Ojúdé Ọba: The Beauty, the Beast, and the Broken Bones of Our Pageantry

Editor's note: In this piece, Folorunso Fatai Adisa examines the beloved Ojúdé Ọba festival with both affection and unease. Drawing from personal experience and cultural heritage, he confronts the disorder behind the spectacle, questioning the cost of pageantry when safety and planning are neglected.

There’s something about Ojúdé Ọba that tugs at the soul like an ancestral drumbeat. A riot of colours, a communion of culture, a festival where the past pirouettes in the present, horses adorned like warriors of legend, age-grade groups parading in garments stitched from prestige and poetry. Yes, I love the event. I love the people. I love the story. But even love must interrogate its object. And today, my love demands answers.

Let us begin with what ought to be obvious but has become dangerously ignored: crowd control. Or rather, the sacred art of making chaos look like celebration. At Ojúdé Ọba, it isn’t just the crowd that gathers, it is anarchy in agbádás. A sea of humans moving without direction, choked by canopies like mushrooms on tar, roads blocked by carnival bands and processions with no sense of space or safety. Imagine spending four hours trying to leave Ìjẹ̀bú-Òde, not because of a security lockdown or a presidential visit, but because a group of enthusiastic revellers decided that federal roads should bow to their dancing feet and rented horses. What Westerners would call a safety hazard, we call vibes and Insha’Allah.

I drove. I was stuck. I pleaded. I waited. And when I finally moved, I almost ran over some boys too eager to impress their juju or their egos. They threw themselves near my tyres like gods immune to Goodyear and Michelin.

But what stabbed me the most was the ambulance, or what they claimed was one. A tricycle (Keke Napep, to the uninitiated), dressed in red crosses, was being pushed through the crowd because it had no engine life left. Imagine this: a human life needing urgent care, trapped in a festival where a dead keke is the only lifeline, and even that keke is being manhandled like a sacrificial goat. What if it were you? What if it were your child? What if the celebration of culture becomes the funeral of reason?

Now, let us talk about priorities. We seem to know how to party, but not how to plan. We are bold in display, weak in design. Our culture is rich, yet our logistics are poor. We dress the festival like a queen, but we treat its foundation like a street beggar. Ojúdé Ọba is not just a local event anymore. It has drawn the gaze of the nation and even the world. But prestige without preparation is like a palace built on water, beautiful, until it sinks.

And now, I speak from the soul of an insider, an Ogun-born boy from an Ijebu woman and EGBA man. Except I belong to regberegbe. Except I am one of them, or a VIP/Politician or a title holder, who would be shielded by that privileged affiliation, I doubt I’d endure the stress just to attend Ojude Oba as a spectator. Not because I do not cherish my roots, but because love must not be blind. Culture should not be a hostage to chaos.

We must begin to ask: Must cultural pride come at the price of public suffering? Can we not pair our aesthetics with safety protocols, emergency plans, and effective traffic control? Will it take a stampede, God forbid, for us to realise that celebration without coordination is a curse in masquerade?

I write this not to spit on our splendour, but to cleanse it. To hold up a mirror so we may see the beauty and the blemish. So that the next Ojúdé Ọba may be remembered not just for its grandeur, but also for its grace, its order, and its humanity.

We can do better. And we must. For the sake of the ancestors we honour, and the children who will inherit our chaos or our correction.

Folorunso Fatai Adisa is a writer, communication specialist. He holds a Master’s degree in Media and Communication from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He writes from Nigeria and the UK.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng.

Source: Legit.ng