NRI KINGS ARE TRULY IMMORTALS by Onyeji Nnaji

        
Every Eze Nri is, though mortal but, buried and immortalized before his coronation. Ajuede light caught the pact of this still-antiquity-concerned area of west Africa you need to know about. Just look at this small house with fragile fortress round about it. The White men tried hard, but could not enter this small compound. To see Eze Nri, colonialists had to propose Igbo genocide  



Everything was to however change upon the arrival of the British colonialists who saw the advanced welfarist system of the Nri Kingdom and the widespread loyalty it enjoyed a serious impediment to their parasitic and inhumane pursuits. After failing to capture the kingdom and the king, the colonial forces threatened to slaughter all the people of the kingdom, unless the king appeared before a colonial court in another town, Awka. It was then a taboo for the Nri King to travel outside Nri town, his seat of power, but in order to save the lives of his people, Obalike, who was the king at the time, agreed to travel to Awka to appear before the court. The glory of Nri kingdom was captured succinctly by Major A. G. Leonard in the following way,

The street of the Nri family is the street of the gods, through which all who die in other parts of Igbo land pass to the land of spirits. One may now know and that it is probably through the corridors of Nri history that the Igbo will come to occupy their proper place in the majestic story of the rise of Negro civilization (Lower Niger; 36).

The role of Nri as the foundation ground of African Theosophism positioned the kingdom properly as the maker of the kings of other nations that have kings. In 1906 for instance, Major A. G. Leonard also wrote in his book, The Lower Niger and its Tribes, that “the reverence in which the Nri were held throughout igbo land is the fact that they were widly known as "King-makers" and enjoyed the sole right of removing ritual pollution in Igbo land (P.37).

The king-making views associated with the Nri theocracy is not far understood anytime anybody dims it fit to investigate the origin and history of kingship in the nations within the Igbo neighbourhood. As oral history reveals, the Benin and Yoruba all have issues connected to the Igbo of Nri kingdom, should their kingly history be investigated. Oral history is not alone to this proof, the research works of earlier historians, foreign and natives also have solid information about this. Osare Omoreghie, for instance, stresses this affinity in his trace of Benin history (see Great Benin I & II). Ruth Finnegan, on the other hand, stresses the contribution of the Igbo (Nri) in the formation of Yoruba tradition. Consolidating them, oral history proves that these three brother nations of antiquity have the same historical source. And in discussing their hierarchical positions, the order stands thus: Igbo, Benin and Yoruba respectively. By virtue of their positions, the influences of the Igbo Eze Nri remain apparent in the making of the kings of the rest.   

This pact of spiritual or ritual lordship of the Eze Nri was discussed by many researchers. Lawton, for instance, made the following remark:

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.

J. B. Lawton could not be considered as speaking with floury since it is of evident that he was the acting the Acting District  Commissioner of Awka in 1913. Being for such a time and place, he certainly met Obalike, at least once, to have heard from him and written to that effect. Both Jeffrey and Lawton, (administrative officers) also unearthed evidences in the tradition the Nri, Benin and the Igala suggesting that Nri ritual priests had important parts to play in ceremonies connected with the coronation of the Oba of Benin.

Obalike was the Eze Nri from 1889 to 1936. He was the first Eze Nri to be seen; for all his predecessors were only heard, but not seen. According to Northcote W. Thomas, when the British continued to take over the administration of the Igbo in 1907, both the forces of the colonial authority and the Christian missionaries focused on destroying the Nri traditional authority failed. Military attempts to capture Nri and the Eze Nri ended in complete failure. They forced Eze Nri, Obalike, against a long-standing tradition, to leave Nri town to attend the native court sitting at Awka by threatening to commit genocide against the Igbos. Eze Nri Obalike agreed to leave Nri in order to save innocent lives. The government anthropologist, Northcote confirmed that when Eze Nri Obalike appeared in the court, ‘the whole assembly rose and prepared to flee’. This is because, that was the first time an Ezenri was seen in person. This was the opportunity Northcote and other expatriates had to hear the Igbo history for the first time.  Nobody could take his picture because an Eze Nri is a spirit-man. This is very true; for all Eze Nri were though mortals but immortalized before coronation.

The Making of an Eze Nri

The dialogue staged over the disappearance of Nnamdi Kanu while on the bus, from Onitsha to Enugu, in August 2017 eventually led to the need to visit Nri Kingdom.  Following this, we have discussed the origin of Nri theology previously; yet I do not think it is wise to leave our audience without profound information about this god-man personified as Eze Nri. The history attached to the institution of one is excellently intriguing, but the spiritual invocation that actually makes him whom he is – is mystifying and captivating. Indebt understanding of this spiritual pact makes one to see the Igbo as one mystic collection of the human race whose involvement and personality is more immortal than the contrary. In general, what should be understood is that an Eze Nri is born, but he is not made.

To be qualified for the Eze Nri coronation, a certain people believed to have the same bloodline with the living Eze Nri is formally scarified on their faces. This scarification is designed on the princes of the living Eze Nri. With the facial scarification one could easily differentiate the prince from other age mates of his. All the prices wore this facial scarification to mark them out significantly. The last of the Nri prince to wear facial scarification is seen below through the photograph taken in 1907 by Northcate W. Thomas.

Each of the sons wearing scarification was a waiting Eze Nri, pending the time when the living Eze Nri would die.

On the day the living Eze Nri dies, Nri is faced with another phase of kingship which invariably creates a part in the sustenance of her history; for the history of a king is that of his community through successive years. From the day an Eze Nri dies Nri ceases to have an Eze Nri until seven years are over. The Eze Nri is buried as shown in the picture mummified below.

He will stay for a whole seven years, allowed to decay and mummify into skeleton. On the seventh day, another turn arrives for the making of a new Eze Nri. First, the sepulcher of the deceased Eze Nri will be visited by the king-makers who are themselves purified to contain such purpose. Usually it was the duty of the Umudiala to oversee issues connected to the burial and coronation of Eze Nri. The Umudiala were the ancestors of the Igbo heartland and all that had migrated from them. According to the creation story in the east, a god-man of the third generation married the daughter of Eze Nri. 

This unification conferred on the Umudiala the traditional right pertinent to the coronation and burial of Eze Nri. It was that way until the day (after the war of the gods) that Odudunwa (Oduduwa) and Idu (the progenitor of the Benin and her sister nations) dispersed from the city of the sun known as Eridu. For the Umudiala were custodians of the Igbo tradition (Ome n’ala), and Idu headed this sacred tradition before his days of hobo.The visit to the late Eze Nri’s sepulcher on the seventh year is significant in the formation of the Igbo traditional philosophy. In the Igbo cosmology, the number “seven” stands for the highest level of spirituality (see Nnaji’s Cosmic Chain). By this time, the late king has decayed and the body ignited with the ancestral powers that conferred the title on him. The head only is needed, as the body remains for random visitation over matters of traditional relevance. 

During the coronation of a new Nri king, the king-makers extract the late king’s skull. This is all that is needed for the coronation of the new king. Unlike the ancient Benin that used the heart of the late king to prepare purification and fortification meal for the new king with which he is launched into the aura that sustains the traditional perfection and relevance of the Benin kingdom, the new Eze Nri only needs the skull of his immediate predecessor to contain the design of the crown that he is coroneted with. No Eze Nri retained the crown of his predecessor; each carried a new crown designed on the skull of the very Eze Nri known to him.

Seven days before the coronation of a new Eze Nri, another preparatory purification resumed on the delegated would-be Eze Nri. Two of the sons would be buried alive in different graves. This burial is designed to create interwoven relationship between the new king and the body of ancestors of Nri Ezes. There they stay for seven days. On the eight day, like the principle of circumcision, both sons are exhumed. By this time, having attended seven days of meeting with the ancestors of Nri Ezes, they have attained the level of purification and are as well fortified beyond mortal existence. That is why an Eze Nri in his mortal state could as well attend functions of the immortal essences. But because it is the ancestors who choose an Eze Nri based on their own immortal qualifications, the two would-be Ezes exhumed would have to choose their destinies in the court of the ancestors. 

It is this circumstance of choosing destiny that gives the ancestors the permission to judge between the buried sons and choose the Eze to be coroneted. After the choice is taken, the son with the good fate is spared, while the other joins the ancestors. Therefore, at the time they are exhumed, only the son with a good fate comes up alive and is crowned the successor Eze Nri. The ill-fated one is then given a normal burial.

Nowhere in the earth planet had, ever, or still has this most purified way of choosing the people leaders. The will of any man is completely out of the decision of who survives and who should be coroneted. It had never been, and it is and will never be political. An Eze Nri is a spiritual father; he is not chosen by men because his services are to oversee the affairs of his people beyond mortal realm. That is what the entire Igbo have as the King over them; he is the heritage of Nri and he dwells among the Nri people.                   

Instant Reference

Leonard, M.A. The Lower Niger and Its Tribes. New York: The Macmillan        Company, 1906.

Metuh, E. E. God and Man in African Religion: A Case of the Igbo of Nigeria.   London; Geoffrey     Chapman, 1981.

NNAE, OP268/1921, Lawton, J. G., ‘An Inquiry Under the Collective Punishment Ordinance 1914 Holden [sic] at Oborka Before J. G. Lawton Esqre [sic] District Officer, Political        Officer on Nkanu Patrol on April 2nd 1923’, 2 04 1923.

Oriji, John N. Traditions of Igbo Origin. New York: 1990.