the history about Aboakyiri festival(the rich festival /Dear catching festival )
the people of Effutus in the central region hold in high esteem their festival; the Aboakyer festival also known as the deer hunt festival. It is a festival celebrated annually by the Asafo Companies to pacify their war god Apa Sekum. The Aboakyer festival has gone through several phases since the inception of the celebration. Winneba Aboakyer is an ancient rite of animal sacrifice to the god Otu to celebrate their safe migration from the ancient western Sudan Empire to their present home, Winneba and also to remove evil and predict a good harvest. Their priest instructed them on behalf or their god, Otu to offer a young member of the Royal Family every year as a sacrifice.
Due to the harsh nature of the sacrifice, the people pleaded to the god, Otu for an animal sacrifice rather than human sacrifice, then the substitution of a wild cat was accepted as a sacrificial offering instead of a human, provided it was caught alive and beheaded before the god. However, most people lost their lives in an attempt to capture the wild cat. They appealed a second time to Penkyi Otu, named after the place the people settled, and the god accepted the offering of a bushbuck.
THE HISTORY ABOUT SUNYANI
The city of Sunyani rose as an outpost camp for elephant hunters during the 19th century; its name derives from the Akan word for elephant, ‘Osono’.that was a place where most Elephants was found ,
to skin or to butcher an animal came about the name called Sunyani.
Sunyani was a place where the hunters butchered the elephants they killed in the early days. The town became the capital of Brong Ahafo region due to the settlement of the British, and Asondwaee became Sunyani.
In support of the activities of hunters and the settlement of Sunyani, Kwamina Dickson wrote:
Although compact nucleated settlements were the rule, there were also a few isolated hunters’ camps which not infrequently became the basis for a future larger settlement. Hunters’ camps could exist in isolation in those unsettled times because of the hunters peculiar knowledge of the terrain and his skill in evading the enemy. The town Sunyani in Brong Ahafo, originally sited a few miles west of its present location, apparently began as a small camp for elephant hunters, to which the rich reward of hunting soon attracted large numbers of people. In support of the tradition is the name Sunyani itself which implies skinning of elephants