Overview
The Eyo is a Lagos Island procession of masquerades dressed entirely in white, carrying staffs and moving through closed streets in honour of a departed oba or chief. It is held rarely and never on a fixed calendar, which is part of what makes it an event.
History and origin
Eyo is understood to have been first performed on Lagos Island in the nineteenth century, with 1854 commonly cited as the date of the earliest recorded outing, held for Oba Akitoye. The masquerade draws on Awori and wider Yoruba traditions of honouring the dead and is administered by the Adimu Orisha and the recognised Eyo groups, each with its own hat band colour and lineage.
What happens
Groups of eyo, robed head to foot in white aga cloth with wide hats and veiled faces, fill the streets of Lagos Island carrying the opambata staff. They greet onlookers with the call Eyo, and the crowd answers. The staff is used to bless, and by custom it should not be touched. Rules apply to spectators for the day: no shoes, no head covering such as a hat or head tie, no smoking, and motorcycles stay off the route. Roads across the island close, and the procession converges on the Iga Idunganran palace.
When it takes place
Irregular. It is declared for a specific occasion, usually the final burial rites of a Lagos oba or a senior chief, and announced weeks in advance.
Where a date is set by a traditional council, a lunar calendar or the harvest, it changes from year to year. Confirm locally before making plans around it.
Where to see it
Lagos Island, Lagos State, Lagos State
The people behind it
YorubaThe Yoruba are concentrated in south western Nigeria, across Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti, with large populations in Kwara and Kogi and related communities in Benin Republic and Togo. They are one of the most urbanised peoples in Africa, with towns such as Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ile-Ife, Oyo and Ogbomoso that were already large and densely built long before colonial rule. Yoruba political tradition is monarchical: each town has an oba supported by a council of chiefs, and Ile-Ife holds the place of origin in Yoruba thought, while the Alaafin of Oyo once headed an empire that stretched west into present-day Benin. Yoruba religion, philosophy and art have travelled further than the people themselves. The òrìṣà tradition, the Ifá divination corpus and the drumming and dance that accompany them survive in Cuba, Brazil and Trinidad through the Atlantic slave trade, where they shaped Santería and Candomblé. Today most Yoruba are Muslim or Christian, often within families that hold both, and older practice persists alongside them. The language is tonal, written in a Latin alphabet with diacritics, and carries a proverb-heavy register in which indirect speech and respect for age are woven into ordinary conversation.Spotted something wrong? Tell us.