Lost history · Tradition; stool recognised after 1946 · Tradition
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A runaway prince whose name no Benin record knows, a warrior lured to Degema, and a crown that is won by election rather than birth. The Ekpeye of Rivers State say every one of their sons is a prince, and in 1979 they proved it by crowning a retired air force officer.
The Ekpeye live mostly in Ahoada East and Ahoada West, in Rivers State, in the land between the Orashi River on the west and the Sombreiro on the east. In 2018 the Daily Trust journalist Victor Edozie wrote about their royal stool, the Eze Ekpeye Logbo, and about the people's story of where they came from.
That story starts with a man called Akalaka. Ekpeye oral tradition names him as the father of the people. It also says a smaller group of Ekpeye later moved north and founded the land of the Ogba, the neighbouring people whose language today sounds plainly Igbo. The most common version told in both places is that the founders of Ekpeye and Ogba were sons of one father by different mothers. They are, in other words, half-brothers.
Where did Akalaka come from? Here the account becomes careful. Ogba culture looks a lot like that of old Benin, and the Ogba are said to have put forward the idea that their ancestor was a Benin prince. But, the article points out, the name Akalaka does not match any person known in Benin history.
Some historians, the article says, now think the father of the Ekpeye and Ogba did leave the Benin kingdom, because of fighting inside the royal family. He is said to have run away with his family after being disloyal to the Oba. They travelled south towards the River Niger, and there they settled with the seven original families of the Ekpeye.
The dates in the article do not agree with each other. It links the Ekpeye's early days to the reign of Oba Ewuare, but gives the year once as 425 AD and once as 1425 AD. It is safest to say only that the Ekpeye tie their beginnings to the time of Ewuare, and to leave the exact year open.
What the article is sure of is that the Ekpeye were fighters. It remembers Onje Nworisa Odu of Ogbele, who kept the colonial forces out of his community. After fighting them off bravely, he was later tricked into going to Degema, the colonial headquarters, and he died there around 1890.
In the old days, the article says, the Ekpeye governed themselves through full representative democracy. Then the politics of colonial government forced a change.
In 1946, a leading Ekpeye ruler made a case to the colonial government. He asked for recognition of one overall head for the whole Ekpeye clan, in keeping with their ancestral customs, which they trace to Benin. The campaign took a long time and a lot of effort. When recognition finally came, that same man was elected as the first Eze Ekpeye Logbo.
His name was Edmund Ashirim Unoshi, and he was born at Ihuaba, in today's Ahoada East. The title gave him the right to speak for the Ekpeye in the Eastern Region House of Chiefs. He is remembered for bringing peace to the kingdom, and for giving it a public face and a sense of ceremony. He died in 1977, and the article says people still speak fondly of his kindness and his love for them.
What makes this stool unusual is how its holder is picked. Many royal stools in the Niger Delta pass down through one family. The Ekpeye throne does not. It is filled by a democratic choice. People in the area believe that every Ekpeye son is a prince, and so any one of them could be called to the throne when it falls empty.
The next man called shows how true that can be.
Robinson O. Robinson was born on 13 March 1940 at Odiereke, Ubie, in what is now Ahoada West, into an ordinary Christian family. At 16 he joined the army. He served in a reconnaissance squadron in Kaduna, in the Lagos garrison, and at the army's ordnance depot in Lagos. In 1966 he moved to the Nigerian Air Force.
There he rose to be personal assistant to the first Nigerian Chief of Air Staff, and aide-de-camp to the military governor of Plateau State. He also taught as a training instructor at the air force's office in Port Harcourt.
Then, in November 1979, the call came. He was asked to take the throne of Eze Ekpeye Logbo. He left the air force of his own accord, as a flight lieutenant, and became king. In 1983 he was made the first chairman of the Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers and Chiefs. People in royal circles call him the Lion of Ekpeyeland, and he holds the national honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger.
His regalia carries the story of his people. On his head sits a crown shaped like a fish lying sideways, and his clothes carry other animal shapes. These stand for bravery and the warrior spirit the Ekpeye are proud of. The red of his robes is said to come from old Benin, and it stands for heroism.
The Ekpeye themselves, the article says, have a culture that mixes their own ways with those of their Ijaw and Igbo neighbours. Their most important mask, Egbukele, came to them from Ijaw land by way of Abua. Some still hold to very old rules, such as the belief that a woman marries into a family, not just a man.
Visiting the palace is simple. You book through the palace staff, and you sit and wait. When the king walks in, you stand up and greet him by his title, twice: "Eze Ekpeye Logbo! Eze Ekpeye Logbo!"
