Ozikorosection in the archive
Omabe
Recorded in Enugu. A place page gathers every related history, image, recording and document rather than opening only one article.
Connected writing
Histories about Omabe
The archive links no published history to Omabe yet. Its neighbours’ histories are not shown here, because a link to another community is not a history of this one.
Named in other records
Histories that mention Omabe
These are published records whose own words name Omabe. A mention is not a history of Omabe, which is why they are listed here rather than with the histories about it.
Read as: Omabe. Counted where the name is written with a capital, because a lower-case occurrence of a name that is also an ordinary word is the word.
The record
What the archive holds for Omabe
| Region | Enugu |
|---|---|
| State | Enugu |
| Local government | Nsukka |
| Division | Northern Igbo |
| Ethnic group | Igbo |
| Recorded as | section |
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.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Lejja", "Obimo" and "Opi (archaeological site)"
Archive records
Photographs, oral testimony and documents connected to this community would appear here with provenance.
Add knowledge
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