Legend · About 400 years to present · Tradition
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Five crocodiles, each a different colour, live in a pond south of the Aku Uka's palace. People in Wukari say they never bite, that they once walked to the palace every Friday, and that the family who feeds them came from Katsina centuries ago.
Wukari, in Taraba State, is the old seat of the Jukun people and of their king, the Aku Uka. South of his palace there is a pond called Marmara, and in it live five crocodiles. Each one, people say, is a different colour.
When the Daily Trust went to see the pond, the man who showed them round was Manu Danladi Boushe, who holds the title Kinda Acio and sits on the Wukari Traditional Council. His title, he explained, is like that of the Madaki in a Hausa emirate. He told them that the pond has been there for about 400 years, ever since the capital of the old Kwararafa kingdom moved to Wukari.
Before that, he said, the capital had been at a place also called Kwararafa, close to what is now the Jalingo to Wukari road in Gassol Local Government Area. And the people's journey began much further back. In the account he gave, the ancestors of Kwararafa set out from Yemen in 360 AD, passed through Egypt, and about a thousand years ago reached Ngazargamu, in what is now Yobe State, before they moved on west. This is the tradition as the elders keep it, and it is told with pride.
One habit, he said, travelled with them the whole way. Even before they left Yemen, their rulers never went to war, began an expedition or moved house without first asking fortune tellers what lay ahead. So they always moved together with clerics who could see the future. That habit, as we will see, is how the crocodiles and their keepers came together.
Each crocodile, the Kinda Acio said, has its own hole, and each hole is a passage that joins the pond to the great rivers nearby, the Benue, the Donga and the Katsina Ala. In the dry season the crocodiles travel through these tunnels out to the rivers. When the rains come, they swim back home.
Ask anyone in Wukari about these crocodiles and the first thing they will tell you is that they do not bite. "We've never recorded any case of attack on any person or animals by the crocodiles," the Kinda Acio said. They move around the town freely, and even children leave them alone.
Part of the reason children leave them alone is the warning that comes with them. The crocodiles are believed to have great powers. To attack one, or throw stones at it, is to invite serious trouble, even death. The Kinda Acio said there have been cases where people attacked the crocodiles and died afterwards, and that is why nobody touches them.
In the old days, he said, the crocodiles did something even more remarkable. Every Friday they left the pond and went to the palace to pay their respects to the Aku Uka, the way a subject greets a king. That practice stopped many years ago. Today they keep to the streets not far from the pond.
A Jukun woman, Madam Rose Adi, told the paper what that looked like through a child's eyes. She grew up watching the crocodiles walk about the town, and she never once heard of them attacking anyone. About thirty years before, she said, people used to watch the black one in particular whenever it came out. And she remembered the festival at the pond as a joyful time, with people in traditional dress dancing all the way from town down to the water.
The pond has other rules. Nobody may fish in it. Malam Yahaya Usman, one of its keepers, said that if anyone did catch a fish from it, that fish would never cook, not even if it sat on the fire all day. The water, he said, is a medicine. When Jukun people living far from Wukari fall sick and nothing else works, they are sent back to the pond.
Here is the part of the story that surprises many visitors. The people who keep the pond and feed the crocodiles are not, in origin, Jukun. Long ago, the paper learned, Jukun rulers met Hausa men said to come from Katsina or Zaria. They were Islamic teachers, and they also practised Bori, the old Hausa spirit tradition. The Jukun kings, who always wanted fortune tellers near them, brought these men in to work for them. They settled, and many married Jukun women.
These Bori men came to see the crocodiles as their deity, and whenever a Jukun ruler came for spiritual guidance, they consulted the crocodiles. Together with the Jukun, they offered sacrifices at the pond each year, at a festival called Bori and Gani. Out of that practice grew two families who became the custodians. In Wukari they are called Abakwa Riga, and no ritual or festival may be held at the pond without their permission.
Malam Yahaya Usman, aged 69 when he spoke, inherited the role from his late father, as his forefathers had. His ancestors came from Katsina. They were taken into Jukun society, he said, because they worked so closely with the kings, and they married the Jukun women who became his mothers and grandmothers. That is why his people carry the name Abakwa Riga. He stressed that the pond belongs to the Wukari Traditional Council; his family are only its keepers. When disaster strikes, they gather at the pond to calm the crocodiles and seek answers, and it is he who kills the black cow whose body is thrown into the water.
Beside him is Hauwa Umaru, aged 54, who holds the title Andre Ashe Gbumkpa. Her forefathers also came from Katsina. Her mother handed the work to her more than forty years ago. Before any rite, she says the incantations and prayers at the water's edge, and she cooks the food that is eaten at each ritual.
Malam Usman admitted that the Bori and Gani celebration is fading, as more people follow Islam and Christianity. The Aku Uka used to visit the pond, he said, and so did Jukun sons and daughters living far away. Fewer come now. But the five crocodiles are still there.
