Contest| Celebrating Grand Festivals:

Live image from the event ground
THE ICONIC FESTIVAL IN MY COMMUNITY

INTRODUCTION

Festival is one of the events used to preserve our cultural heritage. Organizing festivals yearly, is a way to upholding the cultural heritage of a people or community.

In my country Nigeria, there are over 200,000,000 million people. Within these 200,000,000 million people exists about 371 tribes, that spreads among about 250 ethnic groups. Among the ethnic groups, the well known ethnic groups are:

• The Igbo
• The Hausa
• The Yoruba
  These show that there is the existence of huge cultural heritage that is in existence in my country. It gives us cultural advantage and puts my country in the map of those that could be regarded as ‘a huge cultural site.'

CELEBRATING THE MASQURADE DANCE CULTURAL FESTIVAL IN MY CITY

Live image from the event ground

In the Igbo part of Nigeria where I come from, there are quite a number festivals that runs from January to December of every year. One the most outstanding festivals celebrated every year in my city is the masqurade dance festival. Different communities in the city may choose a date beginning from the 1st december to 10th January of the new year.

Our community just celebrated theirs on the 8th Of January 2025. This cultural festival is to project the rich culture of the Igbos and my country Nigeria to the world. By so doing, we protect our cultural heritage and creativity. This event brings people from different culture and religious backgrounds together for the purpose of unification and peace.

Live image from the event ground

This event is an avenue for us to celebrate our traditions in history as well as bringing it to the conciousness of the younger generation to uphold them.

During the event, the masqurades walks to various vilages making up the community in the city. He moves around with cultural music players and dancers comprising male and female. Libations are poured and eggs broken in order to invite their deiities.

The tradional chieftaincy tittle holders like the kings, chieves or village heads, clan heads follows the masquarade as he moves to the neighbouring villages and communities.
The joirney of the masqurade may not end just in one day. He continues the nourney untill he visits all the villages in the community.

Finally on the last day of the event, the guests would be entertained as the women will gather at the community square to showcase their traditional dancing skills. Delicious traditional meals will be prepared and the guests would eat to their satisfaction.

There would also be fundraising to enable the community embark on community development projects such as schools, markets, water boreholes etc.

So the masqurade dance is the most iconic cultural festival in my city. This is especially celebrated on every december of the year.

I invite the following to participate in the contest:
@ifatniza
@caringmanasseh
@awesononso