Ejemekwuru : A Study in Socio-Cultural Evolution Up to 1997

Many people at different times have made comprehensive studies of different parts of Igbo Land. Although life throughout Igbo land follows the same pattern in many ways, yet the Igbo tribe is so vast an area that variations in dialects, customs, settlement arrangements, bride price, occupations, traditions and culture exist from place to place. A knowledge-of the life in one locality does not necessarily include the details of the life in another locality.
So, in December 1964, I undertook a detailed study of the life in Ejemekwuru, a town now in Oguta Local Government of Imo State of Nigeria. This was the first time that the history of the people, their traditions and their culture have been put into writing.
I have tried to bring out as much as possible the people's traditional ways of life, their cultural values and how the impact of Western civilisation has modified most of them.
In publishing this book, I have taken into consideration, so many social, economic and political developments that have taken place in Ejemekwuru since thirty two years ago, when this essay was written in the University of Ibadan. For instance, Oguta County in Owerri Division then, is now Oguta Local Government Area in Imo State.