THERE’S never a child with a greater love for masquerades. I guess in my previous life I was actually a masquerade dancer, if not one itself. My Mom never stopped screaming; “Uwuma you can’t watch masquerades! It is satanic! No one in this house will watch masquerades!” I will sneak out and defy these warnings. That was very long ago and other interests have filled up those childhood spaces, but I still love watching masquerade dances.
Whenever I am home and there is a masquerade dance going on, not even the EPL will take me away. Armed with a recording device, I will go for the dance. I still have loads of videos, audios, and pictures of masquerades from all over Ekpeye land.
Ekpeye masquerades are usually symbolic representations of either a physical phenomenon, a remarkable animal or human trait or just an animal with spectacular habits. There’s Ocha, the promiscuous; Ebulu, the ram; Adunwo Osali, the beautiful daughter of the gazelle forever engrossed in her narcissistic beauty; Uwélé the Wind; Nwala the Farmer, etc. But the masquerade with the greatest fascination for childhood eyes was Ogbumadubè, a scary manifestation of murder and impunity and possibly the most dangerous of all Ekpeye civil masquerades.
Ogbumadubé is so dangerous it has a thick restraining chain tied around its waist. This chain is held by two attendants and occasionally pulled to restrain Ogbumadubè from harming people when the dancer is overtaken by the potency of its permeating essence. The mask itself was no joke. Two huge ears stick out from both sides of a big head crowned with feathers of different colours and type; a giant nose, a big mouth and two large, but blind eyes complete the visage.
Ogbumadubè dances wielding a machete on the right hand and sometimes a bottle of Fanta on the left. Among the Ekpeye, Fanta is the drink of the gods and plain white and red clothes, their sartorial choice. It is common to have trees in scared grooves or shrines wrapped in either red or white with a bottle of Fanta standing beside, but it is the very powerful deity that gets both colours at the same time. Ogbumadubè wears both.
The moment the drums call it to dance, folks flee and the usually crowded playground made forever smaller by surging, excited dancers, suddenly clear the way a floor filled with roaches clears at the flip of a light switch.
Suddenly the masquerade appears like a gale, machete raised high up as if ready to strike, its attendants running behind and tugging yet wary of their own safety. Another supremely fascinating aspect about Ogbumadubè is the drumming, the sheer creativity that goes into it. Why does an ugly and murderous masquerade have so much creativity invested in its dance? Appeasement?
To distract it from actually living up to its name -Ogbumadu Bè, meaning; The One Who Kills and Lives, or The One Who Commits Murder and Gets Away With It, or simply, Kill-And-Go? Unjustifiable murder among my people is only answered by death. You kill, you die. No debating that. A fellow referred to as Ogbumadubè is one with serious suspicions of having committed murder, usually through mysticism or magic and got away with it, for lack of proof.
Such a tag comes with great opprobrium and no such persons are called such names to their face -except when heated words are exchanged during quarrels. Even then, when tempers cool, the name caller might have to explain before some gathering why he or she was bold enough to lay such accusation. It never ends well.
But here is Ogbumadubè, bold and dangerous, yet the owner of the playground, and commander of all that its huge, blind eyes surveys, prancing about, a huge machete to his right, a bottle of Fanta in his left chasing folks who fly off screaming for their lives.
The drummers will beat harder as it dances, seeking appeasement in frenzied singing and vigorous drumming. Ogbumadubè must be appeased least he kills some more. Unlike with other masquerades, beats to its steps are different; vigorous and beautiful, the drummers labouring away in plain servitude to appease a manifestation that instead of being hounding off the playground with boos and taunting beats, is allowed a dignifying attire, a bottle of Fanta and a machete in what should be a joyous celebration of life and culture.
Ogbumadubè reminds me of the killer Fulani herdsmen roaming the grasslands of the Middle Belt as free roving Kill-And-Gos leaving behind a trail of blood and wails. Like Ogbumadubé, these men, today given all manner of tags just to excuse them: Unknown Gunmen, Gaddafi’s Men, Leftovers from Boko Haram, etc boldly carry AK 47s threatening anyone on their path with death. “Give us lands to graze our cows or die!” Never identified, never arrested. In short, instead of serving them their deserved justice, like Ogbumadubè they are fettered with talks about cow colony, cattle routes, foreign grass, foreign semen, just name it.
Just like Ogbumadubè gets folks who sing it on and taunt it to further violence, the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, MACBAN, the umbrella body of cattle breeders in Nigeria sing excuses from local TV stations and newspapers to the BBC Hausa Service. It seems the government of Mohammadu Buhari, himself a Fulani, also beats the drums as these murderers dance atop the Plateau doing murder in droves, else how does one excuse the free reign of murders with no one prosecuted and made to pay? Why is the government always talking about political sponsorship of this violence as even if that were true, such sponsors are untouchables?
Just as Ogbumadube can injure anyone during a dance and such victims blamed for either obstructing its path or not fleeing on time, so it is with the Fulani cow herdsmen.
We have been so tortured by videos of slain humans making the rounds on social media that some of us have been so shaken as to be numb. What does the government expect from citizens before it will act?
In a tweet, Senator Shehu Sani suggested for all victims of these murders to be buried in special plots close to Aso Rock and the National Assembly Complex so at least those vested with the authority to act, will have the ghosts right at their doorsteps but aren’t they seeing the gory videos and pictures in the news?
A country does not run like this. What happens after Mohammadu Buhari leaves and another person from another ethnoreligious background takes over? Reverse killings?
When a masquerade becomes so powerful as to challenge human safety, it is shown the wood it was carved from. Except these killings have become state policy, the current masquerade is long overdue to be shown the right trees.
