A delegation of Haitian citizens has arrived in Enugu State on a mission to trace their ancestral origin to Igbo land.
The leader of the delegation, Senator Moise Jean Charles, was accompanied by some Haiti nationals for the historic fact-finding mission.
The delegation was received on behalf of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, by the Secretary to the State Government, Simon Ortuanya.
Haiti is the first independent black republic in the world that defeated King Napoleon and the Fresh colonists in 1803 and became a sovereign nation in 1804.
It is the second oldest independent nation in the West, after the United States of America, and also the first country in the West to abolish slavery.
The Igbo lineage of the Haitian people has been a lingering story over the years, taking facts from the culture of the people of Haiti whose population derives from black slaves who got liberated from areas around the United States of America.
About12 years ago, a journalist and administrator, Dimgba Igwe (now deceased) of The Sun Newspaper, wrote a piece narrating his encounter with a Haitian woman when he visited the country.
He narrated how a lady housekeeper in the hotel he stayed at the Haitian capital, Port Au Prince, told him her name was Adanna.
The told the woman that the name is Igbo, meaning first daughter. But the Haitian woman corrected him that her father told her the name actually means father’s first daughter. He expressed shock and surprise that the Haitian lady knew the more detailed meaning of the name in Igbo language than him.
– Media Report