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This paper aims to provide a living tribute to the leading autoethnographer, Alec Grant.

Alec provided Jerome with a list of names of people he might approach to write a tribute on his behalf.

The accounts describe the influence that Alec has had both as an educator and as a trusted colleague for the people approached.

While this is a living tribute, it is about one man and could, therefore, be described as a case study. Some people wonder what can be learned from a single case study. Read on and find out.

Alec has carved out a path for himself. In many senses, he chose “The Road Less Travelled”. He has never shied away from challenging “The System” and defending the rights of the marginalized and socially excluded. It is not a road for the faint-hearted.

For systems to change, radical thinkers need to show the way. “Change keeps us safe” (Stuart Bell).

Alec was a well-known and highly respected cognitive behavioural academic practitioner and the author of key textbooks in the field. He then decided to reinvent himself as an autoethnographer. This has brought him into contact with a much more diverse group of people. It has also brought him home to himself.

The study explores the nexus between Ibu-Ubu boyhood initiation and the conservation of cultural heritage in Afikpo, Southeast Nigeria. The study is motivated by the rarity of such cultural conservation through initiation rites in an age of Christian-inspired culture terrorism against Igbo traditional religion, arts and relics.

The study adopted cultural anthropological research method. The boyhood initiation rite was studied through participant observation of the initiation between September and November 2017. As a cultural anthropological study, oral evidence was derived from the men who had undergone the rite. Through the oral evidence, interpretations were given to the material culture, monuments and heritage that have been conserved through Ibu-Ubu initiation rite.

The study discovered that amid the deluge of Christian-motivated culture terrorism and erosion of Igbo cultural arts, relics and heritage, the people of Afikpo have preserved most of their tangible and intangible heritage through the Ibu-Ubu boyhood initiation rites.

This study will assist in the reinvigoration of campaigns on environmental and heritage conservation in Igboland. It is sufficient to posit that Igboland is ridden with myriads of environmental and cultural terrorism, perpetrated by some Christian fanatics. The study reveals the relevance of the boyhood initiation rites in ensuring the preservation and conservation of Igbo cultural heritage in a century marked with fanatical Christian evangelism, culture-terrorism and destruction of both tangible and intangible heritages, which the Christians have labelled evil, barbaric and fetish.