Ahia Njoku

At Mbaise, on the morning of the festival, the yam chiefs walk to the priest’s barn while it is still early and cool. A he-goat is killed there and its blood is sprinkled on the shrine of Ahiajoku. Kola nut is broken, palm wine is poured, and the prayers ask for a good planting season and a harvest that keeps coming. Only after all that does the new yam come out of the ground and into anybody’s pot.

The god behind the rite goes by many names, because Igbo has many dialects. Ahia Njoku, Ahiajoku, Aha Njoku, Ifejioku, Ifijioku, Ajoku and plain Njoku all point to the same deity, and the Njoku Ji listed separately in some reference works, “Njoku of the yam”, leads straight back to it. What the god does is not in doubt. Ahiajoku is the yam god, and in the words of the Nigerian scholar Emeka Onwurah the divinity that makes all seeds grow and the earth fruitful. For a people whose phrase for daily bread was ji na ede, yam and cocoyam, that is not a minor portfolio.

Yam was the mainstay of the old Igbo economy. Wealth was counted not in cash but in the size of a man’s barn and the rows of yam stakes standing in it, and skill at growing yam was a basic measure of male standing. The farming calendar ran the social one, with festivals for clearing new land, for planting, for weeding and for harvest. Accounts from Afikpo go further and treat the tuber almost as a person. The yam is a man’s crop and an amadi, a freeborn. Nobody defecates in a yam farm. Yams hate bloodshed. Menstruating women stay out of the barn, salt and pepper are kept away from the stored crop, and anyone who has touched a corpse must be purified before touching a yam again. Women do not untie yams or take them from the barn, and no yam is stored head down. It is a demanding crop, and it has a god to see that the demands are met.

That god has no fixed body. The shrine, called Ajoku or Njoku, is a circle of abosi trees, the camwood Baphia nitida, and in the Ndokwa country west of the Niger a shrine to Ifejioku today is a small marked-off patch of ground holding a wooden stake. The richest images connected with the deity are a set of clay sculptures made in the nineteenth century by a woman potter at Osisa, an Ndokwa Igbo village on the Niger’s west bank. They show no god at all. A titled man sits at the centre, an ivory tusk in his left hand and an imported hat on his head, flanked by two wives with elaborate hair, one pregnant or with a baby at her breast. An attendant beats an iron gong. Chickens wait for the knife, and in front of the man a brazier holds yams roasting on the coals. Art historians read these as altars to Ifejioku, and what they depict is the god’s gift rather than the god: a full household, children, and food. One is in the British Museum, another was published in a French travel journal in 1892 and is now in the National Museum in Lagos, and a third by the same hand is in Edinburgh.

The record does not agree on the deity’s sex. English reference sites usually call Ahia Njoku a goddess, while the Ndokwa shrines treat Ifejioku as male, and the writers who describe the festivals simply speak of the yam god. The disagreement is probably local variation rather than error, since each town kept its own shrine and its own priest.

Nobody seems to know how the god began. The yam itself has origin stories, and Onwurah remarks that there are as many of them as there are old men. The one he calls most popular comes from Afikpo. In a time of famine the people went to Ibini Ukpabi, the great oracle of Arochukwu, and were told that a woman named Orienta Imomo must give her son in sacrifice. She sent a slave in his place. What grew was the water yam, a lesser crop, and when the people went back to complain, the oracle told them that they had been given the slave of yam because they had offered a slave. Orienta Imomo’s own first son was sacrificed at last, and from him came the white yam, the real food. It is a hard story, and it explains why the tuber is handled with such care: it began as somebody’s child.

Each town keeps its own form of the rites. At Maku in Awgu, the priest of Ifejioku plants a few yams two months before anyone else, harvests them first and offers the whole crop to the god, and the colonial anthropologist C. K. Meek recorded in 1937 that it was an offence there to eat new yam before the rites, or even to bring new yam in from another town. At Onitsha a fowl is killed in the farm, its blood is dripped on a few choice yams, and those yams are laid before the Ifejioku shrine at home together with every farming tool the household owns. In the big public festival the ikoro, the great wooden slit drum of the village square, booms at midday to call people in. The priest then eats roast yam mixed with herbs while the crowd shouts at every mouthful. The young men eat next, then the chiefs from the lowest rank upward, and the king last of all. The British officer A. G. Leonard, writing in 1906, explained the order plainly: if the new crop carried anything malign or poisonous, the ruler would be the last to meet it. Going last at dinner turns out to be one of the privileges of kingship.

The planting season has its own opening. Priests of Njoku Ji once led the council of elders in roasting yams in the village square in a rite called ihu-ji na-ama, and until it had been performed no one could put a yam in the ground. A man who planted early brought bad luck on himself and his household. Nobody plants early. Nobody eats early, either.

The god’s reach is still visible. A 1979 survey by the government’s cultural office in Enugu counted 377 major festivals in 99 towns, and 103 of them were New Yam or yam-god festivals. In the same year Sam Mbakwe, the first civilian governor of Imo State, founded an annual lecture series on Igbo life and culture and named it the Ahiajoku Lecture, choosing the yam god’s festival because it lent the whole enterprise the authority of Igbo tradition. Michael Echeruo gave the first lecture, and Chinua Achebe later took the platform too.

The god’s power is growth itself: seed that sprouts, earth that bears, barns that fill, and through them the wealth, titles and large families that the Osisa altars celebrate. It is also the power to make the season lawful, since planting and eating both wait on the god’s rites. Its limit is that the protection runs entirely through human keeping of the rules. Plant early, eat the new yam before the rite, or bring the new crop in from another town, and what follows is misfortune for the offender and his household. The people who once kept those rules have changed as well. The old priesthood has split, the priest-kings called Ezes and Igwes now preside in many towns, and Christian pastors have begun blessing the harvest thanksgiving. Across Igboland the new yam is still not eaten until somebody has eaten first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ahia Njoku?

Ahia Njoku is the Igbo deity of the yam, also known as Ahiajoku, Aha Njoku, Ifejioku and Njoku. The yam god is believed to make seeds grow and the earth fruitful, and the Igbo New Yam Festival is held in the deity’s honour.

Is Ahia Njoku a god or a goddess?

The sources disagree. English reference sites usually describe Ahia Njoku as a goddess, while in the Ndokwa region of western Igboland the deity, called Ifejioku there, is male, and many accounts simply speak of the yam god.

What happens at the Ahiajoku or New Yam Festival?

Sacrifices such as a he-goat or fowls are offered to Ahiajoku, and the priest of the yam god eats the first new yam before anyone else. In some towns the young men eat next, then the chiefs in ascending rank, and the king last. Eating new yam before these rites was treated as an offence.

What does the shrine of Ahia Njoku look like?

The shrine of Ahia Njoku, called Ajoku or Njoku, is described as a circle of abosi or camwood trees. In the Ndokwa area today, shrines to Ifejioku are small marked-off areas of ground holding a wooden stake. Nineteenth-century clay altars from Osisa show a wealthy man, his wives and children, chickens and roasting yams rather than an image of the god.

What is the Ahiajoku Lecture?

The Ahiajoku Lecture is an annual lecture series on Igbo life and culture founded in 1979 by Sam Mbakwe, the first civilian governor of Imo State, Nigeria. It takes its name from the festival of Ahiajoku, the Igbo yam god, and speakers have included Michael Echeruo and Chinua Achebe.

Related Entries

Asase Yaa, Mami Wata, Demeter, Ceres, Persephone, Rongo, Inari, Freyr (Frey), Xipe Totec