More than a century after it was taken away from the African Kingdom of Benin and kept at Jesus College, Cambridge, Okukor, a bronze stature of a cock, finally made its way back home to the Palace of Ewuare II, Oba of Benin, some time in 2021. A British punitive expedition in 1897 to avenge the killing of Captain Philip of the Royal Niger Company, who was killed by the natives for attempting to violate an important ritual of the Benin Kingdom, destroyed one of Black Africa’s most advanced civilisations. And the hallmark of the Benin civilisation was its highly sophisticated metal working knowledge, with a specialisation in the stylistic use of bronze said to have been introduced into the kingdom by Oba Oguola, as a means of historical documentation.
Characterised by plunder and pillage, while the British expedition resulted in the banishment of the reigning Oba Ovonranwem Nobaisi from Benin to Calabar, the many art works of bronze that abounded in the ancient African Kingdom were looted by the expedition forces, carted faraway and kept in museums in Europe and North America. After many years of concerted clamour by concerned Africans for the return of the looted art works of ancient African civilisations to Africa, Okukor was handed back to the Benin Kingdom, from Jesus College, where it had been on display since 1905.
However, what should have been a moment of joy for Nigerians on the safe return of a precious artefact, became a source of acrimony and dispute over the appropriate name of the dear old ‘Okukor’. The controversy started when the palace officials of Benin Kingdom insisted that the correct name of the returned artefact was not “Okukor” but “Okhokho” because the former is an Igbo word, while the is Bini (the language of the kingdom). And just before the dust could settle over the Igbo “Okukor” or the Bini “Okhokho”, “Akuko”, a Yoruba word for cock, was thrown into the mix as the most probable original name of the artefact. Then came the Ebira “ukokoro”, Igala “aiko”, Efik “Akikor” and many other synonyms of “Okukor” from other parts of Nigeria. In all of these various nomenclatures for the cock among the country’s many ethnic groups, Nigerians have once again majored in the minor differences, while minoring in the major similarities between the peoples and culture of modern Nigeria.
If the contention over the proper name of the returned artefact was intended to highlight the differences between the Nigerian people, it ironically reveals deep similarities and commonalities across the various peoples and cultures of Nigeria. The Okukor, Okhokho or Akuko controversy reveals Nigerians as essentially one people whose over 500 spoken languages are simply variations of a super Nigerian language…
Sixty two years after independence, Nigeria has remained a deeply divided country along ethnic and religious fault lines; a situation that has slowed, if not reversed, the country’s journey to nationhood. Just as a house is not always a home, a country is not always a nation. A house becomes a home when members of a household are cohesive, united and bound together within a convivial atmosphere of love, care and equal treatment by the head of the house, for the purpose of sustaining their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. Similarly, a nation is one that is socially cohesive and united under a prevailing atmosphere of equity, fairness, inclusivity and justice, for the purpose of advancing the course of the collective security and welfare of the constituent peoples. But for a country to achieve nationhood, recognition of the major commonalities and similarities between the constituent peoples must be emphasised, more than the minor variations and differences, in order to forge a sense of oneness, common purpose and national aspiration.
If the contention over the proper name of the returned artefact was intended to highlight the differences between the Nigerian people, it ironically reveals deep similarities and commonalities across the various peoples and cultures of Nigeria. The Okukor, Okhokho or Akuko controversy reveals Nigerians as essentially one people whose over 500 spoken languages are simply variations of a super Nigerian language that is largely mutually intelligible to all. Long before the colonial creation of the modern Nigerian state, the constituent peoples of Nigeria interacted through trade, diplomacy, warfare and migration since time immemorial. That the Yoruba, Igbo and Bini have a similar word for ‘cock’ is a clear illustration of these pre-colonial Nigerian interactions and contacts.
According to the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe, in an interview he granted the BBC Igbo service, he posited that several centuries before the British creation of Nigeria, a group of people migrated out of Ile Ife, in the Yoruba speaking western parts, to Benin Kingdom in the south region, from where they moved towards the south-east to establish the Igbo speaking Onitsha Kingdom, alongside a party of Igala speaking people, Idah, in the north-central. The intersection between the Bini, Yoruba, Igbo and Igala (a people having ancestral links with the Kwararafa confederacy of northern part of what is now Nigeria) in Onitsha effectively ties every component part of present Nigeria to a cultural and linguistic commonwealth. And this explains the similarities in language, customs, traditions, norms and the oneness of the Nigerian people from the north to south and east to west.
To build a Nigerian nation that will be socially cohesive, united, peaceful and prosperous, a new consciousness of the oneness of the Nigerian people has to be instituted through a comprehensive national re-orientation. The core principle of social justice is for a people to desire for others what they desire for themselves. And when opportune, to do unto others what they want others to them.
For example, among the Ebira people of North-Central Nigeria, ‘Oricha’ is the word for the supreme deity among traditional African worshippers. Among the Yoruba people of South-West Nigeria, it is called ‘Orisha’ and for the Igbo people South-East Nigeria, it is ‘Olisa’. And when Ebira people want to consult Oricha, they do it through a medium known as Eva; this is Ifa for the Yoruba and Afa for the Igbo. The famous oracle of Arochukwu, which was originally known as Ubinu Ukpabi, was a fusion of the Aro and Ibibio cosmologies of ancient times. In essence, what the British colonial authorities did when they created the country Nigeria was to formalise an already existing linguistic and cultural commonwealth into a modern sovereign geographic entity. But sixty years after independence, the different people have not been able to create a Nigerian nation from the entity created by the British as a country.
Nigeria’s central issue is not a problem of the lack of unity in diversity but that of division in oneness. This division in oneness is a function of majoring in the minor differences but minoring in the major similarities of the peoples and cultures of Nigeria. Nigeria, like China, Japan and Norway, is a mono racial entity that hardly qualifies as a diverse country but is more of a plural country; a plurality of the same pre-colonial linguistic and cultural commonwealth. The various ethnic identities in Nigeria are superficial products of pre-colonial migratory patterns, interactions and contacts across contiguous environments that make up modern day Nigeria. Ethnicity is not genetically encoded in any individual just as nobody was born with a pre-recorded language. People adopt the identities and languages of the environment they were born into. Some Nigerians who are Northerners today were Southerners yesterday, just as some Southerners were once Northerners. As presently constituted, the people of Nigeria of various ethno-geographic groupings are like members of the same family who are living in different parts of the family compound.
To build a Nigerian nation that will be socially cohesive, united, peaceful and prosperous, a new consciousness of the oneness of the Nigerian people has to be instituted through a comprehensive national re-orientation. The core principle of social justice is for a people to desire for others what they desire for themselves. And when opportune, to do unto others what they want others to them. But for this principle to be sufficiently internalised by a people is to become conscious of the commonalities and similarities that exists between them, hence making it imperative to live and let others live. It was Samora Machel, the first post-independent leader of Mozambique who famously said, “for the nation to rise the tribe must die”. A new consciousness of the oneness of the Nigerian people, irrespective of ethno-geographic variations, is required to transform Nigeria from a country of tribesmen into a nation of citizens, otherwise Nigeria will remain perpetually trapped at the bottom of the pyramid of human development, where life is nasty, brutish and short.
Majeed Dahiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja and can be reached through dahirumajeed@gmail.com.
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