Ilo-Muo Festival in Aguleri: A Study in Ancestor Veneration in Igbo Traditional Religion

Abstract

The ritual Ilo-Muo celebration is a festival for the veneration of ancestors that acknowledges their role as guardians as well as acts as a spiritual force that binds the clans and villages that constitute Aguleri in Eri kingdom. Through the mediation of ancestral worship and supportive rituals performed by the adherents of the traditional religion, the stability of the cultural brotherhood is secured. This festival is usually an occasion for jocundity and thanksgiving offered to ancestral spirits. People appear in their best and give of their best; the meals constitute an opportunity for communion between the ancestors and their “children”. This paper focuses on how this renewal of covenant relationships celebrated in all clans and villages is done to reinforce the ancestral brotherhood and to show how the Aguleri community uses this festival to uphold its leadership of other communities. The ritual festival of Ilo-Muo in Aguleri, “the cradle of Igbo civilization”, reawakens within Aguleri and the Igbo diaspora the culture and sustenance of ancestor veneration in Igbo Traditional Religion and cosmology.