Custom · Ancient to present · Tradition
No matching image yet, so this page uses a plain title card instead of a photo.
Every year, around corn harvest, masked figures under raffia mats walk into Ijebu-Ode from the villages, and women are warned off the roads. In 2017 even the NYSC told its corps members to stay away.
Agemo is a masquerade, but not the kind with a carved face and bright cloth. The Agemo shows itself in public as a mat of raffia that seems to move on its own. To understand why, you have to start with the story the Ijebu tell about where it came from.
In that story, Agemo was a son of Obatala, the god of purity. He married someone his father did not approve of, and Obatala took away his magic powers as punishment. Agemo did not know this at first. He went to perform one of his usual magical acts, one that required him to put his body back together afterwards, and this time he could not. Termites got at his insides and he was left deformed. Rather than hide away, he covered himself with a raffia mat and carried on, and people admired his courage and cleverness so much that his worship became an institution. So the mat is not decoration. It is the story itself, walking down the road.
The Agemo is believed to protect children and to guard the future of Ijebuland. The people who keep the festival believe it holds back epidemics, keeps evil away and brings enough rain. Historically it fell at the time Ijebu farmers were harvesting maize, and it still comes around between June and August.
It is strictly a male affair. Women may not take part, and above all they may not see the Agemo while it is travelling. As it moves, its followers shout ahead, telling everyone to make way for the orisa that can speak with the dead, and telling women not to look. The belief, as people in Ijebu-Ode told a Vanguard reporter in 2017, is that even a hidden, sideways glance by a woman means instant death. Nobody may wear a cap when an Alagemo, an Agemo priest, is near.
Long ago, Agemo priests were part of the thinking class of Ijebu society. Over time they have argued about how many titled Agemos there really are and how the rites should go. Many people count sixteen, though there are more.
The festival does not begin all at once. About a month before the main event, the chief Agemos, the Oloja Agemos, perform sacrifices called Ireku, which open the way to Imosan, the town that holds the Agemo shrine. Then comes Idojo, when the Ifa oracle is asked whether the festival will last seven days or nine that year. The Agemos go home to get ready.
Before they can enter Ijebu-Ode, the Oro society holds seven days of its own rites to drive off evil spirits. On the seventh day the Gbedu drum is beaten, and only one family, the Obaruwa family, is allowed to beat it. That sound tells the Agemos they may come. The Awujale, the paramount ruler of Ijebuland, pays for these sacrifices on behalf of his people. Today's Awujales are Muslims or Christians, but that has not stopped them doing it.
Then the Agemos set out from their towns, each one wearing things like feathers and ram's horns on his head, with followers behind. This journey is called Ilo, and the entry into Imosan through Ijebu-Ode is called Iworo. Along the way they stop to take gifts and pray for people. There is a rule about corn, too. Young men come out to meet the Agemos on the roads, and any farmer who has planted corn is expected to wait by his farm with kegs of palm wine. If he does, the Agemo prays for him. If he does not, the youths harvest his corn for him.
At Imosan the Awujale sends more gifts, and the Agemos spend three days at the shrine making offerings. On the third day they dance in the open, and this time men and women alike may watch.
For a week, all of this reshapes ordinary life. In July 2017 the Awujale, Oba Sikiru Adetona, put out a statement listing the routes the Agemos would take into Ijebu-Ode, from the Epe road to Odogbolu to Ijebu Imusin, and asked women to keep off them. Primary and secondary schools sent pupils home by noon. Staff at the Tai Solarin University of Education closed at midday, and many female students who lived off campus simply stayed away. Mosques and churches lost their afternoon services. The National Youth Service Corps in Ogun State told corps members not to travel to Ijebu-Ode that week, and told those already there to stay indoors. One local inspector warned party-lovers in particular to stay clear.
After Imosan, the Agemos come back to spend the rest of the festival in Ijebu-Ode, at a place called Agbala, where people come to them for prayers and help. The last day belongs to the leader of all the Agemos, Tami, the Onire of Odogbolu. Dressed in his regalia at Ojofa, near the Itoro town hall, he dances with the Awujale himself and blesses him and the people.
People say that dance is never finished without rain. While Tami dances with the king, the other Agemos are dancing at Agbala, so when the rain comes it soaks all of them together. That gave Ijebu a saying: the rain that beats the Onire will beat every Agemo. Women may watch the dancing at Agbala, but they must leave before the last Agemo takes his turn.
That evening the masquerades go to their lodgings in town. Before dawn they slip out and head home. Only after the festival is done in Ijebu-Ode does each Agemo hold his own celebration back in his own town, and the roads open again.
