ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE IJAGAM - Onyeji Nnaji

 One thing history has ignored obliviously is the contribution of the Ijagam in the development of the human population in Africa and the world in general. The Ijagam culture overtook the inhabitants of their neighbourhood right from the Anang-Ibibio of Akwa-Ibom state, the Efik community of people both in Nigeria and the peopling of the human societies in the border country Cameroon. Call them the Ijagam, Ejagam or Ejagham; it is the same term referring to the ancient population of giants that chracterised the monolithic African population that contributed in the peopling of the populations that occupy the present day Nigeria South-Southern/Western Cameroon.

Drawing inference from the interconnected tie between the oral traditions of some historically related neighbours, it is apparent that the name Ijagam was derived from the root word, “Ijaga” which connote “gigantic, huge, giant, large, great” etc. The inclusion of “m” in the word makes it a noun, “Ijagam” referring to a people of the Ijaga ancestry. This is the farthest information that oral tradition can tell anyone seeking to have fuller information about the Ijagam and meaning, except the person has decided to source information from some kind of fantastic storytellers who would want to promote certain views. By this reference to “giant”, “elegance” or the huge lake, “Ijagam”, it becomes apparent that the Ijagam may have a deep connection with the term “Izaga” which represents the same concept and reference to elegance among the neighbourhoods. This is one unquantifiable relevance of oral tradition. It remains the last and most authentic source when every other source fails. Ba Hampate made the following observation,

When we speak of African tradition or history we mean oral tradition; and no attempt at penetrating the history and spirit of the African peoples is valid unless it relies on that heritage of knowledge of every kind patiently transmitted from mouth to ear, from master to disciple, down through the ages. This heritage is not yet lost, but lies there in the memory of the last generation of great depositories, of whom it can be said: 'they are the living memory of Africa' (History 1: 166).

There is always the remnant of every oral property through whom the forgotten parts are easily located. It may be a particular family line or people of relevant traditional position. The tendency is there for a people to be completely disconnected from their real story in its storytelling form due to incursion and negligence. Where this is the situation, just as we can find among the Ijagam, cross-cultural study becomes relevant. No people just sprung from nowhere; every people have one or more sources. Even the Igbo and Yoruba whose myths claimed having descended from the sky, it is still credible that they had come from somewhere. The Ijagam too celebrate this inter/cross-cultural trace of their oral tradition. Nnaji remarks thus:

An oral tradition is considered more genuine and complete when such oral tradition embodies evidences of having mothered people belonging to other tradition via a traceable proof that shows them as belonging to a same source. In the same vein, that oral tradition is considered the richest which contains the prehistory of other people connected to it with clear specifications (Cosmic Chain, 6).

Flickers of the oral sources of any people are not collected via one source; otherwise its true ration may be subject to skepticism. Concerning the matter at hand, the term “Izaga” is a proverb among the Isizulu group of community in the Zulu tribe of South Africa. Among the Isizulu, Izaga is elaborately associated with elegant and huge art and act of notable figures. And as we have found earlier, the Zulu have close ancestral tie with the southern Nigeria. Among the Igbo extraction, Izaga is realized in this same elegant connotative concept, celebrating the existence of a people characterised by outstanding height. For this concept, the masquerade below was instituted to contain this detail succinctly.

                                         

With these views it is apparent to thought that the world of the Ijagam was the abode of giants. Explicitly important, the entire ijagams were not giants, for apparently as it was discovered, the population southward and beyond that have had contacts with the Bantu or are Bantu are direct descents of the Umudiala; the Ijagam must be obviously short people. The Umudiala were identically the little people. Their home was the abode of the pygmies from where they moved and populate the world of old. For as Diop Anta could make us know all the way from Egypt, the entire human population found in Africa had their ancestry traced to the east.  

  

No matter where we collect legend on the genesis of the Black African people, those who still remember their origins say they came from the east and their forbearers found pygmies in the country. Dogon and the Yoruba legends report that they came from the east,…(Civilization, 179).

The Ijagam populations were never grossly giants, but there were giants among them. Conduct any research possibly to unveil the Ijagam culture; one clear finding you will make is that there were giants among them. These giants were addressed in the same term (they were called Ijagam, from where the word becomes useful for the description of the people among them. For in the most ancient time, the land marked for the Umudiala were the whole vas of land ranging from the monolithic Ikom setting through the present day Imo, Abia, southern Ebonyi population and the dominant population that occupy the marshland. Those were in the days when Idu had not catted his population to mid-western region. Throughout these period and the days of Okigwe civilization marked as the civilization of the cavemen (as confirmed by the archaeologist, Anizie). How the Umudiala developed giants among them is detailed in the book Reminiscence. Our findings show that these giants must have travelled through the Ijagam and actually lived with them. This very wide footpath left on the Okwe Asirikwe Mountain is a clear indication that a giant once lived here. Although the Ijagam myth spoke of God standing here at the time when languages

 were created. As a result, they had more languages than others. This claim does not hold any water, for at the time of the spread of the human language God did not stand anywhere here on earth. Ijagam, particularly the Ubang who had wedded this myth into their history, is alone in this view. No other oral tradition of the world claims likewise. Even the Mesopotamians, who had acquired this skeptic myth that associate the spread of language with the fall of a Babel tower, did not have such claim in their myth. Whatever is true about the oral tradition of any people must be found in another oral tradition by virtue of consanguinity. What is credible here is that this footprint remains the most credible proof that giants lived among them. The presence of the giants and their roles in the civilization of the Ijagam suddenly made the Ijagam origin relatively murky.

Origin of the Ijagam

As we have earlier remarked, the presence of the giants in the civilization of the Ijagam contributed immensely in the allusion and obscurity that besotted the Ijagam history. And unlike other organized settlement around them, the Ijagam do not have a family line or certain orally conditioned people to transmit their oral tradition. As a result, the coming of the visitors became the only viable history traceable for the Ijagam. The history of Ijagam is not written, they had depended on the succinct oral history that is passed on through time. From Talbot’s In the Shadow of the Bush, it was gathered that the Ijagam myth of creation speaks of two deities whom they refer to as Obasi Osaw and Obasi Nsi. Obasi Osaw is referred to as the sky God, while Obasi Nsi is an earth God. Obasi Nsi is less powerful. He assigned powers to the goddesses of trees, lakes, rocks and rivers, as countless as their gods are. Talbot remarks that

For the Ijagam people, the whole bush is peopled with these supernatural beings. Here, more truly even than in old Greece, the terror of Pan reigns supreme.

Obasi Osaw is father and Obasi Nsi is mother. The two are expressed in bird and tree worship as every small town has its “juju” tree with weaver birds inhabiting the tree.

Talbot made an attempt at explaining this myth but he could not do this successfully, for as the people mentioned, he was overtaken by the activities of the supernatural; the concept of a supreme overlord and a lesser deity. Creation accounts are not realized in this form when the African situation is called to mind. For as Metuh, E. E. reveals in the book, God and Man in African Religion: A Case of the Igbo of Nigeria; a 1981 publication of Geoffrey Chapman, London; “it has been revealed that in the time of old, men carry spirit in them”. They were all referred to as gods in the African pantheon. Those men of old were godmen; they were spirits in the human’s clothing. The remarkable thing here is the roles of the Nsi god in the creation act. Since they were explained as the creator of earth and man and presides over the human affairs, according to the Ijagam, it is apparent that the history of the Ijagam is traced to these godmen, Obasi Nsi. The idea of this god, Nsi clarifies that the Ijagam had lasted beyond time.

The Nsi godmen were associated with the attributes of divine beings. Among the humans of old, the Nsi were explained as having greater energy (spiritual power) than all their contemporaries. They were the godmen remarkable for priesthood in the traditional concept. And all the Nsi godmen were pygmies; they were generations of dwarf before their stature was influenced on. The Igbo refer to them as “Ndi Eshi/Nshi”. The late professor Catherine Acholonu made the following remark in her comparative study of the global historical contiguity.  In her findings published in the book, They Lived Before Adam,

All Sumerian kings bore the title Esh.  Equally in Igbo land Esh/Eshi/Nshi/Nsi is a sacred word implying divine origins of the first people, who indeed were wielders of supernatural powers.  Igbo people from the area occupied by the autochthons (Orlu and Okigwe) begin time reckoning with ‘Kamgbe Eshi’ – ‘From the time of the Eshi’. The term ‘Oha-eshi’ refers to the generality of the people descended from the autochthons. These would tend to suggest that the Hebrew Esh (‘first people’), Igbo Esh (‘First People’) and Sumerian Esh (Sumerian kings who bear the “ESH” title do so in order to legitimize their reign through association with the autochthons) all have the same root. In fact Sumerians called themselves ‘Black-headed people’ to distinguish themselves from the Egyptians, who were called ‘Black-footed People”.

Read The Twelfth Planet and There Were Giants upon the Earth by Zachariah Sitchim and you will be surprised about the connections of the human race.

The Nshi were explained as the earliest settlers in the monolithic Ikom before the flood. If the same generation of dwarf Esh, Eshi, Nshi or Nsi were the ancestors of the Ijagam, then it is apparent that the Ijagam occupied their present home after surviving the Noah flood. And to have survived this flood, the Cameroon Mountain would be of relevance. From this point they spread into the various communities of Ijagam, forming the Bantu of their own sort. Their spread was also encouraged by the activities of the colonizers who finally separated the South-eastern Ijagam in Nigeria from their eastern Cameroon Ijagam.   

The Misconception

Any historical setting that lacks clarity on her oral tradition is definitely bound to set misconception in the attempts towards deciphering their real source. That is the circumstance that had given birth to the misconception experienced mainly among the Ijagam and their Efik, Ibibio and Anang sister communities. But some issues here are very obvious. The Ijagam had lasted for centuries before the Efik breakout period of the 9000BC. Again the settlement differ among this people is different from the Efik quintessential journey with their Ibibio and Anang sisters. By characteristic features, the culture of the Ijagam shows their relationship with both the Igbo and the Efik Ibibio sect. For instance, all of them are associated with the Nsibidi script art, they share in the Ekpe masquerade culture and both the Ijagam and the Efik/Ibibio communities make use of the Igbo traditional caps. The picture below shows this.  Here are Ijagams dressed culturally.

The next picture contains Ijagam in the traditional attires that depict Efik/Ibibio/Anang cultural wears.

The dispassion of the Efik and the Ibibio/Anang sisters took effect much later; and each of them has a distinct source characteristically remarkable. The Journey of the Efik communities started from Nwangene of the present day Imo State. They settled first at Osak Edet, from where the Ibibio, Anang and other sub-Efik tributaries trace their ways from Osa Edet. This is the reson behind their untold relationship. Meanwhile, because the Efik were of minor population compared with the Ibibio-Anang Bantu parents, there is a subordinating relationship between the Efik and a section of the Ibibio fraction. This, we are not prepared to clarify here.