It is happening live at Winneba, the Aboakyer festival is on going...
Aboakyer is celebrated in the southern coastal region between Accra and Cape Coast, in the township of Winneba.
Aboakyer derives from an ancient rite where sacrifices are traditionally offered to the god Otu in order to remove evil and predict a good harvest. To celebrate this, the priest instructed them on behalf or their god, to offer a young member of the Royal Family every year as a sacrifice. The people appealed this, and the substitution of a wild cat was accepted as a sacrificial offering, provided it was caught alive and beheaded before the god. However, so many lives were lost in attempting to capture the wild cat, that they appealed a second time to Penkyi Otu, named after the place the people settled, and he accepted the offering of a young deer.
The festival occurs on the first Saturday in May and the celebrations last all weekend. This festival is now more commonly known as the deer-hunting festival, as the human sacrifices have been replaced with the hunting and slaying of an antelope. This is one of the few times the strict enforcement of the hunting ban is overlooked, as this is a very important part of the Simpa peoples’ calendar.
The hunters must go out into the bush unarmed and bring back a live antelope to the towns’ chief. The element of competition here is strong as teams compete to be the first to present their prize to the elders and be declared champion.