Oku people (Sierra Leone)

The Oku people or the Aku Marabout or Aku Mohammedans are an ethnic group in Sierra Leone and the Gambia, primarily the descendants of marabout, liberated Yoruba people who were released from slave ships and resettled in Sierra Leone as Liberated Africans or came as settlers in the mid-19th century.

Oku people
Mohammed Shitta Bey
Total population
25,000 (0.5% of population)
Regions with significant populations
Sierra Leone, Gambia, United States, United Kingdom
Languages
Religion
Sunni Islam (99%)
Related ethnic groups
Yoruba people

Some Oku historically have intermarried since then with ethnic groups in Sierra Leone and the Gambia such as the Mandingo, Temne, Mende, and in some cases with the ethnic Sierra Leone Creole people. The Creole are primarily descendants of African-American former slaves, as well as some from Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and slaves liberated from illegal slave trading in the 19th century. The Oku people primarily reside in the communities of Fourah Bay, Fula Town, and Aberdeen.

The vast majority of Oku people are Muslim. They were able to translate Islamic ideologies that spread throughout the Sahel in the 11th-century. The Oku people have practiced sub-Saharan passages such as cliterodotomy since the late-19th century. A very small minority of them may have recently converted to Christianity in the late twentieth century. A large number of Oku people embraced Western education and other elements of Western culture prior to the Sierra Leone Civil War.

During British rule, the colonial government officially recognized various Oku neighborhoods as historical communities in Sierra Leone. During the 20th-century a railway system provided agriculture and consumer goods to a newly independent Freetown. Since independence, the national Sierra Leonean government has classified the Oku people as non-native Creoles although the Oku people are distinct from the Sierra Leone Creoles.

The Oku people have an extensive diaspora with Oku communities established in The Gambia and in Sierra Leone. The Oku people in Sierra Leone reside mainly in the capital cities of Banjul while the latter are in Freetown. In Sierra Leone the neighborhoods belonging to the Oku People are Fula Town, Fourah Bay, and some parts of Aberdeen Village (which has other areas occupied by Creoles).

Origin

While the Africans repatriated from England, North America, and the Caribbean between 1787 and 1800 came with their plethora of Christian churches and train of missionaries, the Oku people are descended exclusively from Muslim Yoruba Liberated Africans who were resettled in Sierra Leone during the nineteenth century.[1] The Yoruba Muslim elements among the general Liberated African population, formed a distinctive community and as early as the 1840s, there were references in documents and journals.

Prominent Oku families include the Dahniya, Zubairu, Mahdi, Iscandari, Aziz, Mustapha, Rashid, Abdullah, Lewally, Bassir, Deen, Tejan, Savage, and some adopted Oku families acquired Creole surnames such as Cole, Williams, Carew, Gerber, Spilsbury, and Joaque. Some of the European or Creole surnames of the Oku people were appropriated to gain entry into colonial schools in Freetown and others retained European surnames given or assigned to their Aku Liberated African ancestors.

Culture

The Oku people have a distinctive culture that has strong similarities to that of larger communities of Muslim who adhere to Ajami script. They are known for their inquisitive nature, adventurous spirit, and valuable tradition primarily influenced by marabout and to a lesser extent griot folklore. The Atiq Mosque is the central mosque of the Fourah Bay Community, similar to the Conakry Grand Mosque and The Great Mosque of Touba. The official cemetery of Oku People from Fourah Bay is the Aku Mohammedan Cemetery on Kennedy Street.

The Oku practice cliterodotomy alongside other indigenous ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. The Oku often have Arabic names. Some Oku people later adopted the names of prominent benefactors such as Carew, in addition to Yoruba and other Nigerian names, which they thought aided admission into the Islamic schools founded by Fula and Mandinka people in Freetown. Some elder members of the Oku community continue to speak a traditional language such as Temne, Mende, Pular, Mandingo, and Soso while fluent in Yoruba, Krio or English language.

Relationship with the Sierra Leone Creole people

Several scholars such as Ramatoulie Onikepo Othman and Olumbe Bassir classify the Oku people as distinct from the Creoles because of their ancestry and strong Muslim culture.

In contrast to the Oku people, the Creoles or Krio are Christian and are a mixture of various ethnic groups including African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and Liberated Africans of Igbo, Fanti, Aja, Nupe, Bakongo, and Yoruba descent in addition to other African ethnic groups and European ancestry.[2][3][4] Furthermore, unlike the Oku people, the Creoles do not practice cliterodotomy, engage in the Bundu society, and are monogamous.[5]

More recently, some scholars consider the Oku people to be a sub-ethnic group of the Creoles, based on their close association with British colonists and their adoption of Western education and other aspects of culture.[6] Those classifying the Oku as part of the Sierra Leone Creole people note their adoption of similar English or European surnames (although this was a minority of Oku) and cultural aspects such as komojade,[7] egungun, gelede, hunters' masquerade,[8] esusu[9] and awujoh.[lower-alpha 1] However, as scholars have outlined, the few cultural similarities between the Creole and Oku people are because there are some Yoruba cultural retentions from the Christianized Yoruba Liberated Africans (who are one ethnic group among the many diverse ethnic ancestors of the Creoles) found among the Creoles and because the cultural orientation, heritage, identity and origin of the Oku people are Yoruba in essence.[5]

Cultural associations

The Oku people are represented by cultural associations such as the Ebilleh Cultural Organization, aiming to preserve and enhance Oku heritage of Sierra Leone and the Gambia.

Notable Oku in or from Sierra Leone

Notes
  1. Awujoh originates from the Yoruba Liberated African ancestry of the Creoles. Awujoh ceremonies are held for the protection of newborns and newlyweds by ancestral spirits and as a means to acquire guidance and wisdom regarding aspects of death.[10]

References
  1. "The Krio of West Africa: Islam, Culture, Creolization, and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century" (PDF). www.ohioswallow.com.
  2. "Sierra Leone: Brief Introduction". English in West Africa. Institute of English and American Studies, Humboldt University. Archived from the original on 29 September 2003. Retrieved 1 December 2012. citing Wolf, Hans-Georg (2001). "English in Cameroon". Sociology of Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (85).
  3. Stefania Galli (2019) Marriage patterns in a black Utopia: Evidence from early nineteenth-century colonial Sierra Leone, The History of the Family, 24:4, 744-768, DOI: 10.1080/1081602X.2019.1637361
  4. "Looking Back, Moving Forward: Documenting the Heritage of African Nova Scotians". www.archives.novascotia.ca.
  5. Bassir, Olumbe (July 1954). "Marriage Rites among the Aku (Yoruba) of Freetown". Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. 24 (3): 251–256. doi:10.2307/1156429. JSTOR 1156429. S2CID 144809053.
  6. Cole, Gibril R. (15 September 2013). The Krio of West Africa: Islam, Culture, Creolization, and Colonialism in ... ISBN 9780821444788. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
  7. Dixon-Fyle, Mac (1999). A Saro community in the Niger Delta. ISBN 9781580460385.
  8. King, Nathaniel (2014), Chapter 3, Freetown’s Yoruba-Modelled Secret Societies as Transnational and Transethnic Mechanisms for Social Integration, Berghahn Books OAPEN Library Edition
  9. Bascom, W. R. (1952). The Esusu: A Credit Institution of the Yoruba. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 82(1), 63–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/2844040
  10. "Creoles of Sierra Leone". www.encyclopedia.com.
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