“The Great Day,” as Ukenho literally means in the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun language, brought at least 25 communities of the ethnic group to Kente, where they communed and shared their unique cultural experiences from 5th to 7th December 2013.
The grand finale of the festival was a colourful display of cultural dances by the 25 Jukun communities who occupy the vast land in scattered settlements from the Gongola lowlands to the Benue upper Basin.
The Taraba State Arts and Culture troupe heralded the Saturday event with dazzling dance steps. Dressed in flamboyant traditional Nigerian styles, the female and male dancers, for up to an hour, thrilled spectators to the fine art of dancing, curling their waists, flailing their arms and stomping their feet to the throbbing of the animal skin African drums.
Then a march past of all the 25 communities, proudly exhibiting their cultural troupes, artefacts and arts, as they gyrated round the open square. It was a stunning parade as oldmen bore amulets and charms on their arms while others carried skeletons of wild beasts on their heads, chanting Jukun songs that sounded more like incantations. Dark skinned giant men clad in leopards skins re-enacted the valour of the Jukun in battle, brandishing spears and tossing up axes as they intoned war songs.
A prominent son of the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun, Chief David Sabo Kente, the prestigous title holder of the Atavon Ekpan Nyifon, said the essence of the cultural carnival was not just to celebrate the greatly endowed arts and culture of the Jukun, but also to unite the various communities that make up the Jukun ethnic group of the famous Kwararrafa kingdom.
But he insisted the numerous dialects of the Jukun, though mutually intelligible in most cases, are a barrier to this sought after unity.
“We have to unite the various dialects first. We have the Wanpans, we have the Ichens, and several Jukun dialects all over and by the time we unite the segments we will be able to bring the Jukun together,” said Kente, who was the chief launcher of three books written in Jukun in an attempt to preserve the language.
He said there are about 10 dialectal variations of the Jukun language and advised that the Wanpan variety, which is widely spoken in Wukari, the headquarters of the Jukun nation and the seat of the Aku Uka, the traditional and spiritual head of the Jukun, be adopted for standardisation and preservation.
The festival, which was well attended, had the wife of the Executive Governor of Taraba State, Mrs Hauwa Suntai, Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Hon. Josiah Sabo Kente, His Royal Majesty, the Aku Uka of Wukari, Dr Shekarau Angyu Masa-Ibi, among others present.
During his welcome address, the National President of the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun Development Association of Nigeria (ENJUDAN), Chief Jerome Uggah Moze said the socio-cultural gathering was a clear manifestation and testimony of the genuine desire and commitment of the people, both at home and in the diaspora, to revive, to re-invent, to re-invigorate, to re-identify and to re-focus the cultural, historical and artistic values of the Jukun people and to re-establish a new bond of friendship with their neighbours and other ethnic nationalities around the Gongola valley and the Benue upper basin.
“It is indeed in this new spirit and our great desire to continue to preach this gospel of peace, harmony and understanding among all the ethnic groups in Taraba, Benue and Nassarawa States, and indeed Nigeria that our association intends to pursue a deliberate policy of invitations to other ethnic groups to participate and celebrate along with our people during our Ukenho festivals with the sole objective of promoting and encouraging unity, which is the motto of our association, friendship in our various communities and Nigeria in general,” Moze said.
It was also a time to take stock of developmental issues affecting the Ekpan Nyifon group. The president said with much regret that past efforts to launch an annual development appeal fund had failed. He explained that if the appeal fund had come off well, the association would have been able to grant scholarships to deserving and indigent students of Ekpan Nyifon Jukun extraction.
Moze thanked Governor Danbaba Suntai, who is recovering from injuries sustained during a plane crash in 2012, for the support he (Suntai) had given for the organisation of the past editions of Ukenho and prayed for better health for him.
The event was also an opportunity for the Jukun people to demand from the government infrastructural development of their communities. Moze who had earlier thanked the government of Suntai for fulfilling his promise of electrifying some rural communities like Manya and Mararaba in Donga local government and Sondi and Kente in Wukari local government, asked that the Wukari-Sondi-Kente-Anyiin road, which is in a complete state of disrepair, be rehabilitated.
He also appealed that the government should provide well equipped and staffed hospitals in Jukun communities, upgrade the status of some of the Ekpan Nyifon chiefs and fund the Ukenho festival to boost and encourage the tourism potential of Taraba State.
For the guest speaker, Mr Andrew Abinkanme, the Jukun must learn from their forebears, who were great warriors and achieved unprecedented feats in battle against their aggressors.
The Jukun originated from the legendary Kwararrafa kingdom, migrating from the Mandara Mountains to settle in the Gongola basin and the upper Benue basin. In the course of time, precisely in the 16th century, pressure from the Borno empire for payment of tributes resulted in conflicts and a military class emerged with great prowess in calvary, which helped in warding off invasions from the Borno empire.
By the 17th century, their military exploits extended to Hausa land, where they had earlier acquired horses to fight their Borno enemies. Their military force had the ability to strike enemies from long distances far away from home and they were able to invade Kano and the other Hausa states effectively.
According to Ambinkanme, the present day Jukun people have no enemies to fight, except poverty, and called for unity of purpose in fighting the new enemy just like their forebears united to fight the Kanuri and Hausa in battle successfully.
“The question now is, how will the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun as descendants of our forebears live up to or even surpass the reputation of their ancestors in this 21st century?
“As we have seen our forebears in the Gongola and Benue basins forged an identity as warriors and fought their enemies and fed themselves respectively. Presently, the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun are living in relative peace with their neighbours; there is no conflict. What is oppressing and dealing a debilitating blow on its citizenry is poverty. We can overcome this through the instrumentality of Ukenho festival of arts and culture. It is through this festival that our people can come together to socialize and share ideas—progressive and developmental, which will go a long way in driving out poverty from amongst us,” he said.
Ambinkanme urged the Ekpan Nyifon elite to make conscious efforts at enlightening the people during Ukenho festivals about the benefits of forming cooperative societies to engage in farming activities, adding that cooperatives help farmers have easy access to agricultuural loans, farming inputs like fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, tractors and so many other advantages.
He also called on the contemporary Jukun to pursue education with vigour. He lamented that the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun are lagging behind educationally.
“There is no data to back up this assertion, but I am certain that if a comparative analysis was done with our neighbours, one would discover that the Ekpan Nyifon has no commensurate number of professors, doctorate degree holders, consultants and others. Schools and colleges that exist in our areas are dilapidated and lacking in teachers and laboratory facilities. How can we consciously forge an identity if we continue to bask in ignorance and primitive tendencies in the 21st century, when other people are into the information super highway—ICT?”
He harped on the need to take education as the number one priority, if at all they were to recreate the legendary feats their ancestors attained in wars in contemporary Nigeria.
For him, it was pertinent that those sons and daughters of Ekpan Nyifon Jukun blessed with material wealth should impact positively on their communities by establishing educational institutions so that the teeming youth can have access to education.
“If this scenario is not possible, then they can set up endowement funds for scholarship for brilliant students to go for higher studies. Our students must not only aim at getting first degree, but must also go for masters and doctorate degrees in various fields of study, so that in no distant future, we would boast of professors and professionals in medicine, law, engineering, space science, ICT etc.
“We are living in a competitive world . If we are to forge a new identity for us to be known and recognized, it is to education that we must turn. God has blessed us with the human resources that we can harness for this purpose. The idea of going to school to secure a meal tickect is obsolete. Our youth must be encouraged and prodded to excel to the highest peak of study in all spheres of knowledge,” he added.
The people were also urged to embrace politics of ideas and development, eschewing bitterness but practising fairness and equity as a means of advancing the Ekpan Nyifon Jukun communities.
The event, however, was not all about long boring speeches. Intermittent musical and cultural breaks coloured the festival and it was clear from the gleaming faces of the crowd that they were greatly entertained.
The Nyimui cultural group, made up of old men and a small boy captivated the audience with their esoteric dance, putting the small boy on a rope between two stakes and gyrating round him to the pulsating rhythm of the animal skin drums and their croaky voices.
Goge and Agashi dancers too graced the stage thrilling spectators with their acrobatic displays. But it was the erotic dance of charming Jukun maids that stole the show. The four young girls shook their shapely bodies, swirled their slender arms to the romantic beat of the music as the crowd laughed, yelled and screamed in ecstasy.
Mrs Suntai, whose birthday fell on the same day, was presented with a birthday cake, locally made by Jukun women.
Speaking on behalf of her husband, she said Suntai was passionate about culture and so she came to represent him.
She urged parents to stop speaking English to their children so that indigeneous languages will not go extinct. According to her, the best thing is for children to learn and speak their mother tongues at home while they study English in school.
She said she was fascinated with Jukun culture and thanked the organisers of the Ukenho festival for the attempt to preserve the rich culture.
