Magha Nkem of Igbo-Benue [1]
Born: 956
Reigned: 1003 - 1022
It is written that, of the many women that Apia II loved, his daughter Nkem was the most beloved by far. One of Apia’s biographers writes that he “saw to her education personally.” It is more correct to say that she was always underfoot, reading scrolls without permission and eavesdropping on her father’s discussions with the holy men. Her father was charmed by her interest, and when she began making pronouncements on the divine to the wise ancients, his amusement was plain.
With her father’s indulgence, Nkem began to put on airs, known to order about children much older than her. Pious Orisans would say that, in her pride she placed herself above even Ọlọrun, a grave sin indeed. This arrogance would prove to be her undoing more than once. When Ekwefi died in 984, Nkem was in many ways the most capable of Apia’s children, the most learned and compassionate. But she expected her brothers and sisters to kneel to her, and this they would not do. It was a fundamental reason why opposition to Chisom never coalesced.
As Oba of Borgu, also, Nkem frequently alternated between tantrums and condescension, alienating her ajapadas and leaving fertile ground for an uprising. Her treacherous daughter, known in those days as Nkem the Younger, was quick to take advantage, rallying the disaffected nobles of Borgu in a bloodless coup. Nkem the Elder was forced to flee back to Igbo-Ukwu, with only a few servants, whereupon her sister Chisom placed her in house arrest pending execution.
Nkem would spend years as her sister’s captive, expecting on any day to be burnt at the stake as a traitor to her sister’s throne. She would say later that her time in captivity was the most formative period of her life, where she was forced to reckon with her mistakes. In Borgu, she concluded that she failed to cultivate the good will of her ajapadas, and that she failed to move ruthlessly against her daughter’s coup. She had been too high-handed with potential allies, and too soft with her rivals. These were not mistakes she intended to repeat.
With the death of Chibueze, Nkem found herself in a treacherous position. She was now next in line for the throne. But precisely for that reason, Chisom might finally be motivated to execute her traitor sister in order to keep her from the throne. Nkem had a letter smuggled out to her daughter’s holdings in Nikki, proposing an alliance and a path out of the wilderness for both of them. Mother and daughter began to plot regicide. [2]
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Whatever Nkem’s hopes were upon assuming the throne of Igbo-Benue, she soon found herself in the gravest crisis for the dynasty in over a century. Kaya Magha Yasiboy Cisse of Mali claimed over thirty thousand warriors to his name, compared to Nkem’s twelve thousand, a nearly three to one advantage. Nkem commanded the loyalty of many formidable champions and her personal retinue was made up of the finest warriors on the continent, but they could not by themselves make up the disparity.
Nkem ordered her warriors to avoid the main Malinese force while marching directly for their capital, gambling that she might be able to bargain for peace with a valuable captive or two. The Igbo champions did not know the territory half as well as their enemies, however, and the Malinese army caught them out in a pair of bloody battles fought in the shadow of Mount Hombori in November, 1004. The Igbo lost over seventy-five hundred warriors in the fighting itself, while some two thousand more died of starvation in the Sahel during a long retreat.
The devastating losses at Hombori forced Nkem to rethink her strategy. Some of her advisors now recommended that she pay homage to the Kaya Magha, but she was not ready to give up. Instead, she ordered a scorched-earth strategy. Igbo warriors burned the savannah, poisoned wells, befouled watering holes and led devastating raids on the Malinese supply lines. And in hopes of throwing the Malinese command in disarray, she ordered the assassination of Yasiboy himself.
This ruthlessness went against some fundamental element of her character. Apia II had considered her the most compassionate of his children, and she was never able to order the death of another casually. Her grandson Chima wrote that, of all the mourners at Oba Chisom’s funeral, Nkem’s grief was the most sincere. She could not afford to weep over the death of a Malinese warrior, however. She chose to mute her conscience through carnal excess, and for the last two decades of her life her bed was rarely empty.
The scorched earth tactics cost many thousands of Malinese warriors their lives, from starvation and disease. Modern estimates suggest that the Malinese in fact suffered five thousand more casualties than the Igbo. On more than one occasion, Yasiboy offered his warriors a blistering harangue to head off a potential mutiny. These signs of incipient disorder gave Nkem hope that the death of Yasiboy would throw the Malinese into chaos and offer an unlikely path to victory.
On November 23, 1009, Nkem’s agents successfully poisoned food offered for the Kaya Magha and his command staff. Yasiboy Cisse had been the most powerful man in Africa for thirty-two years, and his war against the Igbo-Benue had promised to nearly double Mali in size. Instead, he died feverish in his tent on the verge of his greatest victory. The Malinese warriors were angry, and starving, and far from home. Their advance might have crumbled here.
Unbeknownst to the Igbo agents, however, Yasiboy’s eldest son Bunama had been bedridden that day with a migraine headache, and had not eaten dinner with his father. As the Malinese soldiers began to turn on each other with suspicion, Bunama--now Kaya Magha in his own right--appeared before them and in a heartfelt speech asked that they not let his father die in vain. His appearance ensured the success of the Malinese advance.
With Kaya Magha Bunama’s accession to the throne and the Malinese occupying the western half of her kingdom, Oba Nkem could see the writing on the wall. On January 12, 1010, Oba Nkem appeared before the High King of Mali to offer her submission and place her family’s lands under his command.
The Malinese terms of surrender were in truth quite lenient. The Kaya Magha had lost his father and over ten thousand warriors in his last war against the Igbo, and was reluctant to relive the experience. He left Nkem as Magha over the Igbo, with her territories intact, so long as she provided a yearly tribute of gold and offered up her warriors to fight for High Kingdom. He even invited her to serve as one of his advisors.
Magha Nkem traveled to Akwar to sit on her liege’s council. She had long lunches with her younger sister Salaama, playing the charming guest and supportive friend to the woman she had widowed. She treated with Bunama, her nephew as well as her liege, with the humility of a supplicant and the warmth of a supportive aunt. She found the rituals of Soninke court tedious but she applied herself to learn them and in time became Bunama’s confidant. (This tentative bid for influence might have been sundered had Bunama ever learned the truth about his father’s death. She quietly sought out those who had known of her involvement and saw to their silence, with gold or the noose. [3])
These acts of submission left her seething, no doubt. It was against her nature to recognize any man as her superior. But she felt duty-bound as the leader of the Nri kingdoms to protect her patrimony as best as she knew how. Playing the political game in Akwar gave her realms twelve precious years of peace, years that she put to good use.
In the year 1000, Igbo-Ukwu had a population of roughly twenty thousand people, equivalent to that of medieval London. [4] The population had long since outgrown the simple palisade that Oba Nri-Alike had erected a century before. The central market was also far too small, and with few Igbo officials to step in, disputes between merchants were common and hard to resolve. Nkem insisted on new defenses, surrounding the larger city with improved walls as well as a dry moat. She also expanded the market and dispatched local Orisan clergy to resolve disputes and ensure the use of honest scales. Creditable accomplishments, to be sure, but Hombori cast a long shadow.
One November night, her wits failing, Nkem was found wandering the streets of Igbo-Ukwu. When her grandson came to collect her, she looked at him with eyes full of hope, asking if there was news of battle in Mali. “I forced a kind of smile,” Chima wrote later, “and said that we had the Kaya Magha on the run for sure. Her eyes brimmed with tears as I led her barefoot back to the palace, and she died that night dreaming of victory.”
[1] It is historical convention to refer to the Nri kings that offered homage to the Malinese Kaya Magha by the Malinese title.
[2] Igbo nobles at the time primarily blamed Nkem the Younger (later, Magha Nkem II). It was in keeping with Nkem the Elder’s new ruthless approach that she let her daughter be hated for a crime that both had been involved in.
[3] Much of what we know of this period comes from Nkem’s grandson Chima Nri, a keen observer of court and her closest confidant late in life. Chima’s recollections would form the basis of a Nri family chronicle.
[4] In game terms, London and Igbo-Ukwu had the same development. Akwar and the surrounding areas are even wealthier, equivalent to southern Italy, and I have to admit that I find this pretty galling.