Omabe

Omabe is a cultural group of the Nsukka country in Enugu State rather than a descent group: three towns — Lejja, Obimo and Opi — that belong together by the Omabe they keep, the masked rite that gives the group its name.

The Omabe is a masquerade rite and a season, kept by the towns of this part of the Nsukka plateau, and the towns that keep it speak of themselves as one cultural group because of it. It is not a lineage: Lejja, Obimo and Opi each reckon their own ancestors and run their own affairs, and what they share is the rite and the calendar it keeps.

Lejja is the Onyishi Omabe, the chief of the Omabe, and holds the first place in the group. That precedence is why the three are named together in the order they are.

The country they sit in is old iron country. The Nsukka escarpment, with its laterite and basalt, carries some of the earliest iron smelting sites in sub-Saharan Africa, and all three towns stand on it.