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By Emmanuel Kanayo<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Igbo forefathers were gardeners of destiny. They understood one law older than politics: a leaf that forgets the tree becomes firewood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n They taught it with the smallest thing \u2014 eriri nwa<\/em>, the umbilical cord. So we did not throw it away. We buried it with intention. That was the first lesson, taught in silence: Know your root, or the wind will name you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n To our ancients, root was not sentiment. It was survival. Language, names, taboos, how we settle ikpe<\/em>, how we bury our dead \u2014 these are buried cords. Invisible ropes tying us to the ground that first drank us. And here is where irony puts on agbada \u2014 our Etche brothers and sisters in Rivers State. Linguists have classified it. Oral history has traced it. The soil remembers it. This is the modern way of cutting eriri nwa<\/em>, burying it, and then suing the midwife for kidnapping. But knowing your root is not declaring war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The man who buries his cord in Mbaise can build ten houses in Port Harcourt. The root doesn\u2019t tie his leg. It gives his wings a runway. Eriri nwa<\/em> is not just Etche\u2019s problem. It is a mirror. Our ancestors watched that stump for ten days. No distraction. Just care. The wisdom is stubborn:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the iroko kisses the sky, something must rot in the ground._ You can redraw maps. You can rebrand history. But you cannot rebrand blood. Blood has a memory longer than any government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A people that honors its cord will always have ground to stand on when the storm comes. _\u201cHe who does not know the farm where his umbilical cord was buried will die a tenant in his own life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Emmanuel Kanayo Our Igbo forefathers were gardeners of destiny. They understood one law older than politics: a leaf that forgets the tree becomes firewood. They taught it with the smallest thing \u2014 eriri nwa, the umbilical cord.The hospital calls it waste. Our people called it a rope. The rope that pulled you from the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-opinion-and-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deepstrataenergy.com\/phmundial\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The hospital calls it waste. Our people called it a rope. The rope that pulled you from the other world into this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A boy\u2019s under the kola tree: \u201cGrow deep like this tree. Be fruitful. Remember home, wherever you go.\u201d
A girl\u2019s by the hearth: \u201cBuild a good home. Nurture your people. Bring prosperity.\u201d
With the cord went prayers. With the burial went an address \u2014 in the soil and in the spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A man with no place for his cord was \u201ca leaf on election day\u201d \u2014 blown from one camp to another, belonging everywhere and nowhere. No anchor. No history. No ancestors to call when trouble comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deny your root and you don\u2019t become modern. You become homeless. You may wear agbada in Abuja, but you\u2019ll spend your life holding press conferences to explain who you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Listen to Etche and you hear Igbo singing in a different key.
Watch Etche masquerades and you see Igbo spirits wearing a new cap.
Check Etche names, food, proverbs, and you find Igbo fingerprints still wet on the clay pot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet today, some Etche voices stand on podiums to declare: \u201cWe are not Igbo.\u201d
As if you can rename rain and expect it to stop falling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When a people deny their cord, three things happen. First, you discard ancestral medicine \u2014 proverbs, communal labor, conflict resolution \u2014 for imported solutions that wither in your soil. Second, you lose your address. If your cord is not in Igboland, is it in a political alliance? Alliances expire every 4 years. Blood does not. A people without a root become rented chairs \u2014 used for meetings, then stacked away. Third, you lose your children\u2019s inheritance. Fifty years from now, what will an Etche child answer to \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d If the answer is \u201cMy leaders were confused,\u201d then that child is already a ghost with a voter\u2019s card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prayer was never \u201cStay in the village.\u201d It was \u201cMay your heart remember home, wherever you go.\u201d
Etche can be Rivers by politics and Igbo by ancestry. Water and garri live in the same bowl. Cutting off your leg because the shoe is tight is not wisdom. It is self-sabotage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before we throw stones, let us check our dustbin.
What cords are we throwing away? The Igbo we refuse to teach our children because \u201cEnglish is faster\u201d? Our village meetings we now call \u201cbush\u201d? Our names we bleach to sound like WiFi passwords?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Identity is like fire. If you don\u2019t feed it, it becomes cold ash.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a person, that \u201csomething\u201d is memory and values.
For a people like Etche, that \u201csomething\u201d is truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A people that denies it will spend its life looking for land to rent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n