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.
The Ọka blacksmiths were able to establish themselves in Yorubaland due to their advanced gunsmithing skills. Unlike Yoruba gunsmiths who used nails and rivets to assemble gun parts, Ọka smiths employed screws, allowing their guns to be easily disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled.
One of the most prominent Ọka blacksmiths in Yorubaland during the 1930s was Godwin Okafọ, who settled in Igede Ekiti. The locals referred to him simply as “Ọka,” unaware of his actual name. Okafọ introduced several innovations that significantly enriched the smithing tradition in Igede, just as other Ọka craftsmen were revolutionizing the profession in various Ekiti towns.
Chief Akande, an elder from Igede, shared his memories of Godwin Okafọ and his fellow Ọka craftsmen:
“These Isobos [a term originally used for Urhobos but extended to anyone from the Eastern Region] came and began to make heavy-duty guns that could kill two or three animals at once. They were the first to produce knives, cutlasses, hoes, and other tools in large quantities for sale. Look at Awka [referring to Godwin Okafọ]; he is small in stature but stronger than many around us. He was the first to start producing short guns instead of the usual long ones. Not only that, these Awka people performed their smithing activity by producing, for the first time, double-barrel guns that could kill a whole district if there was a war…”
(Source: “Economic History of Ekiti People in Nigeria, 1900-1960” by Jumoke Oloidi, PhD. Thesis, University of Nigeria, Nsukka)
