5 Imo Clans Where Strangers Can’t Walk Alone This Season

By Cami Ezenwa

Do you know that there are 5 Imo clans where strangers can’t walk alone this season? Strangers in the sense of non-natives visiting the clan for one reason or another, but also natives who have not performed certain age grade rites.

These clans – Isokpo, Umuabagwo, Okpuala, Ogbuke and Uzele make up the Ogbujioma autonomous community of Ogbaku, a town located southwest of Owerri, the Imo State capital.

It is time for the culturally definitive Owu festival in the town, held yearly to mark Ogbaku’s epic agricultural season, which comes with a lot of observances and merriments.

A week to the festival, the villages would have taken an enterprising colour. Paths are cleared and roads levelled. When mud houses were common, they would all have received new coatings of native paints, these artistically finished to give the most exotic aesthetics.

Households begin the preparation early enough, stocking needed foodstuffs, and extending invitations to friends, family and associates. Males that have come of age are prepared for the initiation rites that would guarantee them free passage before the Okoroshi.

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The head of the households would make special provisions for shopping, and maidens would be doubly busy, helping their mothers to prepare for expected visitors.

Sons and daughters outside the community would return home to relish the endearing melody of the Owu dance, be part of the troops in desperate flight from the whips-wielding Okoroshi masquerades, all these amidst reunion meetings and feastings that sometimes witness marriage proposals.

A fanfare of a different class, the Owu festival is a beauty to behold, from the hosting of guests to exotic native dishes through to the dance aspects to the sighting of the Okoroshi masquerade. It creates a rare spectacle dancing to its special tunes, and would soon begin a chase of non-initiates, once they get carried away relishing the rare spectacle.

So, throughout the months of June and July, there would be an unusual turnout of visitors to these clans.

Major delicacies include mushroom pastes for cola and Ugba, alongside rich soups with pounded yam and assorted drinks to go with.

And strangers can’t walk alone in the five clans once the festival had set on, except they had performed the rights. They are, in the sight of the masquerade, babies and women, and these two have to be escorted past wherever the masquerade is holding court.

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The festival itself is a cultural renaissance of sorts, helping the people to recall the epic periods of their past and applying the lessons there then, to improve living in the current.

With the masquerade a rallying symbol and judge of misdemeanors, quarrels are automatically outlawed, once the festival sets on and the Okoroshi has made its appearance.

Believed to be the spirits of near kinsmen long dead but who had come to help resolve outstanding disputes and rekindle all other values the festival stand for, the masquerade is held in aware and respect, with a lot of don’ts: for example, no whistling or shouting of any kind, no loud arguments and disputing, no full covering of the head with head tie or wrapper, in short things similar in nature to its outlook or mannerism. These turn the clans into a place where strangers can’t walk alone. Simply because they may easily fall foul of these observances, which attract sanctions.

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In June and July in the clans, there are places where strangers can’t walk alone: they may not tell hamlets and household where the masquerade is sheltering, and bursting into them, may lead to debilitating shock. It takes the natives, especially the initiates to know.

There is also a prohibition of the villagers from harvesting farm crops until the festival is out, essentially influenced by the need to preserve the yam, the clan’s king crop from premature harvest and a ridiculing of the faming prowess of the clans.

In the days gone by, as attested to by several historical accounts on the Igbo generally, honour in men is decided by amongst others, the bans of yam they cultivate. So, you can’t catch a free-born of Ogbaku in general harvesting new yam, much less consuming same before the festival is out.

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Yes, there has been constant incursions of modernity, spearheaded by the advent of Christianity on the cultural observances of the Ogbaku people, and the Owu festival remains a major casualty. That it has not totally gone extinct like others, may just be because of its intrinsic values, despite the controversial aspects.

Do you have an opinion concerning this writeup or any other cultural observances you would like to share, please let’s hear from you? Thank you for your time.

-Editor