Northern Region Celebrate Annual Fire Festival

The fire festival or “Bugum Chugu” is an annual festival celebrated by the tribes making the mole Dagombas namely, Mampurisi, Gonjas, Moshie, Sissaalas, Dagombas, Nanumbers and Konkombas.

It is celebrated in the first month of the local calender called “Bugum goli”.

The history of fire festival can be traced back to a time when one powerful king whose name has been lost in the story lost his loving prince.

The story has it that, the price went out to play with his colleagues in the bush but along the way got tired and went and slept under one tree, his colleagues after playing couldn’t find him so went home and reported the case.

The chief and his people started searching for the lost son and as it was dark, they lite up torches made of grass which gave them light.

After several hours of their search, they found the prince under a tree, they took him home and threw the torches on the tree.

On their way home they sung, drummed danced and fired local guns.

Fire festival or Bugum Chugu is celebrated immediately after supper with traditional tools such as torches made of grass and drums made from animal skins.

The celebration of fire festival is characterized by drumming, singing, and dancing of worriers dance called “ziem” with the song “yoo yoo yoo yaa yoo” and firing of massacres or local guns.

The festival is observed by men, women, children, the old and the young.

The celebration of festival helps in uniting families as members who lives elsewhere go home to mark the celebration with their families , it is also used as an occasion to thank God for his guidance and support through out the year.

On the night of the festival, people will cut food and put them on their walls with believe that, their dead ones will come and have dinner that night.

At the morning of the next day one will often hear the common greeting “Ni ti yuuni pali, Naawuni paa mi ti yuuni na” meaning happy new year and may God give us another year with the response being “Ami” meaning Amen.

And children will go and visit their grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, unties and other family members to be given monies and left over meats called “chugu bia”

Before the night on the fire festival day, children will go to the bush, cut grasses to be tired as torches which are used in celebrating the fire festival.

People usually travel from outside the region and the country to watch fire festival, because of this, there is usually present of security to ensure peaceful celebrations.

The 2015 fire festival or “bugum chugu” was held peacefully on Friday night October 23, 2015 across the northern region.

It started as early as 8 pm and ended somewhere 12am to 1am on Saturday.

This year’s celebration was one of the best since no accident was recorded in the Tamale metro as compared to other years where people normally got cutlass by others and some bodies burnt by fire.