Oba Nri-Alike of Yorubaland
Born: 850 (?)
Reigned: 867 - 911
In a time of perennial warfare, Nri-Alike was an unusual figure. On the Nigerian Coast of the time, both men and women were expected to be warriors and make their name on daring raids or fierce battles. Nri-Alike was a well-regarded man but he himself was no warrior. While his wife and concubines led his warriors into battle, then-Nana Nri-Alike would remain at Igbo-Ukwu rubbing shoulders with the local merchants and laying out market squares. Those who knew him found him warm and indulgent as a matter of course, which stood him in good stead when organizing the construction of a new road or haggling over a herd of cattle. It was said, however, that Nri-Alike had a secret face that very few ever got to see.
It was expected at the time that a young tribal leader would have both a wife and three concubines to display his virility and provide him with many strong children. Nri-Alike was no different, and his relations with these women was never less than dutiful, but his heart was not in it. Instead, his heart was captured by a young Yoruba warrior named Omogbogbo, who had come to the Nri holdings as a guest in the late 860s. Omogbogbo was brash and courageous, and his masculine beauty was widely remarked upon.
Nri-Alike was smitten from the start. He was nineteen, and perhaps in love for the first time, and his efforts were (in this author’s opinion) endearingly juvenile. It is written, for example, that he began to spar with his warriors in order to catch a glimpse of his love, and even seems to have rigged a match in order to cut a good impression. He also tried his hand at love poetry (none of which survives), and even delved into a nearby ruin to claim a single rare flower that Omogbogbo was reportedly fond of. The two men soon became inseparable, caught up in a lifelong romance--sometimes to the irritation of Nri-Alike’s concubines.
In the mid-ninth century, Igbo-Ukwu (lit., “Great Igbo”) was a significant centre of culture on the Nigerian coast. When Nri-Alike was born, the region was already home to a sophisticated metal-working culture. The Igbo craftsmen were capable of bronze casting with a delicacy that surpassed contemporary efforts in Europe, reflecting an indigenuous tradition of metal-working that was even then centuries of years old. Igbo jewelry also incorporated glass and carnelian beads fashioned as far away as Fustat. The Nri leaders of Igbo-Ukwu also claimed descent from a lineage reaching back to an ancient god-king, Eri, ordained by the god Chukwu.
As Nana of Igbo-Ukwu, therefore, Nri-Alike commanded not just wealth but prestige. By the age of 25, he was able to use his position to unite the Igbo peoples under his leadership and claim the title Ajapada of Igboland. Omogbogbo and the concubine Amadi had trained a coterie of fierce champions, and the Igbo raids were feared as far as Kru. The Ajapada began to speak of claiming the wealthy harbor of Benin for Igbo merchants and thus fashioning a wealthy trading kingdom.
However, Benin was at this time under the suzerainty of the Yoruba noble, Ajapada Ila Oduduwa of Ife. If Nri-Alike was prestigious, it was nothing compared to Ila Oduduwa. Ife was and is known as the city of four hundred and one Òrìṣàs, and Ila traced his line back to the first Oduduwa, the four hundred and first. Ila himself was reputed to be unassuming and kind, if a tad peevish when made to wait. Ila commanded a Yoruba warrior band nearly two thousand strong, half again as many as Nri-Alike.
However, Omogbogbo had been a young warrior in Ife, and he knew that tensions between Ila and his half-brothers had made the Yoruba kingdom rather more fragile than it appeared. It was common practice for one or another of the Oduduwa claimants to hire a rowdy band of young men to agitate in Ife on behalf of their patron, and when a band sworn to Oyo met another band sworn to Ketu violence was common. It proved simple enough for Nri-Alike to hire an assassin to insert himself into one such fracas; when Ajapada Ila came out to restore order, this assassin cut Ila’s throat.
Ila’s infant daughter Remilekun was named as his successor, but with the Oduduwa brothers now warring against each other openly it was no time for a child to rule in Ife. Such, at least, was the claim of Nri-Alike, who declared with a straight face that it was his obligation to secure the poor child Remilekun from the villains who had murdered her father and desecrated the sacred places of Ife with his blood. His warriors invaded Ife and the child Remilekun was placed in the custody of her father’s murderers. [1] With the victory in Ife, Nri-Alike proclaimed himself Oba of the Yoruba, Edo and Igbo peoples (usually recorded as Oba of Yorubaland). Many Igbo merchants thus made their way to Benin, and from there sold their exquisitely crafted bronzes to tribal leaders all along the Nigerian coast.
As the new ruler of Ife as well as Igbo-Ukwu, Nri-Alike became increasingly interested in sacred matters. At the age of forty, he embarked a pilgrimage inland to a sacred grove in Kumasi. When he returned, he proclaimed a series of visions from the spirits, revealing the secret affinities between sacred beliefs among the three peoples of his realm. For the next twenty years, he would remove himself from Igbo-Ukwu to commune with the spirit, sometimes becoming quite ill in the process. Even the title he chose was significant--Oba, to the Edo people, meant ‘sacred king.’ In this way, he hoped to establish a spiritual basis for unity between all the people of his realm. [2]
After Omogbogbo’s death in 906, the security of the realm became Nri-Alike’s all-consuming passion. It was expected that all leaders invest each of their children (male and female) with portions of land, and since Nri-Alike had three sons and two daughters he could easily foresee his personal holdings becoming divided into insignificance. Complicating matters, he was genuinely unsure who his primary heir should be.
Apia was a well-liked man and respected warrior. Apia had spent most of his young adulthood fighting in his father’s wars. He was kind and plain-spoken, and if Nri-Alike’s religious sincerity could be doubted Apia’s could not. But the two men scarcely understood each other. Nri-Alike seems to have doubted that Apia had the subtleties of mind and the ruthlessness required (in his view) of a true prince. Amamchukwu was much different. She had learned the business of leadership at her father’s side and proved as devious as him. Having remained in Igboland, she was also known to the Igbo clans in a way that Apia was not. As brother and sister, Apia and Amamchukwu were quite close, and yet the question of the inheritance could not help but divide them.
To reduce the division of his lands, Nri-Alike had spoken with some of his intimates about a plan to restrict inheritance to the female descendants of his line. This was tantamount in some eyes to naming Amamchukwu as his successor. And yet Nri-Alike never promulgated this decision to his vassals, fearing that his realm was not yet secure enough for a legal innovation of this kind. He continued to cultivate good relationships with his ajapadas, waiting for a day to introduce this notion to them.
That day would never come. On the 9th of June, 911, Opa Nri-Alike, ruler of the Yoruba, the Edo, and the Igbo, died of a massive stroke with the inheritance of his lands unfinished. According to the traditions of the people, Apia Nri was proclaimed Oba in his stead and planned a lavish funeral for his late father. As Nri-Alike was awaiting burial, however, Apia received word--his sister Amamchukwu had named herself Oba of the Igbo, and most of the nearby clans had followed her. As brother and sister, they had once been close. As king and queen, they would soon be at war.
[1] Notably, Nri-Alike took a very doting attitude with Remilekun Oduduwa, raising her with his own daughters and seeing thereafter to her advancement. Before his death, he even named her Ajapada of Benin, making her a wealthy woman in a stroke. Remilekun was one of the most notorious cynics of the day, and yet she seems never to have suspected him in the death of her father.
[2] He also announced the marriage of his children to Yoruba and Edo elders, hoping to connect the disparate peoples together through familial bonds as well as spiritual.