“LET US MAKE MAN…!” WHO WERE THE “US”? - Onyeji Nnaji

Thinking of the possibility of the presence of the people who existed before Adam, we may suggest that, apart from conditioning the earth the way things were over there in heaven, there was what seemed to be a conversational reason; perhaps between the god-men or between the god-men and their creator, God. 

Both Moses and the poet, Job gave vivid information covering this reason. Moses pretended ignorance about the existence of other races before the creation of his progenitor through his writing of the Genesis, but he sometimes found himself confronting certain exigencies resulting from what seemed to be a universal experience which cannot be completely done away with. In his account of the making of Adam, Moses quoted a speech, thus:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth (Gen 1:26)

To make man, God had to make a call, according to Moses; but the people whom God called were what Moses was not prepared to tell us. The Igbo and Yoruba oral tradition enacted this form of relationship amidst God and the ancestors of the Black race. From the Yoruba point of view, God usually have discussions with the ancestors. One of these forms and time was the period of the misunderstanding between Oduduwa and his elder brother, Obatala.

Olorun threw down an iron chain from the sky and told Obatala, the eldest of his sons, to climb down and create land on the water below. On his way down, Obatala joined some other Gods who were having a party, and he later discovered that his younger brother, Oduduwa had created the world in his place…Obatala and Oduduwa quarelled and all the other Gods took sides. In the end, Olorun settled the dispute by giving Obatala the power to create mankind. Oduduwa was allowed to rule the land that he had created. Oduduwa became the first Yoruba king, ruler of the ancient city of Ile-Ife, the place where he was first believed to have climbed down from the sky.

Coincidentally, this discussion of God and the ancestors led to the creation of man. In a simple understanding, there is no difference here from what Moses had written in the Genesis, even without recourse to mentioning of names. Relating the Igbo view point on this God-man relationship, Achebe notes that,

Chukwu Himself in all His power and glory did not make the world by fiat. He held conservation with mankind; he held conversation with mankind; he talked with those archetypal men of Nri and Adama and even enlisted their good offices to make the earth firm and productive.

 Igbo traditional thought in its own way and style did recognize Chukwu as the Supreme Creator speculating only on the modalities, on how He accomplished the work and through what agencies and intermediaries.--- Similarly there are numerous suggestion in Igbo lore of Him working with man to make the world – or rather to enhance its habitability, for the work of creation was not ended in one monumental effort but goes on still, Chukwu and man talking things over at critical moments, sometimes agreeing, sometimes not.

And finally, at the root of it all lies that very belief we have already seen: a belief in the fundamental worth and independence of every man and of his right to speak on matters of concern to him and, flowing from it, a rejection of any form absolutism which might endanger those values. It is not surprising that the Igbo held discussion and consensus as the highest ideals of the political process. This made them ‘argumentative’ and difficult to rule (Creation, 145).

“He (God) held conservation with mankind”. The dominant information in the early part of the book of Job reveals constant and continuous but momentous reunion of the sons of God and their meetings with God. At least, not less than three chapters carry this same information. We find it in chapter 1:6; chapter 2:1 and chapter 38:7. And from the observations of theologians, the book of Job should be older than the genesis stories save for the creation account. It was written in the days when east was the most concentration of creatures.