By Basil Okoh
Europe of the Medieval to Middle Ages revered their kings to the level of elevating them to divinity, believing they can do no wrong and when they diel, go directly to heaven.
The European belief in divine kingship has not been completely repudiated by modernism. Christian theology was interpreted to accept the divinity of Kingship to the point where Louis 16th, King of France in his majesty would in a fit of immodesty, proclaim to his nobility “le’tat et moi”, “I am the state”.
In Agbor mythology, the King does not just share in the divinity of the gods, he is an integral part of the gods. The King is the earthly manifestation of the Godhead and is part of the community of god’s that serve to protect and advance the kingdom.
The Osiezi festival, celebrated every other year, the only occasion in which the King of Agbor dances in public before his people, is part of the ritual of expiation and the re-affirmation of the bond between the gods and the people of the Agbor Kingdom.
The King of Agbor may not be touched by anyone except the initiated. He may not hit a man, that would be a death sentence. He may not place a curse on anyone or group because such pronouncements carry the power of the gods. There are so many such creeds in Agbor lores and traditions which cannot be written here and which establishes and advances the belief in the divinity of Dein.
Dein, the progenitor of the present lineage of kings of Agbor Kingdom (since AD 1270) was a sojourner of no mean repute. He traveled all the way to the Maghreb (North Africa) where he was likened to the gods and given the name “Dei” (god) for his gifts of healing and magic. Dein was an honoured guest in the court of Timbuctoo (present Mali) in the late 13th century AD.
Many other previous kings of Agbor have been great travelers and sojourners, sometimes for years on end. “Obi jen mbian” is the known expression in Agbor lexicon to describe the Kings journeys to seek knowledge and other powers. Unlike the Oba of Benin, the lineage of Dein travels and sometimes chooses to lead his men to war.
To provide administrative cover for his many exeats and to continue to exercise the Kings authority and powers in his absence, the expression “Obi ara gwu ukpoh” confers on the council of Chiefs “Idubo Dein” the powers to offer the usual greetings and adulation to his throne and exercise the powers and authority of the King when he proceeds on his sojourns.
Keagborekuzi sits on the throne of Agbor, in the direct line of succession of Dein, the progenitor of the Dein dynasty of Agbor Kingdom. No one or Government can change that. Many attempts and Rebellions have been enacted in the past centuries to change the bloodline of Dein in Agbor history and all ended in utter failure and the perpetrators all perished.
The most catastrophic is the misadventure of Kime, who as regent to the young crown Prince in the 17th century attempted to assassinate the Prince and seize his throne. He failed mysteriously and the young Prince was quickly crowned to forestall further disruptions by Kime. Kime organized a rebel army to wage war against the established army of the young king and the kingdom, in order to regain the throne.
He failed woefully and was forced to flee, taking the “Offor” of Agbor Kingdom with him. The result was a great dissonance in the kingdom, leading to mass migrations of Agbor people to far flung places, including Igboland and present Ogbia land in Bayelsa. The same disruptive action was prevented by crowning the reigning Keagborekuzi at the age of two and a half years.
Agbor is an old Kingdom of citizens with republican attitudes and spirit. The sense of untamed freedom has manifested in unrestrained talk and gossip that is now working against the group interest, to the point where the people can no longer build consensus because of the interference of loose talk and banal gossip. This unproductive culture has always been with us, hence the name of our king Keagborekuzi.
Now Agbor has a mob of middle aged men who have come together to form a WhatsApp group that is quite animated and active on the matter of Dein Keagborekuzi prolonged travels. They demand that the Dein must remain an in-situ king to attend to the demands of tradition and his kingship.
That should be a fair and just demand except for the little detail that this is the modern world, with airplanes, the Internet and many accoutrements of modernity that even Agbor is steeped in. And so the Dein of Agbor does travel. In fact, growing up in the motherland of modernity, England, from the age of three, everyone expects that he should have been immersed in and embraced the acculturation of English modernity.
But the Agbor mob would have non of that modern English cultural nonsense for their King. So they would rather have him shielded from Western influences and serve him the pristine cultural accoutrements of pre-colonial Agbor Kingdom. Afterall, he is the custodian of Agbor tradition and culture and Agbor culture and traditions have been standing still since the 19th century. How can he now come back from England and try to change our traditional narrative, our ways of “doing things”?
Never mind the fact that Agbor has one of the highest literacy levels in Africa. Never also mind the fact that these mobsters all drive SUV and live in air-conditioned houses, earning incomes with chains of zeros. They would live and wallow in modernity but want their king to live and govern in pre-modern tradition. See?
The actions of the mob are not informed by knowledge of the Agbor historical experience or a good understanding of the issues they dredge up for contention.
They are merely termagants out to put the blame on their king for a missed political dominance. They are a d
eluded WhatsApp rebel group without a cause or guiding objective, lost in the nostalgia of a dominant past and an Agbor Kingdom they did not know or understand that it has moved in time.
They are lashing out and blaming it all on their king for not regaining yesterday, a time of dominance for which they are not ready today to invest efforts and diligence.
They reveal themselves to be cry-babies, wanting “baba” to come back home and provide political and social stability and bring his leverage to bear on individuals advancement. It is not just as they claim, for the King to come back and meet the demands of our traditional Government.
The Ovia of Agbor Kingdom is the King maker but has never occupied his office nor performed the demands of his very exalted position in the Kingdom since the reign of Keagborekuzi, but no one has taken umbrage at his conduct or demanded restitution.
The Oweh of Agbor Kingdom, though resident within the Kingdom has ceased to be present in the Palace and has also abdicated his traditional functions but no one has invoked the well tried systems of traditional dispute resolution to bring him back to resume his functions.
Even our Agbor WhatsApp advocacy group has never demanded for the necessary traditional dispute resolution machinery be called up to mediate the disputes and resolve differences between personalities in our traditional Government. The King does not rule. He reigns. He rules through traditional institutions and the valued Chiefs who head such institutions, particularly the Ovia, Oweh, Akpara and other valued Chiefs in our traditional Government.
Everything is blamed on the King as if no one else has a role to play in upholding and enforcing tradition. Where are the Ndichie of Agbor, where are the Idubo-Dein, where are our own individual skills in conciliation?
Yes, the WhatsApp group have a legitimate demand to have their king constantly around to attend to and administer the kingdom, to meet the demands of his exalted office and then play the role of father to his subjects. But you do not issue ultimatum to your king, insult his throne thereby and force him to obey the will of your group. His role as king is diminished when he bends to your dictate. He can however listen to and abide by wise counsel.
He also ceases to be king when he is bended by your public petitions to an external power particularly when couched with threats. He is the Dein of Agbor and all the gods and people of the kingdom bear witness to that fact.
The daily barrage of posts on the WhatsApp platform (300 daily on the average), mostly trite and mostly uninformed, do nothing to elevate our people, do nothing to confront or address the issues or challenges confronting the kingdom and do not reflect who we are or the qualities that guide us as a people.
So no one, on the basis of the drivel and ethnic disgrace going on at that platform can proffer solutions to the challenges confronting Agbor Kingdom.
The platform and the meetings that follow, where members go to showcase the vacuity of their mind, lacks the deep rigour, strategic thinking and follow up actions that should bring rejuvenation to Agbor Kingdom, reactivate our traditional institutions and strengthen its offices and personages.
The group has instead become divisive and disruptive beyond its capacity to cope and it’s shameful resort to seek public help and Government mediation has exposed it to be utterly unimaginative and destructive of the progressive and independent spirit of Agbor Kingdom, further threatening the restoration of good order and the balance in social equilibrium in the kingdom.
To begin to issue ultimatum to our king and on a public media and to demand the withdrawal of benefits to the Palace suggest not only that they have lost reverence for our King, our kingdom and traditional institutions but also that they have rubbished our shared values and ethnic pride.
They have chosen idiocy and servitude to an external power, a treachery that would be hard to forgive. They have sought external help to undermine and shame the very institutions that hold Agbor together and give us a definitive and distinctive group identity.
It is the overwhelming power of the Palace of Agbor Kingdom that gives the Agbor person the confidence and distinctive assurance to deal with the rest of the world, knowing and believing that the King and the Palace has his back. It is the reason why some Agbor men would commit misdemeanors and run to the Palace for protection.
To the Agbor man, the King is the father he runs to for protection and the Palace, gilded or not, is his place of refuge. To offer disrespect to the Dein, the King of Agbor is an insult most unkind to the entire Agbor community.
Ifeanyi Okowa, the Governor of Delta State is an intelligent man who I believe has the sagacity to deal with the petition signed and delivered by the same people who would be the rabble rousers, lead the charge and hold him responsible later for taking unwanted actions to demean their king.
The public petition is therefore no more than an entrapment to snare Dr. Okowa into a contrived dispute in Agbor Kingdom. That odious petition deserves benign neglect by the Government. @basilokoh.
PS. Copies of the petition sent to Government is circulating in public. This is an appropriate response to what is now a public petition.
Published on Mr. Basil Okoh’s Facebook page.