CULTURAL RETREAT, ANCESTORAL HOMELAND AND THE GLOBAL FEATURE: THE OGBA PERSPECTIVES

The Egwu-Ogba (new yam festival) of Ogba people in the Niger Delta area of southern Nigeria, is a cultural heritage which demonstrates the peoples’ perception of order in the universe. The activities which characterize this observance are encapsulated in their cosmology. Its tenets are packaged, preserved and transmitted in a month-long ritual which the young and old freely participate. During the “Egwu-Ogba” (new yam festival), celebrants including indigenes, their friends and well-wishers come from different works of life to take part. As it were, this annual ceremony is an institution of cultural reconstruction. The study noted that the participants not only take part in the social activities, they also learn those salient religious features of the people which are not expressed in words. However, owing to the fact that the nuances of the festival are preserved in the memory of participants, those who miss any aspect or could not be part of the celebration, will always be neophytes. The aim of this research was to reconstruct the motivating force behind the idea of cultural retreat, ancestral homeland and the global future, especially the Ogba perspective. The paper employed Abraham Maslow’s motivation theory as the lens of the study. To this end, the work adopted the descriptive phenomenological approach in data collection, presentation and analyses. It observed that reconstructing the religio-cultural heritage of indigenous people was an indispensable tool in ensuring sustainable global future. The study concluded that indigenous societies like the Ogba with rich culture should be encouraged to preserve their tradition for global sustainability.

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