Fact Check: Origin and History of Benin Uncovered - Onyeji Nnaji

Holding the position of one of the prominent empires in West Africa, Benin should serve as the chronology well from where the history of her surroundings should be dug. Unfortunately, the involvement of the kingdom with western culture rubbed her of the most exulted position she once occupied. The monarchs were not aware of the Whiteman’s plans until all that is relevant in the trace of her source was carried away. Today, the pride of the 1440 Benin Empire is only seen in London. This among others made Achebe to intone thus:

The European invasion resulted in Africans losing their “grip over history”. It also led to their losing “their memory of Africa”, a massive loss since “the past” is all we have (Speech, 63).

Up until the late 19th century, one of the major powers in West Africa was the kingdom of Benin in what is now southwest Nigeria. When European merchant ships began to visit West Africa from the 15th century onwards, Benin came to control the trade between the inland peoples and the Europeans on the coast. When the British tried to expand their own trade in the 19th century, the Benin people killed their envoys. So in 1897 the

British sent an armed expedition which captured the king of Benin, destroyed his palace and took away large quantities of sculpture and regalia, including works in wood, ivory and especially brass. Some of these things came from royal altars for the king’s ancestors, but among them were a large number of cast brass plaques made to decorate the wooden pillars of the palace. These had been left in the palace storerooms while part of the palace was being rebuilt. As it later emerged, most of them were probably made between about 1550 – 1650, the people and scenes that they show are so many and varied that they give a vivid picture of the court and kingdom of that time.

Many of the plaques and other objects from Benin city were taken to Europe, where a large number of them were later given to or bought by The British Museum. When the son of the deposed king revived the Benin monarchy in 1914, now under British rule, he did his best to restore the palace and continue the ancient traditions of the Benin monarchy. Because these traditions are followed in the modern city of Benin, it is still possible to recognise many of the scenes cast in brass by Benin artists about five hundred years ago.

As decorations for the halls of the king’s palace, the plaques were designed to proclaim and glorify the prestige of the king, his status and achievements, so they give an informative but very one-sided view of the kingdom of Benin. They do not show how the ordinary people lived in the villages outside the city as farmers, growing their yams and vegetables in gardens cleared from the tropical forest. Nor do they show how most of the townspeople lived, employed in crafts such as the making of the brass plaques themselves. And most striking of all, there are no women or children shown in the plaques, which means that more than half of the people of the king’s court are not shown.

                                               Oba Ewuere

To understand these images we need to know about royal regalia and the role of the king in Benin society. The Oba is shown wearing a crown and tunic woven of red coral beads, which only the king and some of his supporters could wear. The coral for these beads was rare and valuable, traded from as far away as the Mediterranean. It is an appropriate symbol for the king because the prosperity of Benin city and the power of its kings depended largely on long-distance trade.

Origin of Benin

The history of the Benin kingdom is befuddled with several suggestions, many of which were born out of personal interest targeted at projecting the every information that readily assisted the writer’s research purposes. This situation adversely affected the Benin indigenous as they struggled incorrectly to merely make suggestions about their own very history. The closeness of the kingdom to the Ife theosophical structure made them believe that they had migrated from the Oduduwa nation of people. But, information that assign credence to the ancient culture and the making of the Oba of Benin directly tells their story to the contrary of the presumed Yoruba ancestry. This formed the one Homeland version of ancestrial trace which Benin unresearchably believed.

The Yoruba version claimed that Benin father was the last son of Oduduwa. Speaking on the Benin Obaship, this version also claimed that the Benin father lived with Oduduwa until the day Oduduwa passed on. Being the only person around, he took the Oba "chest" and ran to the Midwest to establish the same kingship structure. Some Benin scholars believed this story of theft associated with their father; but it is all false. Benin history does not have a story of stollen kingship in any form. Those spreading this falsehood are doing so because they have refused to study to know the true Benin history. Anybody who wants to know about this stollen kingship claimed here should investigate the cause of the age-long kingship animosity between the Oyo and Ife.

Other versions claimed that Benin had migrated from the Nok region of northern Nigeria, the Jukun Wukari kingship, another suggests Egypt. The English reporter, Cyril Punch, who wrote in the 1890s suggested that Benin had come from the northern part of Nigeria and lived under the king, Lamorodu. The Benin Chronicle by J. U. Egharevgba suggested an Egyptian ancestry of the Benin; he also noted that they settled at the part of Ile Ife which the Benin people called Uhe. The contributions of Egharevba in the discussion of Benin history are enormous. My fear is on the summary that Benin came in three migration waves: from Nupe-Ife, Sudan and Egypt. See details in the Journal of anthropology entitled, Benin Prehistory: The Origin and Settling down of the Edo. The journal was edited by Dmitri M. Bondarenko and Peter M. Roese (1999), pp. 542-552. 

The only truth in Egharevba's copious hints is the inclusion of Uhe. Those who migrated from Nubia (Sudan) were the Zulu and her sister nation; the Kambas of Kenya and the Akans. Another people who migrated from Nubia are the Fulani. Read deeper so you may learn better. Another version, the oral version, speaks of descension from the sky. This was very true, but the involvement of Ogiso Ere was completely out of the way. History is no longer hidden; the true history of Benin is clear, but people find it difficult to get relevant materials. The Oral version is discussed in The Correct History of Edo by Naiwu Osahon. The oral version became most reliable especially when it spoke of a place called Ikodomigodo as the source of the Benin landing.

The continues remark of Ikodomigodo by those who tried to depend on the oral version shows a shift in the oral rendition, maybe as a result of time of transfers of the oral tell for generations. Ikodomigodo should be a veritable pointer that should launch writers to the true source of the Benin, but with the damage done on the name over time, it became difficult to point clearly where the name actually originated. Ikodomigodo points to the home of the Benin Father. The word is Igonigoni. The place is presently in Abi Local Government Area of Cross River State. There is another people settled in Tanzania presently. But, just like the Benin who changed the term, those in Tanzania also changed their name to Kigonigoni.

It is unfortunate that all these suggested places of origin for Benin has never mentioned Igbo land. Just like he Yoruba, Benin wanted to sweep Igbo origin for the Benin into Oblivion. Some suggested Egypt beause of the similitude of one Benin bronze and the shape of the heads of the different  pharoahs of Egypt. Yet they ignored the relevant information that assigned meaning to their history. They felt that Igbo may not have been of ancient standing, and for so may not have any history. To find the truth about any people, one need not nepotise his findings, otherwise he will lose out of facts. History is history and can never be separated from real life stories told through mouths which must have certain evidence on the bearers’ culture, language, myths and other facets of life obtainable within the setting of the people.

The father of Benin held from Umudiala. His real name was Idu. Umudiala were the third set of the Igbo ancestors. Idu and his people first occupied the present day Ikom before relocating. Idu was the man upon whose shoulder the sole function of burying and crowning of a new Eze Nri lied. Before Idu assumed this duty, he was originally the representative of Umudiala in the congregational meeting of the Igbo ancestors in Eridu. Idu was the original Oba in the begining of time. He had a special seat designed for him alone in the kingdom. No other person ever sat on the seat whenever he was absent in the kingdom. It did lasted that, even when he departed to the present Benin, nobody had ever sat on the seat during the meetings of Kings and cabinets of Eze Nri, here in Agukwu.

The only time the seat was occupied was the time itthat a new Oba of Benin was being installed, for it was Eze Nri who performed the ritualistic formalities and foremostly coronated a new Oba of Benin before he returned to Benin for the actual coronation. The last to embark on this kingship tour to Nri kingdom was Oba Eweka II. Issues connected to the spiritual crown formalities of the Oba of Benin was not only captured by the Igbo oral history; whitemen were witnesses to it. The 1906 publication of Major A. G. Leonard, titled The Lower Niger and Her Neighbours. remarked that,

A marked feature of this (Nri) tribe is its hostility to the European, natural enough, when it is remembered that prior to the British, the Obalike was Eze Nri and crowned the kings of Benin and presided over all the religious observation of surrounding peoples.

If there is nothing left to define or clarify the relationship of Benin with any associated ancestry within her surroundings, this spiritual submission to the king of Nri should not be misplaced by researchers. Similar ritual existed between the Effik and Ibibio through which one could vividly decipher who mothered who.    

Idu was a little man in size (a pygmies). That was the size of all his people, for the Umudiala were pygmies. His original settlement was in the present day Ikom land. This was in the begining of things when our fathers were spirits. It was believed that the Stone age art works scattered around Ikom land originally belonged to the Benin of Idu ancestry. As a child schooled in the prestigious Army Primary School Asuegbe in Ikom, I had the opportunity to be exposed to this information. In 1993, our class teacher , Madam Chinyere, took us on an excursion into Ikom Town. In the house of the traditional ruler of Ikom Town, we were entertained by one of the Chief's attendants. Discussing the Ikom history, he made us to know that their present homeland belonged to a people who first occupied the land. He remarked that they kept some artistic features that charactrised their kind of people. What he could not tell us was that the people in question were the Benin. Particular in the monolith, the ones that reflect the arts of Benin are these few engravement shown below. It was during the excursion into Ikom monolith by the African American researchers led by Late Professor Cathrine Acholonu, Igbolanding, that it was uncovered that the ancestors of Benin  first lived in Ikom. We have a similar historical situation in India where the Arinya people had settled first and departed before the ancient Dravidians came in to populate the land. 

The event that ejected Idu from eridu was the same occasion that moved Odudunwa to the west; for they moved at the same time. When Eri died, Nri and His younger brother Odudunwa had quarrels following the wrong advice given to Odudunwa by Idu. When the quarrels was settled, Odudunwa and Idu was banished from the city of Light, called Eridu. Idu moved to the Midwest and founded the city he called Uhe. Uhe is the Okigwe word for light, such was the extraction of the Igbo ancestry he belonged to. In the same light of historical phase, Odudunwa moved to the west and established the kingdom he called Ife. Ife is the Nri word for light, such was the extraction of the Igbo ancestry he belonged to. The names of their new homes are reflections of the kingdom where they had moved from. In the new home, Idu had some children who are called after his name. To know the sons of Idu, including the Idoma, read through the African Journal, Ujah 2 by Le Odeh (2009). 

On the other hand, the Benin alongside all the four nation's on africa that spoke of their progenitors descending from the sky were respectivelywe're respectively correct. What was lacking in their explanations was the differences in time and clarifications on the real person who actually descended from the sky. One thing remarkable about their stories is the idea of a sole place of reference, the sky. This is the affinity they have to prove that the have a common ancestry. The four nation's involved in this same descendancy account are the Igbo, the Benin, the Yoruba and the Dogon. 

Among these four, it was only the Igbo and the Benin fathers that actually descended from the sky. The Yoruba father was one of the sons of Eri, the first to descended from the sky. The Dogon belonged to the Lilliputians among whom Idu emerged. Their reference to the sky clearly shows that they had lived for years before the creation of Adama (the man you called Adam). The Bible and other ancient tablets revealed this.

 Beauty of the Kingdom

Long before Europeans began to sail their ships around the West African coasts, goods were being carried from the shores of the Mediterranean across the Sahara to the great trading centres of the West African savannas, such as Timbuktu, and onwards into forest regions such as Benin. Travelling the other way, the most valuable product of West Africa which reached Europe and Asia during the Middle Ages was gold. This was mined in the regions far to the west of Benin, but it was the search for the source of this wealth which first encouraged the Europeans to sail south and east around the West African coasts. In trying to find a way around the Sahara trade routes which the Africans controlled, the Portuguese arrived in the coastal territories of Benin in 1489. Thus began regular contact between the two countries which lasted 400 years. 

Many of the brass plaques from the king’s palace show images of Portuguese men and they seem to have been made during the 16th and 17th centuries as their costumes show. Although Benin had no gold to offer, they supplied the Portuguese with pepper, ivory, leopard skins and people, who were taken as slaves to work elsewhere in Africa and in the Portuguese colonies in Brazil. Many of these people were captives taken in the wars in which the Benin people conquered their neighbours far and wide and made them part of the kingdom, or they were sent by the conquered local chiefs as tribute to the king.

In fact, the trade with the Portuguese probably encouraged the growth of brass casting in Benin at this time. Although West Africans invented the smelting of copper and zinc ores and the casting of brass at least as long ago as the 10th century, they themselves did not produce enough metal to supply the casting industry of Benin city, which gave such splendour to the king’s palace. The Portuguese found a ready market for brass ingots, often made in the form of bracelets called ‘manillas’.

Brass manilla (bracelet) Europe probably 19th century AD

The figure above shows a Portuguese soldier. He wears a typical 16^th century European costume, with steel helmet and sword, and he carries a flintlock gun. Guns were new to the people of West Africa when the Portuguese arrived. So Africans traded them from Europeans and learnt to make them for themselves, to help them in their wars against other peoples who still only had hand weapons or bows and arrows. Sometimes the king of Benin even employed Portuguese soldiers, like this man, to fight as mercenaries in his wars.

Brass figure of a Portuguese soldier holding a musket Benin, Nigeria 17th century AD

One reason why the rulers of Benin conquered their neighbours was to control the supply of goods which could be traded to the Europeans on the coast. The king himself was in charge of trading slaves, ivory and other important goods, so that all the profit went to support his court and government. Other merchants could only trade with the king’s permission. The Europeans themselves were seldom allowed to travel inland or visit Benin city, to avoid them trading without the authority of the king. The plaques show how the people of Benin perceived the Portuguese traders and their soldiers, with their pointed noses, thin faces and beards and strange clothes. Their presence on the decorations of the king’s palace shows how the Portuguese were regarded as symbols of the king’s wealth and power, to which their trade contributed so much.

Overseas trade was one reason why the king’s power was associated with water, the ocean and the river trade routes by which the European goods came to Benin. It is said that an ancient king of Benin once defeated the sea-god Olokun in a wrestling match on the beach and took from him the coral which the kings have used for their regalia ever since. Mudfish are often shown on plaques because they hop in and out of the water in the coastal mangrove swamps, and are at home on land as well as in the sea, inthe same way that the king has authority over both domains.

Brass plaque of a European Benin, Nigeria 16th century AD

 Another important symbol on plaques are leopards. These show that the king is also master of the tropical forest which covered most of Benin until recenttimes. The leopard is king of the forest, just as the Oba of Benin is king of the city and villages where his people live. The king used to keep leopards, which were paraded on important occasions like mascots, and he sometimes killed them as sacrifices to his gods. The figure below shows one of the King’s hunters, whose work was to capture live leopards for him. So when we see various animals on plaques, they are there for more than just decoration. Throughout West  frica people tell stories and proverbs about all kinds of creatures, wild and domestic, and many of them have characters which reveal important human qualities, in these cases usually those of the king. So crocodiles, the ‘policeman of the waters’, when shown on a plaque probably stand for the king’s authority to punish wrongdoers, whilst the python was the king of snakes, and the messenger of the god Olokun.

Bronze figure of a huntsman Lower Niger, Nigeria 16th-18th century AD

To take another example, a certain bird, a kind of fish eagle, is said to prophesy the future, predicting good or bad fortune, depending on its cry. The story goes that it once warned the Benin king Esige not to go ahead  with a war against the Ibo people. The king ignored the warning and defeated the Ibo in battle, thus proving that he was powerful enough to overcome the prophecy. When Esige returned from the battle in triumph, one of his attendants carried a staff with a model of the bird, which was struck to show what the king thought of it’s prophecies. Thus the bird of the prophecy shows that the king is above the normal dangers of bad omens.

Brass plaque of the Oba holding leopards and wearing a mud-fish belt Benin, Nigeria 16th century AD

The king was the most important person in the government of the kingdom, and treated by his subjects with great respect according to complicated rules. But his power depended on many other chiefs and officials who governed the city and the surrounding villages. In the city itself there were two kinds of chiefs. The palace chiefs, like the king himself, inherited their positions as the senior representatives of their clans. The town chiefs are responsible for the administration of the provinces of the kingdom and were appointed in recognition of their personal abilities and achievements. They represented their people rather than the interests of the king. When town chiefs were shown on plaques they could be identified by their ceremonial costume of pangolin scales. The pangolin (or ‘scaly anteater’) is the only animal which is invulnerable to the king of the forest, the leopard, because it can roll itself up into a scaly ball. That is why the leopard hunters wear pangolin-skin helmets, and the town chiefs wear tunics of cloth ‘scales’ to show that they are protected from being dominated by the king.

Another key figure in the royal court was the mother of the Oba. Queen Idia, mother of Oba Esigie, king of  Benin from the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, played a key role in her son's military campaigns against the Igala people, which may have been over control of the Niger waterway. Benin finally won these wars and made the Igala king a vassal of the Oba. A brass head representing Queen Idia was made to be placed in her altar following her death. It is said that Oba Esigie instituted the title of Queen Mother and established the tradition of casting heads of this type in honour of her military and ritual powers. Such heads were placed in altars in the palace and in the Queen Mother's residence.

Commemorative head of a Queen Mother Benin, Nigeria early 16th century AD

Sacrifices were only a part of a yearly cycle of public ceremonies held in and around the palace, which involved people at all levels of the kingdom. The ceremonies followed the working year, ensuring success in the farming from clearing the forest to harvest, but they also celebrated and strengthened the power of the king and the good order of the kingdom. A great number of people played their own parts in the ritual pageantry, as chiefs and officials, craft guilds or representatives of local communities. Even more were involved as craftworkers producing splendid costumes and ritual paraphernalia for the king and chiefs, like those shown in many of the plaques, or as farmers supplying food for the feasts. Many of the plaques probably represent events or characters from these annual ceremonies, some of which the king of Benin still carries out today. The one below seems to show a procession, with a king or chief flanked by attendants who shade him from the sun with their shields. They are dressed in fine cloth worked in elaborate patterns, whose colourful appearance we can only now imagine. Smaller figures, whose size as well as their scanty clothing shows their lesser importance, carry a ceremonial sword and the kind of circular box used to present gifts. But, as with so many of the Benin plaques, exactly what this scene was meant to show is now difficult to interpret.

Brass plaque showing the Oba of Benin with attendants Benin, Nigeria 16th century AD

Finally, we can take a look at the king’s palace itself. In the 16th Century, when the Portuguese first came to Benin city, they were greatly impressed by its size and grandeur, which compared well with any city in Portugal at the time. They were particularly surprised at the size of the palace, which comprised about a third of the whole city. An 18th century Dutch engraving, based on eyewitness accounts, helps us to understand the plaque shown below. In the middle is one of the tall towers on the wood-shingled palace roof, decorated with a gigantic brass python. Above the snake are the feet of a bird and although the rest of the bird has been broken off we know from the Dutch engraving that it stood with out-stretched wings on the top of the tower, looking rather like the bird of prophecy. The posts upholding the roof are decorated with miniature copies of brass plaques like the ones illustrated in this leaflet. At the base of the posts, on what may be steps into the building or perhaps an altar, are two leopards, probably representing the brass or ivory models of leopards which adorned the palace. The men standing in front of the building include two armed soldiers, no doubt palace servants who also formed part of the king’s army. The young men next to them would be pages, possibly the sons of provincial chiefs sent to serve the king. They were only allowed to dress in the kind of clothes and regalia worn by other palace officials when they were fully initiated as adults.

Plaque showing figures in front of the Oba’s palace Benin, Nigeria early 16th century AD

Source: Benin @ the British Museum n London.