Day Lagos stood still for Olokun Festival

[Im The Truth]

Day Lagos stood still for Olokun Festival
By SOLA BALOGUN and ASHAMU ADEGBOLA
Wednesday, November 14, 2007


• Miss Olokun

Perhaps the choice of Sultan Beach in Lagos as venue of this year’s Olokun Festival was auspicious as it rallied thousands of devotees to the seaside home of Olokun, the beautiful and skillful wife of Oduduwa. Olokun became a deity after taking her permanent abode under the sea, but as one of the many wives of the Yoruba progenitor (Oduduwa), her place in history became significant, such that it made the Olokun Festival Foundation institute a yearly ritual in her honour.

But the festival, which entered its fifth edition this year, recorded yet a rare success owing to the huge number of guests and participants, majority of whom were drawn from the Otunba Gani Adams-led Oodua People’s Congress (OPC). The latter, it would be recalled, is the parent body that gave birth to Olokun Festival Foundation with a mission to celebrate Olokun (otherwise known as Iserin-Ade) as a symbol of entreprise, kindness, honesty, unity and peace.

This year’s festival, which had the theme, African Cultural Revival, kicked off at the Marina seaside in Badagry on October 23. It formally opened with a boat regatta as well as a visit and feast in the palace of the Akran of Badagry. Earlier on Sunday, October 21, the foundation hosted guests to the yearly Miss Olokun Beauty pageant, and had pretty Ijeoma Ikechukwu, who represented Ogun State, emerging as Miss Olokun 2007. She was awarded a Nissan Primera 2.0 car as well as a return ticket to London. The pageant also had Ifeoma Umeh, a representative of Lagos State and Modupe Akinbulejo, representing Bayelsa State, as first and second runners-up respectively. Both ladies also won N150,000 and N100,000 respectively for their efforts.

By 4pm on Tuesday, thousands of OPC members from across Yoruba states and beyond, arrived Sultan Beach for the festival. They trooped in large numbers in loaded buses, lorries and cars, all dressed in white to symbolise the purity and innocence of Olokun.

The following day saw the sleepy beach coming alive with hundreds of food vendors, traders and hawkers of delicacies making quick fortunes. Devotees too had a swell time. Some of them brandished their objects of worship while others took to swimming and playing. In fact, all the chalets at the beach were booked to capacity just as a handful of guests and participants hired hotels around Badagry and its environs.

Later in the day, devotees kept vigil at the beach, performing or making sacrifices to ancestors. All these went on till the following morning when people trooped to the sea to scoop water for healing and propitiation. Others also took time off to fortify themselves while others carried out divinations with spritualists and healers.

The grand finale was held at the Atlantic Bank premises in the afternoon, with devotees, traditional rulers, culture workers and enthusiasts in attendance. Also, prayers were observed in the three major religious versions of Christianity, Islam and African tradition. After this, Adams, who was resplendent in a white Agbada adorned with Abetiaja cap, reiterated how Africans have abandoned their culture for western values. He berated Nigerians for bowing to other cultures imposed on them by colonialists, noting that the idea of reviving African culture through Olokun Festival is not a return to fetish practices but a cultural renaissance for Africans to value and embrace their original ways of life.

Said Adams: "Early history has shown us that our ancestors also worshipped God but revered their deities. One of these is Olokun and when our people prayed in the name of Olokun or any Orisa, they did so for success with the assurance that they would get results."
While asking rhetorically, "Should we then abandon these gods worshipped by our ancestors?" Adams also reminded the large gathering of how many cultures across the globe protect and preserve their heritage, including United States, Britain, Brazil, China and India.

Also addressing the crowd was Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, representative of the Lagos State governor and commissioner for Intergovern-mental Relations, who commended Adams and the Olokun Festival Foundation for the vision of cultural revival. Afikuyomi, who equally lamented erosion of indigenous cultural values, also called on Nigerians to embrace their language and culture. He promised on behalf of the governor that the Sultan Beach venue would be made the permanent site for the yearly festival.

On a rather academic note, Professor Kolawole Owolabi also regretted how Yoruba culture and language are fast eroding due to overdependence of people on foreign culture. The professor added, however, that Yoruba language is widely spoken outside Nigeria and that a few scholars have translated the Nigerian Constitution into Yoruba while an engineer/professor has also translated some aspects of his discipline into Yoruba for posterity.

For Ambassador Segun Olusola, renowned Culture partriarch, Yorubas and indeed, OPC members, should be more accommodating to strangers. He recalled that in the past, Yoruba elders were so accommodating that they gave land out to strangers to build houses and eventually became sons and daughters in the land. Olusola urged OPC members to emulate this hospitality culture even while he commended Adams for reminding the Yoruba race about their lost tradition and culture.

To spice up the festival, there were scintillating performances which reenacted the worship of several Yoruba ancestors and deities such as Ogun, Sango, among others. There were also masquerade displays proudly exhibited by Egungun ensembles from Oyo, Kwara, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos states.