By This year’s edition of the annual Ojude Oba Festival will no longer hold as planned, a statement from the Awujale and Paramount Ruler of Ijebuland, Oba (Dr) Sikiru Adetona, has said.
The annual fiesta, scheduled to hold next week after Eid-el Kabir celebrations, has been cancelled by the monarch following the detection of lethal COVID-19 Delta variant in Nigeria.
According to the statement signed by the coordinator of the festival and Baagbimo of Ijebu, Chief Fassy Yusuf, this decision was also attributed to “the negligible number of people that had taken the anti-COVID 19 vaccine”.
“Rather than expose peoples who will converge in Ijebu Ode from all over the world to participate in the ancient and unique socio-cultural and religious festival of the Ijebu nation, with its parade of traditional-age groups and the spectacular durbar with unsurpassable equestrian display, to avoidable and preventable health hazards, the monarch directed that the 2021 edition be cancelled,” it partly read.
“This is the second time in its known history of more than one Century that the festival that unites Muslims, Christians, and adherents of other faiths will be cancelled. The Ojude Oba Festival is normally held two days after the Eid-el Kabir (Ileya).”
Oba Adetona, however, urged his subjects as well as visitors to Ijebuland to take precautions by ensuring “they wear their nose masks, wash their hands regularly with soap, keep social and physical distances at public places, get vaccinated against the pandemic, and adhere to other medical protocols as directed by the federal, state, and local government authorities”.
