It’s presented before it’s broken
The kola goes first to the most senior person present, or to whoever the host wants to honour. He touches it and hands the dish back. It’s shown, not handed out.
The nut then travels round the gathering and each person touches it to record approval before it returns to the host. That circuit has a name, ire ọjị, and it works as a headcount: everyone in the room has been seen before anything is discussed.
Only then is it broken, and the breaking, ịwa ọjị, is a separate act with its own words.
How it’s broken
Kola is broken by hand, the thumbnail pressed into the natural line that runs down from the head of the nut between one lobe and the next. In some places it’s broken with a knife as a mark of respect.
Who blesses it is fixed: the eldest man in the gathering, or the man of the house when no one outranks him. A man doesn’t bless kola in front of his in-law or his mother's people. Who does the physical breaking depends on the town: in the south the youngest present breaks and shares it; in the north it’s the eldest.
What’s said over it
The elder holding the kola names the ancestors and asks for what the gathering has come for: life, health, children, prosperity. A man does the same each morning, seated at his obi with a kola nut in his right hand, calling on Chineke, on Ala and on the ancestors before anything else is done.
The line people quote is onye wetara ọjị wetara ndụ: he who brings kola brings life. It isn’t a poetic flourish. It’s the claim the whole custom rests on, that what’s being passed round is life itself.
The prayer is said in Igbo. The saying for that is ọjị anaghị anụ bekee: kola doesn’t understand English. After the breaking, a piece is dropped on the ground for the ancestors, and when the dish has gone round and come back, the host is told ọjị eze dịkwa eze n’aka: the king’s kola has returned to the king.
The lobes count
A kola nut splits into natural lobes, and the number is read as a message. Three lobes is ọjị ikenga, the kola of the valiant. Four is the kola of peace and blessing, matched to the four market days, Eke, Orie, Afọ and Nkwọ. Five is announced and claimed as a sign of wealth.
Two lobes is the one nobody wants. It’s read as a bad omen and thrown away. The names for each count differ from town to town, but those three readings are widely shared.
The pieces are then shared out by seniority, from the eldest down, and the women last. In some places nobody is handed kola at all: each man reaches into the ọkwa ọjị and takes his own, and only the women are handed a piece.
Two kinds of kola, and only one counts
The nut for the rite is ọjị Igbo, Cola acuminata, which splits into three lobes or more. The smaller, two-lobed gworo, Cola nitida, is the kola of the north, and it isn’t valid for Igbo ritual. That two-lobe rule and the gworo rule are the same rule.
Ọjị has a second sense: any edible presented to a visitor. Garden egg, groundnuts, a drink, nzu, money or a coconut can stand in as kola when there’s no nut, and the host still calls it kola. A host with nothing at all says so with the set line akọnam ọnụ ọjị: don’t hold the absence of kola against me.
If you’re the guest
You’re not expected to know the protocol. You’re expected to take it seriously. Don’t reach for the bowl before it’s offered, and take your cue from the elders on when to eat.
Traditionally women don’t break kola, with exceptions such as the Omu, the queen mother in Anioma, who breaks it in her own right.
The Igbo word to know is ọjị, and it’s worth being able to say it, because you’ll hear it long before anyone translates it for you.