Celebrating Ndi-Igbo

Azuh Arinze is the editor of Encomium Magazine. Azuh Arinze hails from Azia in Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State. He attended Township Primary School, Nsukka, Enugu State, and Victoria Island Secondary School Lagos. He has an OND in Mass communication from OSISATHEC Polytechnic and a HND in Mass Communication from IMT, Enugu.

Eleanor Roosevelt (l), with Kingsley Ozumba Mbadiwe (c) and Mbonu Ojike (r) Ojike was a man of high intellect. An iconoclast and rights activist. Mbonu Ojike took his politics from the angle of persecution and fought his battles with elevated elocution. He was the pride of the East, whose burning desire was freedom, from colonial clutches. He spoke with passion and deep from the heart. He was the boycott king, who relished in passive resistance made popular by the late Mahatma Ghandi. Like America’s Martin Luther King, whose “I have a dream” treatise still resonates round the world four decades after his brutal killing, Ojike is best known for his “boycott the boycottables” theory. But it was not just a mere theory. He personally practicalised it by adopting native names, clothes, food, wife, etc. He lived his dream to the fullest, enjoining others to emulate him in the psychological battle against while rule. He passed on in 1956.

Ositadinma "Osi" Umenyiora born November 16, 1981 in Golders Green, London, England is an American football defensive end in the National Football League for the New York Giants. Umenyiora is one of three British born players to have won a Super Bowl ring, joining Scott McCready and Giants teammate Lawrence Tynes. Umenyiora was born in London to Nigerian parents. His family moved back to Nigeria and later to Auburn, Alabama, where he started playing football in high school. He attended Auburn High School, the same school attended by fellow Troy State alum and current Dallas Cowboys outside linebacker Demarcus Ware, as well as former Washington Redskins linebacker Marcus Washington. He currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia and Edgewater, New Jersey.

Onyeka Ibe was born in Anambra State, Nigeria and now lives in Atlanta, Ga. He has been described by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as one of the most exciting young painters to emerge from Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990’s. Encouraged by his father, a painter himself, Ibe was introduced as a child to drawing and taught how to observe and take note of things that inspired him. He achieved youthful success at the age of 16 when he first exhibited his work at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Lagos, Nigeria. He later graduated from the University of Benin in Nigeria with First Class Honors in Fine Arts Since graduating Ibe has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Mexico, South America and Europe exhibiting his work, participating in seminars and fine art workshops, and looking for inspiration in the geography and cultures of the world. Recognition for the artist’s work has led to his membership in prestigious art organizations such as the “Portrait Society of Americ...