1 - The Ijo: Their Home, History, and Culture

Summary

The story in The Ozidi Saga is roughly as follows. A brave warrior is killed by a gang of his colleagues whom he has led in an expedition to gather the articles (chiefly, a human head from a neighboring community) to be used in solemnizing the coronation of his brother. They have conspired against him because they do not want the kingship of their nation, which has passed by right to his family, to be assumed by the warrior's brother, who happens to be intellectually deficient—an “idiot,” in the argot of the story. Soon after the warrior has died, his pregnant wife bears a son who, under the tutelage of his grandmother Oreame, a most powerful sorceress, grows prodigiously and assumes the duty passed on to him not only of destroying every one of his father's assassins but indeed of eliminating all other forces that threaten the prominence of his family in the land.

The Ozidi story is easily the best known of tales told among the Ijo of Nigeria's delta country, who have drawn worldwide attention to themselves for resisting what they consider the collusion between the country's federal government and some multinational corporations in the exploitation of the area's petroleum resources. Their present struggles are only the latest in a long history of confrontations that have accustomed the people to a militarized way of life.