Ibi Cookey 
As we approach Halloween I’m inclined to think about how we, as Nigerians, have adopted this western holiday more and more each year. While I applaud our openness and diversity it surprises me how little I’ve seen our costume choices reference fixtures in African culture.
Frankly we have so much range from Oshun, to Shango and even Fela and his kalakutas. What’s funny is even the international musicians reference our ancient culture a lot in their wardrobe choices and recently I’ve seen that spread into the Nigerian music scene also.
I’m sure most of us have seen Beyoncé reference Oshun in her song ‘sorry’ and also her Grammy performance, I mean, if you google Oshun now, a picture of Beyoncé is lurking somewhere. She also referenced yemoja in her song ‘spirit’, recently Tems did also. Although she was a trending topic on twitter for denouncing the very obvious similarities to the yemoja dressing in her music video, possibly her stylists didn’t let her in on their inspiration, but lest we digress.
We have so much inspiration to draw from and I look forward to a time where, even with an adopted holiday we make it our own and put African Halloween Costumes on the map!
