Arochuwku: What Was, and What Became.
I was not born at the time, so whatever you read here were gathered from conversations with people, tales passed down from one ear to the other — possibly garnished with a little fable and what little resource I could find on the internet.
While the accounts I have heard are different, a few things come up consistently, and these are the things that I will talk about in this piece.
Arochukwu, What Was?
First of all, Arochukwu is a town, which lies in between Umuahia, Abia state, and Calabar(remember this bit) is still very much exists. Seated right at the heart of the town, is a UNESCO world heritage site — the Arochukwu Long-Juju Slave Route. What is called Long-Juju is Ibini Ukpabi, a god who settled disputes among Igbo people then. The judgement of this god was trusted so well that every Igbo person from across what became Nigeria came to him to judge cases.
The Aro people were strong at the time, and they were a defining voice in what is now southeastern Nigeria, so it is not a surprise that their god was worshipped and trusted by every Igbo person then. It was said that whoever had been condemned at Arochukwu, was definitely guilty. So oftentimes, you would find a large number of people outside the shrine, waiting to have their cases heard by the gods and judged according to what they deserved.
The shrine was divided into a few parts, and all of them had their purpose. There is the main shrine of Ibini Ukpabi, in front of it stands the statue of Kamalu, the warrior god, just behind was a waterfall, which was called the voice of Ibini Ukpabi, there is the dark tunnel, which was the judgment zone. Anyone found guilty by the gods went into the tunnels and never returned, and those whom the gods found innocent went home with their families. Just by the shrine is the hill of rags.
If you were accused, you were asked to undress and leave your clothes there before you went into the tunnel. Still by the side is a small river which turned red every time the condemned person had been killed by the god. It would be important to note at this point that if the gods did not find you guilty, you would come out from that tunnel via a route and your relatives will rejoice. Finally, there is an outlet from that deep gully called Iyi-eke, a route that led to Onu Asu Bekee, a river which had to be crossed, again, remember this bit.
All sort of disputes were brought to Arochukwu for intervention and judgment, ranging from murder, family feuds, stealing, and just about anything which had supposedly gone past what the humans could handle themselves, and for a long while, it was the justice system of the Igbo people, and it worked.
Until the white man came
Can I add here that the white man has a habit of just ruining every single thing he touches? One day, I will write about how he literally ruined our belief system and gave us his own, then added a touch of forgiveness and grace as incentives. Now, people just do shitty things in Nigeria and get away with it because of an all-forgiving God. Try that pre-colonization, and you may have just earned yourself a one-way ticket to the grave. Our gods were not very forgiving, and that is what was amazing about them. They killed offenders and vindicated the innocent. Now, the innocent get thrown in jail and the criminals give big tithes in churches. Forgiveness can be bought, no?
Arochukwu: What Became?
With the entrance of the white man and the slave trade, a lot of things happened. People began to sell family members they did not like, and some people were just kidnapped from their homes, never to be seen again. There were so many slave routes out of Nigeria, but the one that annoys me the most is the story of Arochukwu. For what it’s worth, I hope you can feel my anger from this piece.
So, the white people soon noticed that there was a level of trust between the Igbo people and this justice system, so they took advantage of it. They made some kind of trade with the men who were trusted to guard and take care of the oracle, especially the priest who was supposedly the mouthpiece of the gods.
When people came with their disputes, the priest suddenly decided who was guilty and who was not, and sent the guilty party into the tunnel. When they got into the tunnel, they were led through the gully out to Iyi-eke, which led to Onu Asu Bekee. They were usually blindfolded all the way there, then put on a boat and taken through Calabar. The trade was done right at the back of the shrine, and the money went to those who took care of the sacred place.
Word soon spread, and soon, people who did not like their family members brought them to Arochukwu. Unsuspecting innocent people were sold to slavery through this method. In case you were wondering what happened to the river by the shrine; they killed animals and poured the blood in, to convince the relatives that their relative was killed by the gods.
There is more than one route from that shrine, and all of them were used for the slave trade.
Arochukwu went from the justice system of the Igbo people to a traitor.
There is not much between what was and what become except that the white men came here and decided that we made great slaves. No, that was not the problem, it was that they used our brothers to sell us into captivity, and when that was not good enough for them, they used our gods. They desecrated the altar of Ibini Ukpabi and turned him into a traitor against his own people.
They ruined our justice system and gave us a court which could be bribed, and the police made up of criminals who brutalize us, cue in #endsars. Someday, we will find liberation from this madness, because we may be 60 years post-colonization, but we are definitely far from free.
More so, when the black Americans are getting mad at the whites for 400 years of slavery, can some of that anger be directed to Africa? Because we sold them. Years later, there are still families living off of the wealth created from selling their brothers into slavery. One day, we will have these conversations, and I hope everyone is not so uncomfortable then.
Abigail, 2020.
