REALITY OF LIFE AFTER DEATH AS BELIEVED BY NNEWI PEOPLE

By Anayo M. Nwosu

I remember vividly that very night of November 1982, when I had to escape from  the house to go watch masquerade performance at the funeral ceremony of Mazi Chukwuchem, a funeral conducted in line with Nnewi traditional rites. 

Chukwuchem, my father's contemporary died in the religion of his ancestors as he vehemently refused to convert to Christianity unlike my late dad.

To attend the funeral, I had dammed the consequences of failing to do a domestic task assigned to me by my mother.

I was to " hoo onumu" i.e to washing off the bitterness in the bitterleaves as is used to make Onugbu soup, an Nnewi indigenous delicacy.

I was to process the leaves and keep them wet inside the "odo" or wooden mortar until my mother returned from the market to make the soup.

When the last masquerade left the funeral ground, I then realized what I had done to myself.

I was left with an option of choosing between going straight home, receive some beatings and be entitled to dinner or to sleep outside.

It was already night when I reached the gate of my home.

I was still pondering on how to resolve my self-inflicted problem which was complicated by the aroma of my mum's soup as she and my other siblings had commenced eating dinner.

They were sitting on the floor in a circular manner with each tucking his or her legs behind the person siting in front in a clockwise direction to form a near perfect circle.

The food and water were placed in the centre.

My mother looked up and saw my shadow produced by the light from the kerosene lantern cast on the glass louvered window as I peeped steadily to know if they would finish or reserve some morsels of fufu for me.

As the fufu level was going down, I heard my mum shout: "onye na-akwughali ebe aghu ka ozu akwaghi akwa?" ie "who is parambulating around there as a ghost whose funeral ceremony has not been done?"

At that point, hunger had to pushed me to respond "Nne omuu!" i.e "Mother, it's me".  What followed was a prayer answered and I couldn't believe my luck.

"Bia nee liee ka ine eligbu onwegi" i.e "come take this food and eat to your destruction " was the only invitation I needed to land at the dinner area like a hawk.

I needed to be swift to snatch the remaining fufu and to prevent my junior brother, Tochukwu from attempting  to carve out and collect what was remaining otherwise I would have been left with only one swallowing activity to do.

I was not expecting any share of meat as my mum wouldn't glorify my bad conduct with such privilege. And I wasn't given.

I knew that the matter was not settled as my mum still woke me up next morning with six stroke of cane as punishment for what I did a day before.

The idea of a ghost whose funeral is yet to be performed stuck with me until I learnt of Muodike of Mbanagu Otolo Nnewi and his struggle to get his brother to settle him with funeral rites.

Mazi Muodike had died naturally and was buried.

He was married but had no children before he died.

His elder brother would not perform his funeral but was more interested in encroaching into his brother's  lands and economic trees, selling them and living good.

Muodike had appeared to his brother and his nephews in dream pleading that to his funeral be conducted.

He even asked that the proceeds of sale of his lands be used to do his funeral but his brother wouldn't hear of that.

His brother, Mazi Asoibenne, a christian convert, believed that the dead was powerless.

The spirit of the dead Muodike radicalised and started interfering with the progress of the businesses of the sons of his brother.

Upon native and Christian enquiries or "iju ase" the message was the say: "your uncle's troubled spirit is responsible for your ill luck".

The children of Mazi Asoibenne could not get their father to conduct his brother's funeral until one fateful day Asoibenna himself was pushed off a palm tree when he had only climbed not more than 7ft from the ground.

He was told by the ghost of his brother as he laid prostate under the palm tree that the fall that left little bruises on him was just a warning.

The fall from a palm tree put the needed fear in Asoibenne as he was a winetapper.

His dead brother had touched the right cord. So he did the needful.

Nothing more was heard nor anybody disturbed by Muodike after his funeral ceremony was conducted and his spirit dispatched to the great beyond by seven "mkpo n'ana" or cannon gunshots.

My father's brother Ozuomee also told me a story of an incident he witnessed as a teenager in Okpuno Otolo Nnewi.

According to my uncle, it was the general pre-colonial practice in Nnewi not to bury the dead until after a full cycle of dawn to prevent mistakenly interring someone who had not yet died but in coma.

On a reasonable suspicion of death, the suspected dead person  is cleaned and laid on "Obolo" i.e a raised platform for sitting or resting made of a mount but smoothened mud located usually at one end of the veranda of a typical pre-1960 Nnewi house.

Tobacco leaves or "unyi" known as charcoal is inserted in anus and/or the vagina of the suspected dead person to slow down rigor mortis or decomposition.

It is the preserve of the elders to authorize the burial of the deceased once they  notice the continuation of decomposition and that the suspected dead person didn't sneeze or get up.

Realizing that her sick husband had breathed his last, Nwanyieke raised her cries to a higher decibel beckoning anyone who could hear her that "alu emeee!" ie "that an anomaly has occurred".

Utufuluku, Nwanyieke's husband was laid on his Obolo for the mandatory waiting period as elders and mourners were seated in groups wondering how the widow would cope as the deceased was shamelessly lazy leaving behind only debts for the wife and children to inherit.

But the rigor mortis or decomposition did not set in even as the sun was retreating.

Nobody was surprised that even the dead body of this monumental loafer would also be slow in decomposition.

Just before the chicken began to retire to their pen, Mazi Utufuluku heaved a loud sigh, opened his eyes and wondered why a crowd had gathered in compound.

Okpuno Otolo elders  were handy to welcome him back to earth to the relief of his debtors and relations.

Utufuluku woke up healed of his fever and high temperature that had killed him. And he seemed to have a message for those around.

He told the surprised kinsmen that his grandfather and other recognizable ancestors pursued him from "ana muo" to "ana mmadu" i.e "he was chased back to the land of the living".

He revealed that his grandfather asked him "whose food would you eat here when you were so lazy and had not a single barn of yam and heaps of coco yams?"  He was warned and was dispatched to go and live a life of industry.

Utufuluku had a rebirth in totality as he worked so hard and died a comfortable man and at a ripe age.

My mother's account of how her dead  father appeared to her in Zaria to inform her of his death and was instructed to go leave Zaria the next day if she wanted to see his corpse in lying in state.

My father and devout didn't believe her but had to let her go. A journey from Zaria to the Enugu by rail was a two-day trip.

My mother arrived her father's house in Okpuno Nnewichi Nnewi just in time before the casket containing her father's remains was closed for interment.

When I attend many funeral services conducted by Bible-only churches, I pity their dead members who they starve of needed prayers at the time it matters most.

The spirit of the dead still hang around and could be assisted in his or her passage through prayers or sacrifice like Holy Eucharist.

It is evident for the traditional religion believers that before now and up till now, that umudibia kalaka ie seasoned native doctors in their elements, do converse with ndiochie or our ancestors in a process called divination or "igba afa".

When there existed footpaths by the ukwa trees, no elderly or titled man from Nnewi would eat or drink without initially pouring libation or throwing out a morsel of food in the wide for our ancestors.

For not being so quick to condemn life after death or for having a similar belief the majority of Ndi Nnewi still stick with Catholic and Anglican churches whose doctrines have not entirely changed who we are.