‘Ojuju calabar’, that infantile rhyme we sang with so much zest and relish when we were yah-high was the song that popped into my head when a scary human entity dressed in funny regalia approached me with a whip as I was walking by the busy road of Mushin. He claims to be a masquerade, and felt it was his legitimate and spiritual right to demand my share in the gods token.
What a malady! I thought. I refused to give him any money; disappointedly, he left me and went to stop another innocent passerby who gave him the sum he requested for because of the fear of being whipped.
These so called masquerades who take on the toga of ‘god’s tax collectors’, move around, constituting cultural and environmental nuisance, scare people and forcefully collect money from them.
In an interview with a masquerade called “Eegun Shokoti Alagbede” he said “owo ti a n gba yii fun etutu ilu ni, ati fun irunmole”, meaning – the money we collect from people is to make sacrifices to cleanse the land, and to appease the gods.
In another interview with a passerby, who is a student of the University of Lagos, he expressed himself with a rather caustic and obnoxious opinion about masquerades and their macabre dances. According to him, ‘I hate those monsters called masquerades because they forcefully collect money from people and if one refuses to give them money they can almost use their whip on him or her’.
These ‘marauders’ have become a nuisance in Mushin market. They have added ‘nuisance value’ to our collective patrimony.
But as the popular saying goes ‘one man’s food is another man’s poison’, so is the case of Fabiyi another passerby who believes in our ethereal obligation to the gods; that is, it is important to give the god’s their tokens regularly in order to avoid unforeseen disasters and pestilences.
The masquerades have consistently claimed that the money collected is meant for the cleansing of the land – for peace and tranquility. I am not one that would readily go against our culture and traditions that have been in existence before my great grandparents, however, any culture that become too toxic and is clearly a threat to freedom and expression is anti-people and anti-existence: It should be put on leash.
I believe the government should take deliberate steps to curb the nefarious and disgraceful acts of these marauders who plunder of hard-earned money in the name of the gods.
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