Legend · Traditional to present · Fact and legend
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At Agulu in Anambra, the crocodiles can't be killed and only canoes may cross the water. The priests say the lake was once a stranger who asked for a place to stay.
If you drive along Awka Road into Agulu, in Anaocha, you come to a wide, calm stretch of water in Umuowele village. There are no signposts. A crew from Diaspora Digital Media went looking for it in 2025 and had to find their own way. When they got there they were met by Onyekwere Ngene Atuegbu, who said he was one of two chief priests chosen to serve the deity Idemili. He sat in an obi, a small open room with no doors or windows, with red and white cloths hanging from the roof beams. Before anyone could come in, they had to wash their hands from a calabash at the entrance. Women on their period weren't welcome, and women in trousers couldn't enter either, so the crew listened from just outside.
Then he told them how the lake came to be. Agulu, he said, arrived as an old man looking for land to live on. In Igbo custom a guest is given kola, and water is brought so he can wash his hands. The hosts brought the water. The old man didn't touch it. He squeezed water out of his own beard and washed his hands with that.
That was the moment, Atuegbu said, when the people understood their visitor was no ordinary man. They gave him land without any argument. Not long after, a great storm came with heavy rain. Trees came down, and the land they'd given the stranger filled with water. The people began to worship what was left as Idemili, and that's how the name Agulu Lake came about.
The priests aren't elected. According to Atuegbu, the god chooses who serves him, and a priest can only be replaced if he dies or offends the god. Next to the obi stands another small house, and it holds the bones of animals offered to Idemili over the years.
What makes Agulu Lake famous outside Anambra is the crocodiles. Pulse Nigeria says they bask on the banks around noon, and nobody is allowed to kill one. Anyone who does has to seek penance, or something bad will happen to them. Another man who serves the deity told the DDM crew the same goes for the python, which people there call eke. The only animal you may kill, he said, is the land tortoise, mbe ani.
Pulse lists other rules too. Women who are menstruating, or who have just had a baby, mustn't go into the lake. Men who've slept with someone must bathe before they come. People believe the lake throws back anything evil. It is said to reject murderers and thieves, but if an innocent person falls in, it pushes them back out. Atuegbu said much the same: anyone who comes with bad thoughts or plans gets that evil handed back to them.
There's also a war story. Locals told Pulse that in times of war, the crocodiles turned into beautiful women. They lured enemy fighters to the water, and the fighters drowned. Nobody claims to have seen it. It's the kind of thing a town says about its protector.
Even the boats follow the god's rules. A stakeholder told DDM that only canoes may go on the lake, and Idemili doesn't want motorboats. Asked what would happen if the government developed the place and brought engines anyway, Atuegbu answered calmly. That, he said, would be up to the government.
Not everything at the lake matches the old story. Further down the path, where the crew were asked to switch off their camera, they met the man in charge of people who come to pray and offer sacrifices. His account of the old man was almost the same as Atuegbu's, with one difference. He said that when the stranger came, he'd agreed on how far his land would go. The lake, he said, has since spread past that line, against the agreement.
There was a second promise too. The old man is said to have sworn that, as a lake, he would never take a life. The same attendant admitted that people have drowned there anyway. His job, he said, was to tell people the dos and don'ts. Whether they followed them was their business. Some people, he said, now treat the shrine with disrespect and do things the community counts as abominations. One of the guides pointed out a part of the lake where you could walk in and drown unless you were a strong swimmer.
The people around the lake also eat from it, even though some accounts say fishing is banned. The attendant said fish was a good source of food that cut down what families spent on feeding. He hoped the state would improve the site, but not in a way that took that food off their tables. He also asked that a cleaned-up lake shouldn't become somewhere only for the rich, or for white visitors.
So the place is a sacred site, a family larder and a neglected tourist spot all at once. DDM found the hotel by the water, the Golden Tulip, looking tired. As the crew were leaving, a young man appeared and demanded money, and said they should delete their footage if they didn't pay. They sent him to Atuegbu's people and drove off, and the crocodiles stayed on the bank.
