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By Young Erhiurhoro
As a cultural affairs analyst and media practitioner and also partly related to the said Evwreni kingdom, I have written much on the issue of Evwreni’s seniority among the various communities making up the kingdom at the moment. Quite often, I had even been threatened by some arrant elements from the Evwreni community on why I should be making such publications, claiming that Unenurhie is senior to Evwreni.
In all my write-ups, I have pointed out that the truth is usually being suppressed by some persons in the kingdom. They do not want the truth to surface or see the light of the day. They want to bury it at all times with all available tools accessible to them. These tools comprise education, business and politics.
Many Evwreni people are doing well in these areas I mentioned. There is always a saying in Urhobo land that, you can’t lick an unripe orange fruit when your friend is on top of an orange tree. This is exactly what is happening between the Evwreni people and the Unenurhie people. It’s indisputable fact that, the Evwreni people are luckily well placed in the society than the Unenurhie people today. But nobody knows the kind of child tomorrow may give birth to in the affairs of men.
I want to begin this article by first recognizing the fact that, Evwreni kingdom is among the 24 kingdoms in Urhobo land today. It’s in Ughelli North LGA of Delta State. From historical records available, no kingdom is an island to itself. A kingdom is a conglomerate of different family units, households and communities. It’s the natural combination of these social dwellings that make every kingdom. The story is always the same in every kingdom across the country.
Secondly, these conglomerate or combination of communities that make a kingdom must have common historical foundations and biological linkages from their ancestral fathers. They could be linked together biologically as fathers and children or as siblings. When such historical records are traceable to a common ancestry, then we can now establish the fact that they are one kingdom. But in a situation where this is on the opposite side with one or more communities making that kingdom, such communities can’t be grouped together as one kingdom. Except it’s done through political manipulation or traditional influence on the part of the larger communities.
Based on the above facts, Unenurhie is a recognized community in Evwreni kingdom. Evwreni as a kingdom is majorly made up of Evwreni community and Unenurhie community respectively. Evwreni community is majorly comprised three quarters of Uneni, Okpawha and Urevwe. While Unenurhie community is made up of two quarters of Enurhie and Uruwheru. There is no doubt or argument about it. However, this has been shortchanged in recent years in order to suppress and marginalize the Unenurhie people by raising the three quarters in Evwreni community to the status of a community. This was done by Evwreni leaders to silent the voices of the Unenurhie people. Truly, the Unenurhie people were really silent at the time this traditional manipulation was raised by the Evwreni leaders. They only allowed the Unenurhie leaders just to feed the crumbs from the table. It was very disgusting!
Again, these three quarters in Evwreni community were raised to the status of a community when the first census was conducted in the 60s. In order to increase the population of the kingdom as it was the corruptive practice then in virtually every area in the country, these three quarters were skillfully raised to the status of a community and then created many household units in them. This is a common attribute with our Nigerian political leaders. Today, the Evwreni people always claim that Evwreni kingdom is majorly made up of four communities instead of the original two communities that were known to history.
And this is usually the sharing formula for everything accruing to the kingdom either from the government or private sector. They will always take the lion’s share because these three alleged communities are grouped in the same place. This actually made them a community like Unenurhie. It’s only the Unenurhie community that is separated from these places in a distant route. Unenurhie is situated on a distinct location far from Evwreni community. This also made them to be the seat of power in the kingdom. That’s, the Evwreni community serves as the traditional headquarters of the kingdom. The Odion’Rode of Unenurhie is today never recognized by the Evwreni traditional power, let alone seeking the government recognition. This is a sheer political fallacy!
Politically, Unenurhie community and Evwreni community are also grouped together in one electoral ward. The seat of power in the electoral ward too is also situated at Evwreni community. Based on this rare privilege, the Evwreni people will always grab every important political positions to themselves, leaving the Unenurhie people to take the subordinate ones. This has been the usual ugly experience of the Unenurhie people for many years now. It’s the same pattern with party leadership structure. Since the creation of the electoral ward, no Unenurhie person has ever become a party chairman or elected as a councillor to represent the ward in the local government council. The highest party leadership position ever attained by any Unenurhie person was a vice chairman.
From these preambles, let’s now go back to the seniority clause of the Evwreni kingdom. Today, no Evwreni man or woman will ever accept the bitter truth that Unenurhie community is the senior in Evwreni kingdom. This is because Unenurhie as a community is a very small place, when compared to the Evwreni main town and also far behind them in many areas of life. This is why the Evwreni people always degrade and also marginalize the Unenurhie people in virtually all things in the kingdom.
However, history had it that, Usu was the founder of Unenurhie community while Ewurhu was the founder of Evwreni community. These two men were great warriors from the great Benin kingdom. They were also related to the founders of Enhwe and Emede in Isoko ethnic region. They however migrated from Benin kingdom as a result of internal wars through the Benin river into the River Niger where they now anchored in place called Elele in the present day Rivers State. They stayed there for some years and a war then broke out. This group of people joined a particular family in the village to fight the war.
Immediately after the war, the group led by Usu , who was their senior and leader again sailed along the River Niger until they came to their different abodes of today. They first came to where Enhwe is today. The founders of Enhwe and that of Emede decided to rest there and thereafter erected huts. Both Usu and his brother, Ewurhu decided to move southwards along the river until they got to the present day Unenurhie. The literal meaning of Unenurhie is “along the river”. When two of them got there , they built huts and decided to stay. As they were there with their immediate families, they embarked on means of livelihood and how to survive. Ewurhu was a highly talented hunter while Usu was a notable fisherman.
One fateful day, Ewurhu decided to go for hunting across the river. As he was searching in the thick forest, he luckily ran into a huge elephant. He killed the elephant with his bow and arrow. There was no way Ewurhu could carry the huge elephant into his hunting bag. He therefore decided to go home and inform his brother Usu, about the big catch. Ewurhu broke this happy news to his brother and other members of the family. They were really happy for the miraculous catch. Since they couldn’t carry the elephant home, Ewurhu and few others decided to go to the forest and butchered it. After butchering, they sent some important and special portions of the animal to Usu, their leader and elder brother. This was how the present Evwreni was founded. Evwreni literally mean, “the village of elephants”. It was named after the huge elephant killed by their founding father.
In fact, this was how both the Unenurhie and Evwreni communities were founded by their ancestral fathers. But as it’s today, this simple truth and straight forward story has been shortchanged and turned upside down by the Evwreni people. They never accepted this truth from any Unenurhie person. But as a writer, we will continue to shout on top of our voices with our pens for the world to hear. In most families, the senior or eldest may have a small stature, but his younger siblings will always respect him/her for being their senior. They can’t take the seniority position from him because he’s small in height or body structure. Seniority according to the African culture, is not a position to bestow upon a person because the person is highly rich or is politically connected. It’s a natural privilege or right. On this note, I want to plead with the Evwreni leadership to set the historical records of the Evwreni kingdom straight to avoid imminent ancestral nemesis.
Young Erhiurhoro is a journalist and member of the Urhobo Historical Society.