Image source: Meta Ai
The journey to the land of Uleya from Otukom usually takes three days and the messengers knew about it. They sojourn day and night with hope that they would meet Nkanta and deliver the message. Not just delivering the message but the willingness to consent to the King's letter.
Back home their village has been desecrated by herdsmen who came from the northern part of the country. They did all sorts of atrocities. They kill, destroy their farm lands and also kidnap prominent people. Many chiefs lost their wives and female children to this menace. Moreover, many people could not go to their farms for fear of herdsmen. Consequently, life became difficult and unbearable.
For the past six years after Nkanta was expelled from the community. Nkanka has been a warrior who fought and gave victory to the Otokum People. His presence alone will send signs to nearby communities that think of attacking them.
Nkanta fought many battles and earned his name. Initially, his father called him Dede, which means “strange” he struggled as a young man and gained his reputation as a warrior, interpreted to mean Nkanta. A name given to a special breed of people.
Through thick and thin, rain and sunlight he defended his people. His house became a point of contact for every enemy of Otukom. He lost his wife and two children yet he didn't let this deter him. Consequently, Otukom village enjoyed all-around peace and tranquillity. No community attempted to engage in any warfare with them.
His fame did not last long when a group of people in the village decided to dance along to the drum of the enemies. They said so many unprintable things against Nkanta. This happened six years ago
During this period, it was discovered that he was a bastard. An abomination to the sacred land of Otukom. No bastard child nor his mother is allowed to live in Otukom. His mother was taken to the village shrine, and she confessed to having had an affair with Nya, a man from one of the hostile communities. When the God of the land was consulted, he said Nkanta and his mother should be expelled from the community and never return.
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“Are you sure, Nkanta will heed to the King's message?” one of the messengers said.
“A word of a king is powerful… in fact, where the word of a king is, there is power”, the messenger at the centre assured.
“I still doubt it, because of the way and manner he and his mother were sent out of the village six years ago,” the third man said.
The three messengers had their turns in discussing several things that had been going on in the village since Nkanta was banished. Their only prayer was that they met Nkanta alive and also for him to come to the rescue of the village.
They had spent two and two night days and two nights passing through mountains and hills, and across many waters. On the last day, as they were about to enter Uleya village, they met a group of villagers returning from their farms, they asked about Nkanta and his mother. They took him to where Nkanta was.
They handed over the letter to him, and he opened the letter written in brown paper and dark ink and signed by the king.
He smiled at them after reading through,
“So the rejected stone the builder rejected has become the chief cornerstone”, he said.
“Nkanta,” one of the messengers called out, “the king asked us to wait and get a reply from you”
“You'll have to wait then for at least a week because I am not done with harvesting my yams,” he said, pointing to a hut at the end of the building for them to wait.
“The king will be worried as well as the entire village of Otukom, we have been crying and wailing for too long. You're our last hope, please return home to your ancestral land and save your people”
Nkanta looked up to the sky and down to the earth. He led the three men to the hut. He asked them to sit and kola nuts were presented to them.
After each of them shared their ordeal at the hands of herdsmen from the north, he decided to go with them and defend his people. Putting away every hurt and pain aside.
On his arrival, the king organised a special occasion to welcome him back to his home.
His return spread across the nearby villages. And it was sung by the women that Nkanta, the super warrior, was back, and freedom was back to Otukom.