Wisdom of the Gods
It was the end of the third week in June, and the sun was shining from vertically above the village of Umudum. Three children ran around the hut closest to the iroko tree, playing hide and seek. A few adults could be seen emerging from the dirt road leading out of their farms on their way to their homes. The temperature was almost thirty-two degrees centigrade under the sun. But the heat under the tree was much lower.
The iroko was the oldest tree in Umudum village and possibly the whole Enike town. The trunk was so broad that it rumour has it that some long-dead servants of Eziokwu bu Ndu, Truth is Life deity, still, live inside the tree. From there they crawl out at night to assist the present chief priest in some of the trickier parts of his duty of upholding justice. But on this hot June afternoon, this little-known fact about the tree is not the most significant thing about it. It was the temperature beneath it.
Under the tree Ada, the first daughter of Akwara, whose hut was closest to the tree, sat on a root of the iroko tree that protruded from the earth due to more than a hundred years of erosion. Standing behind Ada was
Nneka, her friend.
Nneka patiently parted Ada's coal-black hair with one long quill of a porcupine. With a skill born out of years of practice, she dipped her forefinger in a small calabash containing a black liquid made from burning palm kernel and extracting the oil. She ran her finger along the partitions she had created to ensure that weaving the hair would cause her friend as little pain as possible. It was at this point that it happened: Mazi Akwara stepped down from a commercial motorcycle, paid the rider, walked a few steps and collapsed.
Ada was only fifteen yards away when her father collapsed. She sprang to her feet, knocking off the calabash Nneka held in her left hand. It took her less than ten seconds to reach her fallen father, but he was dead by the time she could reach him. His tongue was hanging loosely out of his mouth, and there was a look of surprise on his face. She knelt down, lifted his head up and placed it between her laps as she rocked herself back and forth, screaming at the top of her lungs at frequencies that were alien to her. A crowd of the villagers, men, women and children gathered.
"Get away from him," ordered Mazi Aziza, one of the elderly men that arrived at the scene. He instructed the younger men to remove Ada from the scene. The men lifted her quickly and led her to her family hut. Ada could not believe what was happening. She was only seventeen years old: how were she and her mother going to manage without a father and a husband?
Mazi Aziza stood on a spot, petrified. He shook his head sadly and slowly. "I have seen this before, a very long time ago. But this should not happen to Akwara because he knew the rules. He was the custodian of the rules! Quickly, we must take his body to Ofiansi, Evil Forest. The night must not fall upon us. They were about leaving for the evil forest when a stranger appeared in the midst.
When the stranger saw the body of Mazi Akwara lying there, he took two steps back and fainted. He was about thirty-five years old. The men resuscitated him, and he started screaming when he came to. His name was Okon. According to him, Mazi Akwara left his house in the neighbouring village barely half hour before.
He narrated how Mazi came to his home barely two hours before his arrival at Umudum. Mazi Akwara had come to summon him to attend the proceedings of a case in which another villager had sued him to the Eziokwu Bu Ndu deity.
Before his recent death, Mazi Akwara was the substantive chief priest of the Eziokwu Bu Ndu deity. The people of Umudum had twenty-one deities that served different purposes, ranging from security, protection of the land, rainfall, thunder, fertility of the soil, abundance of harvest, the fecundity of the populace. Among these, Eziokwu Bu Ndu was the most feared and revered. It was the deity of justice. Its justice was swift, impartial and ruthless. There was only one punishment for being found guilty - death.
If someone summoned another person to the deity, only one of the two would come out of that judgement alive. Over the years, many Umudum residents had lost their lives to the ruthless justice of Eziokwu Bu Ndu. The elders of the land had an emergency meeting. They feared that the community might go extinct if something was not done quickly. In that meeting, the elders unanimously agreed that no Umudum resident would use the services of the feared deity. The residents were free to explore other options to settle disputes. This decision stuck through the years.
According to Okon, his half-brother, Akaraka had summoned him to the feared deity, over dispute concerning the inheritance of a house their father left behind.
Mazi Akwara had visited his home to deliver the message himself. This information caused a few murmurs among the elders there present. There were whispers that Okon may have poisoned the chief priest, Mazi Akwara for fear that the deity would find him guilty and kill him. He noticed this and quickly explained that the priest did not sit. He arrived on foot, delivered his summon and turned to leave.
Okon invited him to sit, but Mazi Akwara declined. Then Okon offered to at least pay his transport fare to return to Umudum, and Mazi Akwara accepted.
"An abomination! Sacrilege! A priest of Eziokwu Bu Ndu never accepts gifts from invitees." Mazi Aziza interrupted. "Akwara should have known this! Accepting a gift from you, young man, was a grievous offence and grievously he has paid for it. By accepting a gift from you, he has corrupted the incorruptible Eziokwu Bu Ndu, and he must give way to another priest. Go home, son. You shall be summoned again when a new priest is chosen."
The young men brought a stretcher made of bamboo, lifted the dead man onto it, raised him on their shoulders and turned towards the direction of the Ofiansi forest where his body will be surrendered to the deity. This surrender would be followed by the surrender of all his possessions. Historically, anyone else who attempts to take possession of the properties of someone killed by Eziokwu Bu Ndu would lose his life and properties too.
As soon as the young men departed from the scene, the elders gathered in the village square and began the process of selecting the next chief priest. Selecting a new priest was a rigorous process of scouring the bloodlines of the ancestors of Umudum, from which a list of every male child, young or old, home or abroad, is compiled. None of the elders was sure of the consequence of missing out a name because to the best of their knowledge, there was never a time when the elders, to whom this assignment was given, ever missed adding a name to the list. When the list was deemed complete, the elders matched to the forest housing Eziokwu Bu Ndu and read out the names one after the other. By the time they read the last name on their list, they turned around and went to their various homes. The job of selecting a successor was left for the gods. In due time, a son of the land would appear from wherever he resides to answer the summons of Eziokwu Bu Ndu and whoever presents himself is accepted by the people as the true representative of the deity that accepts no lies.
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