*Pledges to strengthen historical ties with Ughievwen
By Emmanuel Ogheneochuko Arodovwe
The event could not have been more appropriate and the guests in attendance more befitting. It was the annual festival of the Ughievwen people memorializing the historic voyage of their migrating forebears from Ogoibiri, in present Bayelsa State, about a millennia ago. The festival, which has been marked in the last week of August of every year since that famous expedition of heroes long gone, has helped preserve the historicity of that event and its cultural relevance.
On Tuesday, 27th August 2024, Ughievwen sons and daughters gathered again in remembrance of an event that changed their destinies forever.
But unlike in times past, this year’s event had a royal aspect to it. The Pere of Tarakiri Kingdom HRM, Dr Seiyifa Koroye, was a guest to the Okobaro of Ughievwen HRM, Dr Matthew Ediri Egbi JP, who, accompanied by senior chiefs of their respective domains, provided an unusual spark and lift to the ceremony. Highlights of the event include arts of songs and dances of Egbada (war dance), Udje, Maidens dance, ikelike, bridal parade, laughter and exchange of gifts and goodwill.
But what is the significance of the Festival and why should it continue to be marked?
The significance of the Ogbaurhie Festival is at once historical, religious, cultural and economic.
Its historical significance answers the question, “From whence came the Ughievwen people”?
The Ughievwen people are among the contingents of Urhobo migrants, who, in search of greener pastures, in response to growing population and limitation of geographical space, left Edoid territories during the period of the reign of the Ogiso dynastic rule. This was about two thousand years ago.
As Peter Ekeh puts it: “Primordial themes in Urhobo folklore and the existence of large similarities between Benin and Urhobo languages amply support claims of Urhobo folk history that the progenitors of the Urhobo people migrated, in prehistoric times, from Edoid lands now occupied by Benins”.
These progenitors journeyed at different times and in different companies – the companies bonding closely enough to develop dialects slightly different from others but staying within the mainstream enough to keep themselves intelligible to one another.
*Their destination?* They meandered their way to the River Niger, having the native intelligence to realise that it was the safest and easiest means to transport themselves.
Peter Ekeh again comes to our aid here:
“The progenitors of the Urhobo people arrived in areas that are now named as Isoko and Southern Urhobo. Their route of arrival was most probably through the River Niger and its tributaries of Ase River and Patani River and associated creeks. It was from these lands in the South that Central and Northern Urhobo were gradually settled across the centuries”.
For the Ughievwen people, in particular, there was probably a longer stay of a few hundred years around the confluence location at Lokoja, where there were cross-cultural exchanges with the Igala. This is supported by evidence of language similarity and songs.
The expedition then drifted further southeast to Ogoibiri, where there was again a few hundred years of stay with the neighbouring Ijaw people of the present Tarakiri Kingdom. It was from this location that the Ughievwen contingent travelled, first to Umolo in Olomu, and thereafter to Otughievwen. The festival derives its significance history-wise in celebrating this last phase of the journey.
What about the religious significance?
Men everywhere, and through all ages, have always been amazed at the wonders of the world, and existential phenomena of birth, death, the cosmos and daily living experience. This has given rise to the belief in a supernatural being beyond the capacity of the human senses to fathom, which coordinates, or indeed, gives rise and impetus to the world. (Recall the famous poem “Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are…). Religion thrives on wonder, belief and faith in the unseen, and has been so with all peoples acros I’ms the globe.
The Ughievwen people of ancient times, amazed by the fortunes of their trip to the very fertile land they secured, whether rightly or wrongly, attributed the success of that journey through the turbulent waters with high tides to a deity they called “ogba-Archie” (strong one of the waters).
In appreciation, which is normal and understandable, they deified and worshipped it, in the belief that having proved trustworthy and dependable through troubled times in the past, it is also capable of helping them in the present and future. It was simply a scientific conclusion based on hard evidence from previous lived experiments. Whether they were wrong in their assumption, or whether there are now better gods to trust one’s spirituality is a different kettle of fish. The point is that the forebears exploited the best alternative they had available to them at the time.
What is the cultural significance?
Culture is the way “we” do things, as different from the way “they” do things. In specifics, it has to do with the way we talk (i.e. the language we speak), the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the God we worship and the way we worship it, the way we bring up our young and what we teach them, the songs we sing and the way we dance to them, etc.
These elements of culture are ideally supposed to be expressive in our daily actions, and implicit in our thoughtless, spontaneous default behaviours. But festivals provide rare opportunities for a constellation of these cultural manifestations in a regimented display, to remind ourselves of who we are, and to take pride in our point of difference from others. In doing so, we display to the world our own contribution to the varieties that make the world beautiful.
When we show our unique dance steps, for example, and rehearse our beautiful songs, that perhaps only us understand, but which the other appreciates and enjoys, we underscore our difference from the other, but unwittingly also inspire the other to seek what makes him unique and different. Ultimately, in the market place of such individual cultural differences, we create the beauty that gives truth to the cliché that “variety is the spice of life”.
At festivals, the best artistic displays and products that have benefitted from repeated rehearsals are given free reign, which give rise to commodity exchanges that promote economic transactions and well being. Records are sold, prizes are awarded to best performers, exhibitions are held and tourists, seeking pleasure and satisfaction travel from far and near to consume artistic products. There is no limit to the positives that derive from a well planned and managed festival.
But, there is a but!
Cultural activists, especially in Africa, who have insisted on preserving their festivals and cultural distinctions, have been heavily persecuted, almost to the point of frustration and capitulation. This persecution has come especially from practicing Christians who consider it “ungodly”, primitive, brutish, and idolatrous to continue to celebrate such festivals.
Their argument seem to be that even if there are historical and economic value chains to refine from the marking of these festivals, it does not match the spiritual contamination that unavoidably follows from hanging around the environment in which these fetish celebrations are held. Their position therefore is that since there is no connection between light and darkness, then Christians and idol worshippers must maintain an appreciable distance from one another, and the festivities they mark.
Specifically, they argue, that the Christians ought to be satisfied with the Christmas and Easter Festivals, while the idol worshippers can make do with the Ogbaurhie, in the case with Ughievwen. Choosing to operate on both sides of the divide is a betrayal of faith, so the argument goes.
But the culture activists have also provided their own response, which has been equally interesting. Their point is that the Christians who argue in that way do not have adequate knowledge about the background of the festivals they celebrate.
For them, the December 25 celebration of Christmas has its origin in the festival of the sungod (Sol Invictus) in Ancient Rome, and till date is still covertly marked for that purpose by the aborigines. Early Christians, with an eye for innovation, only took advantage of the popularity of that date which the festival accorded it, to smuggle in the birth day of Jesus Christ as the reason for the festival. By doing so, they sustained the cultural and economic relevance of the event, even if it’s religious connotation had been twisted.
The culture activists argue further, that the Easter Festival held yearly in the month of April was originally the celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex. Again, innovative thinking won the day when some creative thinkers twisted the narrative and smuggled in the resurrection of Christ as a way of retaining the relevance of the event and its associated cultural and economic benefits.
They argue therefore that the Christians demonizing the Ogbaurhie Festival and drawing unbridgeable mark of distinctions are dead-wrong in throwing away the baby with the bathwater, and displaying a poverty or lack of inventiveness and creativity. They argue that the evangelists can engage the people, innovate the festival, teach the people the beauty in that history, celebrate the labour and ingenuity of those heroes past, which labour created the communities from whence they (the evangelists) were born and had their being, and celebrate the freedom that that event made possible, even if the credit is then given to Jesus Christ instead of the Ogbaurhie diety.
But by distancing themselves from the people and gaslighting them in referring to their honest and patriotic activities as barbaric, they miss a golden opportunity to win and evangelise their people; they create middle wall of partitions that sever them from their kinsmen with whom they share the same natal origins.
The argument therefore is that if only the African evangelist can be more creative and innovative, he can easily exploit the window of the festival to warm himself into the hearts of his kinsmen, and without breaking a sweat, win them over to the message of the Christian Gospel.
But there is even a further argument raised by the culture comrades. They cite the instance of the Olympics just concluded in Paris a few days back. They hold, factually, that the Olympics has its origin in honour of the Greek deity Zeus, who lived on Mount Olympus. The Games were held in the sacred city of Olympia to honour Zeus. The festival took place every four years, a length of time known as Olympiad, which festival involved sporting activities in the ancient world, that attracted tourists from across the world.
When Greek civilization was succeeded by the Romans and later, other European powers and the United States, creative innovators took advantage of that Olympian festival of sports and made it a global exhibition of best sporting displays.
Countries now fall over themselves to host the event with outstanding returns on investment. At the 2024 Olympics, the United States awarded each gold medalist 38,000 dollars, silver medalist 23,000 dollars, and bronze medalist 15,000 dollars. Hong Kong even did so much better! A gold medalist from Hong Kong earned 768000 dollars, a silver medalist earned 384000 dollars and a bronze medalist 192000 dollars.
Such are the possibilities that innovative and creative thinking engenders. It is amazing what some of our youths, demonized, as lazy and good-for-nothing, and pushed by frustration into drugs and prostitution can make out of their lives through sports and artistic displays, if properly nurtured, trained and encouraged to develop along the line of their natural giftings.
The Ogbaurhie Festival may have its roots in idolatory, in honour of a diety, which, for all intents and purposes, was not afterall undeserved. But the point is that it does not have to be left to be so for all time and ages. It would only need some species of men, blessed with uncommon creative thinking powers, to innovate that event, pick it up from the dungeon to the global arena, to mine and market artistic cultural and sporting talents to the world.
From this perspective, the backwardness of African peoples may not ultimately derive from the idolatous background of our lowly origins, or the incidence of poor governance in our post-colonial societies, but in the failure of ordinary citizens, having the privilege of western education and exposure, to innovate the ingenious creations of our forefathers into enterprises of global reckoning that will keep the world akimbo in awe and applause of our distinctiveness.
The 2024 version of the Ogbaurhie Festival of peace and friendship has come and gone but it is likely to be talked about for some time to come. For one thing, it relived ancient memories of Ughievwen and Ijaw cohabitation in Ogoibiri, exemplified by the sitting beside each other of HRM Dr. Seiyifa Koroye, The Pere of Tarakiri Kingdom, and HRM Dr. Matthew Ediri Egbi JP, Owahwa II, The Okobaro of Ughievwen Kingdom.
Emmanuel Ogheneochuko Arodovwe lives in Delta State, Nigeria, and can be contacted onemmaochuko@gmail.com) (08103108064)
