By Ebere Ameh
Yam, popularly seen as the king of crops by many cultures, is gradually gaining recognition as the most widely celebrated food crop in Nigeria and even Africa. Originally celebrated at the end of the rainy season by the Igbo speaking people of Nigeria in their annual (Iwaji or Iriji) New Yam festival, and made popular by Chinua Achebe in his renowned novel, Things Fall Apart, it is now practiced throughout West Africa (especially in Nigeria and Ghana) and some other African countries. Igbos in the diaspora now celebrate in Europe, America and other places. It is therefore little wonder that one of the most iconic hotels in Nigeria, Transcorp Hilton, decided to have their own version of the celebration of the king of crops, lasting a whole week. Speaking with the Public Relations and Marketing Manager of the five star hotel, Mr Shola Adeyemo, he said the week-long celebration started on Friday, the 18th of September, 2015.
“This is the first time we are celebrating the king of crops and it is basically in line with our tradition of marking culinary milestones. Over the years we have done a lot of celebration and promotion that are international. Now we just felt that charity should begin at home, and we are celebrating the new yam festival for the first time as part of our culinary promotions. Most especially, because the new yam festival cut across Nigeria if not Africa. So we felt that if we could celebrate Italian foods, Spanish, French foods and others, we should also celebrate Nigerian food. That is why we decided to take a whole week to celebrate the new yam festival,” Adeyemo explained.
At the beginning of the festival, the people usually offer the yams to gods and ancestors first before distributing them to the villagers. Transcorp, in their own case is presenting a wide selection of yam delicacies complete with traditional twists at their Bukkah. “We are going to serve yam in different forms – in any form you can imagine, taking into consideration the peculiarities of the geopolitical zones of the country. So we shall have yam prepared the way the Igbo prepare it, the way the Hausa and Yoruba prepare it and a good number of other cultures in Nigeria, cutting across different zones in the country. We are also going to have different menu for the entire week, starting on Friday. We shall also have traditional dancers from different parts of the country, to add the cultural bit and colour to it. And we shall decorate our restaurant in line with the theme of the new yam festival. “Usually our culinary celebrations last only a day but we felt that new yam festival is such a big event that we shouldn’t limit it to one day. We won’t be able to go round the country in one day. We want showcase all the elements of culture from different zones pertaining to new yam,” he said.
A very culturally based festival that symbolizes the conclusion of a harvest and the beginning of the next planting season, it is therefore a celebration depicting the prominence of yam in the social-cultural life of Igbo people. “Yam is the first crop the hotel is celebrating in Nigeria. This is because there is this popular belief that yam is the king of crops. We believe it because wherever you go, in Europe, America, just name it, you see yam. We have seen yam in this part of the world that is so big it weighs as much as 45kg. We have sent our procurement department out to search and purchase some remarkable yams to be displayed at our bukkah during the celebration,” he said, adding that Transcorp is a proudly Nigerian hotel. “Even though we are global, we also think and act locally. We are passionate about promoting Nigerian cuisines. Even though we are international and people come and expect international cuisines, we are not oblivious of the fact that we are first of all based in Nigeria and we should be serving Nigerian cuisines too.”
http://newtelegraphonline.com/transcorp-hilton-celebrates-new-yam-festival/
