No abstract

This study examines how the lives of three women, Lọlọ Ọyịodo Eze Elugwu, Lọlọ Ọyịma Ezema, and Lọlọ Ọyima Ayọgụ from Nsukka Igbo, southeast Nigeria, challenge widespread assumptions on women’s involvement in Igbo masking traditions. Although the uncommon achievements of these women do not completely dismantle existing beliefs and assumptions that view Igbo masquerade activities as the exclusive preserve of men, the study highlights how their roles as initiates of the Omabe masquerade cult, as well as their capacities to commission, own and animate masks, problematize notions of gender, power and spaces in Igbo masquerade institution. It equally opens up a critical space for interrogating women’s positions and roles in Igbo masquerade institution and establishes grounds for re-appraising its essence and gendering politics.

Among the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria, land is regarded as the source of human sustenance and the eternal sacred pot from where all plants and humans draw their powers of fertility and reproduction. The Igbo venerate land as an earth goddess. As a predominantly agrarian society, they not only deify land by instituting shrines in its honor, they also take titles that regulate ownership and use of land. This study examines the interface between title-taking, African indigenous religious rituals, and land use practices among the Nsukka Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria. In the study area, there is no taxonomical distinction between land and the earth goddess, and titles relating to land are laden with rituals whose meaning needs to be investigated. As a study in the axiology of the people, the study adopted participant observations and field investigations. It combines its findings with views in extant literature on Igbo worldview on land and land ownership and sifts the difference between the Nsukka Igbo and other Igbo people. The research is anchored on the theory of cultural peculiarity. This line of thought, it is hoped, would clarify some of the gray and contentious issues about rituals and inheritance in the study area. Such clarification would help reduce the tension between those who take such titles and those, for reasons of cultural barriers, do not have the right to do so.

The coming of the Europeans into Igbo land engendered change-producing forces. Their encounter with the indigenous people created liminality that disrupted vital facets of Igbo traditional life. Masquerades formed a significant aspect of the Igbo cultural heritage. It was hit the hardest by the colonial encounter but comparably changed the least. Participant observation method was used to collect information for this study. It identified a few of the change-producing forces and tried to understand the reasons for the resilience of the masquerade institution in the face of a battery of the forces of the agencies of modern social change ranged against it. Their effects have been enormous but because of the intense belief of the people in masquerades as the incarnate spirit of their ancestors, and the need for them to maintain and sustain the historical links and primordial relationships between them, the institution continues to thrive. Masquerading is a creative act that employs various arts, sciences, and technologies, and incorporates them to produce all-round theatre.