$MASKS

The attached images capture scenes from a masquerade dance featuring the renowned Mgbedike masquerade, a cultural symbol in the Nri-Ọka region. In the first picture, a man is seen wearing a hat with ichi marks on his face, indicating his Igbo heritage.

Surprisingly, these photos were not taken in Igboland but in Okitipupa, a village in the Ondo area of eastern Yorubaland, during the 1940s. They were captured by British colonial officer Edward Harland Duckworth. This raises the question: who were these people, and what was the Mgbedike masquerade doing in Yorubaland during this period?

According to Ọka tradition, Igbo itinerant blacksmiths had ventured into Yorubaland at some point in the past. Professor O. N. Njoku suggests that this migration occurred between the 1890s and 1904. However, it was during the Colonial Period, beginning in the 1930s, that their presence became significant enough to be noted in Yoruba oral history.