page_title: Aboakyer festival
section_title: The festival
hierarchical_section_title: Aboakyer festival / The festival
caption_attribution_description: Winneba, a coastal city near me during the Aboakyer Festival, one of the big ones in Ghana.
context_page_description: The Aboakyer festival is a bushbuck hunting festival celebrated by the people of Winneba in the Central Region of Ghana.
  The name Aboakyer translates as "hunting for game or animal" in the Fante dialect as spoken by the people of the Central Region. The institution of the festival was to commemorate the migration of Simpafo. The people migrated from the north-eastern African town of Timbuktu in the ancient Western Sudan Empire to their present land in the central coast of Ghana.
  The journey from the north-east to the western part of Africa was led by two brothers. The people believed that a god, whom they called Otu, had protected them from all dangers during their migration and to show their appreciation, the people consulted the custodian of the god, a traditional priest who acted as an intermediary between the people and the god, to ask the god for its preferred sacrifice. To their astonishment, the god asked for a human sacrifice, someone from the royal family. This sacrifice went on for some years but was later stopped as the people were no longer interested in human sacrifices.
context_section_description: The festival is celebrated on the first Saturday in May. On the first day of the festival, the two Asaf0Companies (warrior groups) in Winneba take part in a hunting expedition. The first troop to catch a live bushbuck from a game reserve used for this purpose and present it to the chiefs and people at a colorful durbar is declared winner and is highly regarded for bravery. The bushbuck is sacrificed and this signifies the start of the Aboakyer festival. The festival is used also to receive a productive harvest and spiritual guidance from their gods for the coming year.
caption: Winneba during an Aboakyer festival
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