Late Prof. Austin Chukwu

My Interview with Prof. Austin Chukwu

What is Literature?

Literature is a written composition from which we derive pleasure, understanding and meaning, and which is appreciated because of its value as a work of art. Some people use the term literature in a much more diverse way outside its province as a subject of study. But then, any written document in another sense is literature. In this case, such people are using it loosely to mean anything written. The literature student should be very careful not to join in that kind of band-wagon otherwise you lose your own essence.

What do you understand by the Okumkpo Masquerade performance?

        The Okumkpo masquerade performance can be seen as a theatre. It is a moving theatre. But people in the theatre arts have been arguing over it. There was a famous essay by M.J.C. Echeruo which he called “The Dramatic Limits of Igbo Ritual”, in as much as many people have debunked what he is saying, I believe that he has drawn our attention to certain things about ritual, because sometimes we may make mistakes, we may simply begin to think that anytime there is a ritual, it is drama. It is not true, especially for me. I am a Roman Catholic, somebody had once quipped that ‘Roman Catholicism is all ritualism’. Actually, there are lots of rituals in Roman Catholicism. I think that many of us may not have grown up in our traditional religion. We see it as part of the dichotomy between traditional religion and Christianity. And I think that Christianity, which religion in itself is ritualistic, right from the Greeks, the Romans and so on, and owes its origin in Judaism, is ritualistic. Jesus Christ for instance, after eight days of his birth, was taken for circumcision. So there is ritualism in religion except that sometimes people think that it might detract from the whole essence of communing with your God, particularly when we now lay more emphasis on the rituals rather than the substance. Even in those churches that claim not to have rituals, you still have a bit of ritual; it is just that the Roman Catholic church over does it.

Question: What you are trying to say in essence is that the Okumkpo masquerade performance is both dramatic and ritualistic.

Yes of course, but what I am trying to say is that our drama (that is the Okumkpo masquerade) is almost tilting towards the “art for art’s sake” even though we had rejected it earlier, especially in the western society. We are tilting towards “art for art’s sake”. But I think what happens in any movement is an attempt to avoid too much of anything, even though every movement itself can be an extreme expression of a desire. But the fact is that the society has always believed that everything must have a purpose. So people who are involved in the arts – the artists – must take that into consideration which is why they always talk of African art expressing some aspects of our lives, sometimes in rituals. There has always been that contention between the meanings of art. But again, in mainstream criticism, you find out that art must have a meaning; art must have a purpose, but where the purpose outweighs the art, then it becomes something else, which we express in, “all art is propaganda but not all propaganda is art”. Just as some churches will be saying all religion is ritualistic, but not every ritual is religion, because at a stage if you become too ritualistic, you are missing the whole purpose of linking up with your maker.

        Echeruo has had some supporters though, but a great majority of people did not support him especially because they felt that he was looking at art squarely from western eyes. There have been other ways of art, and when I say art, I am using it in place of theatre, in place of drama. Drama is not just western. Different parts of the world have their own drama. Somebody has talked about the Japanese; some have talked about the Chinese in the east, and not too long ago, Yoruba traditional drama. In fact they are moving from place to place, the Yoruba. Even though as the world is becoming a smaller place, each form of drama tries to initiate or to take aspects of another one and incorporate it. That is why theatre can talk of proscenium stage as well as the theatre-in-the round and somebody will tell you that theatre-in-the round is closer to our own way of seeing theatre in the Ehugbo context. When we go to a playground (like Ogo Ehugbo), people stay almost round it and when things are happening, there is always some kind of communication between the audience and what is going on there, that is theatre… In the original form of western drama, we didn’t have the kind of detailed characterization as we have now. In Everyman (medieval drama), Everyman was going out, he was meeting some of his characters on the way: he will meet Faithfulness, he will meet Intelligence and some of them said they were not going with him. These are characters. But gradually, drama began to expand, and began to have characters, individualized characters, no longer characters representing an abstract entity. So it has been a big movement from medieval drama to say Shakespeare’s time where you now begin to have, say, a character like Macbeth, where we now begin to have a character like Hamlet and so on. But even within Macbeth, you see that Macbeth has grown out from the original conception of Ambition, so that if we are still dealing with the medieval times, instead of Macbeth, we would have had Ambition as a concept. Our own drama had not developed to that level, but that does not make it any less drama any more that you can say that medieval drama was Igbo drama, but you know, as the world begins to become more complex, things have to become much more complex, so that even in the modern times, you find out that the characterization in drama is not exactly as Shakespeare’s characterization, something has been added to reflect the kind of complexity that you have in the modern world. This is why you now have things like Theatre of the Absurd; because there are some assumptions that have been made. Even when Shakespeare was writing, he was writing in line with the assumptions of the Renaissance and the Elizabethan times. Then after so many world wars, and human beings finding that they can no longer be complacent, they can no longer take things for granted, that there is a lot of fear about the existence of man, that questions are being raised, so many movements came about that some are even questioning “what is reality” and started talking about issues such as the Theatre of the Absurd, for instance, where somebody is sleeping with his wife, and in the morning what he sees on the bed is a cockroach. Brecht (Bertolt) himself was saying look, look, look, don’t even be bothered about whether somebody thinks that you are joking, that is a make-believe; that actually theatre is make-believe. In the Renaissance, they wanted you to have “a willing suspension of disbelief”. That is a way of getting you to catharsis, but Brecht was even talking against catharsis, this is very deceptive because he wanted his drama to lead you to action, but once you have this catharsis, and you cry, you become complacent. So you can see the class system coming into play, he saw the Elizabethan drama and so on as too much of a bourgeois kind of thing that just reflects the situation of the moment. So when you come to Okumkpo, Okumkpo is drama, the entire thing is theatre, within it is drama and the dramatic element is what happens; the interaction. The Okumkpo displays its dramatic elements by way of songs, just like the choruses in the Greek drama. Even some modern playwrights have invented choruses which help to give us the mood of the play and to see how the playwright is looking at what is going on. So in our own case, it is through the music, the song that we are able to identify what he is doing, because the Okumkpo, number one, was begun as a way of checking the behaviour of people in the society. It is a kind of check on excesses and misbehaviours. The Okumkpo watches the society, and do not forget that the Okumkpo is just one of the attributes of our traditional system in which we have the lower cadre and the upper cadre. The lower cadre which we call the “umu-ena”, suggests the uninitiated people, but the fact is that this uninitiated people also have their own Okumkpo, which is called “Okumkpo umu ena”, and I’ve never heard anybody suggesting that in any case, the performance of “Okumkpo umu-ena” is inferior to “Okumkpo Ogo”. No, it doesn’t follow, but it is always felt that when you are initiated and you are older that you are more mature, you are more experienced and so on. It is assumed that the “Okumkpo Ogo” is likely to deal with much more fundamental issues than “Okumkpo umu ena”.

Question: Do the functions of the Okumkpo umu-ena differ from those of the Okumkpo ogo?

        No, it is the same function. In fact everything in Ehugbo that happens at “Ogo”, happens at “Ohia Umu-ena”. For instance, there is “lughulu umu ena”, there is “lughulu ogo”, and there is “oteru umu-ena” and “oteru ogo” and so on. It’s just like saying that you are moving from primary school to secondary school, to tertiary institution. It’s just that in this case, they had only two levels: the uninitiated and the initiated. In those days to be able to be initiated was totally different from today. You have to undergo all kinds of trials for so many years. It was our own form of education because during that period you will be taken into the history, the laws of the land and so on. It was a process of transformation. Okumkpo itself is just one of those things that happen as far as the ogo cult is concerned. But the Okumkpo now differs from the rest in the sense that it goes as a group. You may have the Nnade okumkpo (the Father), or the Agbogho Okumkpo (the Maiden) whose dressing in fact typifies the beauty of the feminine caste in the society. The Agbogho Okumkpo looks like a maiden, a beautiful maiden. So many different characters will be there, and then there is always some kind of dialogue after which (dialogue) it is now put into a song, and the song will now make references to certain people whose behaviours have been found to be aberrations. In other words, they have not been in conformity with the norms of the society. The reason why some people think that it cannot be real drama is that it doesn’t go too far to now look at individual as characters, but looks at concepts; for instance what does the Nnade Okumkpo do, what does the Agbogho Okumkpo do and so on, and the “Nnade” Okumkpo will control all the other Okumkpo masquerades. They normally move from place to place. In the morning, the crier (Oma-ewa or early riser) will go from place to place to tell some people, look oh, we have a case with you so that, if possible, come and watch it.

        There is an immunity granted to the Okumkpo because sometimes, it might say something that is not palatable. The person being referred to is not supposed to go to court because the Okumkpo is not a human being. So the concept of mask itself which is also found in ancient Greek and the rest of them now come in, so the Okumkpo must be masked.

Question: What are the functions of the mask of the Okumkpo?

        To show that they are no longer ordinary human beings, in our society, masquerading suggests that the person is not an ordinary person, which is why we are told in modern drama or Elizabethan drama about “the willing suspension of disbelief”, for instance that when Austin Chukwu is playing the role of Macbeth and he is on the stage, it is not Austin Chukwu that is talking, it is Macbeth that is talking. Remember, in Things Fall Apart, the Egwugwu masquerade came out and Okonkwo was one of the Egwugwus. Even when the wives saw the sprightly walk, as far as the people are concerned, it is no longer Okonkwo at that particular moment. He is simply one of the elders of the clan that have resurrected to come and intercede. Just as we Catholics were told that the bread, as soon as it has been consecrated is no longer ordinary bread, it is now the actual body of Christ, the wine, is no longer ordinary wine, and it is now the blood of Christ. It is very much a matter of faith. It is faith, which is very important.

Question:- Is it possible to locate the origin of the Okumkpo masquerade?

        It is difficult to locate. I think it was part of the attempt to maintain some element of decorum and certain level of behaviour within the society, just like satire. Okumkpo is satiric. It is highly satiric. They will come and demonstrate how you did certain things. They will mock you. People will now be afraid that if they do the same thing, Okumkpo will sing for them, they will now refrain from doing it. I think it is inborn in man in the society that sometimes you have to develop certain systems by which to check the misbehaviours of your members in the society. It is always directed at satirizing some people in the society with a view to correcting the ills in the society. That is the main function of Okumkpo, but then it is expressed in poetic form. Its music is poetic. When you analyze its music, you find poetry in it and that’s the literature we are talking about. Some dramatic works engage in dancing which has led to the setting up of opera and the rest of them, so there is a close relationship between music and poetry. Okumkpo uses local idioms which is why many people may not understand its language and also because it uses local ascent. For instance, most Ehugbo indigenes who grew up outside the community, find it difficult to understand the language. If you are not part of that locality (Ehugbo), you may not understand it. For example, if any Ehugbo man tells you “na anaghi a chi ite eboo na-aga mkpa-mkpa” you will not understand it unless you are an Ehugbo indigene that is rooted in the language and native idioms unless he explains it to you in Standard English that “it is not advisable to take too many responsibilities at the same time”.

Question: Does the Okumkpo Masquerade performance have a specific time or period when it takes place?

        Yes, you have to find the season. It is a seasonal thing, and sometimes it may not be every year, and because it is quite expensive to prepare. It is just like the “Oke nkwa” or “Akpoha Ngodo” masquerade which I suspect may have come from the Akpoha community through the Ngodo people. It involves so many people dancing, including highly rated people in the society. It is another way of an Ehugbo man saying look, in spite of my height in the society, I am still loyal to my people, and he agrees to be part of it, but it is dramatic. It is just like Corpus Kristi, the people moving from place to place, creating sceneries especially during the “unwu” (when the Ehugbo await the New Yam Festival), so many activities are preformed in Igbo land and other parts of Africa.

Question: Outside the cost, is there any other thing that determines the occasion for an Okumkpo performance?

There isn’t, outside the fact that it is done during the Okochi (dry season). Not much is done during the “Udumini” (rainy season) because of the disturbance of the rain. In modern times anyway, somebody could just suggest that it has been long since an Okumkpo performance took place. Lately, the part of Ehugbo that has held most performances has been the Ozizza group of villages, and people now tend to question whether it is only the Ozizza people that now dominate the Okumkpo performance. It appears the other villages in Ehugbo are losing interest or they are not able to get the right number of people who will be willing to go for the rehearsals (because it is thoroughly rehearsed).

Okumkpo is highly satiric; there is no doubt about it. V.S. Naipaul raised a similar issue when they said he was a satirist, and he said “I’m not a satirist, I’m just an ironist”. Then again, just because V.S. Naipaul says so, does not mean that he is not a satirist, but he was raising a very fundamental issue. He said when you are a satirist, it means you still have hope; that something can change, that something can improve, because the essence of satire is to make people change. Typical Naipaul said he had lost hope and that this people will never change. But I think that the critic, even if he listens to the writer, should not completely assume that everything the writer is saying is true, that’s part of criticism. You should now go yourself and have your own impression of the work of literature. Don’t just end up like “Achebe says this or that”, because many a time, a writer does not even know where he is going, a writer may not know his destination. As soon as the writer brings out his work, it is his own quite alright, but he ceases to have control over it, he leaves it, free. Sometimes of course, when a critic goes overboard, a writer is free to say look, I’m not sure that is very correct. D. H. Lawrence was talking about Miriam, (in the poem “Last Words to Miriam” and the novel Sons and Lovers) and he said that Miriam is patterned after his former girl friend, Jessie Chambers, and Jessie Chambers said no, I’m not like Miriam. But that is not my problem as a critic because sometimes you can model a character after somebody, because it is a work of imagination. You are not a historian. That is why some writers don’t even tell you who they modeled their characters after. But, I think D.H. Lawrence made that mistake by saying Miriam was modeled after Jessie Chambers and that was why the latter flared and came after him.

In a sense, I would want to say that Japanese drama is even closer to our own drama, and even Chinese drama; they are not totally like western drama. Somebody challenged me one day when I was delivering a lecture on the origin of the novel, and the person said: Sir you are always discussing the origin of the western novel or British novel, that before even before the British thought about the novel, that the Japanese and Chinese had already had their own novels, and I said it could be true. But again that is part of the limitations of some of the courses we took, but again it may not be a limitation because I was doing English. I didn’t do much of French literature. We leave French literature to those reading French; we leave Dutch literature to those reading Dutch and so on. But that does not stop me, now that I have come out of school, to really find out how the novel originated in other parts of the world, so that it gives me a wider view to see whether what they thought as their own concept of the novel, may not have satisfied their own (British) concept of the novel.

I think that Okumkpo is drama, but it is for us to prove, to show that it is drama. We have to look at what other people have said. The likes of Ossie Onuora Enekwe have written on it in Igbo Masks: The Oneness of Ritual and Art, Emeka Nwabueze has written on it, and he is supporting Echeruo and doesn’t think that it is drama.

Question: What do you think is the relationship between the audience and an Okumkpo performance?

The fact is that Okumkpo is our own thing. It is part and parcel of the (Ehugbo) society. It is the people themselves who even are expecting Okumkpo to appear, so you do not have the kind of distancing that you normally have is western drama, which is what they are trying to cover up now by talking of theatre in the round. The problem with the proscenium stage is that you have the stage, the curtain opens, and then the curtain closes. It’s like you are watching the television, so there is always that gap between the audience and the players, there is nothing like audience participation. But in our own case (that is Okumkpo), there is audience participation. After the songs have started, usually there are songs that can be imitated even immediately. They are not too long; they are not too complicated, so after a while, the audience joins in the song.

Question: Both male and female?

Everybody joins in the song. And because they already know the person being parodied, because it is a parody, people are being laughed at, they even take more delight, so there is a close relationship between the players and the audience, because the audience are just members of the environment: the language they are using is their dialect, or language and they understand the idioms being used in the songs, so the language is well understood by the people and therefore, they can even join, so the participation is very, very important. It is a celebration. It is essentially a celebration. This is the same thing that happens in Pentecostal churches. Their songs take the form of celebration which is why they enjoy enormous singing and dancing. That is why the epic for instance relies so much on the inspiration from the Muse. It is a formula for any epic. It is called the invocation of the Muse, so you cannot talk of an epic without the invocation of the Muse because it is supposed to be a great work of literature. It is written down and it is accepted. Therefore, you need all the support of all the muses, which was part of the problem that Milton (John) had, because Milton felt that the ancient epics, like Homer’s “lliad” and the rest of them were written by pagans; that his own was a Christian one, and therefore he tried to make some changes and because of that, he had some difficulties – it was a gallant failure as far as I am concerned. That’s why people say that the first books of “Paradise Lost” are almost making Satan the hero, because he was still bringing those attributes of the hero like boasting and at the same time humility and Jesus Christ cannot be boasting.

Question: What do you think are the gains that accrue to the Okumkpo performance? 

The gains are that the society will become much more stabilized.

Question: I mean the players themselves?

The players themselves have only just done their duty as members of the society. They don’t see it as anything to be gained, they just believe that it is their job as Okumkpo to help to stabilize the society, to the norms and the expectations, to the proper behavioural pattern as agreed to by the society. It is the deviants that are mocked; it is the deviants that are caricatured. So the feeling that after the performance there would be some stability, serves as the gain, because they themselves at that point in time are not ordinary human beings. It is an article of faith; they are spirits of the society. According to the African belief system, there is always an interaction between the living and the dead, which is why they cover themselves. An Okumkpo, therefore, is simply an embodiment of the ancestors of the place, so they come from time to time to remind us of how to behave within the society, so you can see that the ritualistic element is very important, which is what Echeruo was trying to say. For him, it was just pure ritual, but we are saying that it is not in all cases that it is just pure ritual, because if you look at it from the origin or the beginning of medieval drama, it started from the church, just as Greek drama started from religious observances. So there is no way in African tradition that most of these things cannot have a religious bearing and it is that religious bearing that also gives it that immunity, so that you don’t even think that you are going to take them to court, you have to accept it, it is part of our (Ehugbo) acceptance that they are religious, they are spiritual, therefore, whatever they are doing comes from our ancestors, you don’t complain and you don’t openly quarrel with it.

Question: What impacts has Western civilization had on the Okumkpo performance?

The impact it has had has not always been positive because you cannot talk of Western civilization without Christianity, sometimes many people are reluctant to participate in it. That’s just part of it because it comes from the Ogo cult or “Ohia umu ena”. These days the “Umu ena” are no more mature, people tend to get themselves initiated at a very young age, they don’t even go through all the ceremonies, and they pay money. They just go into the hiding place in the night and in the morning come out and tell you they have been initiated. So many of those things have been cut down in order to move on with the time and because of our beliefs, so many people are reluctant to do it, except once in a while, people may just gather the courage, as they did a few years with “Oke Nkwa”. Many of them were willing and were even spending their money to get involved, what you may call part of the cultural regeneration, but generally people tend to be lukewarm even though they could be nostalgic. The lukewarmness is that they think that going back to doing it people may say they are combining traditionalism with Christianity.

Question: Is it possibly because there could be sanctions?

Well there may be no sanctions, but people will start criticizing you and people also think they are coming down by going back to “Ogo” to do all those things, but I think there is nothing wrong about it. For instance there was a day there was a wrestling contest going on at my village Ogo and I went to watch and some people were saying, “oh!, so you people come to watch wrestling contest? We thought that Christians have said that those who watch wresting matches participate in traditional worship”. And I told the particular person that said so, “Please shift, let me sit down. Do you think if you say so that I would go back to my house? No I won’t!”

The truth of the matter is that every aspect of our life has a religious implication. There was no demarcation between life and religion, the kind of things that Muslims do, that’s the truth of the matter! Normally before a wrestling season, the natives consult some oracles. There is a deity for wrestling, the Okumkpo does it too, but it does not involve the individual. There is no where it is written that if you want to wrestle, you must go and consult the deity, no! So you, who are a Christian and want to engage in a wrestling contest, would rather choose to pray to your God for inspiration and success! There is no compulsion that you must consult “ekweteri” (the god of wrestling). Those who believe in it visit it, while those who do not abstain from doing so. I think as we are moving in modern times, or post-modern if you like, we should take into account that we are no longer that kind of homogenous community, which is what most African societies were and which is why we are living in enclaves. In many ways, things have changed. For instance, we used to have serious cases of sickle cell (anaemia) simply because we were inter-marrying so intensely that the genetic influence of the disease was very high. But now that our people (Ehugbo) are marrying out, it has drastically reduced. Marrying around though, had its own social benefits, but I think the medical shortcoming far out-weighs the social benefits. Because we were marrying around, there was greater cohesion. The tendency of remarrying was also very high. It was common practice for women to move from community through others in endless remarriages. This made it possible for a woman to have up to five or more children from different husbands. But it helped to maintain some cohesiveness in the sense that in the same cultural area, the same thing was being paraded. There was also a high mortality rate at that time, a woman may give birth to up to nine children and lose five of them through causes of death.

 Question: In your view, is there anything that could be done to rejuvenate the Okumkpo masquerade performance?

        Once we come back to our senses and agree that there is nothing hidden about it, it will come back, I believe it will come back, and we should be humble about it and also be aware that it is exposing an aspect of our culture, it is a way of revealing something about us, something inherent in us and that it can even contribute to solving some of our modern day problems. People seem to act with impunity these days but Okumkpo can help to regulate it. The fear of Okumkpo in those days was the beginning of wisdom. I think it should be part of the rejuvenation of our culture, except that culture itself is dynamic. For instance, what we call “Nkwa umuagbogho” these days is not what it used to be in the past. “Nkwa umuagbogho” was exclusively for wrestling matches; you don’t talk of the “Nkwa umuagbogho” outside the wrestling arena. But that has changed now, we have modified it, we have modernized it, it has now become something for special occasions. It has even been privatized and domesticated to suit the demands and needs of different Ehugbo villages. And I think that is what it should be though sometimes there is an abuse, but that is part of it. Gradually, if there are abuses, you remove them, but what they have done is even to intensify it by adding other elements that are not usually involved in wrestling. So the Okumkpo also can be modernized.

Question: Can the Okumkpo masquerade performance serve as a tool for regional or national integration?

It can. It can. Other people can copy it; after all I’ve seen some people who are not from Ehugbo who have copied the “Nkwanwite” dance. It is because they liked it. The “Nkwanwite” has drastically changed from what it used to be, “Nkwanwite” was simply a way by which marrying people said good bye to a girl and welcomed her into a new fold. It was entirely a female affair. It is actually a welcome party, welcoming girls to the married folk. It has been modernized. Sometimes modernization involves some bastardization, that’s part of it. That’s the way the world is, you conform, you try to change in line with changing times.

Question: What is your view on the origin of Ehugbo?

        Well, I have read history books, and I try to read from the experts, because not everybody can be a historian. I’ve always told people that there is a difference between history and legend, there is a difference between history and myth, though they are related but there is a difference. The difference is that history has a control, history has evidence. You must show evidence, you must prove it. That is why in America some universities are treating history as a social science. It is not just something that you believe. Scientists have belief systems, and over the years, they have been passing it on from generation to generation. That the Ukpa people (of Ehugbo) claim that the first man in Ehugbo (Aja Ibere Kwukwu), came down from the high heavens through a rope, is not history, but then it is central to the belief system of the people, just like faith. We try to give some semblance of deification to our founders, to show that they were not ordinary human beings, so historians do look at them and make some deductions. But real history can be verified, even though oral tradition has its own difficulties, but then even when you have ten oral presentations, you have to look at them. Sometimes, some of the things they say can be dismissed.

        Coming to Ehugbo, because of our location, when there was expansion (the Igbo people expanded), there was expansion in Igbo land owing to over population, and especially from the more populated parts of Igbo land. Those were the areas that the Igbo people originally settled en masse. Then there was land pressure, that’s why the Imo people call themselves Igbo hinterland. People were moving out. The behaviour of Igbo people wasn’t different from the behaviour of people elsewhere, but for different reasons. As they were moving out, they were settling at the more habitable places. You find out that they were looking at the plateaux, which were not normally flooded. It was only when they had exhausted the plateaux that they were making use of whatever they found. So the upland people were there before the lowlands people. Lowlands were always flooded, that is the truth of the matter. Then as people were migrating, they migrated in batches or in hordes. People did not just migrate one day and this took place over a long period of time and because there were no roads, because they were going through the forests (we are living in the forest belt), then cut down trees to create paths. Movement was not as easy as that, there were no horses because our part of the African continent didn’t tolerate horses because of tsetse fly and so on, so most of the job was done on foot except those that lived around the rivers that could use canoe or boat. Some migration took place through boats and canoes like some parts of Ehugbo. So Ehugbo people didn’t come in one fell swoop; they were just coming and settling, just like other people. Gradually, when you settle in a place, curiosity will push you into wanting to know who and who lived around you, and in finding out, you may either meet a very hostile person or a very friendly person. This may either lead to fruitful co-operation or aggression. No place was ever peopled in one fell swoop. Our people (Ehugbo people) like other Igbo people were not original settlers in Ehugbo. Most Igbo territories except the core Igbo areas like the Okigwe, Orlu axis down to Awka (These were the areas where Igbo people originally settled) before they now started migrating upwards, eastwards, westwards and southwards and you find out that most of our people have traditions showing that they moved from that central core. You also find out that the places that lack water are the places that were last occupied, the tendency of human beings is to go to where there is water, so when you find people living where there is no water, you should know that they didn’t see any other better place.

        It is the belief of some people that the Ehugbo people were the first to settle at Osso Edda, but because the terrain lacks water, they moved further upwards to the present Ehugbo location. The Edda people were willing to, and the Edda people are more aggressive because of their terrain. Their original settlement was Nguzu and Ekoli, but the hilly and uneven terrain forced them to move downwards. Some people lay claim that the original founders of Edda were Ehugbo people but the latter were later absorbed by Edda people who came down from Owutu. 

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