The
Imo-Oka festival is a week-long festival of masquerades and dances held
in May at the beginning of the farming season in honour of a female
deity who it is hoped would make the land fertile and yield bountiful
crops. The festival starts with Awka people visiting the community of
Umuokpu with masquerades and it ends with a visit to the Imo-Oka stream
on the final day which is heralded by a heavy rain that falls in the
late afternoon.
There
are four major events performed during the festival, the ede-mmuo, ogwu
oghugha, egwu Opu-Eke and Egwu Imo-Oka. Egwu Opu Eke is a rich cultural
dance performed by female worshipers of Imo-Oka shrine which includes
priestesses and ordinary women alike decorated in colourful costume
dancing in the market square in honour of the deity controlling the
shrine.
The
Imo-Oka festival showcases a variety of masquerades (mmanwu) from
sinister ones which flog spectators to friendly ones which sing or
dance. The masquerades are believed to represent the spirits of Awka
ancestors coming from the land of the dead for the festival.
In 2001 Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy MBE,
a daughter of Awka, exhibited her oil on canvas paintings series of
Awka Igbo Masquerades, to great acclaim in the Cork Street Gallery in
London, various galleries in New York and Washington and at the Didi
Museum in Lagos.
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