The story of Oba Ewuakpe has been engagingly told in J. U. Egharevba’s Short History of Benin. When this Oba became the ruler of the Empire he was saddled with two disadvantages which made him at first unable to handle and manage absolute power, to his own advantage and the good of the people. He was young, and so lacked the constraints and patience of age. Secondly he was not born an Oba. He was thrust into the office by his father AKENNUZAMA who declined to be Oba when he was offered the crown, by selection, in his old age. The IHOGBE had decided that Akennuzama would be the next Oba of Benin when his cousin Oba ORE-OGHENE died. Akennuzama let the honour, and the responsibility, pass over to his son IDOVA who was then hurriedly re-named EHENNEGHA, probably in obedience to an oracular directive. As Ehennegha he was presented by the Ihogbe to the UZAMA and crowned the Oba of Benin with the titular name of EWUAKPE.
At the beginning of the reign of Ewuakpe therefore the Oba of Benin had a living father, and propitiation by the Monarch at the Shrines of the Ancestors must have been somewhat problematical at the Palace.
In the course of time EWEBONOZA the Queen Mother died at Uselu. To provide for his mother in the other world all the material comforts she had been accustomed to while alive Oba Ewuakpe sacrificed a great number of human beings in the course of her burial ceremonies. This blood-letting angered the people and they rebelled against him.
Human sacrifices were said to have been introduced into Benin Court ritual by Oba Ewuare two hundred and fifty years earlier Ewuare was said to have been a spare man, of small statue and physically unprepossessing. He was who introduced the sacrificing of twelve human beings to the annual propitiation of the Oba’s Ancestors. The disdainful and extravagant expenditure of a resource of such priceless worth as humans was calculated by him; it was said, to further enhance the awe in which the Palace was held by the people.
Ewuakpe’s other wives, numbered in the hundreds, abandoned the royal Harem after the people had rejected their husband as king and flung open for them the gates of the Harem. But one of them, called IDEN clung to her husband. She refused to return home to her parents in OKA village now part of the Upper Sokponba Road, Benin City, where she hailed from.
When the life of a King without subjects proved too difficult to sustain in Benin, Ewuakpe, in his own turn, cried the abandonment of the City and the people. He journeyed to the UGOLO Quarters in IKOKA, his mother’s village, on the other side of the Ovia River crossing at the UNUAME waterside settlement. He had expected from his mother’s relatives some sympathy as well as due recognition of his status as the Oba of Benin, but there in the village he was confronted with the immutable fact of life that people place great value on the services they give. They give service when there is a promise of profit material, emotional, or spiritual, attending the effort.
The people of Ikoka village spurned Ewuakpe because in the circumstances in which he came to meet them he had nothing to offer them except an increase of their burdens. Ewuakpe cursed Ikoka village for putting him through this piece of biter basic education and returned to Benin City, to the empty Benin Palace, now overgrown with weeds and leaking from a thousand roof vents.
Iden took the few articles of vanity she still possessed to the Oba Market and sold them. With the money in hand she went to UGBOR village and brought a Diviner to the Palace. Ewuakpe asked the Oracle what he must do to bring to an end this rejection of his rule by his people. The Oracle told Ewuakpe to stage a make-believe scenario which would suggest to the observer that the rejection of the palace by the people had been called off, and that the people had already resumed their loyal and obligatory service to the institution. The general idea was to announce the possession of a blessing before the blessing was actually received, a praying method which Jesus Christ also taught His disciples in St. Mark‘s Gospel when He told them: Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And what would make the ruse stick in this instance prescribed the Oracle, was the sacrifice of a human.
Iden paid off the Seer, and then she and her husband set out to procure the necessary sacrificial items as prescribed by the Oracle. She went to the Oba Market at dusk and collected all the pieces of broken calabashes she could get, especially those which had been used to bring palm oil to the market for sale. Plus all the cast-away head pads, both of leaves and of old calico, with which traders had brought their wares to the market and abandoned at the end of the day’s business. She then went into the Ogo n-erhie, gathered a lot of green shrubbery and elaborated a still greater number of these head-pads herself. Ewuakpe in his turn went about in his city-size Palace grounds stripping down the dried fronds from the many palm trees which dotted the premises. These dried palm faggots he tied up into multiples of torches, such as might be required on a night journey by away-faring multitude.
When these other prescribed articles had been obtained the couple turned their attention to the problem of where to obtain the human sacrificial component of the prescription. Abduction was not worthy even of consideration, because detection would lead to a charge of murder, this would inflict a blow on the already wounded Obaship from which it would be unlikely to recover.
To save her husband’s high office and to preserve him for ft Iden talked Ewuakpe into accepting her as the human sacrificial offering.
There is a remembered episode in the second decade of this century when there recurred another struggle for the sustenance of the existence of this long lasting Benin dynasty begun by Prince Oronmiyan of UHE. Oba Ovonramwen had died in Calabar. The local British Officers in Benin were egging on Chief Agho the Obaseki to step out and reach for the Obaship against the dictates of country usage an aberration which was being strenuously argued against by the Crown Prince AIGUOBASIMWJN, later Oba EWEKA the Second.
OMOKHANUNUOMWAN, better known as OKORO-OTUN; who later as a Chief of Benin successively held the titles of the ESAMA and the IYASE in his time, was the IFA Diviner to the Crown Prince, One evening, when the Prince and his Seer were in consultation with the Orunmila Oracle, during this struggle against James WATT, the Colonial Resident of Benin Province and his protege Chief Obaseki, Orunmila demanded from Aiguobasimwin the sacrificial offering of a hen. The purpose of the sacrifice was to ensure that the over seven hundred years-old dynasty of the Obas of Benin did not come to an end with the death of Ovonramwen.
The unusual thing about this sacrificial demand, as prescribed by Orunmila, was that the hen must be stolen. And the thieving must be done by none other than the Prince himself, personally and unaided. Otherwise the sacrifice would have been done futilely. Okoro-Otun assured Aiguobasimwin that any curses laid on the thief by the owner of the fowl for the deprivation he or she had been made to suffer would be taken care of by Orunmila itself.
A learned Orunmila Interpreter would readily be able to point out the ODU or Chapter, out of the about two hundred and forty Odu in the Orunmila literature where this prognostication appears.
An elderly lady living near the Crown Prince’s house behind Unu Abehe Street at Ogbe was known to own a hen. When night fell the Prince put on a zogodo, a Yoruba voluminous robe, and glided along the alleyways separating his palatial residence from that of the owner of the fowl. The future Oba of Benin and Lord of the Kingdom grabbed the hen in its roost, smothered its flapping wings in the folds of his voluminous zogodo apparel, and held the bird by its beak to suppress its cries of alarm. He hurried home, and directly into his private quarters. He presented the bird to the waiting Okoro-Otun and Orunmila.
To go back two hundred years from Aiguobasimwin’s struggles for the throne of his fathers to the struggles of Ewuakpe his ancestor for the same throne: night fell and Ewuakpe lighted the torches of dried palm fronds, and while they burned scattered them haphazardly over the wide expanse of the Unuogua, the large open space in front of the Palace occupied at the present time by the Ring Road/National Museum Complex.
Iden smeared the gathered pieces of broken calabashes with palm oil and scattered them in like manner. She followed the same procedure with the numerous head-pads she had gathered, as well as those she had elaborated by herself, amongst the burnt-out torches.
With all these articles deployed as convincingly as possible all over the approaches to the Palace Iden garbed herself in the little finery she still possessed and she and her husband walked in the dark, down Iwebo Street. They passed the Ekpenede ogbore Shrine and got to the outskirts of the Oba Market, near where the Iwebo Street opens on to the Uroghotodin. There Iden chose the Site of her grave. Oba Ewuakpe set to, and began the excavation of the final resting place of his wife.
Iden climbed down into the grave, helped by her husband, and tried it for size. With the length and depth judged satisfactory the young woman lay down in the pit, and on her side facing the Palace, in such a manner that the flying clods of earth would not get unto her eyes. She told Ewuakpe to fill up the chasm.
Ewuakpe began filling up the grave from the feet end, postponing the asphyxiation of his wife by the red earth till the very end.
Realising what it meant to be buried in a marketplace, as was happening to her, Iden had requested of her husband that in the event that the purposes of the sacrifice were indeed attained, and the Edo people came round to re-accept the Palace, then she must be protected, where she lay, from all the insults of the market-place.
Day broke, and it was the ESOGBAN, in his residence at the semi-official site of the Ogbe-Eguanran who, on looking across at the Unuogua, first saw the burnt-out torches, the broken calabashes of oil and the head-pads, abandoned as it seemed, by a multitude of people. The articles all constituted the tell-tale evidence that the Benin people had resumed their long – abandoned service to their king. He felt betrayed and left in the lurch. Quarrelling loudly about the perfidy of the Edos, and blaming the ancient Oba EWUARE the Great for this inconvenient habit amongst the people the Esogban opened the store-house of his wealth, both in men and material, and carted an appreciable portion of it across the Uroghotodin to the Palace. There, in a solicitous voice he asked for the endorsement of his monarch.
A lone voice answered the Esogban from behind a half-closed door, reassuring him that the Esogban was regarded as being in good standing with the Palace: he was not the “Oba’s Enemy”. The Chief returned home happy and relieved at not having been left at a disadvantageous position by his peers.
The IYASE was told that his hierarchical subordinate, the Esogban had made his peace with the Palace – and he was flabbergasted. The Iyase blamed his own overly-trusting nature, a trait which, he grumbled loudly, he inherited from his dear mother. People were always and forever taking one advantage or the other of him, leaving him always to carry the can of worms.
He in turn opened the store-house of his wealth and went to the Palace to declare his allegiance; a little apprehensive about whether his declaration would be acceptable to his King, as apparently belated as it was. The retainers, who had been a part of the Esogban‘s earlier gift to the Palace now received the Iyase and his gifts of fealty. It was they who assured him that he was not the “Oba’s Enemy”.
Word of the happenings at the ignored and weedy Palace spread quickly through the City, and the other Chiefs, falling over themselves, followed the example of the two senior Eghaevbo-Nore Chiefs. The imuohan, gifts from a subject to his Monarch, both in men and money, which they bought with them soon re-populated the Palace Villages came to Benin and retrieved the Palace from the creeping jungle. The royal Harem was reconstituted with choice damsels from all over the Kingdom.
So was Oba Ewuakpe rehabilitated, and by a woman’s love, which involved her self-sacrifice unto death. The sacrifice saved the Obaship, and re-positioned it on a stable keel.
And for the last three hundred years there has not occurred similar circumstance when there too there took place a complete breakdown in relations between the people and the Benin palace
This happy state of affairs has been contributed to, in a large measure. and maintained by the far-reaching constitutional changes which Ewuakpe effected in the institution of the Benin monarchy towards the end of his life In doing this he took into account the salutary lessons taught by the events which occurred at the commencement of his reign.
Ewuakpe decided that prior tutelage was essential in the safe handling of absolute power.
Learning on the job had its many hazards. These hazards were acceptable when the power to be wielded was restrained power, or shared power. But the safe use of absolute power required being born into it. The temptation to explore the limits of absolute power was usually absent in the one born into it. It was temptations such as this which had afflicted him when he was suddenly and unexpectedly called upon to become the Oba of Benin.
Ewuakpe additionally came to the conclusion that the physical vigour of the not too old was an additional desirable attribute when one was about to shoulder the responsibilities of supreme office.
With regard to this second consideration it was said that the six Obas of Benin whose reigns spanned the period between the reigns of Oba OHUAN and Oba Ewuakpe were, in truth, more like Edionweres. This was the period in Benin when the search for the next Oba began only after the demise of the incumbent.
These two advantages: a long apprenticeship in the shadows of absolute power, and the physical vigour of vigorous adulthood – were usually combined in a first son. Succession to the father’s rule by the first son was natural. The “naturalness” of this mode of selection made many human societies adopts it as a first option. And it saved the community the recurrent temporary disruption of its internal order which usually accompanied the periodic search for a not pre-determined successor-leader.
This principle, of the first son succeeding his father in office, was the well laid-down and accepted Benin mode of succession to office during the period of the OGISO rulers. This is well exemplified by the about one hundred Ogiso Enogie-ships which are still extant in the land today. The creation of Dukedoms or Enogie-ships could be practised only in a kingdom where the first son of the monarch automatically succeeded his father.
But this principle has never been wholeheartedly accepted in Yoruba land, the western ethnic neighbour of the Edo people. There the principle of Ruling ˇbuses was favoured where all the Sons of the founder of a dynasty took turns to occupy the throne of their father. The Oba dynasty in Benin, which was founded by ORONMIYAN the IFE Prince, took a long time adjusting to the succession-custom of ˇhe alien land where it had taken root and flowered. It was Oba Ewuakpe who, only three hundred years ago, finally and unalterably achieved the adjustment.
Two of the sons of EWEKA I, the first Oba of the new Benin dynasty, were successively Obas of Benin after their father. The three sons of Oba OGUOLA, the fifth Oba of Benin successively succeeded their father on the throne. His third son Oba OHEN, ˇhe eighth Oba of Benin, was successively succeeded as Obas by his own four sons. The fourth son to succeed him was Oba EWUARE the Great, the twelfth Oba of Benin who was in turn succeeded successively by his three Sons as Obas of the kingdom.
Oba EWUARE, it is true, laid toyed with the idea of adopting the Ogiso or Benin succession principle for the Oba dynasty when he made his second son, Prince EZUWARHA the Enogie of the village of IYOWA after he had installed his first son Prince KUOBOYUWA as the EDAIKEN, or Crown Prince, the First Prince of the Dynasty to be so designated after ‘‘three hundred years of the rule of the dynasty in Benin. But he beat a retreat from this Benin principle of First Son Only and went back wholesale to re-adopt the Yoruba principle of ˇhe Equality of Siblings when these his two sons died on ˇhe same day as a result of a quarrel which broke out between them.
The quarrel was about ascendancy, about this First Son Only principle. Ezuwarha resented his being shunted away from the City and into the village as a bush— man and so permanently precluded from aspiring to be the ruler of the kingdom of his father after his elder brother must have had his turn . There was a battle one day between the two princes in which both fell.
Ewuare subsequently restored the Yoruba family tradition by decreeing that each of the three sons which he fathered after this tragedy would successively be Obas of Benin after him.
A story is told about how Ewuare reached this decision. In his later life he had attempted to leave to the people the responsibility of deciding which one amongst his three later sons should succeed him, since his earlier acceptance of the Benin principle had come to grief. Probably there was another way out of the worry than going back wholesale to re-adopt the Yoruba principle. The Oba therefore sent his chiefs on a personality assessment visit to his three sons – Ezoti, OIua and Okpame, later Ozolua. The chiefs were to recommend to him the one among the three Princes who, in their estimation, would make the best Oba of Benin. The choice would presumably lead to the permanent excision from the title of the other two not given the nod.
The Chiefs carried out the assignment, paying courtesy visits on each of the three Princes in turn. They then reached a decision, but would not report their findings back to the King. Ewuare insisted on a report. Shame-facedly they informed the monarch that not one of the King’s Sons did they find suitable for the throne.
Prince Ezoti the chiefs found to be too stingy. If he became the Oba the Palace as a community would know unrelieved hunger.
Prince Olua was a profligate, an okpetu kporozo. It would take less than three lunar months, if he became the Oba for the wealth of the palace, assiduously built up by past Obas, to be squandered on do-good programmes: in feeding those who came to the Palace to announce that they were hungry, and in settling the debts of debtors who could no longer bear the heat from those that they owed.
The only love which Prince Okpame knew was that of the sword, and the only activity which he cared about was that associated with the works of the sword. If he became the Oba the fear of the Palace would be the beginning of wisdom for the citizen. Unrelenting warfare would be the lot of the kingdom, and the fruits of peace would he unknown in the land.
Ewuare felt un-flattered by the judgement of his chiefs. He was perplexed that not one of the three offspring of his loins had earned the love and the approbation of the Edos. Could this judgement, in reality be a subtle pronouncement on his own times and on his own works? He decided to stop tinkering with innovations. He went back to the family principle of the “Equality of Siblings”, pronouncing that each of his three Sons would take his own turn to be the Oba of Benin after him.
EWUARE was succeeded by his first surviving son EZOTI as the Oba of Benin, but he reigned for only fourteen days when he succumbed to the injuries he sustained in an attempt at regicide made on him on the day of his coronation.
Ewuare’s second son OLUA took over the throne after his brother’s demise, even though the assassinated king had a son, Prince OWERE. Oba OLUA fathered a son, Prince IGINUA. Iginua had an uncle Prince OKPAME, OIua’s younger brother. OKPAME after succeeded his brother to his father’s throne as Oba OZOLUA.
OKPAME’S right to the throne was, in the prevailing circumstances, and in the usages of the period, stronger than Iginua’s. It was probably for this reason that Oba OIua arranged, while still alive for his son to journey south to the riverine areas, fully accoutred with the appurtenances of kingly office. There Prince lginua became the OLU of the JTSEKIRIS.
Meanwhile, Okpame had murdered Prince OWERE his nephew and the late Oba Ezoti’s son, in the defence the principle that the first-generation Princes had a stronger claim to the throne than their nephews or second-generation Princes. It was probably this crime which finally made Oba Olua decide to send lginua off into the rivers.
The murder was discovered, and to escape sanctions Okpame’s escaped into the northern Edo territories as a fugitive offender. There in these savannah regions he perfected his mastery of the art of warfare, and acquired a knight’s armour, originating probably from the Byzantine civilisation of north Africa and brought through the desert trade- routes to Kano City, and then southwards across the upper Niger river as a trade article. This armour made Okpame virtually unassailable in the forest-region battles which he had to fight after he was ultimately recalled home to Benin.
Meanwhile, there in the savannah he fathered the Ora people.
By the time OZOLUA ascended the throne of his father EWUARE in succession to his brother Olua, as the fifteenth Oba of Benin the Benin ethos of First-Son-Only had once again waxed strong in the affairs of the Benin royal family in spite of its earlier hurried abandonment by Oba Ewuare. The Yoruba ethos of Equality of All Siblings formerly prevailing in the family had, by the same token, been progressively watered down. This was no mean feat, and it was brought about by the progressive Beninisation of the royal family.
In contrast to what was happening in Benin, an extreme form of the Yoruba succession ethos was, during this period, in vogue in Yorubaland. In OYO, the capital of the famed kingdom and Empire of the Yorubas the AREMO, the eldest son or Edaiken of the ALAAFIN was usually obliged to commit suicide when his father, the reigning Alaafin died. This left the field clear for any of the Aremo ‘s younger brothers, or uncles or cousins to ascend his father’s throne. It was only in 1858, during the early years of the reign of Oba ADOLOR in Benin, and only a year before the first Secondary Grammar School in Nigeria was founded in Lagos by Herbert Macaulay’s father, the Reverend Thomas Babbington Macaulay from Sierra Leone, that the Alaafin ATIBA repealed this provision of the mandatory death of the Aremo whenever his father died. He did this in favour of Prince ADELU, his eldest son. Henceforth, the Aremo was permitted to compete for the throne of his father on an equal footing with all the other Princes.
THAT the Benin method of succession-determination took tentative root in the Benin Palace of Oba OZOLUA was not just a happenstance. Ozolua was maternally a direct descendant of the OGISOS. This fact arose as a result of a contrivance by his father Oba Ewuare. With the death of his two Princes. and after the prolonged and unpopular national mourning period had been called off, Ewuare was advised by the Oracle to bring about a mixing of the blood lines of both the on-going and the defunct ruler-ships of Benin, the Oba and the Ogiso dynasties. The stability of the royal house would thus be ensured, and the prosperity of the kingdom guaranteed. the Oracle asserted.
A search was made, and a young maiden, of marriageable age, who was a direct descendant of the last Ogisos of Benin, was found in UDO town in the Ovia territories. Her name was OMUWA. She became one of Ewuare’s consorts and gave birth to the Obas Ezoti and Ozolua. She is the only woman in the history of the land to have given birth to two Obas of Benin.
As earlier mentioned Ezoti’s reign was truncated by an assassination bid and his only son subsequently murdered. These misfortunes wiped out his line. But his full brother Ozolua prospered and his reign stabilised the Obaship of Benin on a secure and balanced foundation.
Because of his mother’s Ogiso descent the Edos said of Ozolua:
Ozolua ero zee
Ighe atie Oba ovb’Iso:
“Oba Ozolua made it possible
To regard the Obas of Benin
As also the Descendants of the OGISOS.”
Ozolua adopted the method of the Ogisos in tackling the problem of succession to the supreme rulership of the land. The Ogisos were in the habit of awarding their junior Sons pockets of the Kingdom as gifts, to rule over in perpetuity as Dukes under the senior son, who then took over the throne in Benin, in the fullness of time as the king, untrammelled by any subsequent succession-claims from any of his younger brothers. Ozolua in like manner cleared an unencumbered pathway to the throne for his first son OSAWE, later Oba ESIGIE, by making his beloved second son Prince IDUBOR the ARHUANRAN, the Enigie or Duke of UDO UDO, as has been mentioned earlier, was the home town of Ozolua’s mother, and it was the second most important town in the kingdom at that time.
Like Prince Ezuwarha of Iyowa village during the reign of Ewuare his grandfather Prince Idubor of Udo would not accept the permanent subordinate status, vis a vis his elder brother, as arranged for him by his father Ozolua. Instead he strove to turn the tables on Esigie and to make Udo town the new Capital of the Benin Kingdom, with himself as the king. Benin City would, by that token, be reduced to the status of the seat of a Dukedom, headed by Esige as its Enogie.
It took a civil war between the two brothers, and the two Principalities of UDO and EDO to determine the issue. Udo was defeated and Idubor vanquished. Idubors only son, ONI-ONI, died in the battles. His Iyase and Commander of his troops attempted to reverse the defeat suffered by Udo. He suffered a second defeat, and with the ruminants of the Arhuanran loyalists abandoned Udo and founded ONDO town in the Yoruba territories.
With the issue finally decided by war as it had been the Benin principle of succession to the throne, as adopted by Ozolua, held true and unchallenged during the next four reigns. Esigie, Orhogbua and Ehengbuda were succeeded as Obas of Benin by their first sons. Then the system broke down because the fourth Oba, OHUAN, could not father a successor. The IHOGBE reverted to the Yoruba method of selecting a monarch from the royal lineage. On selection he was presented to the UZAMA who then crowned him.
Seven Obas of Benin, from the twentieth to the twenty-sixth, were so selected and crowned. The last of them was Oba Ewuakpe.
With the ostracism crisis which rocked the earlier period of his reign in mind, the resolution of which was purchased with the life of his wife Iden, Oba Ewuakpe desired to harp back to Oba Ozolua’s ideas and to fully “acclimatise” the monarchy by re-establishing in the institution the succession principle of the Ogisos. He desired to do this through a constitutional provision, a promulgated law, so that any attempted departure from it would attract its own sanctions.
He put his ideas to his chiefs that henceforth succession to the throne of Benin would be by the First Son-Only principle, and by none other.
For their concurrence to be obtained for the proposed law the Chiefs had bargaining chips of their own which they put on the table. The Oba’s idea was, after all, a departure from how he, Ewuakpe had come to the throne. Or Oba ORE-OGHENE, or AKENGBEDO, or AFIENKPAYE. And some members of the royal clan were of course already looking forward to the time when a call would possibly come to them to step out and be crowned Oba at the end of Ewuakpe’s reign.
Moreover, the non-predetermination of the crowned Head tended to leave greater powers in the hands of the Chiefs, though not by a long kilometre as great as those which the Bashorun of Oyo enjoyed. And the chiefs were loathe to give up these attractive powers, of being able to participated in the determination of who, amongst the princes, would succeed a dead monarch.
Up to that point in time, about three hundred years ago, the Oba of Benin was the OLA TORO. He inherited the property of any of his Chiefs who died. This custom was a confiscatory form of Death Duties, as severe as is to be found today in some European countries where fully seventy percent of the estate of the very rich is paid to the State on the death of such personalities. Today, under Nigerian Law, every citizen who makes a WILL forfeits six percent of his Estate to the Government when he dies. This percentage is deducted before his children are allowed ownership of what remains of the Estate as stipulated in the WILL. The percentage of the Estate due to the Government is called the Death Duty. In the United States of America the Death Duty is at present 37% of amounts exceeding six hundred thousand dollars, rising to 55% on amounts exceeding Three Million dollars. In the United Kingdom the Duty is said to be somewhat higher than these figures. Atoro was the name, in Old Benin of this Death Duty and the beneficiary, the Olatoro, was the State, as represented by the Oba Those who paid this tax were his dead Chiefs, in addition o those citizens, men and women, who died childless.
A justification for this confiscatory type of Death Duty was the fact that the wealth being taken over by the State, as represented by the Oba, had largely been created by the Oba himself through his beneficent intervention in the life of the dead chief. A chief was usually given, for the duration of his life-time, some towns and villages, in the kingdom and in the Empire, to control as his fief. He received free labour from the populations of these towns, in addition to the bounty of their forests and rivers. He in turn was their political guardian in the Capital, and through him they obtained access to the Benin Palace.
Through this agency of fiefdoms a chief was usually able to live well, and to accumulate some reasonable amount of wealth in the course of a life-time.
Wealth is power. A great deal of it represents great deal of power. And when this power becomes adventitious and uncontrolled as might happen when it falls into the hands of descendants with little empathy for the Palace. It could sometimes threaten the stability of the State. The Atoro mechanism was probably a means designed in those days to protect the State from recurrent ruptures of its stability.
The tax was of course, like all taxes everywhere and in all epochs, unpopular. Vent was given to its unpopularity in songs, with the resentment against it deliberately trivialised in the songs which children sang in their moonlight games
Olatoro, atoro,
Olatoro, aloro,
Atoro ighi tu erhamwen emwin rin, atoro,
Atoro ighi tu iyemwen emwin rin, atoro.
“Lord of Atoro, atoro;
Lord of Awro, atoro;
“May Atoro not get at my father’s property, atoro,
May Atoro not get at my mother’s property, atoro.”
The Chiefs desired that Oba Ewuakpe surrender his Olatoro rights, his right to be the inheritor of his Chief. Since he the king desired that his eldest son the EDAIKEN be the inheritor of not only his royal property but also his title of Oba. Ewuakpe should extend to them his chiefs the same privilege: their first sons should also be regarded as their own Edaikens and be the inheritors, not only of their tides, where the title was hereditary, but also of their wealth.
Ewuakpe granted the request of his chiefs; and surrendered his Olatoro rights, in effect abolishing Death Duties on their estates. In return the chiefs agreed to the king’s proposal, that the principle of primogeniture, of eldest son succeeding his father to his title and his wealth, be elevated to the status of aw, and be accepted as the only possible pathway to the throne of Benin.
To seal his agreement between himself and the people EWUAKPE sent for the lsemwenrigho totem. The lsemwenrigho was an object of ponderous mystical potency originally acquired and used two hundred and fifty years earlier by Oba EWUARE the Great. Pronouncements made by the Monarch with the lsemwenrigho were imbued with immutability. They became the laws of the land.
The EWAISE guild hurried to the IWEGIE section of the Palace and brought the lsemwenrigho to Ewuakpe. Picking up the totem Ewuakpe surrendered his Olatoro rights to the property of his chiefs. He pronounced moreover that the chiefs’ eldest sons be regarded henceforth as their fathers’ Edaikens, with full rights to their deceased parents’ titles and properties.
But the king retained his right to be the inheritor of those of his chiefs, and other citizens, male or female, who died childless in the kingdom and the Empire.
Ewuakpe handed the lsemwenrigho to the chiefs, Holding on to the totem the chiefs, in their turn pronounced that henceforth, the Oba’s eldest son, the EDAIKEN would to the exclusion of all others, be his father’s successor and inheritor.
The lsemwenrigho was old Benin’s equivalent of the Great Seal of State in literate societies. Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of Sir Francis Bacon was, in Queen Elizabeth the Firsts time, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. Chief EGUEZTGBON the Head of the EWAISE, is the Keeper of the lsemwenrigho of the Oba of Benin.
This mode of succession to the highest office in the land, worked out in negotiations between the Oba and his Chiefs is the legacy bequeathed by Oba Evuakpe to Benin and also to those near areas of Nigeria like the Northern Edo territories, the Western Niger lands and the Delta regions, which are inheritors of the Benin concept of societal order.
Succession struggles for the throne of Benin have occurred since the reign of Ewuakpe, but the struggles have been fought not to vitiate the Ewuakpe principle but to uphold it. The struggles have been between:
- Prince OZUERE and Oba AKENZUA the First, the two sons of Oba Ewuakpe himself.
- Prince OGBEBOR and Oba OSEMWENDE sons of Oba Obanosa.
- Prince OGBEWEKON and Oba ADOLOR sons of Oba Osemwende
- Prince OROKHORHOR and Oba OVONRANMWEN, Sons of Oba Adolor.
This last did not develop into physical conflict before the quarrel was resolved.
The two contestants in each of these four episodes were fellow siblings, children of the same royal father. Each son claimed that he was the true eldest son of the deceased Oba and should therefore, going by the Ewuakpe principle, have the crown.
HE principle has only once been seriously challenged in Benin since the last three hundred years. This happened during the colonial era. The effort, which was quite determined, was a clear departure from, and an attempted repudiation of, the Ewuakpe enactment. It was hatched and promoted by the British Colonial Resident of Benin Province, Mr, James WATT when he unsuccessfully pushed an at first reticent Chief Obasek’s candidature forward for the Benin throne at the demise of Oba OVONRAMWEN in exile in Calabar early in 1914. The reasoning was that the Colonial Resident of the sister Province of WARRI had his Chief DOGHO NUMA, the fulcrum on which the native administration of Warri Province turned at that time. James Watt in turn desired to retain his own Dore NUNA of Benin Province, in the person of Chief AGRO, the OBASEKI of Benin, in the administration of the native affairs of Benin Province,
It is true that Chief DOGHO NUMA, the Itsekiri Chief who was so important in the running of the native aspect of the administration of Warri Province during the first three decades of colonialism in Nigeria and who died in 1932, played some role in the resolution of the succession struggle for the Benin throne in 1914 between the Crown Prince AIGUOBASIMWIN and Chief AGHO the Obaseki. But his role was peripheral and dispensable because a firm decision on the matter had already been taken before Dogho arrived on the scene.
Chief Dogho Numa arrived in Benin probably during the first half of April 1914, through SAPELE. The Benin-Sapele road, which construction had been embarked upon by the new Lagos Government in place of the more ambitious and development-oriented Benin-Warri Railway Line earlier planned by the Calabar Government of Sir Ralph MOOR, was nearing completion. Chief Dogho came to Benin along this new road, in an akpele, a cart on wheels or rickshaw drawn or pushed by retainers.
It was the Chiefs second known visit to the City His first recorded visit was on Sunday the 2lst February 1897 three days after Benin City fell to Britain and a day after the Great Fire which completed the ruining of the defeated City. Dogho’s, stakes in the success of the British Expedition had been high. He had supplied a portion of the carrier-contingent which carried on their heads all the supplies of the British army which defeated Benin. Even a not so prominent fellow Itsekiri Chief, FREGENE of Batere, had been able to chip in with seventy carriers of his own.
Dogho entered the soot-blackened City with its roof-less houses in the company of a British military supply column, and of some British Newspaper-men, War Correspondents from Britain who had arrived too late in the theatre of war to report to the world the actual fighting for the City. The War Correspondents’ late arrival was unfortunate for the Edos, as the only available written accounts of the campaign have come from the hands of those who were themselves combatants in the fighting. The story of the Edo war-effort has therefore not been independently known or told.
When Dogho arrived in Benin seventeen years later for his second visit, on account of the dispute surrounding the succession to the Benin throne, Chief Obaseki sent him a bribe of two hundred pounds sterling.
The Itsekiri Chief had a meeting with all the Benin Chiefs. The venue was Chief Obaseki’s palatial residence, the Ogbe Obaseki, by the Uzebu Moat crossing, at the western end of the Uroghotodin High Street. The two contestants for the throne, Crown Prince Aiguobasimwin and the Obaseki, the host of the meeting, were in attendance. The findings of a Commission of inquiry into the matter in dispute, probably the one conducted by Col. H. C. Moorhouse at the instance of Governor-General Lugard, were already to hand.
Dogho held a copy of the Report, probably handed to him by the Colonial officers in Benin. He asked a clerk who was in attendance at the meeting to read out the conclusions of the Report. The findings confirmed that the Obaship of Benin was hereditary, passing from father to eldest son.
Rhetorically Dogho asked the assembled Benin Chiefs whether they were in agreement with the Commission’s findings. The Chiefs confirmed that the concision represented indeed the true position of things. After this affirmation from the Chiefs Dogho repetitiously pronounced in favour of Aiguobasimwin, taking care to be seen to be walking in tandem with the Government on the matter.
Dogho then informed the assembled Chiefs that Chief Obaseki had brought him two hundred pounds sterling. He would keep the money, he said. After all he was from the Benin royal family, being a descendant of IGINUA, Oba OIua’s first son. He was therefore deserving of a gift from Chief Obaseki, which gift should properly be regarded as an imuohan, a sustenance item for the Benin royalty.
It was said that when he arrived home the ltsekiris conferred on Chief Dogho Numa a praise-name for his success” on his Benin trip.
As serious and as menacing as this Ohaseki episode was, the attempt was not able to upstage the Ewuakpe Enactment made two hundred years earlier. The Enactment held out, such was its resilience, and the depths of its roots in the culture of the people. Oba Ovonramwen’s acknowledged eldest son succeeded him to the throne of his fathers.
There is some evidence that he exiled monarch had himself earlier given some guidelines to his British jailers in Calabar about how they should handle the matter of the succession to his throne, in the fullness of time. He was said to have declared to them that Prince Aiguobasimwin was his acknowledged eldest son. Then rather unnecessarily and unsolicitedly he had turned his attention to the British Monarchy itself, advising Britain that succession to that throne be henceforth restricted to only the males of the line. A female was on the throne of England when Britain picked an unprovoked quarrel with Ovonramwen and occupied his Kingdom. When a King was on the throne the macho-ebullience of his soldiers was more even-tempered and more rationally deployed than when the soldiers were fighting for a Queen. An edge of fanaticism, and therefore of rashness creeps into their decisions, exposing the fighting Kingdom to avoidable disasters.
THE Song of Lamentations, by Ewuakpe, Oba of Benin during the troubles days of his rejection by his subjects, is virtually the only song, in the long history of Benin, which has come to us from the mouth of a ruler of the land. The Song details some of his experiences as he trudged through his valley of despair, from which he was finally rescued by the self-sacrifice unto death, of his wife IDEN. The Song is reproduced below.
The Oba of Benin is yet to declare the GRAVE of IDEN a Shrine at which a new Chief, in his pilgrimage procession should stop and do obeisance. At the present time the procession sweeps by the (three hundred years-old Grave, situated by the Oba Market Road end of the Iweho Street, with a scant glance of recognition and acknowledgement of it. A few metres beyond the Grave, at the Oba Market Road junction the Chief in procession turns left towards the next stop-over in his route of honour, the EMOTAN Shrine.
* * * * *
The Song Of Lamentations Of Ewuakpe, The Oba Of Benin.
Ezomo, rhí r ‘ugigho gunmwen momo.
Iyase, rhi r ‘ugigho gunmwen momo.
Esogban, rhi r ‘tigigho gunmwen momo.
Ni ya de atete
Ni ya de ebo.
Nimien ya gha wa Ekioba n ‘Agbado.
A ma ghi wa Agbado
Ai ghi hon emwen agbon.
Ezomo ughu rhie ugigho gunmwen momo.
Ighi de ame gbe aro erhamwen odede
I na ghi mu egbalaka, ina ghi hin ukhunmwun,
Erhuan ka ii de, o ke rhanmwen oto,
I tuu vbe Ogbe, a ma. hon vbe Alaka.
ˇ tuu vbe Alaka, a ma hon vbe Ogbe,
Ezomo u ghu rhie ugigho gunmwen momo
ˇ ghi di ne Ikoka a gha gben ode evbo,
Okpia o rhe ore Ikoka: “Lamogun soyen”
Okhuo o rhe ore Ikoka: “Lamogun soyen”,
O we, u te gha tue mwen “Lamogun soyen
Uma gben ode evbo, u yin ne evbo na,
Ezomo rhie ugigho gunmwen momo.
ˇghi di ne Ikoka a gha yalo oghodo;
Okpio rhe ore Ikoka: “Lamogun soyen”.
Okhuo o rhe ore Ikoka: “Lainogun soyen “.
O we u te gha tue mwen. “Lamogun soyen “
Uma yalo oghodo. uu wanme no rhe evbo na
Iyase rhie ugigho gunmwen momo.
ˇ gb ugbo vb’ lkoka, I na de omo owe,
ˇ na gha tiere: ‘Edo gunmwen yin”
ˇ gb’ ugbo vb ‘Ikoka ni ya de omo amwen
I na gha tiere: “Obo mwan aya fen egbe”
Okhoe n ‘obizeze mu mwen Edogumwenyin,
Okhoe n ‘oguomiza mu mwen Obomwanfengbe
Ezomo rhie ugigho gunmwen momo”.
Chief Ezomo sends me a loan of twenty cowries;
Chief Iyase, oblige me with a twenty cowries credit;
Chief Esogban, lend me the sum of twenty cowries,
With which to buy a mart and a hold – all bag
To display wares with at the AGBADO Market.
If one does not sell at the Agbado Market,
One would not know about the happenings in town.
Ezomo, send me a loan of twenty cowries.
I saw the Shrine of my Ancestors wetted by the leaking roof,
So I got a ladder and climbed aloft to mend.
I slipped from the height and crashed to the floor.
My cries of anguish in OGBE Quarters were not heard in ALAKA Street;
My shouts for help in ALAKA were inaudible in 0GBE;
Ezomo, lend me the sum of twenty cowries.
I arrived in IKOKA village to meet a road-clearing gang.
From me:”The males of Ikoka village, Lamogun soyen!,
“The females of Ikoka village, Larnogun soyen!
Replied they: “You might long hail us Lamogun soyen
But you must join the road-clearing gang,.
lf to inhabit this village is your intention!”
Esogban, lend me the sum of twenty cowries.
In Ikoka village I met a pond-dredging gang;
“The males of Ikoka: Lamogun soyen!
“The fen des of Ikoka: Larnogun soyen!
Replied they: “You might long hail us Lamogun soyen, “
But you must join the pond-dredging gang,
“To obtain drinking water in this Village
Iyase, I need a loan of twenty cowries.
I farmed in Ikoka and bought a male servant,
And I named him: May Benin City proves Hospitable to Me.
I farmed in Ikoka and bought a girl-servant,
And called her: Only from the Labour
Of One’s Hands Comes Deliverance”
An Obizeze ailment killed the male servant,
And an Oguomiza disease the female servant,
Ezomo, Iend me the sum of twenty cowries.
– As sung by Madam Eghaghe Ezomo,
The grand-daughter of Ezomo Osarogiagbon.
