As we enter the second half of the year, most traditional festivals including Agemo, Gelede, Egungun, Oro, etc. take place in many parts of the South-Western Nigeria. The mode of celebrating such festivals, particularly Oro, causes friction that sometimes pitch its adherents against worshippers of other religion, particularly Islam and Christianity. In this report, IFEDAYO OGUNYEMI chronicles the controversies surrounding the conduct of Oro Festival and the resultant violence and sometimes killings linked to past celebrations.
When the former governor of Ogun State, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, laid the foundation for the proposed Ogun State Polytechnic, Ipokia on Friday, September 15, 2017, he sought the commitment of the people of the border town community towards reviewing the mode with which they celebrate the age-long Oro Festival in the community.
He asked traditional worshippers and leaders of Idiroko present at the event if they would stop declaring daytime curfew in the area. A similar call was made at the event by the Olu of Ilaro and the Paramount Ruler of Yewaland, Oba Kehinde Olugbenle.
“We have our tradition and culture but we must moderate it. We will do our ‘Oro festival’ but it is better done in the dead of the night because we want development,” Amosun said. “We don’t want a situation where students will resume and their movements will be restricted at the time that they should be in school. It is when we have development that our culture and tradition can be developed.”
What is Oro
The age-long Oro festival, celebrated annually among the Yoruba in South-West Nigeria, is anchored by members of Oro cult, which is an all-male fraternity. The festival serves numerous purposes – entertain the people, ward off evil in the community, and sometimes it is used to announce the passage of notable individuals such as kings. It also serves as one of the rites done during the coronation of traditional rulers in the area.
While the Oro ritual takes place in the sacred grove which is usually located in the forest, its deity parades the streets of the community and is accompanied by a high-pitched swishing or whirring sound while its followers who make the same sound serve as vigilantes to forestall instances of robbery and stealing during the festival.
Though the mode of celebrating Oro differs from community to community, what is largely a consensus for many generations is that women, children and visitors are neither allowed to see the Oro deity nor partake in its procession. The widely held belief is that something bad must happen to defaulters, including being severe punishment by Oro adherents and afterwards taken to the shrine where the deity supposedly kills them. One of such killings arguably led to the clash between a section of the Hausa community and Oro adherents in Sagamu, Ogun State, where many were reportedly killed.
Religion-motivated killings such as this have grown to be a menace in the country. The United States Department of State documented some of these attacks in its 2019 International Religious Freedom with focus on Nigeria. An analysis of the report by Code for Africa showed that a total of 54 violent incidents took place in Nigeria between December 2015 and April 2019 and no fewer than 1,609 people died from those violent incidents.
A report by Genocide Watch detailed that 2,543 Christians were killed by Jihadists between January and June 2022. A previous analysis by Sunday Tribune showed that over 21 deaths were recorded in 13 attacks on mosques and churches in Nigeria between July and December 2022.
On June 5, 2022, at least 40 worshippers were killed when attackers believed to be members of the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP) bombed and attacked Saint Francis Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State. Almost all faiths in the country have been victims of religious attacks. Some religious sects even accused the government of complicity in the spate of attacks and discrimination against their right to of worship and assemble freely in any part of the country.
Restricting people’s right to public movement and assembly, particularly women, children and visitors is an essential part of the Oro Festival celebrations. This, the adherents believe, helps to protect the sanctity of the deity as well as preserve its secrecy. To achieve this, a partial curfew is declared in respect of the worship hours. In some communities, trading and economic activities are totally paralysed during the designated hours and days.
Amosun’s request at Ipokia in 2017 was not fortuitous; it was made with events of the September 2012 “Oro attacks” fresh in mind. That year, scores of students sitting the West African Examination Council (WAEC) exams were prevented from writing the English Language and Mathematics exams because they fell on days when traditional worshippers were celebrating the Oro Festival.
Other residents of the community who defied the daytime curfew declared by the traditionalists were attacked and their properties destroyed in different communities that make up the Ipokia Local Government Area of the state.
Subsequently, there was a proclamation by the Olu of Ilaro, Oba Olugbenle, directing all traditional rulers in Yewaland to restrict the conduct of Oro Festival between 12 am and 4 am. The directive entitled “Suspension of Oro Festival during Daytime” was issued on September 27, 2012, in a memo with reference no: YTC.07/xx/132.
Aside the events of 2012, the subsequent commemoration of the festival during the daytime drew the ire of other residents of the community due to the attacks and wanton destruction left in its wake. And several outcries have since reached the doorsteps of the government.
The actions of the people who periodically declared the curfew and continually enforced it with violence, not only bothered the governor and his administration but also worried residents of the community who could not go about their respective daily engagements which include personal, religious and business activities.
People in the community believed that the enforcement of the curfew in Ipokia took a turn for the worse following the conversion of a prominent traditional worshipper in the area to the Christian faith. The convert, until his death, was at the vanguard of the movement calling for the abolition of the daytime curfew declared during the annual Oro Festival and the Oosa Oba Festival which is held every five to seven years.
The landmark judgment
In 2018, a section of the community led by Christian and Islamic leaders obtained an order of perpetual injunction from the Ogun State High Court sitting in Ipokia which restrained traditional worshippers from declaring daytime curfew or in any manner interfering with the fundamental rights of freedom of movement and held that the imposition of daytime curfew in the communities as “unlawful” and “unconstitutional.”
A copy of the judgment obtained by Sunday Tribune showed that the respondents and their agents, privies and cohorts lack the “statutory and constitutional power to declare and/or impose a daytime curfew on the applicants and residents of the 12 communities and villages “for the purpose of celebrating Oro Festival.”
The judgment, delivered by Justice Sikiru M. Owodunni, on Tuesday, January 20, 2018, further read in part: “It is hereby declared that Oro Festival or any ritual can only be celebrated in Ipokia, Idiroko, Ihunbo, Ifonyintedo, Ogosa, Koko, Ilashe, Ibatefin, Agosasa, Oniru, Mede and Ajegunle and villages thereunder between the hours of midnight and 4:00 a.m. subject to the government approval and undertaken to maintain peace.”
In defiance of the court order and several peace pacts signed by community stakeholders, traditional rulers and government representatives, the Oro adherents continued to declare a daytime curfew.
“They declared curfew up till last year,” said Alhaji Abdulfatai Alabi, a resident of the Idiroko community in Ipokia Local Government. “It was held for three Saturdays. They will still do it again this year during the annual Oro festival.”
Alabi was one of the victims of the deadly enforcement of the curfew in 2019. He and Afolabi Hamed popularly known as Alfa Eleran narrowly escaped death at the hands of their attackers who had waylaid them at Okoro-Ibatefin on Saturday, August 17, 2019.
A month before that attack, the adherents had attacked Umar bin Khattab Mosque located behind the General Hospital at Odan-Aje in Idiroko during the early morning prayer hours on Saturday, July 27, 2019. They dispersed the worshippers whose offence was disregarding the curfew they (traditionalists) had declared to celebrate Oosa Oba Festival that day.
“They covered their faces with balaclavas,” recalled Abdulwaliy AbdulAzeez, the Imam of the mosque popularly known as Omoakin. “They vandalized and broke the glass windows of the mosque. They broke every window on the bottom layer.”
AbdulAzeez said the adherents, who were sighted by a worshipper who lived near the mosque, had it in for him because of the sermon he had preached the night before.
“Perhaps they thought I was the one calling for prayers (that morning). And the person who called for prayers that day and I share similar physical attributes. They threw a very large stone at him. Fortunately, the stone hit the aluminium supporting the platform used for the call to prayers instead and broke its glass,” he said.
The attack on the mosque served as a wake-up for the Muslim community which involved the government and the police. A peace meeting was called between the parties and traditional rulers of the communities and Muslim delegation from across the state. But a resolution could not be reached.
AbdulAzeez said they were still at that impasse when another curfew was declared in the communities to the annual Oro Festival on Saturday, August 17th in celebration of the annual Oro Festival. Coincidentally, the mosque had a programme that same day which was held and concluded in the afternoon.
“Before we rounded off the programme, the Oro adherents had gone to the house of one of our worshippers, Abdulrazaq at Okoro-Ibatefin. They placed palm fronds at his door frame and broke the tap of his water tank.
“Some of our people went there in solidarity and they wanted to attack us but we accosted two of them and recovered charms and marijuana. We contacted the police who asked us to bring them to the station and we did,” Omo-Akin said.
‘…I would have died’
Upon their return, the worshippers left the mosque in groups based on police request but one of the groups ran into the Oro adherents at Okoro-Ibatefin and two of them – Alhaji Abdulfatai Alabi and Hamed Afolabi (Alfa Eleran) – were attacked by the Oro adherents who were enforcing the curfew in the community.
Recounting his ordeal, Alabi, who drove the second vehicle in the group, said they were identified by one of the attackers who alerted his colleagues while shouting “these are the Alfas”. Alabi was forced to bring the vehicle to a halt in the midst of the attackers who had now blocked off the road behind the first vehicle.
“As I alighted, one of them slapped and pushed me away from the vehicle. The same person entered the vehicle and drove it off while Alfa Eleran was inside. They brought out different cutlasses and charms which they later used on me. They used eyin oka (cobra’s teeth) on me, another aimed the cutlass for my head and I deflected it with my hand. I had a deep cut to show for it.
“One Baba Otun held me by the trousers. They shelled me with the five-inch blocks. They used the hood of my jalabiya to strangle me. If not for God, I would have died. Two of our people walking by tried to rescue me. As they were arguing, I ran away from among them so as not to die; one of the attackers who didn’t want me to die assisted me,” Alabi recalled.
Speaking in the same vein, Afolabi, popularly known as Alfa Eleran, said he had to jump out of the moving car when he was being driven off to the Oro shrine. The other adherents descended on him but he escaped into a nearby house whose owner chased him away so as not to attract the wrath of the attackers.
“I spent four days on admission at the hospital. He (Alabi) spent two weeks in the hospital. We couldn’t even go with them to court for the first time. For months, I was traumatised and I still feel the pain in my joints,” Afolabi said.
‘Daytime curfew for ritual is unfair’
Speaking on the recurring clashes in the community, a former Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Ipokia Local Government, John Jayeola, noted that they have no “interest in fighting the traditionalists” but the challenge is the imposition of the curfew.
“It is unfair for such to happen during the daytime,” he told Sunday Tribune over the phone. “It doesn’t conform with the developments of the 21st century.”
Jayeola, who was part of the 12 applicants who obtained the 2018 court judgment, said: “Police have tried to stop them but they are adamant. People in the community have been on this for over 30 years. There have been agreements spearheaded by traditional rulers which have been flouted even till now.”
One of such agreement was reached on Wednesday, August 21, 2019, at the Ipokia Local Government conference room between Oro, Muslims and Christian representatives.
Among other things, they agreed that the Oro festival should be held at midnight, there shall be no restriction to non-members during the festival and no curfew imposed on the whole town.
Parties also agreed that Muslims and Christians should conduct their worship sessions within their respective premises and without microphones and loudspeakers during the festival and refrain from calling traditional worshippers derogatory names.
A copy of the agreement obtained by Sunday Tribune showed that the then Head of Local Government Administration, Babatunde Odunlami; Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Idiroko, Opebiyi Sunday; DPO of Ipokia, Oluku Sunday and representatives of Department of State Service (DSS) and Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), B.E. Bassey and Garba Dare respectively and one Akanbi Gabriel served as witnesses at the meeting.
While publicly acknowledging the court judgment and agreements prescribing conducting Oro Festival in the daytime, leaders of the Oro traditional worshippers denied any involvement in any clash with Muslims or Christians in the state.
Christians and Muslims still disturb nighttime rituals with vigils —Chief
In a 2019 interview with the Punch, Chairman of Egbe Oloro Ojutaye in Ipokia Local Government, Chief Ojo Alade, however, said pushing the Oro festival to nighttime will be a gradual process because an overnight change will “bring pain to some people.”
Alade, who once practised Islam as a religion, said: “We met our forefathers doing it. We grew up learning that this was how our ancestors usually performed the Oro ritual. We are only following laid down rules. Our fathers did it in the daytime. But there is a new development in Ipokia and we must grow with it.
“…we are gradually bending the old rules, but we are also trying to be careful not to break the laid down rule on the way Oro should be worshipped. If we do anything contrary to this, our own lives will be in danger.”
Efforts to speak with Alade in order to clarify some of the allegations and happenings in his community proved abortive. During Sunday Tribune’s visit to Idiroko, repeated phone calls placed to his cellphone were not answered. Subsequent phone calls showed that his mobile phone was switched off.
In another interview, Alade said when they shifted their ritual rites to the night, Christians and Muslims still disturbed them with vigils. One of such documented incidents happened Oko-Oba in Lagos State on Monday, August 22, 2022, where 25-year-old tailor and Oro adherent, Agboola Akeem Adebisi, was stoned to death by members of the Truth and The Spirit Prophetic Church who were conducting a vigil at the church premises during the Oro Festival.
“We reported them to security officers but we discovered that they were trying to use their wealth to their advantage and to cheat us,” Alade further said while accusing Christians and Muslims of mounting “propaganda campaigns” against traditional religion in a bid to “eradicate” it.
“We have reached an agreement and we have taken steps on that agreement. We have called all our members in Ojutaye who always hold festivals during this period and everyone has agreed to it.
“But the afternoon of that day (when there was a religious fight in the community in 2020), there was no ritual or any Oro adherents outside. People feared that such had never happened before and couldn’t go out. Imams were going from house to house to force people out of their homes; that was when the fight started,” he asserted.
Aside from the 2020 event referenced by Alade, another Islamic scholar and youth leader, Bola Wasiu, was macheted on the head around the Temitope area of Ajegunle-Idiroko on Tuesday, August 5, 2021. He was said to have left the mosque around 4:00 p.m. for his farm to feed the fish when he was waylaid and attacked for allegedly flouting the curfew declared to celebrate the Oro festival.
Though frustrated by varied and lack of compliance with court judgments and agreements, Omoakin hopes that residents can go about their activities during the days when the festival holds.
“People are still afraid to come out during the curfews. That was why they were able to hold the festival during the daytime last year. Even if we ask people to come out, they won’t. But they have labelled those of us who defy them as recalcitrant,” Imam AbdulAzeez told Sunday Tribune.
Ripples across South-West states
Aside the Ogun State border town, other states have had their own share of clashes attributed to the differences arising over the mode of conducting Oro Festivals in their domains. Most recent of such clashes happened in Ile-Ife, the ancestral land of all Yoruba people, on Thursday, March 30, 2023, where Oro adherents invaded a mosque at Ìdí-Òmò and attacked worshippers.
Sunday Tribune reports that a 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. curfew had earlier been declared in some parts of Ile-Ife for the Oro festival. The Oro procession was said to be passing by the mosque for a second time when the adherents demanded that Muslim worshippers who were performing ablution in preparation for prayers should retire inside the mosque located at Akeeran. The request fell on deaf ears, leading to a free for all. In the ensuing melee, the Imam of the mosque, Alhaji Abdul Fatai Adesiyan, was hit with a rod on his face. Other worshippers sustained varying degrees of injuries.
In a related event, Oro festival came to the fore during the last gubernatorial election held in Lagos State when it was made public that a curfew will be held on March 18, 2023, which was already slated for the conduct of the poll. This generated controversies on social media as some viewed it as a guise of voter intimidation for a certain political party.
Following the attacks, crisis and controversies that arose in the wake of the Oro festival celebration held in the Iseyin area of Oyo State in 2019 where several people were injured, not less than three suits were instituted before the Oyo State High Court, but only one, suit no HSY/MISC/6/19, reached a definitive conclusion.
Delivering judgment on the terms of the agreement on June 30, 2022, Justice S.L Akintola ruled: “That neither the applicant nor the respondents shall disturb, harass, intimate, attack or do any act calculated to disturb, harass, intimidate or attack either in the exercise of their religious beliefs.”
Basking in the euphoria of the judgment, the League of Imams and Alfas whom Alfa Yusuf Muhyideen (the applicant) represented in court declared at a press conference that the court had proscribed the declaration of curfew to celebrate Oro Festival in Iseyin.
But in a swift reaction, Orisa Worshippers (Worldwide) United, Iseyin, described the announcement by the league as a misconception that negates the ruling of the court, adding that “the judgment prohibits both parties from infringing or curtailing the religious rights of each other.”
Explaining further on the imposition of curfew as contained in the judgment, the group and its counsels –Chief Matthew Adeoye, Mr Adewale Adegoke, Mr Taiwo Aworinde and Mr Olatunji Adeoti– said “only the applicant, and, by extension, the League of Imams and Alfas whom he represented in court, could claim protection under the judgement and not anybody else.”
Efforts to get recent updates on happenings in the town from the Chief Imam of Iseyinland, Abdulhakeem Babatunde Olajori, failed. When Sunday Tribune first reached out to him, he said he was at a meeting. When he was reached the following day, he said he was busy and would call back. He’s yet to do so at the time of this report.
Government contributing to widespread intimidation of traditional worshippers — Dasola
Speaking with Sunday Tribune on the perception and assessment of traditional religion in the country, Chairman of the Oyo State chapter of Traditional Worshippers Association of Nigeria, Adefabi Dasola, said the bastardisation of traditional religion started with the governments in Nigeria because of the preference they give to Islam and Christianity over others with the donations and construction of worship centres donated to them.
“Have you ever heard that the government built traditional worship centres?” Dasola queried while noting that “religion and faith should be personal. Countries that put religion first do not develop. The constitution is what should supersede everybody unlike what we have in Nigeria.”
On the pushback from the government, he said: “There is a lot of intimidation for those identifying with traditional religion. If our children go to school with a bracelet, officials will cut them off and tag them as cultists. Every religion has its own occultic features but only ours is what is tagged as occultic. Mind you, 80 per cent of these people tagged as cultists are traditionally Muslims and Christians.
“Government is the one promoting intimidation against traditional worship. Muslims have about three different holidays in the year, Christians have about four, traditionalists don’t have any except for Osun State where things are changing.”
Dasola urged that practices of all faiths should be carried out in love and honesty, adding that with mutual understanding, having an Oro procession for about an hour doesn’t really disturb anyone.
“During the conclusion of the Ramadan fast, a road between Wofun and Monatan was blocked for about five hours because of the Eid prayer. What is good for the goose should also be sauce for the gander. But they don’t realize they will inconvenience others.
“When it’s Ileya, Christmas or Masquerade celebration, everyone celebrates it without issues, but they want us to think that it is the Oro procession that disturbs us. It’s unfair. What about those who wake people up at dawn with megaphones on the streets and in the mosques?” he asked rhetorically.
Where a person’s right ends, that of another begins — Lawyer
A Lagos-based lawyer, Festus Ogun, while pointing out that the 1999 Constitution empowers every individual to manifest their religious beliefs without interference, he called for restraint while conducting worship sessions in private and in public.
He also noted that the constitution cannot be violated by a unilateral declaration of curfew by a few individuals in furtherance of their religious or cultural practices, adding that such declaration “will be a violation of the human rights of others taken just too far. Not even a local government Chairman or Governor can declare curfew when there is no total breakdown of law or serious public emergency.”
Ogun added: “Where a person’s right ends, that of another begins. Rights should be exercised in ways and manners that won’t infringe on the rights of others. When they restrict people’s movement and liberty, human dignity is violated. When you threaten other people’s lives because you are manifesting your belief, it is a threat to the right to life guaranteed under the Constitution.”
As it stands in the communities, peace treaties and legal instruments are yet to bring about the desired peace to guarantee freedom of worship for all within the ambit of religious freedom as the community dwellers who are worshippers of different religious sects continue to live in fear and limbo anytime the Oro festival is celebrated.
- This story was produced with the support of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), in partnership with Code for Africa.
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