Ekine and the Water Spirits Who Come to Dance

Among the Kalabari specifically, one Ijaw sub-group centered in the eastern Niger Delta, religious life includes the Ekine society, also known as Sekiapu, whose masked performances are understood to invite the water spirits, the Owuamapu, to dance in the town before its people. The society's masquerades are a significant public religious event among the Kalabari, drawing the water spirits believed to inhabit the delta's creeks and waterways into direct, visible contact with the human community rather than leaving them as an unseen presence. Full initiation into and participation in Ekine, including the song and drum codes its members build up over years of apprenticeship, is restricted to initiated members rather than open to the wider community, a restriction this Ijaw tradition's own restricted tradition record names directly. What this atlas describes is Ekine's existence, its role in bringing the water spirits into the town and its standing as a distinctly Kalabari institution within the wider Ijaw religious world, without describing the apprenticeship's content or the specific song and drum codes it confers. The masquerade tradition remains active among Kalabari communities today, alongside the widespread Christian affiliation shared across the Ijaw religious world.