By NNAMDI EJEKWUMADU

Every year, February 21 is marked as the International Mother Language day. In the light of recent developments, it calls for celebration by Igbo people worldwide. When the news broke last week that the Igbo language will now be taught at the University of Oxford, many Igbo people and lovers of the Igbo cultural identity took to various social media platforms to congratulate Ikechukwu Umenyiora, the first Igbo language lecturer at Oxford University.

This news is not only heart-warming but also monumental. It is monumental in the sense that the trending news in the previous weeks in various churches and high profile court cases had brought the question of Igbo survival and cultural identity to the front burners.

While we celebrate Umenyiora, who will now teach Igbo language under the James Curry Fellowship at the Institute of African Studies, a lot of the credit goes to the maverick scholar and brain behind the James Curry Society, Dr Onyeka Nwelue.

Born in 1988 in Nsu, Ehimme Mbano Local Government Area of Imo State; Onyeka is the from the Nwelue family, whose ancestor Nze Nwelue Nnadum studied at Fourah Bay College, Ghana and was one of the foremost formally educated Igbo men to interface with the Portugese in the 1880s. Onyeka grew up in a network of prominent relatives whose contributions to Language and Literary Arts show all earmarks of a family tradition.

Onyeka can take pride at having achieved many amazing feats right from a very young age. By age 12, he had participated in many poetry competitions, including ones anchored by Nobel laureate, Professor Wole shoyinka. His teenage years saw him writing beautiful novels and other literary works, competing in different countries such as India, Czech Republic and many more and winning various awards including the Future Awards Africa (2010), TM Aluko Prize for Fiction (2009), Tahir Ibrahim Prize for First Book, the Thomson Short Story Prize (2000) and the Nigerian Writers Award (2015).

Onyeka attended the University of Nigeria Nsukka, where he studied Sociology before proceeding to Prague Film Institute to study Film Directing. He holds an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Universite Quennsland, Haiti. Onyeka has authored over a dozen literary works, some of which he has made into movies. His popular novels include The Abyssinian boy, Island of Happiness, Hip-hop is for children and The Strangers of Braamfontein.

As a film maker, Onyeka’s belief in telling stories from an experiential or participant perspective and his love for the Igbo language was demonstrated in his making award-winning documentaries and movies, including ‘The House of Nwapa’ in honour of Africa’s foremost female novelist, Flora Nwapa; as well as ‘Agwaetiti obi uto’ (Island of happiness), an Igbo language movie adapted from his novel. His biopic of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu has presented another perspective to the life history of the great hero. He is currently working on another biopic of the late Jaja Nwachukwu, Nigeria’s former Speaker of the House of Representatives and envoy to the United Nations.

Onyeka is never tired of digging the past and reviving narratives. He has recently revived the defunct African Writer’s Series, originally run by James Currey, who published the works of great African authors, including Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka; and re-launched it as Abibiman Publishing.

Onyeka Nwelue’s greatest adventure is perhaps his travels through over 85 different countries; visiting museums and libraries while teaching at various Ivy League Universities. Among these include Manipur University India, The Ohio State University, Harvard University and Oxford University. At Oxford, where Onyeka recently established the James Currey Society; he has been intentional about telling the African story, including the Igbo one, from the perspective of strength, greatness and limitless potential. The appointment of Ikechukwu Umenyiora is a huge feat for all lovers of the Igbo language and cultural identity.

The introduction of learning of Igbo language at Oxford University is a clarion call to Nigerian Universities, especially in the East, whose General Studies courses include only foreign languages. It is also a wake-up call to Igbo parents who are either inadvertent about teaching their children, or even prevent their children from speaking Igbo language, to realize their self-hate and begin their journey home.

Nnamdi Ejekwumadu is a Doctoral Researcher, Teesside University, Middlesbrough United Kingdom

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