ORIGIN OF NRI THEOLOGY by Onyeji Nnaji

Image adopted for Eri

If our senses of judgment is right, what do we say about who fathered who, seeing that Egyptian civilization began in 3700 B.C. and the arrival of Jacob’s family in Egypt marked the beginning of the “The New Kingdom”, not The Middle let alone The Old Kingdom; but the latest iron smelting in Nsukka was rated 4000 B.C. and beyond; is Nsukka older than Nri?  Or are we to believe that Igbo-Ukwu is older than Nri since the excavation result of  T. Shaw shows evidence of “Spreads of charcoal dating to the eleventh and seventh millennium before our era” respectively, (Igbo Ukwu, 58).

Eleventh millennium from the first millennium AD is equivalent to 22,000 B.C. while seventh millennium from AD 0001 is equivalent to 14,000 B.C. you will read more surprises as you proceed. If Igbo-Ukwu, Awka and the youngest of the Igbo ancestors, the Nsukka, should be older than Nri, then I will accept the Israeli Eri deception. Should Nri refute this betrayal of birthright; then the educated ones among them should pick up their pens to tell the world their history as stated by Obalike (Uruọji) the Eze Nri (1889 – 1936) when he was brought to the court in Awka in the early 1911. His story was documented by people present including Northcote Thomas.

DEBUNKING DECEITS ABOUT ERI MYTHOLOGY

Over the years it had been a lingering issue in and on me about the history of the Igbo nation. This issue had led me to several ancient libraries, trying to find any possible identity that may serve as a pointer towards deciphering the birth place of the Igbo race. Because the Yoruba were the first to document their Oduduwa myths and make it prominent via the cross-cultural comparative work of Olumide Lukas; forming a central leadership structure in the manner of the Benin and Egypt, I earlier thought that Igbo might have emerged from any of these places. On the contrary, the Benin and Yoruba has, each, a version of their oral tradition tracing their rout to Igbo land. Euba and Ruth Finnegan wrote about the Yoruba origin. Ifa priest also supported them in the belief that Obatala was older than Oduduwa; the same person it was believed by the above sources that he fathered the Igbo. The Benin too remains skeptical, reading Osare Omoreghe’s Great Benin I & II. At this point I could not think of Egypt as a possible source for the Igbo nation because, Egypt too has pointed to West Africa as their birthplace.

I met the greatest confusion the day I was on the same commercial bus with a University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) lecturer. We were on our way from Calabar to Enugu when one of the passengers read something from his Facebook page and raise the question of Igbo Origin. Snappily, the lecturer slammed and yelled from the front seat thus, “Igbos are strayed Israelites who found their ways to Nigeria”. Meanwhile, he had just recuperated momentarily from the shock of the Uncle’s demise, for it was that same day (on Sunday) that armed men invaded a Catholic church in Ekwuluobia, Nnewi Anambra State; his uncle was a victim of this mass death.  To make himself credible, he affirmed that he is an Ọzọ title holder born and brought up in Nri, “The ancestral home of Igbo land”, according to him. At this point, I couldn’t let him go further; I interfered immediately and told him that it is a deep disappointment to hear that even him, at his level of education, could accept all those unproven fairytales. This shows that even Nri indigenes do not know their source and are not prepared to look for it. When I said this, he became attentive to hear what I would say. This is what they say of Nri Origin:

Eri, the son of Gad. According to biblical accounts, Jacob had Leah as his wife who begot four sons for him. When Leah noticed she had passed child-bearing age, she gave her maid – servant, Zilpah to Jacob to wife, and through Zilpah he had a son named Gad. Gad then bigot Eri, who later formed a clan known as Erites vide Genesis Chapter 30 verse 9; 46 verse 16 and Numbers chapter 26 verses 15-19. Eri was therefore amongst the twelve tribes of Israel via Gad. During their stay in Egypt Eri became the high priest and spiritual adviser to Pharaoh Teti, the fifth dynastic king of Egypt around 2400 BC (Logbaby.com).

This is not the only site that caries this fake information. The Vanguard, 10th August, 2014 has the same information under the heading Where did Igbo Originate from by Vincent Ujumadu. Found on another site also is the heading, Kingdom of Nri – the history of Nigeria, Posted on  24th September, 2014 by Atip Lawanprasert. This paper also says the same thing. There is no air of truth in the information above. To prove this record wrong, Pharaoh Teti was the founder of the sixth dynasty, he did not belong to the fifth dynasty kings, and Eri was never a priest in Egypt. Ancient Egypt online has the following information on the first paragraph about Teti.  
                                                  Pharaoh Teti

Teti is recorded as the founder of the Sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt in the Turin Kings List, a view supported by Manetho. It is suggested that there was a period of dynastic instability when Unas died without an heir, and that Teti married Unas's daughter Iput to gain the throne. He took the throne name Seheteptawy ("he who pacifies the two lands") which seems to support this theory. The length of his reign is uncertain. Manetho suggests he was Pharaoh for between 30 and 33 years, but most Egyptologists favor a short reign or around 12 years.

Surprising, apart from the latter migration across the Atlantic orchestrated by those orgam scribes of giants who founded the British isle and the later Trans-Atlantic slave trade, there is no consanguinity between the white race and the Black race for they did not come from the same source. 

I am a bible scholar and I have studied the Jewish Cabbala covering the Israeli’s oral tradition, I have read ancient books like The Nag Hammadi, Egyptian Book of the Dead and some other publications from Egypt in the era of print, included in these are Before the Pyramids, African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, African Genesis, deciphering the Origin of Egypt etc. You will be astonished reading the 1890s publications of Petries to discover that all the pharaohs that ruled Egypt in antiquity were strangers. Dr. Ivan Van Setimer clarifies us about their origin when he asserts that,

The Kemmiu (ancient Egyptians) used the term “Af-Rui-Ka to designate beginnings, referring to inner Africa, the place the ancestors of the ruling class came from”. The question we cannot settle here is, “where is the inner Africa?”

The reason why people went on claiming that the biblical Eri the son of Gad was the same Eri who came to the east before time is simply because the European came with the Christian bible and unfortunately Eri was read in the same book, the Bible. If so be it, what then do we say of the name “Adah” which appeared in the various parts of the bible earlier before the birth of Gad? Read Genesis 4:, 19, 20, 23; chapter 36: 2, 4, 10, 12 and 16 you may need to ask yourself whether the name Eri was a replay of the first Eri who founded Nri or not. It does not require much thinking, it is a simple calculation of time which anyone willing to know can easily workout. Again, drawing from provable historical facts, Pharaoh Snefru (c. 2575–2465 BCE) was the king who conquered Nubia whose civilization was rated to have begun in 5000 B.C.; Snefru belonged to the 4th dynasty pharaohs. In the fifth dynasty, in the reign of pharaoh Apophis (also called, Apepi), the children of Jacob were brought to Egypt. Pharaoh Apophis saw the seven years famine and bounty historic in Egypt in 1540 B.C.

                                                     

                                                                     Pharaoh Apophis
Now, if our senses of judgment is right, what do we say about who fathered who, seeing that Egyptian civilization began in 3700 B.C. and the arrival of Jacob’s family marked the beginning of the “The New Kingdom”, not The Old nor The Middle Kingdom; but the latest iron smelting in Nsukka was rated 4000 B.C. and beyond; is Nsukka older than Nri?  Or are we to believe that Igbo-Ukwu is older than Nri since the excavation result of T. Shaw shows evidence of “Spreads of charcoal dated to the eleventh and seventh millennium before our era” respectively, (P.58). Eleventh millennium from the first millennium AD is equivalent to 22,000 BC. If Igbo-Ukwu, Awka and the youngest of the Igbo ancestors, the Nsukka should be older than Nri, then I will accept the Israeli Eri deception. Should Nri refute this betrayal of birthright, then the educated ones among them should pick up their pens to tell us their history as stated by Obalike (Uruọji) 1889 – 1936 when he was brought to the court in Awka in the early 1911. His story was documented by people present including Northcote Thomas.  

ORIGIN OF NRI

Nri and the entire Agulu area, including Oraeri and Igbo-Ukwu (originally called Igbo-Nkwor) all had the same ancestry. Also included in this common ancestry is the present day Yoruba of the Oduduwa theology. Nri and Awka are not related by consanguinity; rather proximity and needs for duty had brought them together. The Nri group descended from the prominent name, Eri, while the Akwa were originally who they are as their technocracy can has assigned them the name, Awka. These were the two earliest ancestors of the Igbo race before the arrival of the Umudiala (the ancestors of the Igbo heartland and those that emigrated from them). The Umudiala were the ancestors of “the Idu”, “the Bantu travellers” and the remnants of the Igbo heartland of the present day. The Umudiala was the third ancestors of the Igbo race. The last, but not the least, are the Nsukka. Eri and Dioka were giants, but Umudiala were pygmies; Nsukka ancestors were explained to be neck-less. From the way these ancestors were made to be, Eri was very powerful as the first father to exist; Awka was specially gifted for craft; Umuiala were the consults of law, precept and odinala; but Nsykka exceeded them all in mystic energy. The Nag Hammadi proves this true in the following ways:   

Then the saviour created […] of them all – and the spirits of these [are manifestly] superior, being blessed and varying in election – and also (he created) many other beings, which have no king and are superior to everyone that was before them. Consequently, four races exist. There are three that belong to the kings of the eighth heaven. But the fourth race is kingless and perfect, being the highest of all. (PP. 125).

These ancestors lived separately but together as they shared decisions in common. They had no king, not even Eri; for they were kingless. That is why the Igbo address themselves as a people without king; “Igbo enwe Eze”. The Igbo celebrate “first” from the beginning, therefore since Eri was the first man he remained the leader in whose abode the representatives of the four ancestors converge; there they had a relatively consolidated democracy formed with the names of Eri and Idu and called Eridu. Eri led as the eldest (the first of their kind), he was never rated as a king.

The Kingless Generation was glorious and without number, they are designated the generation over whom no kingdoms exist. And all the beings of the realm with no kingdom over it … are designated the children of the un-conceived Father (Nag, 277).

These are the people from whom the little population marked as the Igbo today emerged from. Detail of this is contained in the paper, The Origin of the Igbo Race published on ajuede.com.

According to Obalike:

Eri, father of Nri, and Nnamaku, his wife, were sent down by Chukwu, a sky God. When Eri came down from the sky, he had to stand on an ant heap as all the land was then a morass. He complained to Chukwu, who thereupon sent him an Awka blacksmith to dry up the land. While Eri lived, he and his descendants were fed by Chukwu and their food was Azu Igwe, Fish from heaven.

 This Eri was not the biblical Eri. This Eri existed before the flood of Noah. Very important to note, this issue about Eri descending with his wife and the coming of the Awka blacksmith was not calculated in the history account as haven taken place in a day or two; it was considered in generation. This was the calculation of that time, the world and events were been calculated in ways of the different generations of people. We have discussed this in The Origin of time published on the ajuede.com.

Eri had two sons, Nri and his younger brother whose exact name was not captured by Obalike’s tale. He was rather included by mere reference, “Odudunwa”, perhaps that was what he was popularly called, for it has been in the manner of the Igbo to refer to the eldest son and the last as “Okpala/Okpara/Opara” and “Odudunwa” respectively. This was how the name “Oduduwa” emerged. We have also discussed this on the heading, Why did Oduduwa run to the West?”.  Nri and his younger brother grow together until the day their father returned home after he had stayed the number of time the creator wanted for him. Before he set out for the journey, he handed his staff of eldership (the symbol that proved him the first man) over to Nri his elder son.

According to Obalike, it came to a time that the food that came with Eri ceased to show up, and hunger besieged the earth. Nri responded to this challenge by promising to embark on a journey beyond the world of the living to discuss it with God. Therefore, Nri handed the mantle to his younger brother to reign in his stead while he journeyed.  After the tour, Nri returned to fulfill the sacrifice required through which food was restored to the human world. When everything was settled, it was time for Nri to take his position; Oudunwa refused to give Nri the staff. Meanwhile he had had conspired with Idu (the official legal personnel and custodian of the then tradition) never to return the staff to Nri at his arrival. According to Idu’s advice, their father Eri travelled and never returned, now that Nri had gone the way of their father he too should not return. In any case he returned, Odudunwa should not hand over the staff. He did this to his brother, and Nri could not bear it. Therefore, they fought each other. The Yoruba mythology explained this fight in thr following way:   

Obatala and Oduduwa quarreled and all the other Gods took sides. In the end, Olorun settled the dispute by giving Obatala the power to create mankind. Oduduwa was allowed to rule the land that he had created. Oduduwa became the first Yoruba king, ruler of the ancient city of Ile-Ife, the place where he was first believed to have climbed down from the sky.

This was the situation that threw the Yoruba father out of the east. It did not end there, Idu too was sent out of the kingdom, Eridu. And he also moved west and settled at the Midwest. Therefore, because Idu reigned in Eridu as an Oba, this is the main reason the Igbo tradition refer to Benin as the city of kings.  According to traditional history, it was this misunderstanding that led to the creation of man from the dust, and in the Igbo view, his name was Adama. Ifa priest explained this was as the war of the Gods; he also revealed that the war was fought over a claim of staff. Coming to the relationship of the Benin father with his Igbo elder which was retained till the era of Oba Iweka II, it was revealed by Major A. G. Leonard who referred to Nri as the king maker. He further said that,

A marked feature of this (Nri) tribe is its hostility to the European, natural enough, when it is remembered that prior to the British, the Obalike was Eze Nri and crowned the kings of Benin and presided over all the religious observation of surrounding peoples.

We are not going further about this. One thing paramount in this research work is that to decide the history of the settlement of any African states outside the people’s personal story is a complete deceit. The Bible discussed the Israeli’s oral tradition; it has almost nothing to tell us about Africa except those areas that intoned curses to the Black race such as you can find in Genesis 6: 1-6; Isaiah 43 and those damnable information about the destruction of the Egyptian army. Return home and ask your people who you actually are and stop depending on the good for nothing information the white race give about your people when they have not actually known your land. This is our assignment.

Write us with confidence; disprove what you did not accept here with reasonable research evidence. We will applaud you and respond accordingly.