ARIDON

When the maiden issue of the journal was published in 2014, we expressed the hope that it would be a regular platform for scholarship and research on the Urhobo and their world. Regrettably, we did not meet the promise of regular publication. However, in 2022, we produced the double issue (Numbers 2 & 3); it was a bumper edition with 19 articles, covering about 350 pages. We are delighted to note that this fourth issue is rich and diverse in subjects and perspectives. There is an exciting contribution dealing with the analysis of the dirge genre written in Urhobo Language. We welcome this aspect of Urhobo scholarship; we urge more scholars to use the language as a vehicle for intellectual inquiry. In the past few years, studies on various areas of Urhobo experience have yielded promising results. For example, in 2025, the Urhobo Studies Association and the Urhobo Historical Society published the "Scheme of Work for the 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum for Urhobo Language". Also, in 2025, the Urhobo Studies Association hosted the conference on "20 Years of Urhobo Studies" at the Delta State University, Abraka. Selected papers from the conference will be published in future editions of ARIDON. In the intervening period since 2022, ARIDON has acquired an enhanced digital status; it now has an online version of all its publications. Papers can therefore be accessed via the website www.urhobostudiesassociation.org

This article investigates the representations of motherhood in the fiction of Isidore Okpewho, Ben Okri, and Tanure Ojaide through the Urhobo concept of Oniemo. Within Urhobo cosmology, Oniemo signifies multiple overlapping configurations that extends beyond the close bond between a mother and her children. She is figured as a nurturer, custodian of culture, lineage, moral order and a critique of patriarchal norms. Drawing on Sara Ruddick's theory of Maternal Thinking and Catherine Acholonu's articulation of Motherism, the article demonstrates how these writers depict maternal figures as resilient anchors of survival and continuity, particularly during moments of crisis. Concurrently, the analysis resist idealisation by recognising the restrictive dimensions of Oniemo, where women's social values are narrowly defined through sacrifice and caregiving. The study therefore proposes Oniemo as a culturally specific lens for engaging maternal representation in Urhobo literature, one that illuminates both the empowering and burdensome aspects of motherhood.

The cultural practice of female genital cutting, customarily known as female circumcision, is conveyed by different cultural expressions including conventional literature and popular arts. Existing studies on this indigenous tradition in Nigeria have concentrated more on fieldworks in the domains of social and medical anthropology, undermining the role of literature, especially the dramatic form, in creating public health awareness of clitoridectomy. This study, therefore, examines the health implications of female genital cutting in Mabel Evwierhoma's The Cut Across, a drama piece that realistically depict the cultural experience of female genital mutilation in Urhobo land, emphasising its ensuing health complications. The play was subjected to literary investigation, using the tools of qualitative content analysis. The analysis draws from Postcolonial Theory with a central focus on Postcolonial Health, to account for how colonial influence and Euro-modern culture shape new conversations on health administration in the colonies, especially as it applies to the representations of non-medical clitoridectomy (female circumcision) in the play. The study reveals that Evwierhoma appropriates characters and events in the play to create public health awareness campaign that negativises the cutting of female genitals, and prioritises the wellbeing of women. The setting of the play in an imaginary Urhobo community, Omafuowho, underscores the fact that the experiences invented in the play are drawn from the Urhobo worldview, to make a universal statement that decries female genital cutting as an unhealthy and destructive cultural practice. Through Emu, the play's protagonist, Evwierhoma presents a revolutionary stance that portrays female circumcision as a practice that dehumanises women and subjects them to health perils.

This paper examines the overlooked case of Urhobo cultural artefacts dispersed across Western institutions and argues for their repatriation within the broader context of colonial-era acquisitions and decolonisation. While Benin bronzes have gained international attention in repatriation discourse, Urhobo artefacts remain marginalized despite their profound cultural significance. Sacred Iphri figures housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, in New York, and ukiri drums displayed in the British Museum, in London, represent not merely artistic objects but repositories of Urhobo spiritual knowledge and cultural memory. Furthermore, these artefacts continue to be commodified through Western auction houses. Drawing on successful repatriation precedents, particularly following France's President Macron's 2017 declaration and the Sarr-Savoy Report, this study demonstrates how returning Urhobo artefacts would restore cultural sovereignty, provide educational resources, stimulate local tourism, and allow proper ritual contextualization. The paper addresses challenges including infrastructure constraints, security concerns, sacred-secular nature balance, and ownership disputes, and emphasizes that cultural repatriation represents not merely a transfer of objects but a rebalancing of global cultural exchange toward equity and mutual respect. The Urhobo people can heal historical wounds and enrich global understanding of their sophisticated artistic and spiritual traditions at local educational institutions by reclaiming their dispersed heritage.

Iruo nana fuẹrẹ rẹ ine ughworivwin rẹ Urhobo rẹ a sanọ no ẹkuotọ sansan rẹ Urhobo rhe. A reyọ ona rẹ itiori rẹ Isosho-fọnshọnistivwọ fuẹrẹ ayen. Ine ihwe ọyen iruo na vwọphia, rẹ a je fuẹrẹ. Ẹfuẹrẹ rẹ iruo nana shekpahe ughwu, obọ ohwo ghwẹ wan, kugbe obo e sho ohwo na vwẹ Urhobo wan. Iruo na nabo fuere ine rẹ ughworivwin rẹ ihwo suan vwo bro oma raye uche kpahẹn ohwo ro ghwuru na. Ine ughworivwin na vwo ewian sansan ayen wian vwẹ Urhobo. Owian nana fuẹrẹ obo ine na ruẹ vwọke ikrun rẹ ohwo ro ghwuru na siẹrẹ ayen de vwere ughwu rẹ ohwo rayen na. [This paper discusses Urhobo dirges that were selected from three communities of Urhobo. The framework of Socio-functionalist theory is employed for the analysis of ten dirges to unravel the functional role of dirges among family members of the departed in Urhobo community. It serves as a project for the preservation of the endangered oral literature of Urhobo.]

The Counter-Enlightenment was an ideological movement that developed in Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries. It challenged some of the assumptions of what is popularly described as the Enlightenment or Modern Age. The Enlightenment age lasted effectively from about the 1600s to the 1900s in Europe. It prioritized individualism, autonomy, freedom, and independence. It was the ideological inspiration behind capitalism in economics, and, liberal democracy in politics. But counter enlightenment thinkers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1733-1803) reacted against the Enlightenment, holding that it came with huge moral deficits manifested in excessive materialism, consumerism, disdain for traditional values, and loss of ethnic and cultural affinities. For these counter-enlightenment thinkers, the pre-modern values of social cohesiveness, historicity, cultural purity and communitarianism were better to be desired than those that modernity promoted. Interestingly, we find such counter-enlightenment views in the song-poems of Ogutẹ Ọttan (1929-1999), a prominent Urhobo song-poet of the 20th century.This point is significant in view of the fact that Ogute's works were produced independently of those of the European thinkers, whose works he had no access to. In a world which continues to thrive on Eurocentric dispositions, expressed in form of high prejudice for any positive contribution from non-European societies, it is heartwarming to identify ideological profundity in the literary work of an 'obscure' 20th century poet/philosopher among the Urhobo-speaking people of Nigeria, West Africa. This paper, therefore, draws attention to the ideas of Ogutẹ Ọttan because they resonate with the thoughts of the most important counter-Enlightenment philosophers from Europe. It strengthens the argument,first, for the existence of philosophy in Africa, and second, for similarity in philosophic profundity in Africa as elsewhere in the world.

This study examines the orthographic representation of Urhobo-English loanwords in the literature. Following Hosken (2003), one of the hardest issues any orthography has to deal with is how to spell words that are imported from another language: should the words keep their original spelling, or should they be spelled according to how they sound when spoken in the target language? This issue is not unconnected with the fact that loanwords are often modified, especially when they do not conform to the phonology of the borrowing language. Additionally, sounds that are similar in both source and target languages may be represented with different graphemes in the two languages. This study, therefore, seeks to examine the various modifications that loanwords undergo in Urhobo and how these can be best represented in the orthography, as well as how similar sounds that are represented by different graphemes are handled in the borrowing language. The data employed in the study were extracted from religious and literacy materials in Urhobo and evaluated by the researcher, relying on native speaker competence. The data analysis focused on the phonological nuances of loanwords, which have implications for Urhobo orthography, guided by the principle of consistency. The study made a case for the representation of the adapted forms in Urhobo. This is to ensure fluency, word recognition, and disambiguation in the orthographic reading of these words.

This paper reports findings of a sociolinguistic study which investigated the manifestations of identities through stereotypes among the Urhobo in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The research aimed to identify and analyse how the Urhobo and the Ijaw perceived and labelled each other. This study adopted the Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory and a qualitative approach in which the data elicited from some of the respondents were subjected to an ethnographic analysis. The data were collected through oral interview and participant observation and the question sought to know what words each group used to refer to each other. The study reveals that the Urhobo and their host community (the Ijaw) had negative perception of each other as they negatively identified one another. The implication of the exchange of perception is the creation of 'us' and 'them'. In this case, the migrants saw themselves as 'us' and perceived their host as 'them'. The creation of boundaries (linguistic or social) has the effect of constraining relationship between the two groups. This tendency is capable of making each group to distance from the other and the relationship between both groups could be strained.