Due to the significant role of Iden in the Edo kingdom, the time has come to put in place what has been lost and bring to memory the goalkeeper of all Edolite, Queen Iden who fight to preserve the Kingdom monarchs in our Kingdom today, February 14th has been set aside to commemorate the great Iden. ( Please read ). The Story of Oba Ewuakpe and his wife, Queen Iden has been engagingly told in J. U Egharevba’s Short History of Benin. When this Oba became the ruler of the Empire he was saddled with two disadvantages which made him at first unable to handle and manage absolute power, to his own advantage and the good of the people. He was young and so lacked the constraints and patience of age. Secondly, he was not born an Oba. He was thrust into the throne by his father AKENNUZAMA who declined to be Oba when he was offered the crown in his old age. The IHOGBE had decided the Akennuzama would be the next Oba of Benin when ORE – OGHENE died. Akiennuzama let the honor, and the responsibility, pass over to his son IDOVA who was then hurriedly named EHENNEGHA, rightly so because of the prophecy of Oba Ewuare Two and a half-century before this episode. As Ehennegha he was presented by the Ihogbe to the UZAMA and crowned the Oba of Benin with the titular name of EWUAKPE.
In the course of time EWEBONOZA, the Queen Mother died at Uselu. To provide for his mother in the other world all the material comforts she had been accustomed to while alive, Oba Ewuakpe made a human sacrifice, this human sacrifice angered the people and they rebelled against him, which torn the entire kingdom into shreds
Europe’s other wives, numbered in the hundreds, abandoned the royal Harem after the people had rejected their husband as King and flung open for them the gates of the Harem. But one of them, called IDEN clung to her husband, for she knew that her husband made a grave mistake which he regretted. She refused to return home to her parents in OKA village, now part of the Upper Sokponba Road, Benin City, where she hailed from.
When the life of a King without subjects proved too difficult to sustain in Benin, Ewuakpe, in his own turn, tried the abandonment of the City and the people. He journeyed to the UGOLO Quarters in IKOKA, his mother’s village: on the other side of the Ovia river crossing at the UNUAME waterside settlement. He had expected from his mother’s relatives some sympathy as well as due recognition of his status as the Oba of Benin, but there in the village, he was confronted with the immutable fact of life that people place great value on the services they give. They give service when there is a promise of profit, material, emotional, or spiritual, attending the effort. The people of Ikoka village spurned Ewuakpe because in the circumstances in which he came to meet them he had nothing to offer them except an increase of their burden. Ewuakpe cursed Ikoka village for putting him through this piece of bitter basic education and returned to Benin City, to the empty Benin palace, now overgrown with weeds and leaking from a thousand roof vents.
Iden took the few articles of vanity she still possessed to the Oba Market and sold them. With the money in hand, she went to UGBOR village and brought a diviner to the palace. Ewuakpe asked the Oracle what he must do to bring to and end this rejection of his rule by his people. The Oracle told Ewuakpe to stage a make-believe scenario which would suggest to the observer that the rejection of the Palace by the people had been called off and that the people had already resumed their loyal and obligatory service to the institution. The general idea was to announce the possession of a blessing before the blessing was actually received.
Iden paid off the Seer, then she and her husband set out to procure the necessary sacrificial items as prescribed by the Oracle. She went to the Oba Market at dusk and collected all the pieces of broken calabashes she could get , especially those which had been used to bring palm oil to the market for sale. Plus all the cast-away head pads, both of leaves and of old calico, with which traders had brought their wares to the market and abandoned at the end of the day’s business. She then went into Ogo n-erhie, gathered a lot of green shrubberies, and elaborated a still greater turn went about in his city-size Palace grounds stripping down the dried fronds from the many palm trees which dotted the premises. These dried palm faggots he tied up into multiples of torches, such as might be required on a night journey by a way-faring multitude.
When these other prescribed articles had been obtained the couple turned their attention to the problem of where to obtain the human sacrificial component of the prescription. Abduction was not worthy to even of consideration, because detection would further strain the already broken ties.
To save her husband’s high office, the kingdom in totality and to preserve him for it Iden talked Ewuakpe into accepting her as the human sacrificial offering.
Night fell and Ewuakpe lighted the torches of dried palm fronds, and while they burned scattered them haphazardly over the wide expanse of the Unuogua, the large open space in front of the Palace occupied at the present time by the Ring Road/National Museum Complex.
Iden smeared the gathered pieces of broken calabashes with palm oil and scattered them in like manner. She followed the same procedure with the numerous head pads she had gathered, as well as those she had elaborated by herself, amongst the burnt-out torches.
With all these articles deployed as convincingly as possible all over the approaches to the Palace Iden garbed herself in the little finery, she still possessed and she and her husband walked in the dark, down Iwebo Street. They passed the Ekpenede ogbore shrine and got to the outskirts of the Oba Market, near where the Iwebo Street opens on to the Uroghotodin. There Iden chose the site of her grave. Oba Ewuakpe set to and began the excavation of the final resting place of his wife.
Iden climbed down into the grave, helped by her husband, and tried it for size. With the length and depth judged satisfactory the young woman lay down in the pit, and on her side facing the Palace, in such a manner that the flying clods of the earth would not get into her eyes. She told Ewuakpe to fill up the chasm.
Ewuakpe began filling up the grave from the feet – end, postponing the asphyxiation of his wife by the red earth till the very end.
Realizing what it meant to be buried in a market place, as was happening to her, Iden had requested of her husband that in the event that purposes of the sacrifice were indeed attained, and the Edo people came round to re-accept the Palace, then she must be protected, where she lay, from all the insults of the Market-place.
A young lady, probably in her mid-20’s, born in a village of OKA with no stake in the future of the empire as she had no child of her own yet sacrificed her life for the future of her Kingdom and to restore the dignity of the exalted throne of her husband, the Oba. No wonder history called “NOKPOKHUO” as age never limited her courage, sacrifice, and above all her timeless fairest love for her people, to me, she is the greatest heroine of Benin history and a model that we must teach our children of her uncommon character. Great Benin Descendants remember her today and dedicate February 14th every year to remind ourselves of what we must do to make Great Benin Great again.
THE MOTHER OF THE BENIN KINGDOM TO BE CELEBRATED- EPIA PRESIDENT
