The EDO MAN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

With a few months to go to the end of the Twentieth Century it is right to look back at the last one hundred years and attempt to identity the one Edo person who lived during this period, and whose life brought the greatest good to the Edo people. Aiguobasinmwin, Prince of Benin, and later EWEKA II, Oba of Benin is, in my opinion, that person.

Edo State, amongst the thirty six States of Nigeria is referred to as the "Heart-Beat of the Nation". It has earned this flattering appellation because of the world-wide exposure which Benin's sophisticated art culture has enjoyed this century, supported by the suprisingly great span of the remembered history of Edoland. These have made Benin to loom large in the tapestry of cultural Nigeria, and the life of Prince Aiguobasinmwin played a pivotal role in bringing about this prominence enjoyed by Edoland. Prince Aiguobasinmwin, son of Oba Ovonramwen succeeded in succeeding to the throne of his fathers, the Obas of Benin when Ovonramwen died in Calabar on his seventeenth year of exile from his throne and his kingdom. On this achievement is founded the significance of Aiguobasinmwin's life. His attainment of the throne was against great odds, and the benefits which have accrued to Edoland from this personal triumph of his have been incalculable. These benefits are sufficiently important to make Aiguobasinmwin the "Edo Man of the Twentieth Century."
Hampate Ba, the Malian Writer said: "Every old person who dies in Africa Is like a library set ablaze."With equal veracity it could be said that every long-lasting Dynasty which died in Africa was like a whole country losing its history.

Prince Aiguobasinmwin was crowned the Oba of Benin on 24 July, 1914. Two events, each of enormous significance, took place conjointly in that single act. The first event was that Benin land had once again become a kingdom, with the restoration of the monarchy. There was again a Palace in Benin seventeen years after the City had lost the services of that institution, and the belief was already widespread that the ruling British would see no need to restore the institution after having been able to cope without it for nearly two decades. In point of fact two thirds of the Palace grounds had already been taken over by permanent fixtures of the colonial authorities. The remaining one third was not built upon because it had been pressed into service as a Government farm where the in-mates of the Benin Prisons did the"Hard Labour" aspect of their sentence, raising food crops to augment the supplies to the Prison Kitchens by the Prison Contractors.
The second significant event inherent in the crowning of Aiguobasinmwin in 1914 was that the monarchy was restored to the same dynasty, the same family which had possessed it for seven hundred years when their patriach ORONMIYAN, the Ile Ife Prince, arrived in Benin, and which had lost it in the British conquest of 1897, We have it on the written testimony of Dr. J. U. Egharevba, the Obakhavbaye of Benin and the father of Benin historiography, that it was the ceremonies which accompanied the crowning of Oba Eweka II in 1914 which brought to his attention the richness of the history of old Benin. Grateful at discovering what would have been hidden from him but for the Restoration Egharevba frenziedly put pen to paper, and recorded for posterity as much as he could of the lore of old Benin, as narrated to him by the old men of the Nineteenth Century who had survived into the Twentieth. In a long life of labour he published at least thirty-two works on this single subject.

J. U. Egharevba saved Edoland from the fate spelt out in the truth of Hampate Ba's profound observation. The crowning of Prince Aiguobasinmwin as the Oba of Benin determined the great writing career of Egharevba. Had the 1914 Restoration resulted in a change of dynasty, as would have happened if Aiguobasinmwin had lost out in the struggle for the restored throne to Chief Agho, the Obaseki of Benin, there would have taken place a determined if subtle suppression of the seven century-long history of the Obas of Benin. With the discouragement of the dissemination of the history of the defunct dynasty by the succeeding rulership much of the now remembered history of the Edo people would also have been suppressed, since the history of pre-literate peoples was always tied up with that of their Kings. This type of situation occurred in Benin eight hundred years ago during the period of the dynastic change from the Ogiso period to the Oba period. At the time the Obas were struggling to entrench themselves in Benin the word "OGISO" became taboo in the land. The mere mention of it attracted sanctions. A euphemism: Ogie GUI: "the King is angry" was adopted for the word "Ogiso", and used whenever the word had to be mentioned. This tendency is natural and is to be found in all of history. It happened in Hausaland two hundred years ago. Uthman dan Fodio, the Fulani Moslem cleric, had conquered much of Hausaland and beyond during the course of his Jihad. Before dan Fodio's time the courts of the kings of many of the Hausa kingdoms were already literate in Arabic. The histories of the kingdoms and their interaction with their neighbours had been written down by their learned clerics. But
the successor sons of Uthman dan Fodio, highly literate and keenly aware of the power of the written word, ordered the written records of the pre-Jihad histories of the conquered kingdoms to be consigned to the flames. This was to ensure that the centuries-old native ways, the indigenously developed habits  and thought - processes of Hausaland were wiped off the memory of the conquered peoples. In their place the ways of the new Caliphate were to constitute the only remembered and accepted truth of the land. The age-old wrong-headed belief in racial superiority had always underpinned the sustenance of all empires, and the British Empire was no exception to this rule. This belief was the moral foundation for, and thereafter the justification of, colonialism. Fervently believed in by the colonial Field officers the idea upheld and reinforced their personal authority in their day to day dealings with their colonial subjects. Any appearances which tended to question this faith were denied, discouraged or actively suppressed, to ensure for colonialism the unchallenged tenure which it enjoyed.

The story of the publication of the book the "History of the Yorubas", written by the Rev. Samuel Johnson, the Yoruba Pastor of Oyo town illustrates this point rather well. The book was completed in 1897, the year Britain conquered Benin, after twenty years of labour by the author. The manuscript was sent for publication to a Publishing House in London. The voluminous manuscript got "lost" in the offices of the Publisher, who then turned round and offered to pay for it! The author died broken-hearted in 1901. But luck was with Africa. The Rev. Johnson had an equally eruditely - educated brother, in the person of Dr. O. Johnson. From the copious notes and scripts which the author left behind Dr. Johnson re-wrote the "History of the Yorubas". It is assumed that the British colonialist of one hundred years ago, whether he was a field officer in the colonial administration in Nigeria or a Publisher in London, must have seen
very clearly that the publication of such a sophisticated history of acolonised people would tend to strike hard at the battlements of colonialism, and question seriously the reason for its continued existence.

The saving, and therefore the preservation for posterity, of the morethan one thousand year history of Benin land was achieved, and more importantly encouraged, by the successful accesion to the throne of his father by Aiguobasinmwin in 1914. His struggle to attain the throne was successful because of his sterling personal qualities. He seemed to have been specially structured by fate to wage this struggle, so that victory in the fight would not elude the land. And
Aiguobasinmwin was himself the first person to acknowledge, and to mark, the fortuitous roles which fate played in his becoming the first Oba of the Restoration. He took the title: Eweka : "Got it !!! " Later in his reign he formalised this sense of quiet triumph by creating a new title, an egie ozema, to celebrate and commemorate the happy circumstance. The title was: Eweka - guosa - d'Oba : "Eweka II purchased the Obaship of Benin At the hands of the Lord God Almighty". Chief M. I. Agbontaen is the current holder of this title which is heavy with the weight of the improbable history that gave rise to it. A sequence of happenstances coalesced into the full fruiting of the dynastic Restoration in Prince Aiguobasinmwin: Aiguobasinmwin was a love-child, born by a woman who, during the period of her pregnancy, was nominally the wife of another man. The name: Aiguobasinmwin: "No subject-citizen disputes ownership-rights with the Oba of Benin", was given to the new-born baby by the cuckolded husband, in acceptance of, and acquiescence in, the wrong done to him. This was in recognition of the lofty societal status of the philandering youngman who had cuckolded him. The youngman was the Edaiken, the Crown Prince
of the Benin kingdom and Empire, Idugbowa, later Ovonramwen, Oba of Benin. Largely because of the above-mentioned circumstance of his birth Aiguobasinmwin, as an adolescent, was side-lined for the throne, in favour of his junior half-brother Prince Usuanlele. He left Benin City with his mother Dame Eghaghe to his mother's ancestral village of EKHOR in the ISI district of the kingdom. In common with the other youngmen of his age he learned to be a subsistence farmer and an oil-palm fruit harvester. These activities helped to augment his and his mother's living expenses. Later some untoward incidents occurred in the Palace of Oba Ovonramwen in Benin City. To bring about a resolution of the problems the Oracle decreed the recall of
Aiguobasinmwin from Ekhor village, and his re-instatement to his rightful position as the Edaiken, the Crown Prince of the kingdom. Prince Usuanlele was, by that same token, demoted to the second position in the line of succession. Royal messengers were despatched to Ekhor. When Aiguobasinmwin arrived in state at the Palace of his father, bathed in the white chalk of sanctification and rejoicing Ovonramwen, in a great public ceremony sat the Prince on his laps, and
holding him to his breast pronounced him the heir to the throne of Benin. Not that Aiguobasinmwin was in truth the first male child fathered by Ovonramwen. He was not. Ovonramwen's first-born son was Prince EHIGIE, later the Enogie of Uwaan village in the Ozoguor group of villages. But the circumstances under which the adolescent Prince Idugbowa fathered Ehigie were so casual that Ehigie was never at any time in any serious contention for succession to the throne. Ehigie's mother accepted this quite early and did not object to her son acquiring the Ikharo facial markings which Benin Princes did not wear. When Prince Aiguobasinmwin was confirmed in 1914 by the colonial authorities as the next Oba of Benin he went to Prince Ehigie and ritually "purchased" Ehigie's seniority from him. Ehigie formally surrendered it to him in a short ceremony. He then prayed for Aiguobasinmwin, wishing that the restored office would be a blessing
to the Oba-elect, and to the kingdom.

During the seventeen years which elapsed between the British conquest and the Restoration Prince Aiguobasinmwin led the hardy life of just another Benin City citizen of those difficult days. The experience in self-reliance which he had acquired during his adolescent years in Ekhor village stood him in good stead during this second period of privation which was to last for nearly two decades. The Prince, on his return to the City in 1899 from his two years of fugitive existence
which he had spent dodging the British occupation soldiery of the Benin territories, built himself a house in Ogbe Quarters. Once again he sustained himself and his household largely by subsistence farming. He farmed in the suburbs of Benin City, in the area now known as Evbareke Quarters, through which passes the Edo Textile Mill Road. Oba Akenzua II, Aiguobasinmwin's son, named the area "Evbareke" because the territory was an inheritance, a piece of real estate
retrieved from the forbidding equatorial forests by a struggling, labouring father of, at that time, an indeterminate future.

The local colonial administration made efforts to accommodate Aiguobasinmwin in the changed circumstances of the Benin City of the first decade of the Twentieth Century. He was offered the District Headship of the Agbor territories in 1900. This gift led nearly to his losing his life when the Agbor people rose against him. Their grouse was that his father Ovonramwen had been on the verge of moving militarily against Agbor town when the Benin/British War aborted the expedition. The cause of the quarrel between Ovonramwen and Agbor had to do with the activities of the Royal Niger Company of Sir Taubman
Goldie. The Company regarded all the lands of the Niger river basin, including much of the present-day Northern Nigeria as its territory of operations. From the Company's base in Asaba its officials subverted the influence of Benin in the western Ibo territories in the hope of physically occupying the territories by Treaty-making with the local kings. It then hoped ultimately to move on Benin City itself and seize the Benin territories from the Niger Coast Protectorate
Government in Calabar which had as yet not been able to make good, by physical occupation, its claims to the Benin territories. Had Ovonramwen had the time to move against Agbor he would have, in effect, inadvertently been at war with the Royal Niger Company. Aiguobasinmwin undertook a Meet - the - people tour as the District Head of Agbor. An argument arose in the Council Hall over some matter of protocol which had to do with the seating arrangement between the
Benin Prince and the Obi of Agbor, the traditional ruler of the town. Tempers flared and the people moved against Aiguobasinmwin and his entourage with cudgels and matchettes. As the Prince retreated from his attackers, dodging their blows as best as he could he steppedbackwards - into the gaping mouth of an uncovered well. He made a great somersaulting leap backwards, successfully clearing the chasm ofthe well. His attackers stopped in their pursuit. He arrived Benin safely, and the British authorities sent Chief Osula to take his place in Agbor. It was said that the ankle which initiated the great backward spring which saved the day grumbled periodically thereafter throughout the life --time of the monarch.

Thereafter Prince Aiguobasinmwin became a well-known Government Contractor. He was one amongst those involved in the construction of the first roads in the Benin territories. Some civil works in the City were also awarded to him, like the filling up and obliteration of the AGBODO pond, the six hundred - year old body of muddy water near the walls of the old Palace. The pond was the scene of one of the struggles between the Princes Esigie and Arhuanran, sons of Oba
Ozolua, four hundred years earlier.

At least once, but probably twice did the British authorities in Benin scramble their occupation forces when alarums went out that Prince Aiguobasinmwin was on the verge of launching an attack on the British. He was said to have planned to drive the colonialists out of Benin to avenge his father's deportation. In the episode of 1906 troops were moved again into Benin City, and army units in other places put on the alert. Investigations revealed the alarms to be false. The rumour of 1906 must have arisen because on the First day of January of that year Sir Ralph MOOR, the conqueror of Benin and the jailer of Ovonramwen in
Calabar, lost power. He lost it to the Governor of Lagos when the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was amalgamated with the Lagos Colony and Protectorate. Calabar became just a provincial headquarters instead of the capital of a country she had been for fifteen years. Moor returned home. To the conquered Edos the movement of the Government to Lagos and the exit of Sir Ralph must have seemed like a form of liberation, with the jailer walking away and leaving the
prison doors wide open.

On January 1 1914 the two Nigerias, North and South, were amalgamated under the Governor - Generalship of Sir Frederick LUGARD. Oba OVONRAMWEN died thirteen days later, on 13 January, 1914, in hospital in Calabar. Had the two Nigerias not been amalgamated it was likely that Benin would have permanently lost her monarchy, and therefore the memory of much of her past history. The Government of Southern Nigeria was prosecuting the policy of the Direct Rule of the dependent peoples. This policy was in direct competition with the pre-colonial traditional institutions for the loyalty of the colonised peoples. It would naturally therefore seek to further weaken, rather than strengthening those institutions. As it happened the headship of the newly created conjoined country of Nigeria was vested in Sir Lugard, the apostle of Indirect Rule. Lugard had put this policy through its paces in his beloved Northern Nigeria which he had, like Uthman dan
Fodio a hundred years before him, conquered. He saw that the policy worked, and moreover that it was cheap to run. Now that he was additionally in charge of Southern Nigeria he ordered the application of the policy across the board. His action was reminiscent of what the Obasanjo/Yar'Adua Government did to Nigeria in 1978 with the Land Use Decree. The local officials in Benin, led by Resident James WATT, compelled to carry out an administrative policy which they did not see any need for, decided to eat their cake and still have it: they would abide by the new directive and yet maintain the status quo aute. Chief Obaseki would continue to run the show in Benin, but with a change of nomenclature, from "Chief" to "Oba". It was here that Prince Aiguobasinmwin's strength of character and the hardiness which had been built into him by all of his previous experiences stood him in good stead in the struggle he had to wage, so that the Restoration, which was now inevitable, was vested in the same Oronmiyan dynasty which had lost it seventeen years earlier. In his fight against the overwhelming influence and contrariwise disposition of James Watt Aiguobasinmwin reached outside Benin for help. He appealed to the
Ooni of Ife, whence the Benin dynasty came. He wrote to the Alaafin of Oyo, his junior half - brother, born after Oronmiyan their father had walked out on Benin. He appealed to the British monarch King George V. In Benin City itself the PACT which was made two hundred years earlier between Oba Ewuakpe and the Benin City chiefs: that the office of the Oba of Benin would be occupied only by the First Son of the deceased monarch, to the exclusion of all others - came powerfully into play, and ultimately carried the day. Aiguobasinmwin was given the nod by the British, but on a probation period of one year. All the fears of James Watt were written down as the do's and dont's with which the restored office was hedged round. Effective power was left in the hands of Chief Obaseki, now re-titled the Iyase of Benin. But what had been achieved proved sufficient for the good of Edoland, and of the near-areas of Nigeria running a culture derived from Edoland. And it resulted in the encouragement of the codification of the seven centuries of the history of the restored Benin dynasty.

Prince Aiguobasinmwin was crowned the Oba of Benin on 24 July 1914. July was the rainiest month of the year, and the new Oba had no Palace to move into, the Palace of his fathers having been destroyed seventeen years earlier during the British War. When, decked in his full regalia, he arrived that day in Benin City from his coronation venue in USAMA the new Oba moved into the Prison farm which was the only portion of the old Palace grounds which had not been built upon
by the colonial authorities. He spent the first night as the Oba of Benin in this scrub-land, under the open, weepy skies. Some corrugated iron roofing sheets placed over forked sticks shielded the new monarch from the elements. The following day the building of the present Benin Palace was begun, with the Oba already in residence.

Aiguobasinmwin was given two praise-names by his appreciative subjects, the Edo people. He was called: Ovbiudu : "the Leopard - Hearted, the Brave One".
a reference to his resolutely standing against the desires of the local colonial officials in Benin, and successfully wresting his patrimony from their unwilling hands. The other praise - name was: Eweka n'Ologbe : "Eweka II, the Re-Builder of the Ancestral Homestead". He acquired this name with regard to his re-building of the Benin Palace. The two praise-names summarise very succintly the trajectory traversed
by the life of this Prince, and the significance of that life to the
people whom, at a critical point in their history, he led as the Oba
of Benin.

He is truly the "Edo Man of the Twentieth Century"