Arondizuogu is believed to have been founded in the mid-18th century through the forceful occupation and open massacre of the people of Umualaoma by Mazi Izuogu Mgbokpo and his brothers.
Places of interest in Arondizuogu include Mazi Mbonu Ojike Cottage (village home of Nigeria's late "Boycott King"); Uno Ogologo (a safe house built in 1887 for hiding children during the slave trade era); the Stone Palace (a storehouse erected by late Chief Green Mbadiwe, West Africa's first millionaire, for his father, Umualaoma Nkwo Ochie); Mbadiwe Odum; Ngeze stream; Ogbuti Ezumezu (visitor's chamber of Ikeji musician Pericoma Okoye); LN Motel Plaza, Home Diamond Hotel; National High School, Arondizuogu (pioneer model school built by Mazi Nwosu Elele Igwiloh and commissioned in 1951); Iheme Memorial Secondary School (a second model school commissioned in 1951); Palace of The People (country home of Nigerian politician K. O. Mbadiwe, commissioned by Nigeria's prime minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa in 1965); Upiti rice fields; Obi Omenuko, homestead of Igwegbe Odum; and Ngene Okwe, a natural spring.
For the culture–loving people of Arondizuogu, the day is a unique annual homecoming that they celebrate with much aplomb comparable only to their popular Ikeji Festival, which is touted to be “the greatest carnival of masks and masquerades in Africa”.
Its origin dates back to over five centuries and it is acclaimed as the biggest pan-Igbo cultural community festival with a strong heritage and international recognition.
In contemporary times, each year has witnessed an increase in grandeur, display, dance, sophistication, and all-inclusive participation of all Arondizuogu people and friends.
The festival is marked with colourful displays of different masquerades, such as Ogionu, Mgbadike, Nwaaburuja, and Ozoebune, prestigiously parading across the market square to the public's admiration.
Each of these days has a special significance and represents one of the several dimensions of Ikeji – a festival renowned for sumptuous feasting, fascinating masquerades, pulsating rhythms, and colourful performances.
Another interesting aspect of Ikeji is the raconteur known as ima mbem – an imaginative tale delivered with a musical cadence that only the initiated can sometimes understand or comprehend.
The importance of the flutist during Ikeji festival is very vital, for he communicates things hidden from the ordinary eyes to the masquerades, combined with soulful melodies, steps, and gestures, blending esoteric messages into the intoxicating rhythm of the drums to the admiration of the crowd.
Eventually, the bravest among the masquerades participating in the competition for that year's festival, after overcoming all odds, will reach the ram, untie it and take it to the thunderous applause of the spectators.
The young men of Arondizuogu who laid the foundation for APU left their homes for the first time in the 1920s and early 1930s to seek a better life in the emerging urban centres of colonial Nigeria.
They assembled at Aba on October 8, 1932, to aggregate ideas on how best to convey the modern development with which they were surrounded in the city (such as wide roads, schools, hospitals, post offices, potable water, electricity, courtrooms, etc.)