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The Okuku decree

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  • January 30, 2025
  • 4 min read
The Okuku decree

By Omo S. Uwaifo

A kpònmwę Osa, we thank Providence that the ridiculous errors of the ekhaęmwę sent to advise the public about the “misuse” of the okuku, the special hairstyle of Benin women, have been dealt with. This piece is about a trend that, in my opinion, needs to change.

Emeritus Professor Dan Izevbaye recently told me that it’s not acceptable to say that a person who lives in Benin is a Benin, nor is it acceptable to say that anyone who lives in Lagos is a Lagos. We agreed that a person living in Lagos is a Lagosian; one who lives in London is a Londoner. But these look and sound anglicized. What name, anglicized or not, can we find for a person living in Benin? We considered Bini and recalled that the late Ómó n’ Óba Erediauwa had banned it. However, the Emeritus Professor said that that name is the only recourse for now.

We probably need the help of Linguists here, but that’s for another day. Trending now is the matter of okuku, Benin women’s ultimate hairstyle. The concern of the Ęguae is that it’s not intended as a hairstyle for every woman. A video from Benin that I saw recently is of young men from the north of the country wearing the hairstyles of ekhaęmwęn. It was funny. A few people speaking Edoid gathered and angrily suggested that the boys from the north insulted their culture. I thought the northerners were most reassuring when they opted to shave off the offending style.

My reaction was, if you like it, you use it. Anachronism can’t hold if it is to do with personal adornments. My take is that if it’s our culture, copy as others would in the global village that the world has become, it remains our culture. Let’s give the world, if it wants our culture!

We have lots to learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. A trending video that I saw this morning is of a man, Mr. Fowowe, whose parents came from Idoani and Ipele both in Ondo State. He had researched his origins and found that Idoani, his father’s place, and Ipele, where his mother came from, were both founded by Royals from Benin; Idoani was founded by Okpamen before he became the Óba Ózólua, and Ipele, was by a Benin Prince, who I suspected was the same Okpamęn. Benin’s oral histories are replete with founded and conquered places for which we have nothing to show.

I had heard of the Idoani story from its present Óba, Kabiyesi Olu Olutoye, a retired general of the Nigerian Army, but like millions of other Benin people, I heard about the founding of Ipele for the first time this morning. Perhaps the Benin Traditional Council needs to spend more time unearthing those characteristics our ancestors had that imbued them with their achievement impulses. We have lots to learn. It has not always been pageants in red and white.

From what our earlier and current generations have done to the moat, Iya, a colleague at the Benin Moat Foundation once said we were ignoble offspring of noble ancestors. The Ęguae should consider that indictment. What changed to make us more inclined to destroy than to mend our own these days? And we seem satisfied with pageantries even when we lack social and economic progress!

If we know where we’ve been and how we got there, we would be better tuned to achieve greater things in the years ahead. The 21st century is rocketing away from us. What do we do in a world changing so fast? We must reject the idea of being passive onlookers as man sets to create a new world that will live differently probably elsewhere in the cosmos. Do we still have time?

* Uwaifo is an engineer, writer and cultural historian

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