Custom · Ancient custom; held 1960, 1970, 1974, 1976 and 2022 · Tradition
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In Jukun belief the king of Wukari never dies. He travels. In January 2022, for the first time since 1976, a single chosen horseman rode out of the shrine at Puje with the Aku Uka strapped to his back, bound for the sacred forest of Nando. Some riders, people said, never came back.
Wukari, in the south of Taraba State, is the home of the Jukun people and the old heart of the Kwararafa kingdom. Its customs, Vanguard reported, have been held sacred there since 1596. At the centre of them all is the king, the Aku Uka, who is not only a ruler but a spiritual leader, a go-between linking the people on earth with the world above.
Because of who he is, the Jukun do not say that an Aku Uka dies. In their tradition he cannot die. He changes, and he travels. He leaves the shrine of the Jukun people at Puje and goes to join his ancestors at a sacred place called Nando. The ceremony that sends him on that road is called Pankya ya Nando, which means the journey to Nando. Most people simply call it Pankya.
For a very long time, almost nobody alive had seen one. Dr Shekarau Angyu Masa Ibi Kuvyo II sat on the throne for nearly fifty years. He was the 24th Aku Uka of Wukari, and he was the thread that held all the children of Kwararafa together. He had 13 wives, 68 children, 111 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. In October 2021, in the words of his people, he joined his ancestors. His going opened the way for a new ruler who, they believe, the forebears themselves will send.
So for any Jukun born after 1976, Pankya had only ever been a tale told by older relatives. In January 2022, those who were near enough to Wukari saw it with their own eyes.
Of everything in the Pankya, the part that gets people talking is the horseman. The tradition is that only one man goes with the departing king. The Aku Uka is strapped onto the rider's back, and the two of them ride together on a horse into the forest of Nando. No one else follows.
Old stories say that some horsemen went into Nando and never came out. Over the years, many outsiders spoke of the ride as a kind of suicide mission, and when the time came again, people who did not know Jukun ways worried openly about whether this rider would return.
Among the Jukun it is seen very differently. To carry the Aku Uka is an honour. It is a last service to a king, done with eagerness and with a sense of duty to the people, and as a mark of loyalty.
Nor can just anybody do it. Dr Shishi Zhema, a Wukari man who is an associate professor of history and head of the department of history and diplomatic studies at the Federal University Wukari, explained how the rider is found. He comes from a particular group inside the Jukun supreme temple. The chief priest goes through a careful process of divination until the right man is identified, a man the ancestors themselves approve.
That approval, Dr Zhema said, is the whole point. According to the tradition, the riders who failed to come back in the past were men the ancestors had not sanctioned. To be sanctioned is as good as hearing the ancestors say: go, we are protecting you, and you will come back. Since that process has been followed with care, he said, the tradition holds no account of a rider who did not return.
A Jukun elder agreed. Mr Danjuma Adamu, then Taraba's commissioner for information, said he had watched five Pankya in his life, in 1960, 1970, 1974, 1976 and 2022. In every one, he said, the rider came home safely.
The ceremony for the late king was held on 14 January 2022, and people came from all over Taraba and beyond. Mr Adamu explained why the crowd was so large. Most young people, and anyone around forty-five or younger, had never seen one, because the one before had been in 1976. Nothing in the rites had been changed, he said. Everything before the day and on the day itself was done the way it was done in the old times, and to him that was the beauty of it.
Wukari is known as one of the biggest yam markets in central Nigeria, but that day the market fell quiet. Hotels were full. Some visitors had to find rooms in neighbouring towns.
From the palace and along the main streets, the people moved in a long procession to Puje, the Jukun shrine, all of them in the traditional cloth, which they call Adire. The men dressed as their grandfathers had, chests bare, the cloth tied at the waist. The women wore it wrapped around their chests and walked the whole way barefoot.
At Puje the crowd sat in groups in places marked out for them, and many simply sat on the bare ground. They were waiting for three things: the initiates, the rider, and the departing Aku Uka on the royal horse that would carry him on to Nando. When the horseman came out of the shrine, a cheer went up. That was the sign the journey had begun.
Then came the waiting. Three days later, on 17 January 2022, the horseman rode back into Wukari. Many people had said his trip was one from which there was no return. He proved them wrong, and for the Jukun it was proof of something else too: that the ancestors had chosen well, and that a tradition many had only heard about was alive.
