WELCOME ADDRESS AT THE GRAND UNVEILING CEREMONY OF THE STATUE OF EZE NRI OBALIKE 1, THE LEGEND, AT EZE NRI OBALIKE ROYAL PALACE GROUND, URUOJI VILLAGE, NRI, ANAOCHA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, ANAMBRA STATE, READ BY PROF. PETER N.C. UMEADI, CHIEF JUDGE EMERITUS OF ANAMBRA STATE, CHAIRMAN AT THE CEREMONY ON SATURDAY 4TH MAY, 2024
Eze Nri Obalike I, the 14th Eze Nri of the Ancient Nri Kingdom and Hegemony whose reign spanned from AD 1889-1936 was a wise king and exceedingly so. The Nri people would remain grateful to Professor M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu, Professor of Anthropology at University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria, anthropologist, historian and inaugural curator of Odinani Museum Nri for collating many previous works on Nri Kingdom and Hegemony. Words are not enough to thank Professor Paul Basu of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, who unearthed the pioneering anthropological works by the British Government Anthropologist, Northcote Whitbridge Thomas made during his second tour between November 1910 and December 1911 on Eze Nri Obalike. It was the diligence of Professor Paul Basu which put the trove of pictures and materials on the laps of Prince Ben Egwuatu Okolo, Onwa of Nri, the grandson of Eze Nri Obalike to enable his royal family sponsor this memorial to a great wise king and a legend. We would also put on record our huge debt of gratitude and indebtedness to Northcote Whitbridge Thomas, the British Anthropogist, for his research, photographs and writings on the King of Nri, Eze Nri Obalike I whose statue is to be unveiled today by Prince Ikenna Onyesoh, Idevuteaku, Regent to Eze Nriewelani II.
We learn of the charity and courage of Northcote Thomas that correspondences in the archives shows that Thomas impressed upon colonial authorities the need to respect Eze Nri Obalike’s spiritually ordained authority as a divine king, but they had no interest in doing so. According to Onwuejeogwu the District Commissioner S.W. Sproston on 4th of August 1911 at Nri invited chiefs from many surrounding towns and at gunpoint asked the King of Nri to abrogate the nso ana which the colonial administration figured was his hold on the people and instructed the assembled chiefs that they should henceforth obey the whiteman and not the Eze Nri. Eze Nri in his wisdom obeyed the whiteman. He did not want any harm to befall his people. I think the King of Nri would have known better than the whiteman. That the agents of the Eze Nri since AD 900 have been performing political and ritual functions; removal of abomination, dissolution of the codes of abomination, ordination of the ritual and political officials, crowning of chiefs, peacemaking and creation of markets and shrines all over Igbo land holding some degree of control over the external and internal politics of the older Igbo settlements, ingrained with the concept of peace, harmony and truth, ritually symbolized and enacted in the ceremonies of the ozo title men who were the political elite, would be difficult to abrogate with one forced ceremony. (Onwuejeogwu) In all these, I am enamoured by the some of closing words from Professor Basu’s letter, I quote “The fact that the high office of Eze Nri continues, however, and that Nri remembers and remains proud of its remarkable history, tell us that ultimately the colonial destruction of a civilization was not successful”.
Before the debade of 1911, in 1906 the Eze Nri Obalike was forced to attend Agulu court as its leader. Northcote Thomas noted that his first appearance was remarkable for when he appeared “the whole assembly rose and prepared to flee… so great is the awe which he inspired”. Eze Nri Obalike considered it a degradation of his authority, dignity, reputation, personality and sacredness. He promptly turned down “warrant” chieftaincy as he was not ready to sit and argue with his ozo in Nri, let alone ozo and non-ozo of other towns. Indeed that was the last British political appointment for any Eze Nri. (Onwuejeogwu).
The Nri people of this generation are grateful descendants of a long line of kings, Nrimenri, including Eze Nri Obalike I, whose statue we are to unveil today. Our aim henceforth in the light of our history is to reestablish ourselves in the political fabric of our country Nigeria as a major player. We should see the Eze Nri sitting in the front row of traditional rulers in Nigeria, since the Eze Nri throne is the oldest kingship institution in Nigeria. The legacies of Nri Civilization could be summarized as follows :
a) Igbo market days
b) Igbo lunar calendar
c) Igbo agricultural cycle
d) Title taking-Ozo with the ubiquitous red cap
e) Pacifist traditional worship in a monotheistic system
f) Sanctity of human life and respect for the dignity of the human person
g) Igbo hegemony
h) The concept of all-kind and merciful God
i) Unified age grade system
j) Democratized monarchical system of government
Non-violence and peace as mantra in governance and justice to society
Nri kingship – the oldest kingship institution in Nigeria. See Dirt on White Spectrum, (myths, travails and legacies of Eze Nri, the custodian of Igbo tradition and Nigerias oldest kingship institution) by Chukwuemeka .I. Onyesoh, pages 25 to 34.
In a public lecture I delivered for Lion Gadgets and Technologies under the office of the Vice Chancellor, University of Nigeria, Nsukka on Friday 25/6/2021 I catalogued how our profound civilization was unearthed at Igbo-Ukwu and published by Chief Charles Thurstan Shaw et. al. to the world at large. “The excavation at Igbo-Ukwu … provides the earliest indication of Nri economic life (Shaw, 1970). The objects archeologically named Igbo-Ukwu are associated with Oreri which was an Nri settlement establishment during the reign of Eze Nri Namoke AD 11th Century” (Onwuejeogwu 1974, 1975). See Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action by M.A. Onwuejeogwu, page 31. Wikipedia said inter alia “the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes amazed the world with a very high level of technical and artistic proficiency and sophistication which was distinctly more advanced than contemporary bronze casting in Europe”. Hugh Honour and John Fleming would add inter alia, “the high technical proficiency and lack of known prototypes of the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes led to initial speculation in the academic community that they must have been created after European contact and phantom voyagers were postulated.
However research and isotope analysis has established that the source of the metals is of local origin and radio carbon dating has confirmed a 9th century date, long before the earliest contact with Europe. The Igbo-Ukwu artifacts did away with the hitherto existing colonial era opinions in archeological circles that such magnificent works of art and technical proficiency could only originate in areas with contact to Europe, or that they could not be crafted in an acephalous or egalitarian society such as that of the Igbo. Some of the glass and carnelian beads have been found to be produced in old Cairo at the workshops of Fustat thus establishing that a long distance trade system extending from Igbo-Ukwu to Byzantine-era Egypt existed” (Nri Ifikuanim was King of Nri from AD 900). Permit me to reproduce other relevant part of my public lecture here in quote: “One of the striking finds by Chief Charles Thurstan Shaw et. al. in Igbo-Ukwu, would be the bronze torus, again rendered in the same fitting label of “exquisite explosion without antecedent or issue” as quoted above. Finding a locally made bronze torus in Igbo-Ukwu show the high science and technology and innovation that prevailed in Igbo land at the time. Listen to the import. In the paper ‘Hyperspace and Torus Revisited: An African Perspective on Theory of Everything; by Animalu and Acholonu published on the African Journal of Physics Vol. 3 2010, I respectfully reproduce the following lines “The surprise is apparent from what Carl Segan of Cornell University said in his introduction to Stephen Hawkins book titled “A Brief History of Time”, about a universe that has the form of a torus. Hawking embarks on a quest to answer Einstein’s famous question whether God had any choice in creating the universe. “Hawkins is attempting as he explicitly states, to understand the mind of God. And this makes all the more unexpected the conclusion of the effort; a universe with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time (like a torus) and nothing for the creator to do”. The conclusion of the effort in question, as Hawkins stated at page 116 of his book is “the possibility (when quantum mechanics is taken into account) that space time was (like torus) finite and had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning or moment of creation”.
That bronze torus was made by Igbo science and technology and innovation. Bronze is a delicate metal and difficult to produce to a consistent finish and working with it is a highly-skilled, labour intensive process. We have waded through our numerous contributions in our glorious past. We have shown resilience to survive the travails of our present. We hope that our future would surpass all we have achieved.
It is my singular honour and privilege, on behalf of Prince Ben Egwuatu Okolo Onwa of Nri, the grandson of Eze Nri Obalike I of Umu-Nri Omalo Royal Lineage of Nri to welcome you to this ceremony where Prince Ikenna Onyesoh, Idevuteaku, the Regent of Eze-Nri Enweleana II would unveil the statue of Eze Nri Obalike I, the 14th Eze-Nri of the Ancient Nri Kingdom and Hegemony. I thank you sincerely for finding the time to come.
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