AE-FUNAI VC Urges Easterners to Preserve Igbo Culture, Heritage

The Vice-Chancellor, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State, Prof. Sunday Oge Elom has urged the people of the southeast geopolitical zone of the country to preserve the Igbo culture, language and heritage as it is their collective duty to safeguard what is theirs.

Myschoolnews reports he said this while speaking at an event organized by Iruka Centre – The Centre for the study of the Future of Igbo, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike in collaboration with Igbo Wikimedia.

 Professor Elom, said he was happy with the exposure the programme would give the staff and students of the University in the area of Igbo language, literature, culture and heritage.

Continuing, the Vice-Chancellor, who was represented by the Dean, Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences, Prof. Augustine Ibegbu said Iruka Center has done a lot in promoting the Igbo culture, and encouraged them to do more as there is still a lot of work to be done in that regard.

He further encouraged the people of the Southeast region especially students of tertiary institutions to be proud of their culture by speaking Igbo language anywhere they find themselves as that is a sure-way to preserve the language.

Earlier, while making her opening remarks, the Director of the Iruka Centre, Dr Anne Onyinye Nwankwo said the programme was the second to be held in the institution, adding that it was to strengthen the stake of Igbo culture and language in the world as it is the core identity of the Igbo people.

speaking at the event with the theme, “How to Contribute to and Use Wikipedia/ Wikimedia Projects towards Preserving and promoting Igbo Language and Culture Digitally”, Dr. Nwankwo said that the website was created to encourage and teach students other ways of learning the Igbo language, stressing that interesting events and educational articles are also uploaded on the website so that people around the world could easily have access to any information of their choice about the Igbo nation.

Concluding, She thanked the Vice-Chancellor for providing an enabling environment to make sure the event was successful, which shows his interest in making sure the Igbo culture and language survive.

She further encouraged students to make good use of the opportunity the website avails to upload helpful and educational articles on Igbo culture as possible in order to promote the culture around the globe.

The Wikimedia Facilitator, Mr Okechukwu Ogbonnaya while speaking at the event said that Wikipedia is a project to build free encyclopidias in all languages of the world, adding that, virtually anyone with internet access is free to contribute neutral information, noting that the prevailing objective of the site is to introduce Wikimedia projects to more Igbo people that are literate in Igbo language at any level, and encouraged the Igbo people that are literate in Igbo language to become contributors, even as he stated that Wikipedia is one of the biggest platforms to share and preserve information in the world.

He concluded by teaching students how to translate on Igbo Wikipedia using the content translation tool, “en.wikipedia.org”.