Lots of masquerades and Muslims have engaged in a fight in an Ekiti State community, causing a lot of tension in the area.
Ikao masquerades
Ikun-Ekiti, a hitherto peaceful and obscure community, home to an
obsolete and moribund dairy farm, gained notoriety in recent times
because of the clash between the Muslim Community and the Traditional
‘Egungun’ Masquerade worshippers.
The last week of May to the first week of June every year is very
significant to the people of Ikun-Ekiti, in Moba Local Government Area
of Ekiti State, because it is the period set aside for the celebration
of Egungun festival and virtually everyone in the community participates
in the ceremony. However, that of this year was ill-fated because it
fell within the same period of this year’s Ramadan, a period Muslims
worldwide, including those at Ikun are observing it being one of the
pillars of Islam, which is fasting .
How it all began
On the ill fated day, which was on May 30, 2017, the Muslims, had
converged at the Ansar-ud-Deen Central Mosque in the community, the same
place where the shrine of Ajagunmole was located, just about 20 meters
away from each other, this was just as the procession of the
masquerades was also making for the shrine.
Absolute silence and solemness
It was gathered that the fasting Muslims had converged at the
central mosque in the community to break their f ast, while the
masquerades were heading to the shrine of Ajagunmole for propitiate the
Egungun deity.
A source in Ikun claimed that “in the community, the tradition
is that when the masqueraders, which appear once in three years, hold
their procession, any form of noise is not tolerated. It is done in
absolute silence and solemness, but the Muslims’ call to prayer was done
at about the same time and this, I believe, caused the clash.”
Vanguard gathered that it was the Muslims’ loud call for prayer
that irked the masqueraders, and prompted a violent reaction from them.
They descended on the Muslims with cudgels, stones and metals,
resulting in varying degrees of injuries among the Muslims, just as the
mosque was vandalised. Windscreens of two vehicles parked at the mosque
were also smashed just as the panes of the mosque’s windows. The Imam of
the mosque, Alhaji Abdul-Rasak Abubakar-Bello, received a head injury
and was treated at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital in Ado
Ekiti (EKSUTH), while five other worshippers were also injured.
Abubakar-Bello said they were held hostage at the mosque for hours
by the masquerades, who he said threatened to kill them, saying “there
was no way we could escape because they laid siege outside the mosque
after initially attacking us inside the mosque with iron and wooden
rods. When we succeded in locking ourselves inside the mosque, they
started throwing stones at us.” The Muslim community alleged that the
Monarch of the Community, Oba Olatunde Olusola orchestrated and
physically supervised the attack. They also alleged that the police
ignored their distress calls.
Monarch’s reaction
The Onikun of Ikun-Ekiti, Oba Olatunde Olusola, who denied
complicity in the allegation level against him, said he was the father
of all and the custodian of all religions in the community. Oba Olusola
said that it was not true that he orchestrated the attack, pointing out
that “I have been fair to all faiths and the ugly incident happened in the full glare of a large crowd of people in the town.”
He said he had written a letter to the Muslim community in Ikun,
dated May 26, 2017 entitled “Appeal for Cooperation,” saying he had done
that to avoid any kind of trouble as this had always been the situation
even before he became the traditional ruler. In the letter signed by
his secretary, Akinwumi Jimoh, Oba Olusola had asked the Muslim
community to grant the traditional worshippers Tuesday, May 30, 2017 for
the grand finale of their triennial masquerade celebration.
Part of the letter read: “This is to inform the congregation
that this year’s ongoing Egungun festival will come to an end on
Tuesday, 30th May, 2017. And as part of our culture, women are to be
kept indoors in the evening of the final celebration rites on the said
day. ”You have all the year round, please grant the Egungun celebrants
this one day in three years.”
Oba Olatunde said “there has always been a crisis between them
because the shrine is very close to the mosque; that is why we took the
step of informing the various bodies before hand, to avoid trouble.
Because they have to go to their shrine, there’s always trouble that is
why I wrote a letter to them to ask them to do their thing and it takes
less than one hour.”
He said the Muslim community had met with the traditional council
and they had agreed that there would not be noise during the procession,
pointing out that “I gave them another option of using the other
mosques in the town instead of the one close to the shrine, all in a bid
to avert trouble.”
According to him, “in the full glare of everybody, when the
Egungun procession was coming at about 6:35 or 6:40, the call for
prayers began to ring out and it was a surprise to everybody. They even
threw a missile from upstairs which smashed one of the vehicles parked
at the mosque.”
Via Vanguard
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