Tag: Kogi State

Denja Abdullahi writes on the importance of Oluwo festival celebrated by the people of oworo in Agbaja local Government of Kogi State. The annual festival is an avenue to bring the people of the area together to celebrate the culture and tradition of the people. This year’s edition was marked by remarkable events and people came home from all over the world for the celebration.

Asking why a festival should be celebrated or having to explain to a people why they should celebrate their own festival suggests that something fundamental has gone wrong somewhere. And when you talk about reviving a thing, it means that thing has gone nearly extinct, if not already extinct. When you add the strident or muffled call for unity within a homogenous ethnic group such as the Oworos to the two other concerns mentioned above, then there is a course for real concern.   The inference one can draw from all these without even waiting for any deep analysis is that the culture of the Oworos is seriously misunderstood by the people themselves, may be endangered and the people are disunited. Let me say here that it is not out of place to use a festival, like the Oluwo festival, to create understanding, salvage cultural endangerment and forge a unity of purpose.

The Raison De’tre for the Celebration of Festivals in Africa

Any observant person that have been scouring the social media in the last few weeks would have observed that we seem to be in the festivals belt, particularly in  what is called the Middle Belt or North Central Nigeria. In the last few days or weeks, Nze Mada Festival of the Mada people of Nasarawa State, Tuk Ham Festival of the Ham or Jaba people of Kaduna State, the Nze Berom Festival of the Berom people , the Pusdung Festival of the Ngas people, the Ilum O’Tarok of the Tarok people , all of Plateau State  and the Ovia Osese Festival of the Ogori People of Kogi State and many more have been celebrated with  lots of  colourful cultural extravaganza and fanfare. Africans  host or stage festivals either after the farming harvest season or just before the onset of the farming season. Festivals are celebrated when people have a lot of leisure time on their hands, away from farm  work or any kind of dedicated work. After harvest to the time just before the onset of the planting season are period of celebration either to thank God for a bountiful harvest or pray for a hitch –free farming season ahead. Festivals thus have both a functional and a spiritual essence.

Festivals and their Typologies

Festivals can be further defined as “ a fundamental aspect of a people’s culture. They are special events organized by communities to celebrate specific aspects of their collective life” (Tume, 2021). Festival are often ceremonial, featuring surfeit of events derived from the tangible and intangible heritages of a people and are put up to mark a cycle in the life of a people or occurrences .of symbolic and special importance to the people (Duruaku, 2010). Festivals can be grouped into various types, which for the purpose of this talk, we shall be adopting the British Council festival survey classifications ( British Council,2016.) We thus have the government festivals usually created, curated and  organized by federal or state governments such as the National Festival of Arts and Culture(NAFEST) and States Festivals of Arts and Culture; traditional festivals organized by local communities  such as the Oluwo Festival and independent arts festivals set up  by independent bodies to propagate  or popularize a targeted art form such as literary, books and arts festivals, film festivals, music festival ,drums festival ,poetry  festivals, dance festivals and many others.

Cultural Festivals as Agents of Unity

Traditionally, in most communities, when the farms have been harvested and the next planting season is been expected, then it is time to commune with history, tangible and intangible heritages with the staging of festivals that underpin the people’s existence. Nigeria can thus be described as a rainbow land of festivals. There are as many festivals as the number of ethnic groups and distinct cultures we have in Nigeria. They are so many and can be further classified “into the famous and not so famous”( Awofeso,2013 ) depending on the popularity of such festivals or the lack of it in the people’s imagination, the size, cultural tenacity and industry of the ethnic groups where such festivals are held.

Festivals have some innate characteristics which make them to be considered as veritable tools for settling differences, blurring dividing lines and creating harmony and understanding. The qualities are as follows:

They involve a mass of people in a participatory, festive and entertaining shared atmosphere thereby building friendship and forging new relationship

They are organized in a consultative and consensual manner across a broad spectrum of stakeholders and participants.

They promote a sense of identity and general socio-cultural and spiritual  well-being  within an ethnic group

They create opportunity for neighbouring communities to a particular ethnic group celebrating a festival to participate and identify in shared cultural similarities

A festival being celebrated is often a sign that all is well with the celebrating community and a festival not being celebrated denotes communal misalignment and discordance.

Festivals are often social construct of peace, truce from extant conflicts and seals for enduring understanding.

Tonic for Promoting Unity and Safeguarding a People’s Cultural heritage: The Example of the Oluwo Festival of the Oworos

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Though the  Oluwo festival, from orally transmitted and recorded history from ancient time was celebrated by the people of Agbaja every three years to appeal to the god of the earth for bountiful harvest before the commencement of every planting season, it has evolved to involve all the towns and villages of the Oworo people ,who operated a kind of confederacy from the pre-colonial period till the present time. Each community or village in Oworo has its own festival which may either be Iboko(after the harvest season festival) or Ije(before the planting season festival) but the Oluwo festival at a point in time in the history of the Oworo became a festival that sought to culturally solidify the unity of the ethnic group. It became a rallying point for the Oworo people spread across the eastern and western banks and flanks of the confluence of the Niger and the Benue to stage their culture harmoniously in a single festival arena at the administrative and spiritual capital of the ethnic group , Agbaja. We cannot thus talk today that the previous Oluwo festivals over the ages that were celebrated with all sorts of cultural fanfare and theatrics by all Oworos did not contribute tremendously to harmony and a sense of general cultural well-being   of the Oworos.

We also know that the many years the festival went uncelebrated denoted the lack of unity among the people and many things went downhill with that economically, politically and culturally. A recent research conducted by Alhaji Hamid Taju and my humble self across Oworo land in the last three years came out with the finding that the larger part of the culture of the Oworo people have gone extinct except for two features which have soldiered on in spite of manifest decay: the art of masquerading and the Oworo language . The marriage system, child rearing system, songs and dances such as the Owe, Okura songs, Akuba,  Ihanle, Agbelege, Gbogbolo and many other associated ritual and cultural practices have all gone comatose.  To know the details of those practices that have gone extinct , why they went extinct , the possibility of reviving them and why the two surviving, though seriously threatened features have remained with us, you need to read our book Sacred Places, Festivals, Rituals and Taboos:  Evolution of Traditional Cultural Practices in Oworo when we eventually release it in the near future.

At this point, we must commend the many villages and entities in Oworo land which kept the Iboko and the Ije festivals alive all these years of near cultural annihilation. The entire Oworo must commend their tenacity in the face of the rampaging influence of modern religion and western civilization that are the greatest threat to the survival of our cultural heritage. We must also at this point commend all those that are striving to bring back Oluwo Festival on sure footing to be celebrated without break henceforth for their herculean task of building upon the work of our patriotic forefathers and mothers to keep the Oworo ethnic group culturally united and thriving. The Oluwo Festival is to the Oworo ethnic group what the National Festival for Arts and Culture is to Nigeria ; it is pure and simply a festival in which we must continue to use to deepen our unity and forge better understanding in our grappling with the challenges of the evolving times.

I mentioned some ethnic groups earlier who have just celebrated their festivals. Those ethnic groups in their historical evolution and traditional social-political structures have a lot of similarities with the Oworos ,including fine differences within the same ethnic groups with regards to spatial locations and individual beliefs; but that has not prevented them from rallying round to celebrate their common heritages with a vigorous commitment to project and sustain their unique identities as a people.  Oworo case should not be different. If we continue to forage for the differences that are not there or whip up unnecessary hegemonic and anti-hegemonic feelings among ourselves, we will be self-destructing ourselves and it is our culture and our people that will suffer the consequences. There will be loss of collective resolve, problem of identity and we will end up not been able to negotiate development in the larger nation state. 

At this point , I must foreground another important function of a traditional festival like the Oluwo festival. Traditional festival celebration of old was never complete without the invitation and active participation of neighbouring or even far-flung communities. This has been the African home-grown way of exercising cultural diplomacy, blurring differences, building peace and maintaining a harmonious existence. People attend festivals for various reasons, which includes enjoying cultural spectacles, engaging in trading, feeding taste buds with exotic foods and drinks and finding lifelong partners. All of us gathered here today fall into one category or the other. The Oworo ethnic group is surrounded by the Bunus, Owes, Kakandas, Bassas , Bassanges, Basakoms, Kupas, Hausas, Fulanis, Nupes, Ebira kotos, Ebira Okene, Igalas, Ogoris etc .Let us begin to imagine a situation where every ethnic group in Kogi State actively celebrates its own unique festival and make it a duty to invite all other ethnic groups to participate.  We can only imagine how much that will contribute to sustaining unity and peace among the people of Kogi State. This can be furthered by the State initiating a Kogi State Festival of Arts and Culture involving all the ethnic groups in a tapestry of cultural activities.