Festivals > Articles > Egungun Festival

It can be a bit unsettling arriving in a small town at 11p.m. and finding that every one of the residents is already indoors. Except for some sheep and goats curled up by the roadside, and two night guards carrying locally made guns. There is no sound of any kind; the wind itself is still.

The taxi driver, impatient to return to Oshogbo (40km away), drives into the palace of the king (Aragbiji) of Iragbiji, steps out and leans on the car. As it is, he has to either drive me (and the two other journalists who have come to report the Egungun festival, which climaxes tomorrow) to a resort at Ada (10km ahead) or leave me behind—If I so wish. While we contemplate what will be, the guards approach. And the older one asks if we won’t mind sleeping in the mosque abutting the gate behind us. I really don’t mind. The only lady present won’t even consider it. “Please, let’s find a hotel.”

Just then, Muraina Oyelami—the world-renowned painter and a traditional titleholder (Eesa of Iragbiji)—calls me. He wants to know when I’ll be arriving. “I’m already here in Iragbiji—at the palace,” I tell him. A short while later, he drives down in an old model white Land Rover, welcoming the three of us with more than open arms. He offers to take us to a hotel at Ikirun (a border town) instead, and then to a restaurant. “You must take something,” he insists. Indeed.

Fortunately, we find one canteen still open at that late hour. It’s a young man with the built of a boxer who serves us fine Amala and Ewedu soup, and ‘bush meat’ covered in pepper sauce. In between bites, we ask Oyelami some questions. What do the Iragbiji people do? (“They are mainly cash crop farmers—coco yam, cacao.”) Is there ancient architecture? (“A few Brazilian buildings here and there.”) You have a private museum in your home? (Yes. I am about to transfer its ownership to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments. It can manage it better—I am not an expert museum technician.”)

And the Egungun festival—what’s there to it? “The dead are not dead, so we believe,” Oyelami says after a sip of his own drink. “All over Yoruba land we share the same beliefs that the Egunguns (“I don’t like to use the word ‘masquerade’. It sounds derogatory.”) represent the spirits of the ancestors who have descended from the heavens/mountains. It is a period when the dead come to interact with the living.” He suggests that I have to be up on time to go to the masquerades’ compound and observe the early morning rites as they are done before the masquerades go public.

On my way to the first compound, I pass 1940s and ‘50s one-storey buildings and a sweating young man busy lobbing baskets of neatly packaged cola nuts with practised precision into the hands of another person (on a lorry), who also tosses same to another pair of waiting hands. The consignment is bound for the north. Shortly, I get to the bungalow where Okenigbegbe (‘Gbegbe’ for short), the most important masquerade in Iragbiji, is usually dressed up for the day’s outing.

I’m in time to catch a senior member of the family saying the necessary prayers.

The ‘ancestors’ have yet to descend into this room, because right on a chair before the old man is the masquerade’s colourful garment and headdress. Bean cakes and pap litter the ground. The old man prays silently for a while into his palm, and then he throws cola nuts to the ground for the last time. I hear him say, “He has accepted.” Who has? What for?

As the story goes, there was once a war involving the early inhabitants of Iragbiji and the Nupe tribe further north along the banks of River Niger. While it lasted, the warriors from the village, having overrun their enemies, discovered a box “containing something heavy”. Thinking it must contain treasures they took it as part of the spoils of conquest. Back home and in the dead of night, a heavy breathing sounded from where the box had been kept. According to Oyelami, the people were scared, “so they consulted the oracle, and the oracle said that it was an ancestral Egungun Okenigbegbe of a particular family in Tapa land.” An annual ritual of appeasement and celebration has been carried our ever since.

“Everyone pretty much decide what they would give,” says Iragbiji Adepoju, Gbegbe masquerade’s current minder. “They don’t necessarily have to have so much. You go as far as your resources can carry you. And it can be anything from sweeping the floor around Gbegbe to giving a gift of honey.”

Apart from the respect it commands from the locals, the Gbegbe also wields some power where the king is concerned: he is the last masquerade of the lot to enter Oja Oba (the King’s market), where the weeklong festival winds up. “The king cannot leave until Gbegbe has made his way to the square and then say his prayers,” one native tells me. “Even if it is 1a.m the king has to wait to receive Gbegbe.”

Starting at about midday, the masquerades visit households around the town, praying for the families and receiving money as they do. The procession is as rowdy as a carnival can get, and each masquerade moves with its own band of drummers and very excited young men—some of the girls also form peer group mobile choirs, chanting not-too-melodious songs up and down the streets—who carry canes that are saved for the evening when people gather in thousands to watch the masquerades entertain. Here is where a whipping session takes place.

The whipping does not amuse everyone. It somehow takes from the colour of the show. “It is annoying,” fumes a lady, who has come here for the first time. Visitors may not enjoy some of the things that natives do as a tradition; but the truth is that each festival has its own flavour, and I won’t begrudge the youths of Iragbiji for revelling in theirs. Funny enough, Iragbiji’s Egungun festival, which takes place in May, is one of Nigeria’s less well-known cultural celebrations; it is hardly publicised and so has enjoyed little tourist presence.

That is beginning to change. A few of the town’s enlightened indigenes now want a festival to rival the better known Osun Osogbo festival, which takes place every August and attracts thousands of secular and spiritual participants. Oyelami for one has tapped into the broadcast power of the web to spread the message. He has created a website and dispatches occasional newsletters. “We have always welcomed visitors here from time immemorial,” explains Adepoju. “It is difficult to tell a visitor from a native. As a matter of fact, no one can count the number of people you see here—except you can count the number of seeds in a tobacco plant. We don’t quarrel with our visitors.”

If you are here the next time, watch out for Ajogbasile. It is next in rank to the Gbegbe, and somewhat stimulating. A member of the family says it is “the most notorious” because it is “very aggressive”. Tiamiyu Owoseni, head of the Ajogbasile compound, bets that “If you watch the Ajogbasile this year, you will pray to see it another time.” The Egungun’s garment here is also waiting to be worn.

The headdress, resting on a window, is smeared with blood. Meanwhile, the masquerades will have to storm the town anytime from now. A small crowd gradually builds up in front of the house. “Tell the drummers to start drumming,” someone shouts from behind me. A man wearing only trousers walks briskly into the room, sits on a wooden chair and grabs the pair of tennis shoes on the floor. Someone quickly shuts the windows. Both the garment and headdress go on him. He is the ‘ancestor’.

“The man behind the masquerade is a gentleman but on wearing the costume and getting to the market place, I’m telling you for God’s sake everything will change. You won’t recognise him again,” I am told by Tope Omoakin, a member of the family who has travelled 600kilometres to be here. “According to the origin of this town, it happens to be the power of our ancestors. He won’t misuse the power but he will make everything lively—for the supporters and the entire community.”

In the past there must have been literally thousands of masquerades in this locality alone. But the number has fallen with the passing of time. Wasiu Onirungbonogun, who will wear the costume for the Lobamaja masquerade (of Aare compound) later today confirms that there used to be about 201 in the compound. “Now we can boast of just seven.”

It is, perhaps, why the youths are central to Iragbiji’s Egungun society nowadays. Just so that the masquerade culture does not vanish completely, they are the ones who wear the masquerade’s costume, and also make up most of the crowd. “Our fathers have played their part in the past and they are no longer physically fit to carry on the task,” one says to me. “We believe our culture must not be left to die.”

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