FOUR 5-STAR TRADITIONAL FESTIVALS
Oye’koro Festival
Annual Coronation Anniversary Festival of the Olu of Warri.
Coronation and coronation anniversary celebrations have been held in Warri from as early as the reign of Ginuwa 1, the first Olu of Warri. More recently, under the reign of Ogiame Atuwatse Il (1987 – 20150, the festival grew to carnival proportions, involving enthusiastic inhabitants and indigenes in Warri and beyond along with thousands of others from across the country and even abroad.
The week-long ceremonies marking each Oye Ekoro festival is timed to commence from the date of the coronation of the reigning Olu of Warri. Activities ranging from lectures, thanksgiving church services and a land carnival train or boat regatta are regular features of each year’s celebrations. The celebrations afford the Olu’s subjects and all well-wishers the opportunity for conviviality, reflections and to give thanks to the Creator for His mercies.
The most striking feature of the festivities is of course the carnival train procession, or in its place, the boat regatta. They are enchanting sights to watch. The carnival train procession comprises of a chain of up to a hundred or more vehicles (mainly trailers and lorries), gorgeously and ingenuously decorated, many of them reshaped into the likes of ships and huge canoes and bearing dancers and drummers. Large crowds of spectators line both sides of the streets of Warri as the carnival train moves at regal pace through predetermined routes to the palace grounds. You could call it a land regatta!!!
The regatta proper, on the other hand, has deeper roots among the Itsekiris. Historians recall the first vividly remembered regatta to be that organized and employed by Prince Omatseye, the son of Olu Akengbuwa I, the 16th Olu of Warri, to collect custom dues from alien vessels coming into the territorial waters of the Warri kingdom. Thus, originally, regattas were employed for purposes akin to war, but Chief Dore Numa has the credit of reorganizing traditional regatta for ceremonial and entertainment purposes. Today it has been elevated even further to a level of pomp and pageantry and constitutes the main activity of the annual Oye Ekoro festival attracting thousands of spectators and tourists to the Warri waterfront each year.
Awan’kere Festival
Held annually in Okere, Warri.
The annual Awan’kere festival of Okere (popularly known as Okere Juju), is one of the most popular festivals in Warri metropolis and environs today. Its origin dates back to the later part of the 15th century when Ekpen, the chief-warrior founder of Okere, introduced it. The festival is celebrated in honor of the deity Okioro, who is believed to be the sovereign of all other deities (umale) that inhabit the rivers, sea, and ocean.
Awan’kere is celebrated for three lunar months between June and August annually except in any year when the bigger Eleghe festival is celebrated. The Eleghe festival usually incorporates the Awan’kere festival and is celebrated once every twenty years.
The Awan’kere is a fertility festival and purification. The community is purified, and sacrifices are made to appease and thank the deity for all the blessings of the preceding festival year prior to the commencement of the ceremonies. Such rites as ajafifa (purification of the community), ibiribi (night masquerade), ode gbigba (sweeping the arena) and awerewere (cleansing ceremony), precede the main event.
The festival proper is a convivial communal rite with mimes of sexual acts, phallic symbols, and lewd songs replete with fertility images. Explicitly expressive dance movements evoke an errogenuous empathy between spectators and performers.
Among the masquerades, the Oshogw’umale, who is always attired in resplendent white, is the father, while Okpoye, dressed in sack cloth, is the mother. All other masquerades are children of Oshogw’umale and Okpoye and wear costumes of varied colors. A typical awan’kere masquerade wears a flowing robe of the local agbada variety to cover the upper body and ties two loin cloths around the waist over white leotards to cover the lower parts. Imerigo, made from palm fronds, are tied around the ankles. A hat, ebo, for the masker’s head, has long, loose raffia threading hanging halfway around its rim. A light, black scarf hangs from the front of the rim of the ebo masking the wearer. All the masquerades apart from Okpoye carry two specially designed whips called ukpasha, one in each hand. The ukpasha produces gunshot-like sounds when the masquerades whip the floor with it.
The festival takes place during the rainy season. Thus, masquerades and other performers find an appropriate weather and ground condition to splash about. The timing of the festival is to ensure that the environment on land is conducive for the temporary stay of the deity, Okioro, who lives in the waters. The splashing about in the rains and mud is to the people a symbolic washing away of evil spells and diseases from their bodies. The festival lasts for five weeks with one performance each week on succeeding days. Like the Greek fertility god, Dionysus, the Egyptian Osiris and Syrian Tames, Okioro’s festival combines both the sacred, in its numerous rituals, and the profane, in its orgiastic dance and lewd songs. Underlying it all is the expectation and yearning for a life more abundant.
Agbassa Juju Festival
Held biannually in Agbassa, Warri.
The Agbassa juju festival is usually celebrated every two years by the Urhobo indigenes of Warri township in honour of a warrior deity called Owhurie.
The festival is believed to have originated from Agbara-otor from whence the ancestors of the Agbarha Urhobos came. It tells the story of a beleaguered community under siege from immensely powerful enemy forces and how the deity, Owhurie, is invoked in their dire need. The deity responds to the people’s invocation, possesses them, and leads them to victory over their enemies.
The festival parades an array of young men and women in scarlet war garbs, their bodies and faces painted to fearsome hues of blue and black, the young men throwing, catching and brandishing keenly sharpened cutlasses and clanging them in midair in salutation and dance. The participating communities led by their ogbu (head hunter) carrying a basket (Osa) on his head with a little child in it, and smoke billowing from the basket, dance through the streets and converge at the festival arena at Agbassa.
The highlight of the festival is at Agbassa where the Olotu, the Chief Ogbu, titled Otemu no ruemu (it is he who qualifies that does it), is brought out disguised, masked in plantain leaves and carrying a fresh head of a ram with blood still dripping from it in one hand and wielding a very sharp cutlass in the other. He is led into the shrine from where he emerges about an hour later apparently entranced and enacting how a killing was made. The drums pound on, providing an appropriate background to the enactment, while the clanging of cutlasses provides choric support for the Chief Ogbu’s performance.
The festival lasts for one day and takes place around April when the rains have not yet come and the weather is still sunny and clement. It also provides an opportunity for the testing out of charms. Dancers usually acquire protective charms as “insurance” against machete cuts. It is not an unusual sight at these festivals to find people dealing heavy machete blows on themselves with no cuts to show for them.
Umal’Ude Dance Festival
Performed by Itsekiri Cultural Societies in all Itsekiri Communities in Warri and across the world.
The Umal’ude dance festival is performed by the Itsekiri communities and their cultural societies in Warri township and all over Warri North, South, and South-West Local Government areas as well as across the country and abroad. It is a masquerade dance drama that involves the re-enactment of the lives of the umale, mythical beings who lived amongst the Itsekiri people in primordial times but later dematerialized and began to be honored and revered as deified heroes.
Through dance, songs, music, and ritual acts, these heroes are invoked to manifest as masquerades personified by masked dancers who carry the etetse representing the deity on their heads. The etetse is a carved head mask which the umal’ude dancer wears. Every etetse represents a totem associated with a particular deity or umale. They are generally in the form of fishes, crocodiles, and other aquatic creatures. Some of the more common masquerades represented are the olisha, asamaigon, oki, ipi, inama, itikoru, agbakara, ide and oludienyen.
Incidentally, or by design, these festivals hold during the short dry periods of the year. Unlike the awan’kere dancer splashing in rain and mud, the umal’ude dancer prefers more clement weather conditions. In Warri township, the festivals hold at Okere, Odion, Ekurede, Ugbori, and Ugbuwangue among other communities. It is not uncommon for fun seekers and tourists to enjoy the fun of a boat cruise on the Warri River to places like Ode Itsekiri (Big Warri), Orugbo, Usele, Ugborodo (Escravos), Omadino, etc. to experience even less modernized versions of the umal’ude dance festival.
The dance festival is led by an orchestra of drummers manning a battery of leather drums (ogume) and others beating metal gongs (agogo). The umal’ude orchestra is the primary means of communication with the masquerades and other dancers; the drums indeed speak a language! While dancing, the masquerade’s torso is inclined slightly forward, the knees bent outwards in front of him, the weight of the body is on the toes as he stomps on the spot, forward or sideways, every movement in response to the okwa (master drum). Movement is a major metaphor employed in the theatrical performances in umal’ude. Just now it is a slow and steady rhythm and the next moment it is fast and frenetic, like the rise and splash of sea waves, carrying the spectators along in ecstasy.
Apart from the statuesque resplendence, and the richly ornate costumes and stylized stomping of umal’ude masquerades, there is always that festive grandeur, a lightheartedness and joy which envelopes performers and spectators alike, unifying them in a celebration of beauty and elegance. Thus, the umal’ude festivals find a natural place during such world festive periods as Christmas, Easter and, locally, the Nigerian independence anniversary.
The umal’ude dancers prepare both physically and metaphysically for their role before donning the mask which induces him to enter the personality of the invoked deified hero. Rituals are also performed beforehand to ward off evil spells suspected to have been cast by rival dancers or evil-minded members of the community.
Umal’ude performances are always theatre feasts as are the Japanese kabuki or Indian kathakali dance for example. Spectators are usually up on their toes and about, enraptured by the thrill of the performance. The high point of each festival is the display of the dancing skills of the masquerades. Each masquerade usually has its own dancing pattern, but generally their dance entails rapid and rhythmic stomping on the spot coupled with elegant moves to the sides in tune with the beats of the orchestra.
The umal’ude orchestra is to the umal’ude performer what the negate ensemble is to a kabuki performer. Made up of the okwa (master drum), oji or iy’ogume (mother drum), agba (long drum), complemented by smaller drums.
[The editors acknowledge the unique contribution of Mr. Eni Jologho Afolabi Umuko in putting together this piece about festivals in Warri. It was first published in Warri Business Pages in 1995. May the blessings of the Most High be upon his genial soul and guide him for ascent into eternal life.]
