My attention has been drawn to a publication by Mazi Dr Chuks Nwosu on many WhatsApp platforms, including Asa Devt Union, Asa People of Abia State, and Ukwa Peoples’ Assembly, posted on Monday, (Orie) 12th October, 2026 , titled, ‘PUBLIC PROTEST AND CLARIFICATION: IT IS UKWA NA NGWA, NOT “UKWA LA NGWA”.
Ordinarily, I should not burden myself with an engagement of responding to the publication because Mazi Dr Nwosu has his fundamental right to express his opinion as an individual in a democratic society. But because there are what could be viewed as misconceptions in the said publication, I consider it important to do the ‘proper clarification’.
To start with, it is necessary to state the fact that both ‘La’ and ‘Na’ are two dialectical versions of a cordinating conjunction that joins two words or names together. In standard Igbo language, the conjunction ‘and’ is ‘na’. But there could be variations of the conjunction in some dialects of Igbo language. Specifically, in Ngwa dialect, the conjunction ‘and’ is ‘la’. So, in Ngwa dialect, once two different names are to be joined together, the appropriate conjunction to be used will be ‘la’.
In both Asa and Ndoki dialects of the Igbo language, about 75-80% of the indigenes use ‘na’ as their cordinating conjunction, which aligns with standard Igbo language while about 20-25% of the people use ‘la’ as their equivalent of ‘and’. To be specific, most of the communities and villages in Asa Group in Ukwa-West Local Government Area, which is Asa, use ‘la’. Who knows if this could have stemmed from what could be regarded as dialectical acculturation resulting from proximity to, and close interactions with the Ngwa, especially taking into consideration that many men from Asa Group married Ngwa women?
From a historical perspective, let it be stated that in 1982 when His Eminence, late Eze Bernard Onyenguzo Enweremadu, the Eze Ukwu of Ngwa Ukwu, and Traditional Head of Ngwa Land, initiated the idea of a union between Ukwa and Ngwa Peoples, personalities that honoured the initiative from Ukwa then, which was just one Local Government Area, included; His Royal Majesty, late Eze Hon H. M. J. Nwachukwu who was then representing Ukwa Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, 1979-83, His Royal Highness, late Eze Alfa Ekekeulu who was a broadcasting legend at Imo Broadcasting Corporation in Imo State, and late Chief J. K. Taribo, a quintessential charismatic Civil Servant in Imo Civil Service. I was then a young Teacher at Ihie High School, formerly Adventist Secondary School, Ihie, in Isialangwa.
Giving the Union a name was a very interesting process. While everyone knew and acknowledged it was a mutual union between Ukwa and Ngwa Peoples, the challenge was on how it would be written or coined. On their own, the Ngwa group, notably including late Nze Hon A. O. Arungwa who had represented Northern Ngwa Regional Constituency in defunct Eastern Regional House of Assembly, proposed Ukwa-Ngwa, that was the two names being joined together with a hyphen, the Ukwa group suggested Ukwa/Ngwa, that was using a forward slash to join the two groups as a coalition or partnership. Both groups agreed on the use of a forward slash, as opposed to the use of a hyphen to join the two groups.
Some other groups later cropped up, and also thought of creating a union between Ukwa and Ngwa. In most cases, their labelling of their names was unacceptable to the Ukwa bloc. However, about 2021 or 2022, Dr Max Nduaguibe, Barr Moses Ogbonna, and some of us from Ukwa formed what was called Ukwa La Ngwa Elders’ Council.
Some elites from Ukwa sharply criticized the use of ‘la’ in the nomenclature. Some went to the extent of interpreting the ‘la’ in Ukwa La Ngwa to mean ‘Ukwa Return To Ngwa’.
I, personally, did not see anything derogatory to the psyche of the Ukwa man in the name, knowing that ‘la’ in Ngwa dialect is purely a conjunction that means and. Where two groups of people come into a union and have two different versions of a cordinating conjunction, naturally one must have to give up, as only one conjunction would have to be used. The most important thing is that the meaning serves a common purpose. Assuming that the coalition had been written as Ukwa And Ngwa, or Ukwa Et Ngwa, the meaning would still not have been altered simply because the conjunctions And or Et which are English or French, respectively, was used.
So, I do not think a caption as loud and divisive as the one used by my dear brother, Mazi Dr Chuks Nwosu, to express his feelings on this issue of the use of the conjunction ‘la’ is really worth the time and mental resources deployed to arrive at what William Shakespeare in 1598 and 1599 would summarize as ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.
Sir Don Ubani is Okene Ukwu Nde Ngwa, a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State, and Publisher of Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
