ALAPANSANPA: An essay on Yoruba egungun (original) (raw)
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Today marks another milestone in the annual celebration of the Okota Festival – a festival to reunite the spirit of a people with their ancestors and showcase the cultural heritage of Arigidi Akoko. I salute His amiable Eminence Otunba Gani Adams (National Co-ordinator, Odua People’s Congress (OPC), who is the sponsor and promoter of Olokun Foundation that annually organize the two-day fiesta tagged ‘Okota Festival’ since 2008. Okota Festival has the aim of ‘Promoting one of African Deities for Positive Social Change and Development’. The festival annually features a beauty pageant contest with a grand prize of a motor car and serving as idol of Okota Festival in order to re-enact the beauty of African traditions and culture in fashion similar to what obtains at Osun-Osogbo Festival. The crowd files in procession to the riverside to make sacrifices to Okota River goddess before people rush into the river for spiritual impartation and cleansing. The Great Spirit behind Okota River is reputably revered as a problem solver because whatever problem is brought to the goddess is answered. OKOTA welcomes all and sundry except thieves and liars. Okota festival has been a source of love and unity for generations of Arigidi-Akoko descendants because the ‘highly benevolent river goddess’ who is a harbinger of goodwill and a major source of refuge to the people from the pre-colonial era till date. The deity - Okota is highly revered among the people and credited with potent supernatural powers. Narratives have attributed to the fact that Okota made barren women to bear fruits of the womb and the afflicted to receive healing after tasting the water its river. In studying the similarity of Okota with other Yoruba ancestral deities, a good point of reference can be drawn from the works of James C. Lewis entitled Olokun (an orisha in Yoruba religion associated with the sea). He noted that Olokun has male and female personifications, depending on where it is worshipped. Olokun is also personified in human characteristics with patience, endurance, sternness, observation, meditation, appreciation for history, future visions, and royalty personified. Its characteristics are found and displayed in the depths of the ocean. Its name means "owner" (Olo) of oceans" (Okun). Olokun also signifies unfathomable wisdom. That is, the instinct that there is something worth knowing, perhaps more than can ever be learned, especially the spiritual sciences that most people spend a lifetime pondering. It also governs material wealth, psychic abilities, dreaming, meditation, mental health and water-based healing. Olokun is one of many orisha known to help women that desire children. In female form among the Yoruba, Olokun is the wife of Olorun and, by him, the mother of Obatala and Odudua. Again, while these relationships are taken quite literally, they actually serve to tell occult members which orisha work well together in healing situations, as well as to provide historical references to relationships between communities that serve as centres or hosts to main shrines for each of these orisha. Olokun is worshipped in Benin, Togo and among the Edo and Yoruba in Nigeria. In African Diasporas religions, Olokun is sometimes considered the patron Orisa of the African Diaspora, the descendants of those who were carried away during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Olokun is still revered in modern Lagos, and Eyo Olokun masquerades are among the main attractions at the Eyo festival. Lewis concluded that Oya (Deity of the Winds) and Egungun (Collective Ancestral Spirits) herald the way for those who pass to ancestor ship by the critical role of Iku (death) and Aye (life) and the transition of human beings and spirits between these two existences. Nigeria as a nation lost much of its cultural heritage, history and institution that were founded on solid traditional settings where knowledge of the Okota would have spread due to the influence of western education, religion and culture. Efforts to trace back those lost cultural values and to give it a dignifying place has brought us here today to reconnect with ideas of ancient times that truly make us Africans, Black people, Yoruba race or adherents of traditional beliefs. This is the basis of this lecture piece: ‘‘THE MYTH AND POWERS OF TRADITIONAL MEDICINE - – A focal point for the celebration of Okota Annual Festival’’