A Crown for Our King, Stones for Supper for his Subjects

By Prof Pita Agbese

The coronation of the Och’Idoma should have been the crowning glory (no pun intended) of the week under review, but Ortom rained on his own parade. He made the coronation a side issue, a minor issue, by granting a television interview in which he was brimming with self-righteous indignation at what he claimed was an injustice done to his new godfather, Gov. Ezenwo Wike. The interview was vintage Ortom, lying in almost every sentence and blaming the federal government for his wicked refusal to pay salaries and pensions’ benefits. Ortom also claimed to be in hibernation, but the next day, he was coronating the new Och’Idoma. The Idoma people may have acquired a distinction of being the only people whose king was coronated by a man in hibernation. It was that bad. As one of my friends was fond of saying, it was bad awful.

What ought to be a joyous occasion, an occasion of immense pride and glory to the Idoma people was, instead, turned into a vivid demonstration of what happens to a group whose destinies are controlled by others. No Idoma person, not even the new Och’Idoma, could have been proud of a coronation ritual without substance. Clearly, this was a coronation of empty rituals, rituals devoid of meanings and the right symbolism. In the Idoma tradition, a king has an organic linkage with the people. Their destiny is his destiny.

Their pains are his pains. King and people celebrate together and if unfortunate circumstances dictate, king and people mourn and grieve together. It was certainly a sacrilege to the Idoma tradition to crown an Idoma king when the king’s people are hungry and impoverished. Idoma land is a blighted land. Even Otukpo where the coronation took place is largely a cesspool of stagnant street waters and mud. Many Idoma children cannot be educated because their teachers are hungry. The storehouse of knowledge in Idoma pensioners lie fallow because they are too hungry and too sick to share their knowledge. Every public hospital in Idoma land needs to be hospitalized.

Ortom, the king-maker, arrogantly ignored the sacred bond between an Idoma king and his people. Ortom was apparently dismissive of the Idoma ethos in which the king cannot be an island of prosperity to the detriment of his people. Ortom has created a major problem for the new Och’Idoma. He has divorced him from the people on whose behalf and interests he wears the new crown. The king’s shiny and beautiful new beads did not reflect pride in the Idoma culture as they were supposed to. Instead, they stood a few days ago, as a luminous reminder that the centralization of chieftancy affairs in Makurdi has deprived the Idoma people of choosing their own king. I raised this point in the past and the coronation demands that I bring it up again. Under Benue law, the governor is the appointing authority of traditional rulers. This is wrong. The exclusion of the Idoma from the governorship in the name of ethnic minority status means that all Och’Idomas will be selected by a Tiv man whereas no Idoma person can choose a Tor Tiv. This is unfair. People should have a right to choose their own kings. A people whose king is chosen for them by an outsider are a dependent people. Their king may wear a crown, but that crown is akin to a crown of thorns, a symbol of an ultimate humiliation.

It might have been this realization that the Idoma people did not have anything to celebrate in the coronation that saw the sparse attendance at the event. Even non-Idoma people failed to honor the invitations the Benue State Government sent out to them. There was no federal presence. The Aku Uka of Wukari and the Tor Tiv were the only traditional rulers in attendance. Ortom could not get even a single sitting governor to attend. Seriake Dickson, former governor of Bayelsa State was there, but probably he did so in honor of his former chief press secretary, Dr. Francis Ottah Agbo. In a political campaign season, none of the presidential candidates turned up. Many prominent Idoma people were conspicuous by their absence. They were probably embarrassed and disgusted that the king was being coronated amidst the hunger and destitution ravaging Idoma land.

Ortom’s horrible leadership victimizes almost everyone in Benue, but on an occasion in which our king was given a crown of glory while we were cooking stones for supper, it feels as if the most poisonous venom of Ortom’s wickedness has some ethnic colorations.

P/S, the fact that it is only an Idoma traditional ruler in the entire country who has a prefix of a pastor added to his name, amplified the surreal nature of the coronation.

Prof Pita Agbese, writes from University of Northern Iowa, USA