Ekwensu: What Catherine Acholonu taught Dr. Aniedobe

Dr. Aniedobe shared with Asaba Post News-Wire what he felt when his good friend, and mentor, Professor Obiechina died, he told us that a part of Igbo history died with him. Very few were as versed in Igbo history and culture as Prof. Obiechina. Very few are more organically Igbo than he was. He said the shock of his death still have a sharp grip on him over the death of a well grounded mentor and it has been so hard to write a tribute to him.

When Prof. Obiechina couldn’t tell me the philological derivation of “ekwensu,”as an Igbo word, I knew that there might be no other place to turn. I turned to my own biological father, quite a historian himself, but he had no clue. Many of us know ekwensu as the anti-God principle; the devil, Satan, Lucifier etc; but few have wondered why and how the Igbos began to call that anti-God principle - ekwensu.

Why is that important? Because few things are more important to us than our religion.

Our relationship with ekwensu, that anti-chukwu element, does inform tremendously about the Igbo world view. No other phrase in Igbo language evokes as much fear and loathe as ekwensu. But was ekwensu an anti-chukwu element known in traditional religion? Did that anti-chukwu element carry over as the anti-God element of the assimilated Western religion? What in fact was the role of “ekwensu” in shaping Igbo culture and belief system.

One way to deal with that problem was to do a philological deconstruction of “ekwensu.” Prof Obiechina and I tried. “Ekwe” we know could be a wooden gong; could be an affirmation as in “we agree” but the “nsu” term just floored us. Does “nsu” have ties with “esu” as in ogu esu (fight breaks out) so that one can say that “ekwensu” literally means a wooden gong that announces war or generally that announces a bad thing. Professor Obiechina and I parted ways on that day promising to get back to each other once we find the meaning of “ekwensu.” He died before I could share my discoveries with him.

I reasoned that “ekwensu” could be a corruption of “ekwensi” a phrase which means, “not capable of being poisoned,” or “refusing to be poisoned,” but that did not seem to jive with the religious underpinnings of “ekwensu.” I discarded that theory.

Next I theorized that “ekwensu” could be a corruption of “ekwenshi” but ekwenshi had no philophical bearing as far as I could tell. Somehow, though, I figured out that if I could find out the meaning of “nshi” in Igbo language, I could in fact crack the riddle of the “ekwensu” phrase.

When I met Catherine Acholonu, Igbo’s foremost master comparative philologist, I experienced a new dimension. In one of her writings, “the Origin of the Igbo – the Chosen people of the true God,” Catherine used the methodology of comparative philology and wrote as follows: Please read carefully. My analysis continues afterwards:

From Catherine Acholonu
“The Niger-Congo belt is the home of the dwarfs also called Pygmies of the Congo Basin. Ikom folklore says that dwarfs which they call Mong-kom (and which the Igbo call Nwa-Nshi) were the authors of the monoliths, known to the natives as Akwa-Nshi. Dwarfs were known in antiquity as adept workers of metal and great magicians. The link between the Ikom name of the monoliths - Akwa Nshi - and the Igbo name of the dwarfs - Nwa-Nshi - indicate that it was an Igbo-speaking Nwa-nshi community that authored the monoliths and invented the ancient sacred script known to thee Cross River indigenes as Nshi-biri – (which in Igbo means ‘Written by Nshi’), used by the members of the Ekpe cult whose sacred temple is the monoliths capital located at the monoliths circle in the village Alok, Ikom. The fact that the Cross River people of the monoliths have little no in-depth knowledge about the Nshi phenomenon so deeply rooted in Igbo Weltanschauung and central to the identity and cosmology of the creators of the monoliths, is ample testimony that the authors of the monoliths and the creators of Igbo culture belong to the same cosmological bloodline. This explains the link with Igbo Ukwu bronzes!”

“Akwa Nshi means ‘Property of Nshi’, and Bantu, as we have earlier indicated, has its origin in the Ikom/Benue linguistic belt! The root etymon Kwa in Akwa Nshi, would tend to connect the Nshi dwarfs with the Kwa language family to which belong quite a number of West African tribes including the Igbo.”

“[t]he native name of the monoliths which the Ikom oral tradition says were made by dwarfs, is Akwa Nshi. An Igbo mythology known as Ndi Ichie Akwa Mythology or Folklore Origins of the Igbo (I.N.C.Nwosu, 1983) maintains that God gave the Law in the form of stone tablets to the ancestors of the Black race, and that these stone tablets were called Ichie Akwa (a cognate of Akwa Nshi). The story says that leadership of the Black race, hence the world fell on the Igbo nation by primogeniture.”

“The Akwa Nshi stones of Ikom are each a representation of an ancestor. It features the ancestor Eve (whom the Ikom indigenes call Shishe (by an uncanny coincidence, Shishe happens to be the same Hebrew name which Adam gave to Eve the moment she was created), the first woman on earth to ever bear a child by pregnancy! Another monolith among those that have been transcribed so far, bore the name Kheme (Ham). Ikom indigenes translate the term Akwa Nshi as ‘Spirits in the Earth’. This may mean that the stones above ground are representations of god-men who have gone underground, died, or were god-sons of the earth goddess.”

“Native legends say the monoliths were made by dwarfs who acted with one mind (having a group soul), who were called Mo-nkom in the native Ikom dialect, which literally means ‘the little people (mo), of one mind (nkom)’. The word Nshi/Eshi and variations of it were also used by Egyptians and Cushites as a secret name of pygmies and Blacks from the land of the gods. Chami noted that the Egyptians attributed the origin of Pygmies to the land of Punt … and they identified the Puntites as being “nehsi” … The Cushites maintained the same concept for Black people whom they called “nehesyu”. The Swahili of the coast of East Africa have maintained the word “nyehusi” for black.”

“It must be noted that their discovery of the autochthons, “the little heaven beings”, the Akwa Nshi or Igbo Nwanshi in Punt/Panchea/Nigeria-Cameroon geographic environment was the ticket to the colonization of the world. “

My Analysis Continues

From the above excepts, “nshi” probably referred in ancient Igbo to autochthons, little heaven beings, spirits of the earth who acted with one mind. “Ekwenshi” or what is known today as “ekwensu” therefore probably refers to a rebellious character who did not agree with the autochthons.

Now tell me if the above story does not sound eerily similar to the Biblical legend of Satan. Now ask yourself which theory predated the other. Precisely what Catherine is trying to say. Before Adam and Eve and Moses, etc; there were the Igbos, the sons of the true God. Call them angels or call them autochthons, there is a striking convergence in belief systems across the world that tend to point to a common origin of all religions.

Whether Catherine is right or wrong, our challenge today is to commit to exploring the rich ramparts of Igbo history and culture. Let’s not easily discard our traditional belief system as those of a barbaric, illiterate, tree dwelling Africans who needed to be civilized. Chances are, we once civilized everyone else. That is the case that Catherine has so eloquently made. To boggle your mind just a little, how many times have you seen extraterrestrials depicted as dwarf like beings. Sounds like the ancient Igbos knew about spirit sons of the earth who were dwarfs.

As for my “discoveries” about the origin of the word “ekwensu” I regret deeply that Professor Obiechina is not here today to share that “discovery” with me. That active mind of his would have listened intently at me and smiled approvingly and would have probably added something like, “Chris, look at the words relationship, kinship for the etymonic interplay of “nshi” in those words. I agree with you that comparative philological analysis could in fact point to those words as being derived from the Igbo word “nshi” tending to mean working with one mind.”

“Indeed,” I would have said, “the Igbo origin of Adam and Eve is not as far fetched as many later day Christians may want to us to believe.” There is a lot to the Igbos than meets the eye. Be Igbo, be proud!