“Anyone Can Be A Barbarian, It Requires A Terrible Effort To Remain A
Civilized Man” Leonard Sydney.
The Urhobo people are inexorably obsessed with matters concerning
their customs and traditions. They hold on to their tradition with
pathological imperativeness notwithstanding the hybrid of Western
bastardies and civilizational interfacing (Religion and Education ).
The Urhobos believe that death is a continuation of life in a
different realm. Hence, the belief in Transcendentalism,
Transmigration, Transmogrification of the Soul, Reincarnation and
Ancestral Worship, etc.
In secular terminology, death is a cessation of life. Death by
extension is lifelessness, inanimately deceased, dysfunctionally
demised (legal) and extinctly late. William Shakespeare the English
Playwright observed that death is an inevitable end and it will come
when it will come. He said “There is no armor against fate, hence
death lays its icy hands on Kings”. Implying that death is a common
denominator, a leveler and a landlord that reminds us of the
expiration of our tenancy agreement on earth.
A studied and educated understanding of life and death by
Philosophers, Religionists, Necromancers and Occultists has introduced
semantical neologisms into the “death” lexicon. They say it is a
ltransition from mortality to immortality, departed, a move to eternal
bliss, end of a chapter, a touch of the Elysian ladder, end of story,
Elysium transcendental, joined the saints triumphant, gone to the
grand theatre, a time to be born and a time to die and ad majorem dei
gloriam.
It remains a pasteurized fact amongst the Urhobo people that nobody
dies a natural death under the age of (60) sixty years. Such deaths
must have been caused by witches and wizards, etc. Hence, the recourse
to look for the cause of the death of such a person. It is the oracle
that determines the type of traditional burial the person gets.
However, under normal circumstances, if a young person dies with or
without children, it is a sad story and does not attract too much
fanfare. But when an elderly man, chief, king, or queen dies it is
given all the trappings of traditional grandeur. In most parts of
Urhobo land the elderly or a wealthy elderly man of note is given
complete traditional burial rites within (7) seven days, fourteen days
or twenty-one days burial ceremonies. This entails the formal
interment after death or after several weeks in the mortuary. Then the
family of the elderly man or woman now sits down to fine- tune the
burial logistics. In some cases the burial is combined with Christian
wake keeping and then on to traditional rites. Depending on the
family, the Agberen (effigy) is carried. This symbolizes the
completeness of traditional honour to the deceased, etc.
The families of the deceased have their traditional roles to play. In
most cases, the eldest son is given specific roles to play. The
elders are called upon to pour and offer prayers to the ancestors
(Erhiwin) and to shrines where the deceased worshipped. It could be
any of these: Onerungberun, Ayelala, Eni, Eshu, Ogun, Erirhie,
Aguarode-Ogbu, Aguarode-Ogidigan, Olokun, Amenojigbe, Ekpenakpewen,
Oreshugbo, Aigbiroko Daderhie,etc. It is then capped with traditional
gun salute (Ekurusu) as a mark of honour. There are other clandestine
rituals which cannot be discussed here.
However, the traditional burial rites in most Urhobo areas are
virtually the same with slight variations in different kingdoms making
up the Urhobo nation. But the gravamen of this submission is the
wantonness, waste, mutant immorality and splendiferous theatrics that
have in recent times become fashionable in most Urhobo burials and
being disguised as tradition. We have seen corpses lined and decorated
with beads and gold rings. Some buy caskets lined with gold rings.
Most burials in Urhoboland are carnivals of immorality and
bazaar of Babel. Divorcees (Omotogbes) and social nitwits have taken
burials as a rendezvous for grandiose debauchery. Most Urhobo families
try to almost wake up the dead through these terrible grotesque
burials, some still call them traditional burials.
A belief in the continuation of life after death and a desire to
gratify their arrogance has given rise to this state of affairs. The
reverence for the dead in ancient Egypt led to the dead being
mummified and preserved, buried with gold, diamonds, silver, clothes
and horses, etc. All the Empires that grew in Upper Mesopotamia, (the
river Euphrates and Tigris) Samaria, Babylonian, Hittite and the
Persian Empire follwed suit 9400-330BC).
Nobody is saying that the dead do not deserve a good burial, Afterall
the Bible says in Ecclesiastes chapter 6 verse 3 that “if a man begets
a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his
years are many but he does not enjoy life’s good things, and also has
no good burial, I say that an untimely birth is better off than he”. A
decent burial is the crowning glory of a worthy life. But must we
Urhobos kill the living to bury the dead? All types of demonic levies
are stamped on unemployed children.
In Wole Soyinka’s play “the Bacchae of Euripides,” he described such
wantonness as the display of unmajestic, orgiastic, Dionysian
exuberance and salacious revelry. As soon as an Urhobo man or woman
dies the family is thrown into jubilation because an opportunity for
social recklessness has been opened. Each member or each gate is asked
to pay some money and they go on to erect temporary brothels
euphemistically called family booths or canopies. Members of each gate
or the general family go into a competition of “my Mercedes is bigger
than yours”. Some go to money lenders for loans, whilst some sell
their properties to enable them massage their egos and give a so
called good account of themselves during the burial ceremonies.
During the burial, expensive clothes, drinks and dance groups are
flaunted with wicked devilry. Women, both married and single move,
dance, talk, sing and dress with sensual and libidinous
suggestiveness. It is, however, instructive to note that in most
families when the deceased was alive nobody cared to assist him or
her. There is a family that gave one of the most wasteful burials in
Sapele. It is on record that the deceased suffered from diabetes, but
nobody could afford to buy him his dose of insulin. Another case in
Ughelli was that of a Chief who suffered from stroke. He defecated and
urinated on his bed. None of his children could assist. He died out
of frustration. But as soon as he died all the children and their
friends arranged and held the most terrifyingly explosive burial in
Ughelli. Why can’t we care for the living?
Virtually every Urhobo man or woman belongs to one social club or the
other. The aims and objectives of such clubs are mainly to assist its
members during burials. The clubs have extended their tentacles to the
churches. During burials, the groups from the churches are placed
side by side with the social clubs, old boys and girls associations,
town or village unions, etc. They then start their depredational
jamboree and melodramatic saturnalianism. There is so much of
boisterous carousal and waste that you will begin to wonder whether
these people have no problems like building of schools,hospitals,
roads and other welfare facilities in their towns and villages.
As soon as you mention development projects to these ones they develop
cold sweat, cold feet and the donor fatigue syndrome. Their greatest
love is for this meaningless waste. Sometimes they use these burials
as political campaign ground and for snatching other people’s wives.
Burial has become a major industry in Urhoboland. The media is also
involved. These senseless burials have become the greatest catalyst of
corruption and moral decadence, because everybody wants cursed monies
for frivolous extravaganzas. We know of people who have become
financially insolvent and bankrupt because of these burials. Are these
lunatic fixations and corybantic deliriums part of Urhobo burial
tradition?
The time has come and it is now for Urhobos to start re-orientating
their social and traditional thought patterns on burials, to mirror
what is reflective of modicum of moral moderacy and discipline. The
traditional rulers in their various domains and kingdoms have a great
role to play here, by letting burial mongers know where tradition
starts and where it stops. They should draw a line between traditional
degeneracy and abuse, and where it is loftily lifted up. Any burial
that is beyond laid down criteria should attract fines for
community development. The blocking of roads for burials must be
stopped and the immorality and salaciousness inherent in most burials
must be checkmated. The Urhobos will be lifting up the banner of
social decorum if they implosively forestall these antediluvian antics.
They must realize that life is like a tale told by an idiot packed
full of sounds and fury, but in the end signifying nothing. Our
intellectual binoculars should be able to fathom the fact that life is
more than the physical embellishment we put into it. The love of the
mundane perishable and frail physical body has dwarfed the eternal
essence of life. Man is so pestiferously committed to his solipsistic
self centeredness that he has become monomaniacally introspected in
materialism. The essayist John L. Motley said “Deeds, not stones are
the moment of the great”. Let Urhobos begin to think of things that
will eternalize their names, and not transitory and impermanent
hypnotic regression into yahoo-like burials.
The wanton desire for rapacious narcissistic and esurient acquisition
of material things has precipitated the fear of death in man. A man
who luxuriates in wealth fears death, because he feels he will lose
those empty things, which strangers will come and inherit and not even
his children.
He is tortured emotionally on his death bed and on his way to the top
because he must have stepped on so many toes to get to William
Thackaray’s “VANITY FAIR”-vanitas vanitum. The wicked are hideously
afraid of death because they are not sure of their destination. The
Urhobos have become spectacle of ironies and comedy of errors in
matters relating to burials. Our highly revered burial tradition is
now submerged and sandwiched in and with duplicitous interpolations,
which supplies incentive to base and deranged conduct.
Finally, let Urhobos begin to think, act and operate on “tabular rosa”
in Matters relating to burials. The Urhobo burial tradition has been
consigned to a state of AB ABUSU AD USUM VALET CONSEQUENTIA (No valid
conclusion as to the use of a thing can be drawn from its abuse). Even
if others do it Urhobos must carve a unique social niche for
themselves. But if they insist on this show of shame, let them heed
the principles of sic utere tuo alienam non laedas (so use your
property as not to damage the property of another). In the words of
Leonard Sydney Weoff “Anyone can be a Barbarian, it requires a
terrible effort to remain a civilized man”. Let Urhobos be civilized
in “Burial” matters.
Chief Bobson Gbinijie, writes from Warri, Delta State
