The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe

FOUR Inside King Ahebi’s Palace, ca. 1916–1948

C Four inside King ahebi’s Palace, ca. 1916–1948 The Palace Grounds King Ahebi’s palace grounds were large.The palace was a gated community of sorts, with a market, a court, a prison, a school, a “retraining” house, a masquerade house, animal stables, several residential homes, guest houses, and a brothel. Samuel Apeh, a retired army sergeant and one of the pupils who attended King Ahebi’s palace school, equated the extent of Ahebi’s palace grounds to several football (soccer) fields or plots of land: “What is a [football] field? It was way bigger than a field. It was more than 20 plots [of land]. In fact, it was uncountable. It was really vast oh! It was about 28 or 30 plots [of land].”1 Ahebi Ugbabe acquired much of this land by force. As warrant chief and king, she would simply point to a piece of land she wanted to have, and the owners of the property would “gift” it to her.2 The grounds were enclosed.The palace had a dwarf mud wall on the inside. On the outside, “the part facing Umuareji [another village] was a fence covered with palm fronds, ekarika.”3 A substance called okikpa was added to the fence to prevent it from crumbling. A market named after King Ahebi—Nkwo Ahebi (or Nkwo Chief)—was located within the palace grounds at the present site of the Ahebi Primary School. It served as Umuida’s main market, providing all sorts of goods and services for the citizenry of Enugu-Ezike. King Ahebi’s personal palace court, where she judged cases away from the prying eyes of the colonial government, was located at the front of the palace grounds, directly inside its inner mud wall (see Figure 4.1). King Ahebi’s animal stables were located inside the inner wall. She reared numerous cows and goats, and her chickens were housed in a chicken coop.4 Every morning the palace men collected grasses to feed these animals, which were allowed to roam freely in the section of the grounds set aside for them. Samuel Apeh observed: “King Ahebi had many, many, big cows, goats and chickens. They stayed in a house at her palace. They would wander around, and at the end of the day, they would come back to their houses.”5 INSIDE KING AHEBI’S PALACE 137 Tucked away in one corner of her palace was the masquerade house (ulomma). King Ahebi’s Ekpe Ahebi masquerade emerged from the ulomma. Some oral history collaborators suggested that the great Omabe masked spirit also came out of Ahebi’s masquerade house,6 which I think unlikely.7 Of King Ahebi’s ulomma, Alice Akogu had this to say: “In this masquerade house, King Ahebi kept everything. Women were not allowed to enter it. No woman ever entered there.”8 The ulomma was also used as a storage facility. Akogu continues: “Any time food was to be cooked and she was at home, Nnenne went into the ulomma to bring out the food items to be cooked. No woman ever entered there.”9 The ulomma structure highlighted the gendered nature of space within Ahebi’s palace grounds. Between the palm-frond fence and the dwarf mud wall, the palace farm was situated on both sides of King Ahebi’s palace court. This farm was one of numerous farmlands spread all throughout Nsukka Division and beyond that King Ahebi owned. The palace farm workers planted ede (cocoyam), groundnuts, cassava, ekpei, and corn: “Yes, there was space for farming [in her palace]. She planted crops like cocoyam and ekpei. All the men who lived in the palace worked King Ahebi’s palace farm.”10 Figure 4.1. Surviving wall of King Ahebi’s court, Umuida, Enugu-Ezike. Photograph by Nwando Achebe, November 1996. 138 THE FEMALE KING OF COLONIAL NIGERIA The main crop that King Ahebi’s farmers—freeborn and “slave”— planted on her other farmlands was the male crop, yam. Yam was the king of crops and anyone who possessed these tubers was considered wealthy. Ahebi owned over twelve barns of yams (oba ji iri na abua).11 As she did in her palace farms, she had her farmers interplant female crops (e.g., cocoyams, groundnuts, and corn) with her yams. All ablebodied men in Umuida and the surrounding communities—Akpaturu, Ogrute, Ogene, and Umuadogwu—were obligated to work on King Ahebi...