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Haunted places · Forests, islands and abandoned places

Ibini Ukpabi – the Oracle That “Devoured” People

When
December 1901 date from records made at the time
Where
Long Juju shrine, Arochukwu, Nigeria
Verdict
Explained

Anyone who lost a case before the oracle at Arochukwu vanished into a tunnel – people believed the god had eaten them. In fact many were sold into slavery.

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5.39°, 7.91° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

Ibini Ukpabi (“drum of the creator god”), known to the British as the Long Juju, was the oracle of the Aro Confederacy in what is now southeastern Nigeria. It served as a supreme court for the peoples east of the Niger: people brought it cases of murder, witchcraft, poisoning and family disputes. The shrine lay in a wooded gully with a waterfall; it was reached through a six-foot passage, and there was a “throne of judgement,” a hill of rags where the condemned left their clothes, and dark tunnels into which they disappeared. The oracle was believed to devour the losers, and a stream dyed red was meant to tell relatives that the condemned was dead. Those who entered the tunnels did not come back. In reality the Aro priests increasingly sold the condemned into slavery – they were led blindfolded to the riverbank, where boats took them to Calabar and the European ships. In November 1901 the British sent an expedition against the Aro; on 28 December they took Arochukwu and destroyed the shrine.

Witnesses

British officials and officers of the 1901–1902 expedition (including Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Montanaro, and William Heneker in “Bush Warfare,” 1907); Aro oral tradition. The history has been written by Adiele Afigbo and Felix Ekechi, among others.

Explanations and hypotheses

Ibini Ukpabi was not a “haunted place” but a religious and judicial institution that was harnessed to the trade in human beings: the belief that the oracle devoured the guilty concealed the fact that many ended up in the slave markets. Historians such as Adiele Afigbo stress, however, that the British had aims of their own – fighting the “juju” and the slave trade was a way to break the power of the Aro and open the interior to colonial administration and commerce. Today the site, together with the “Long Juju slave route,” draws heritage tourists in Abia State, and for many local people it remains sacred.

Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.

Sources

  1. Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo, The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885–1950 (University of Rochester Press, 2006)
  2. William Heneker, Bush Warfare (1907)
  3. The Nation – Unique nature of Arochukwu Long Juju (2015)
  4. Daily Independent (Lagos) – Nigeria: Arochukwu – Place History, Tradition Meet (2014)

More: Wikipedia (en)