Waawa
Igbo subgroup in Nigeria
The Waawa clan of Northern Igboland, also referred to as Ndi Waawa, Wawa People, are a unique sub-group of the Igbo people in Enugu and Ebonyi State, Nigeria, consisting of several communities, who all speak a unique dialect of Igbo called Waawa. The most notable among these are the Agbaja and Ngwo which consist of peoples between the wooded lands of Awka (capital of Anambra State) to the rocky valleys of Enugu (capital of Enugu State). The Agbaja are made up of communities in present-day Ngwo clan, Udi, Ezeagu, Umulokpa, Igbo-Etiti,Enugu East Local Government Areas. Other notable parts of the Waawa clan include Nkanu, Nsukka, Abia (not be confused with people from Abia State), Nike, Agbani, Owo, and other communities in Enugu State. The Waawa are most notably associated with Chief Onyeama's people from Eke, who was the paramount ruler of Agbaja in the early 20th century.
Chief Onyeama of Eke
Onyeama was born circa 1870s, the youngest of the ten children of Özö Omulu Onwusi, a polygamous titled man of means, and an only son of his mother – Chinazungwa Ijeonyeabo of nearby Ebe community. At 7, his father initiated him into the masquerade society. A puberty rite of passage, this showed the promise of the young man. Onyeama's father died thereafter. His mother also died, probably killed for poisoning a man who had threatened her son Onyeama with violence.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19945979. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Waawa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.