Lifestyle Habits and Customs Traditional Customs or Festivals
The Iria Festival: Festival Of The Ogu People In Rivers State.

According to reports, the Iria festival dates back to the 16th century. It is an annual ceremony of womanhood that is held at the market square and it usually takes place at the last three to four months of the year. The festival requires all the young maiden in the village between the ages of 16 and 17 years to participate, and after the ceremony, they officially become women and can get married. The family of maidens looks forward to this event. The ceremony starts with the selection process where the parents present their virgin daughters to showcase their chastity. The qualified young maidens are kept in a fattening room where they are fed with body nourishing meals, especially pounded yam mixed with pounded plantain and fresh fish. They are pampered for over a month and they get them ready to dance bare-chested at the market square which is seen as an initiation to womanhood.During the fattening period, the maidens go to the village stream to bathe. Some old women known as the "Gbenerime" are the ones saddled with the task of inspecting the maidens before the ceremony begins to find out if anyone amongst them is pregnant. Any maiden that is discovered to be pregnant is immediately disqualified and banned from taking part in the ceremony.
A disqualified maiden disgraces her family and the family becomes an object of mockery and embarrassment. On the other hand, maidens who pass through the ceremony successfully are congratulated and the families celebrated. By the time the maiden come out of the fattening room to the village square, their bodies would have changed and looked more succulent. Their bodies are painted in different colours and their skin is well taken care of. Most of the maidens get suitors even before the festival.
At the market square, Chiefs and Heads of families are gathered with the people to watch the young virgins who only cover their lower bodies and leave the upper body for all to see! During the festival, the parents are usually happy that their children are passing through the Iria ceremony because they have kept their virginity.However, in recent times, some families are no longer participating in the ceremony due to Christianity and education as they believe the ceremony is fetish and the act of dancing bare-chested is against their religion.At the end of the festival, the maidens are given tickets to indicate that they have been finally initiated into womanhood and can get married. The festival is still performed till now as the significance is the respect it gives to the family of the maiden.