‘The Igue Story’: Power on show
By Omorodion S. Uwaifo
A show of power by the Eguae evidenced a growing tendency to emasculate the right of the people of Benin Kingdom to write stories about their own people. The Ęguae said a play, The Iguę Story, was Iguę Festival as it is usually performed, and that neither ACERE nor Ómóródión Uwaifo had its permission to dramatize it.
On Friday November 22, 2024 the Óba and the Benin Traditional Council sought an injunction in the High Court of Lagos to stop ACERE and its play. The Court did not grant the injunction. However, this fight against The Iguę Story, a play written by a nonagenarian, Ómóródión S. Uwaifo, which was to have been dramatized at the MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos on November 24, 2024, was a new face of this hostility.
On page 111 et.seq. of the book, Edo Cultural Voyage, Hanon Publishers Limited, Lagos, 2006, Ókhaęmwę Nosakhare Isekhurhe, who chronicled Benin tradition and history, wrote about Igue Festival. Omo n’ Óba n’ Edo Erediauwa wrote the foreword to the book, which for the most part, Ókhaęmwęn Samuel Igbę, the Iyasę of Benin, had put together. I was the editor of the book written by nine authors including Professors Emmanuel Emovon and Eghosa Osagie, as well as Dr. S B Omoregie.
So, Omo n’ Óba Erediauwa, ehe ne Iran hia ni kpaa nę ye vbe ęrinmwin evbu, evbu, had by his action in 2005, approved the release of the Igue Festival itself into the public space, and no one except the Copyright Holder can stop its adaptation on stage or screen. That book sold around the world. I recall that someone in the US showed me the cover of his copy on Facebook about seven years ago.
The Igue Story, my intellectual property, took its building blocks from that book, and I gladly authorized the Association for the Cultural and Economic Renaissance of Ędo (ACERE), of which I was interim chairman, to stage the play.
Though the Ómó n’ Óba and the Benin Traditional Council failed to obtain the injunction, the effort to stop ACERE from showing The Igue Story is as grass at the foot of an iroko tree. The power haunting the people of Benin Kingdom is huge. It seeks to emasculate the rights of the people to write about their own lives and whatever influences them. As it sees the issue, authority to write anything about Benin Kingdom and its people resides in the Ęguae. If you would want to write about anything Ędo, you apply to the Ęguae to authorize you. How medieval this type of thinking!
ACERE was never going to court to embarrass the Óba, Benin Kingdom’s cultural and spiritual leader. When people have applied for injunction, they have often backed their application with violence, whether or not they succeeded. ACERE would not succumb to that either. So, ultimately, the Ęguae succeeded in derailing ACERE’s attempt to showcase Ędo’s rich history and culture.
ACERE lost N14m (fourteen million naira) and a precious footprint in the process. There should be no mistake about the fact that we live in a democracy. As Nigerians, we practice its tenets too in our daily lives. This should never have happened to ACERE or to any other group, or person.
There should be a forum to take care of Benin people’s Diaspora affairs. The Óba and the people, wherever they are, belong together these in difficult times than in the past. Attitudes have to change as well if the coalescence of intelligence, resources, wisdom, and strength needed to rebuild Benin Kingdom must come, and the people turned big achievers as their ancestors were. We need the past to galvanize us; we should to stop trying to live in it.
The Benin Traditional Council needs a secretary to take charge of Diaspora issues. We are an ethnic nation. A computer with a database should have information about ivbiedo around the world. That done, contacts can be made and people mobilized for good. Let’s avoid embarrassing situations in future.
Solomon S. Uwaifo
