Nembe Cultural Festivals of Nigeria: African Culture Notes

Abstract

Cultural festivals are increasingly becoming arenas of discourse for scholars to express their innate views about the cosmological component of a society on a wider social, cultural and political scales. Thus, galvanizing debates that invariably polarizes between those advocating change and those preserving tradition in the face of globalization. This paper however analyzes the significance of cultural festivals among the Nembe people of Ijo ethnicity of Nigeria. Thus, the paper informs that generally festival and its cultural contents is the livewire that have been appropriately utilized to keep alive the cultural history of what becomes the collective or historical memory of the people concerned; which links them to their past. This ostensibly underpins the collective sustainability of the meaning, importance, as well as the role festival plays in the history of Nembe society of all ages. The findings revealed that festival was and is a major source of history as well as history in its own right among non-literate societies of the globe for historical, aesthetic, as wel as existential purposes. The methodological approach in this paper was historical anthropology where primary and secondary data collection were subjected to varying content analysis for utilization informed the conclusion reached.