rearranged its content.

In the new arrangement, the mum becomes a mere memory kept going in inherited habits, in routine and practice, in the instinct to call a name they know will not answer – again.

“Each new morn…new orphans cry new sorrows…” says Shakespeare in Macbeth. Every forlorn child fiddles with the void. But the muse insists that children that are counted fortunate do not simply outgrow their mother; they outlive her absence and grow new muscles and new bones; they learn slowly to carry and endure what cannot be put down.

News

FG Declares Public Holidays For Christmas, New Year Celebrations

Published

10 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Editor

The Federal Government has declared December 25, 26 and January 1, 2026, as public holidays.

Announcing this on behalf of the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Magdalene Ajani, said the holidays are to mark Christmas, Boxing Day and the New Year celebrations respectively.

Tunji-Ojo called on Nigerians to reflect on the values of love, peace, humility and sacrifice associated with the birth of Jesus Christ.

The minister also urged citizens, irrespective of faith or ethnicity, to use the festive period to pray for peace, security and national progress.

According to him, Nigerians to remain law-abiding and security-conscious during the celebrations, while wishing them a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

See the full statement below:

PRESS STATEMENT

FG DECLARES DECEMBER 25, 26, 2025 AND JANUARY 1, 2026 PUBLIC HOLIDAYS TO MARK CHRISTMAS, BOXING DAY AND NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS

The Federal Government has declared Thursday, 25th December 2025; Friday, 26th December 2025; and Thursday, 1st January 2026 as public holidays to mark the Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year celebrations respectively.

The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, who made the declaration on behalf of the Federal Government, extended warm Christmas and New Year felicitations to Christians in Nigeria and across the world, as well as to all Nigerians as they celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of a new one.

Dr. Tunji-Ojo urged Christians to reflect on the virtues of love, peace, humility, and sacrifice as exemplified by the birth of Jesus Christ, noting that these values are critical to promoting unity, tolerance, and harmony in the nation.

The Minister further called on Nigerians, irrespective of religious or ethnic affiliation, to use the festive season to pray for the peace, security, and continued progress of the country, while supporting the Federal Government’s efforts towards national development and cohesion.

“The Christmas season and the New Year present an opportunity for Nigerians to strengthen the bonds of unity, show compassion to one another, and renew our collective commitment to nation-building,” the Minister stated.

Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo also enjoined citizens to remain law-abiding, security conscious, and moderate in their celebrations, while cooperating with security agencies to ensure a peaceful and safe festive period.

The Minister wishes all Nigerians a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

SIGNED

Dr. Magdalene Ajani

Permanent Secretary

Ministry of Interior

December 22, 2025.