vanishing Multiple Eze System in Anioma Cultural Space and Accompanying Challenges: A Case Study of the Ibusa Community

 vanishing Multiple Eze System in Anioma Cultural Space and Accompanying Challenges: A Case Study of the Ibusa Community

Emeka Esogbue  

According to Gideon Ikenwe, “a society or community without stratification or authority, functions, and social ladder will enthrone disrespect, disorderliness and even anarchy, at which stage the community becomes ungovernable. There must be levels in every society and extant rules and regulations that will control these different levels and by and large, bring discipline to the entire community.”

The Ibusa society with ladders of statuses and stratifications falls within the establishment of Gideon’s theory of social stratification as elucidated above. The Ibusa society recognizes that everyone in the society does not enjoy homogenous or equal rank or eminence, as individuals with different beliefs, desires, and aspirations will always want to rise beyond the other by climbing socio-political ladders to find their way to the top. The Ibusa society, has also in consideration of this societal expectation, created several satisfying avenues to mollify this need and yearning among the members of the society.  

The stratification goes on even in death when different humans are buried differently, some valiantly, according to their acquired status while they were still alive and others in ordinary and familiar terms according to the unassuming lifestyle lived by them. Just as a child is never accorded the burial benefits of an adult, the Mgbankpisi, in Ibusa is never buried like the Mkpalor. In the same vein, the Mkpalor cannot in death, be gifted the rites of an Eze titleholder. It is the same in every part of the Anioma. Choosing one’s status on earth, by implication, is a decision on what form of burial one becomes entitled to. However, it must be emphasized that social status is not all about burial but serves other means and purposes. 

The Ibusa stratification  

The Ibusa society is broken down into three specific classes that are:

Eze or Obi

Mkpalor

Mgbankpisi

The social rank of this arrangement is derivable from the pointers of Ebuke and Awele, writers on Ibusa history who considered that “the lowest title or rank amongst Ibusa men is Mgbankpisi. This is followed by Mkpalor with the Obi being the highest.”

From the above, Obiship or Ezeship can be seen as the highest stratification of the Ibusa people. It is also important to state that climbing the ladder of attainment in the assumption of these classes proceed in small stages of life. For instance, no one can earn the rank of an Obi without first being a Mgbankpisi or Mkpalor without first wearing the Mgbankpisi robe. It is from the rank of Mkpalor that one takes up the Eze title. This is the aphorism in the saying, “Okpali Alor na Eze dia nso, followed by responses from the witness,” usually sung on the day of the Alor ceremony of any particular candidate. It is perhaps, a traditional reminder to the candidate that he could go further, beyond the Alor stage, to take up the Eze title, which is next to the Alor about to be enjoyed by him. The sound of “Okpali Alor na Eze dia no” tends to intoxicate the Alor dancer on the day of the ceremony who on the day of his show, begins to think ahead of exalting himself to the step of Eze upper class.   

As said before, once the Alor is assumed, the next ladder to be climbed becomes the Eze, which is the last. To start with, there is a traditional caveat to taking up Alor. The Alor candidate must have first lost his father to death as a prerequisite. It is the loss of his father that naturally promotes him to manhood. After all, by traditional stipulation or specification of the people of Anioma as a whole, one cannot be a man while his father, another man is still alive. It is the natural ability to take the place of his father and to act in manliness in all expectations that confers manhood on him. By implication, every Eze seen are men because they have taken the places of their fathers and could act in their stead.   

Ezeship in Anioma          

Ezeship or Obiship (not to be confused with monarchical Obiship in other places) is an institutional practice of the Anioma people but found only in the four communities of Asaba, Ibusa, Okpanam, and Illah, four neighbouring Oshimili settlements.  It is called “Multiple Obis” or “Multiple Ezes” since anyone may assume it within these named communities provided that the traditional requirements are ably fulfilled. It is unique to the Anioma and never in practice anywhere else. The Multiple Eze institution is distinctly tailored to suit the traditional interest of the Anioma people and is something that other societies particularly among the Igbo of the South East find difficult to understand. It possesses the difficulty of understanding even to the rest of Anioma societies where it is not in practice and unusual.   

The interest in assuming the Ezeship in these parts of Anioma is initiated by the man who must also assume it with his wife, without whom it is impossible to take up. For this reason, the Obi must be married before he expresses interest in the esteemed title of his forefathers. It is in this regard, that there exists the “Obi Nwoke” and “Obi Nwanyi”, inversely described according to their sex. Where the woman in question refuses the ambition, the Obi is left with one of the two options of either his inducement of his wife to obtain her approbation or the option of taking up another wife to accomplish his Obiship determination. One of these two options must be duly satisfied for the Obiship to emerge. 

In those days, the tradition of the people provided the way out for a desperate and strongminded candidate to take up the title. He could get an egg to throw at his non-interested wife. The wife, knowing what a desperate husband could do, could easily flee from home and the husband, frantic, determined, and poignant to become an Obi, by all means, could spend years in an attempt to hunt down the woman whom he could throw the raw egg at. The egg, once hitting the woman, confers on her husband, the right to take up the title. Nevertheless, since not every man would be patient enough to institute a manhunt for his wife, some of the men could easily take up another wife to fulfill the purpose in them especially if the wealth is available.

The Obi does not reign as expected of the monarch or any sovereign ruler except where nature has thrust upon him the likely privilege of the head of his community in the case of gerontocracy. It must be further accentuated that before now, core and staple gerontocracy was the system of government in the four communities of Asaba, Ibusa, Okpanam, and Illah. These four communities were heavy practitioners of antimonarchism as a system so that where nature confers an Eze titleholder with the headship of the community, he becomes the community head. Curiously, the system of administration in these communities has changed over time with newer arrangements in place. 

In Asaba, republicanism gradually gave way to Asagbaship when the richest Eze or Obi emerged as the first Asagba of the community. This changed the system of governance completely in that community. HRM Obi Prof Joseph Chike Edozien, CFR, born on July 28, 1925, in Asaba, a former professor of mathematics is today the 13th Asagba of Asaba. According to history, the Asagba stool introduced in 1780 with Obi Nemo of Umuogu as the first Asagba of the community defines “Eze Asagba Nwe Agba”, meaning the only Eze with wealth and stature to summon all other Ezes in the community to a meeting and preside over them. It was only in 1925 that the principle of rotating the Asagbaship in Asaba among the five quarters that make up the town was adopted.  

Illah community is today headed by Ogbelani. In Ibusa, the people had approached the government and now have the Obuzo system in place with the Obuzo-in-Council charged with the community’s leadership as the prescribed authority. It was an Obuzo system patterned after the Asagbaship of the Asaba people with HRM Obi Prof Louis Chelunor Nwaoboshi, a retired professor of forestry from the University of Ibadan as the first beneficiary. He remains the first and only Obuzo of the community to date. 

For the people of Okpanam, a neigbouring community, the case is not different. Okpanam is bordered to the East by Asaba, the state capital and Ugbolu, claimed to be once vassal to the community, Ibusa and Ogwashi-Uku to the South, Issele-Azagba and Azagba Ogwashi to West and Akwukwu-Igbo, Atuma and the River Niger to the North according to information supplied by Felix Igbekoyi. The community rose to champion a cause that saw the Utchi community become patterned after the Asaba and Ibusa internal political arrangement. 

The new Okpanam arrangement bore the Ugoani system in which HRM Michael Mbanefo Ogbolu emerged as the traditional ruler of the community but while there is an important provision that mandates any candidate seeking the position of Asagba, Obuzo, and Ogbeleani to first assume Obiship as a prerequisite, the Okpanam Ugoani document neglected this. With HRM Michael Mbanefo, the first beneficiary who never assumed the Obiship according to the dictate of the document, the inattention in the document turned out to become a huge disadvantage in the internal political arrangement of the community. This is because while a few men, on assuming Obiship, attained the highest status, required of the sons and daughters of the community as practiced in related Asaba, Ibusa, and Illah, the Ugoani is not an Obi. The new arrangement threw up challenges in Asaba but Ibusa, Okpanam, and Illah especially.  

Ezeship in Ibusa: The Origin

As established earlier, Ibusa is one of the four Anioma communities that practice the Multiple Eze system. Generally speaking, there are several schools of thought on the origin of Ezeship natively known as “Ichi Eze” in the people’s local parlance. Some writers on the traditional institution of the Anioma people have posited that the reason for the origin of the Multiple Eze system in Asaba, Ibusa, Okpanam, and Illah is traceable to the period that the communities were protected against the assumption of sovereign rulership by any individual. In Ibusa, it is buttressed with the 18th-century end of the King Ezesi Dynasty in the community. Ezesi, the last of the Ibusa monarchs in history, was enthroned by the Oba Akengbuda, the Oba of Benin was dethroned and he consequently went on exile to Ejeme Aniogor. The school of thought holds that Ezeship in the community was a check after the dethroned King Ezesi to ensure that no single individual rose to become the king of the community, which the community knows as “Eze Ofu Ani.” 

Ezesi was indeed the last of the Ibusa personalities that enjoyed the honour of a singular Obiship in the community. After him, monarchy in the Obiship of Ibusa ended for the people as what followed was the Multiple Eze system in which any freeborn of the community was at liberty to assume the title of Obiship. The institution therefore transformed from monarchy to the nobility that it is today.  

The other school of thought, retained in the legend of the people, explains the origin of the institution which it traces to Nshi (Nri), the kingdom from which Edini, the founder of Ogboli, a settlement, now a quarter in the community is said to have migrated from. Some writers of Ibusa history typically, Prof Michael Angulu Onwujeogwu have written widely to claim that Obiship as practiced by Ibusa people was imported from the Nri Kingdom, presently located in Anambra State, southeast of the country. This places on Ogboli, the custodianship of Obiship in Ibusa and also the reason the people are legendarily referred to as “Nshi Nwe Eze”. According to this school of thought, it was from Ogboli that Obiship was imported into Umejei’s Igbuzo settlement in 1844 by Odiegwu.

Challenges facing Obiship in Ibusa   

From the 420 recorded number of Obis available to the Ibusa community in 1914 and 600 in 1983, there are now about 5 Obis in the community. Although the people of the community still place inestimable value on Obiship, the institution appears to gradually vanish from existence due to several reasons that can be mainly attributed to the high cost of acquiring it and burial of the Obi, on one hand, and the other, the conditional life that the Obi must live. Ironically, anyone may regard the Obi but not anyone may wish to assume it because they consider it very odd to do so. Quite often, it is considered the status of an old man who is finished with life and wants to spend the remaining days of their lives, taking some rest. This is worsened by the traditional stipulation that forbids the Obi from traveling outside the Ibusa community. 

I have in my book, “A History of Ibusa,” enumerated the life of an Obi and other challenges confronting the institution. I will only just reproduce these challenges as published in the book to further the understanding of why the institution is almost dead. 

Challenges facing Obiship Institution in Ibusa Today   

First, it should be understood that threats to the existence of the Multiple Obi system are not peculiar to Ibusa as the institution is also dying a gradual death in the rest three Anioma communities of Asaba, Okpanam, and Illah where it is also practiced. Although the factors challenging the institution in Ibusa will be listed here, it is important to underscore that in Okpanam the vacuum created in crafting the Ugoani document, discussed earlier in this work, in which Obiship status for Ugoani candidate was neglected is rearing its ugly head to finally vanish the institution in that community. Take, for instance, the chief traditional emblematic identity of Obiship in these four communities is the red cap, which the Obi must wear at all times. This is to say that not only should the red cap not be far from the head of an Obi, but it is also nearly exclusive to this institution and the Omu while other few privileged titleholders only rely on occasional honours to adorn it. The widely regarded okpu odudu is called the “Okpu Ndi Nze,” cap of the Eze in Okpanam.  

One of the controversies raging in the communities that instituted court cases is that the Ugoani permitted his chiefs to wear red caps without the traditional conferment of the title by the Onishe and kingmakers. By the people’s age-long tradition, not even the Ugoani is entitled to put on the red cap since he is not an Obi. The indiscriminate wearing of the red cap in Okpanam or any of these four Anioma communities will amount to relegating an endearing right of Ndi Eze. It thus constitutes a threat to the existence of Obiship since society cannot guard the institution jealously. 

The challenges facing Obiship is Ibusa are listed below:

High cost of acquiring the title in the face of today’s poor economy 

The expensive funeral ceremony of a deceased Eze sometimes require the survivors to either borrow money or sell off landed properties to raise money for the burial

Little or traditional functions to perform in the political arrangement of the community

Unfavourable influence of Christianity, civilization, and westernization 

The numerous conditions that accompany the bearer are unfavourable in modern times

All of these challenges are applicable in other communities where the institution is in practice

The way forward

If the four various communities that practice the institution desire to preserve Obiship, they would need to reform it. In reforming it, it will be made relevant and attractive to young minds who may then patronize it. For a community like Okpanam, it should be made an important prerequisite for the attainment of the Ugoani. Any traditional ruler in any of these four Oshimili communities must never be junior in rank to an Obi title wearer. Fortunately, Asaba, Ibusa, and Illah realized this in Asagba, Obuzo, and Ogbelani respectively. Okpanam should seek to amend the Ugoani white paper to make it mandatory for any Ugoani candidate to first and foremost, ‘chie Eze’ i.e. pass through Obiship rites before becoming one. The Ugoani would then become complete in status, nobility, and royalty as an Obi and also one who could adorn the red cap according to the laws of the land. 

As for Asaba, Ibusa, and Illah, these communities should take steps to reform the institution. Some people have argued that it is an elitist title but since culture is meant for the people and not the other way round, it is quite sensible that the unnecessary expenses are incurable from the desire to take it up to be reduced and that some unexpected rites be abolished. That Obiship is going into extinction like Omuship is something that culture enthusiasts should worry about. However, something can still be done to revive it. 

Emeka Esogbue is the 2020 Ornimedia Anioma Writer of the Year