There are milestones that shimmer with ceremony, and there are others that shine with soul. The June 14, 2025 declaration of Igbo Day by the Governor of North Carolina, Josh Stein, belongs to the latter. It is not merely an administrative gesture inked into the annals of the state’s civic calendar; it is a living tribute to a people who turned wounds into wisdom and exile into excellence. It is the echo of ancestral drums finally heard, not as background noise, but as the heartbeat of an American story.
Across time and tides, the Igbo have been many things – traders, thinkers, builders, healers. But above all, they have been resilient bearers of memory, never forgetting who they are even when the world tried to forget them. Their journey into the American consciousness did not begin in boardrooms or universities. It began in bondage. And from that crucible emerged something defiant, something divine. In 1803, along the humid banks of Dunbar Creek in Georgia, a group of newly enslaved Ndigbo made an immortal decision. Rather than surrender to the weight of chains, they chose the waters. Walking calmly into the marsh, they chanted prayers to their gods, affirming that their bodies may have been captured, but their spirits would never kneel. That moment, now memorialised as Igbo Landing, was not a collapse. It was a covenant; yes, a sacred refusal that planted the earliest seeds of Diasporic dignity on American soil.
Indeed, every exile is a seed planted in the soil of another possibility, and from that sacred refusal has grown a people who, even in foreign climes, carry their world with them. The Igbo do not migrate to disappear; they migrate to multiply meaning, add value to life, and turn survival into significance. In North Carolina today, the fruits of that legacy bloom brightly. The Igbo community has distinguished itself not only through its visible successes in medicine, law, education, entrepreneurship, and information technology, but through the intangible wealth of character and commitment to civic life. They are not just working; they are weaving communities. Adopting highways, supporting women’s shelters, organizing food drives, and uplifting the underserved, not out of obligation, but out of a deep-seated value system that holds – onye aghala nwanne ya – let no one abandon their sibling.
This ethic of communal responsibility is not new. It is ancient, folded into the Igbo worldview that teaches: “those who have suffered understand suffering, and therefore extend their hand.” Through trials in Nigeria and transitions abroad, Ndigbo have learned how to carry both the weight of grief and the grace of giving. They understand that recognition is not merely the reward of contribution, but the affirmation of identity. This is what makes North Carolina’s proclamation so profound. It does not simply tally what the Igbo have done; it affirms who they are – a people of purpose, power, and peace; a people, who do not wait to be honoured before they build, but whose very act of building becomes its own honour.
The road from Igbo Landing to North Carolina’s Igbo Day has been long. It has passed through plantations and protest marches, through classrooms and clinics, through whispered lullabies and defiant dances. And at every point along that road, the Igbo spirit has whispered: “we are not victims of history; we are authors of legacy”. The philosopher Hemingway once said that “a man can be destroyed, but not defeated.” The Igbo have lived that truth across continents. Torn by war, scattered by necessity, and often misunderstood by their host nations, they have refused to be broken. They have transformed displacement into determination, and in so doing, redefined what it means to belong, not by birth, but by contribution.
In declaring 14 June as Igbo Day, Governor Stein is not just recognizing an ethnic group; he is recognizing a pattern of greatness, a cultural rhythm that enriches the American experiment. It is a statement that diversity is not demographic decoration; it is the soul of democracy. For the Igbo, this moment is more than symbolic. It is spiritual. It is the affirmation that from the chains of the past, they have crafted the chapters of the present, chapters still being written by doctors and dancers, coders and community leaders, children learning Igbo and cultural heritage in weekend schools, and elders preserving ancient idioms in modern spaces.
And so, on 14 June, as North Carolina pauses to honour Ụmụ Chukwu (God’s children), the world is reminded that identity does not vanish in migration; it travels; it transforms; it triumphs. From Landing to Legacy, the Igbo have shown that to remember is not to weep, but to rise, to rebuild, and to reclaim one’s place in the song of humanity. Let the drums sound not just in the Carolinas, but in every corner where the name “Igbo” is lived and spoken with pride. For this is not just their day; it is their story. And the world is finally listening.
The Nigerian state has for too long recited only one version of the past, a version in which the victors are always right, and the vanquished should remain forever grateful for survival. But as the world applauds what Nigeria ignores, one is reminded that “he who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present.” Memory is not a burden to discard, but a map to consult, lest we wander again into the errors of yesterday. In truth, the war never ended for Ndigbo, not in their battered roads, not in their under-resourced schools, not in their armada of security checkpoints, not in their ‘abandoned property,’ and certainly not in the cold denial of power. And yet, like trees whose roots drink from deep wells, they have refused to wither. The Igbo, in every generation, have proven what the Chinese sages once said: “To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.” They have remembered, through language, through culture, through their undying industry, and in that remembrance lies their renewal.
But there is a deeper warning in this silence. For as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded the world, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The marginalization of one region is the corrosion of a nation. The exclusion of one voice weakens the harmony of the whole choir. A country that sees ambition as insubordination and treats a people’s pain as political noise risks building not unity but resentment. What, then, becomes of a people who are made to bear untold stories in silence? This soul-searing pain defines generations of Igbo youth, who inherit not just trauma but questions; who search their textbooks for their history and find blank pages; who look to their nation for belonging and are met with suspicion; who rise to serve and are told to wait their turn, again and again.
But people do not wait forever. History does not idle at closed doors. For as Rosa Luxemburg warned, “Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” Ndigbo have moved, and in moving, they have noticed every link in the chain – economic, political, cultural – and have begun to break them, not with violence, but with vision. Not with arms, but with excellence. And perhaps the most haunting wisdom comes from the ancestors of another wounded people, the Native Americans, who said: “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.” Look closely and you would observe that Igbo women have not surrendered. They lead in business, academia, advocacy, and culture. They teach their children to speak, to stand, and to strive. The Igbo heart still beats – defiant, determined, undaunted.
At this point, let’s pause momentarily to return to history because, this is the crux of Igbo disquiet: a history unacknowledged, a grief unatoned, a loyalty continuously questioned. But roots cannot be erased. They may grow underground, seeking new soil, but when they bloom as they have in North Carolina, they bloom defiantly, radiantly, and without apology. Yes, ‘Abandoned Property’ may still remain abandoned; systemic property demolitions may well continue, if that is what it takes to lubricate the quaint wheel of Igbophobia and placate the gods of the land. The world now watches in admiration, while Nigeria squints in suspicion. And yet, the truth remains: “he who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present.” In failing to reconcile with its own wounded history, Nigeria endangers the possibility of genuine unity. The Igbo, scattered but not shattered, continue to rise – planting seeds of excellence in foreign lands, while their homeland keeps them at that part of purgatory closest to hell. But exile is not erasure. If anything, it is empowerment. The Igbo spirit, nurtured by its women and anchored by its ancestors, has never fallen. It kneels only to dance and to pray.
Still, the silence of the state grows louder. It is a silence that chokes the narrative; it is one that buries truth beneath bureaucracy and labels mourning as mutiny. But as Zora Neale Hurston once said, “there is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” Nigeria must ask: how long shall the Land of the Rising Sun be told to heal while being denied its history? It must also ask whether it will continue to move in place – repeating old errors, denying old wounds – never noticing its own enslaving manacles. And so, while North Carolina celebrates Igbo Day, Nigeria must decide whether it will continue to punish memory or begin to honour it; whether it will continue to fear a people who have given so much or finally embrace them with the dignity they have long deserved.
History, it is said, waits for no one. And drums, once silenced, do not forget their rhythm. The question now is not whether the Igbo will rise; they have risen. The question is whether Nigeria will rise with them, or remain the country that watched others celebrate her finest, while she looked the other way. Let this not be another missed moment. Let it be a beginning. Let it be the truth, finally spoken, not in whispers or memorials abroad, but in policies, apologies, reparations, and inclusion at home.
.Agbedo, professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria Nsukka, is a Fellow of Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and Public Affairs Analyst.
