People · 1945-1956 · Disputed
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Ameh Oboni died during a struggle over his throne, but stories of bees and curses have almost hidden the man.
Every Igala child knows some version of the story. The Attah Ameh Oboni is ordered to take off his cap at a gathering of powerful men. He refuses. When they insist, bees pour out of the cap and send everyone running.
In other tellings, locked doors cannot hold him, and his curses fall on whole towns. One popular version even puts him at a meeting in 1963, seven years after he died. That one, at least, cannot be true.
The man behind the legend was the Attah of Igala, crowned at Idah in May 1945. The stories his people kept about his reign are plainer. He wanted schools, roads and dispensaries. When Idah cleared land for an airstrip, he took off his outer robe and worked with the labourers.
But he had enemies. Rivals at home sent petitions and accusations to the British. Nigeria was still a colony, and a king could be removed by the colonial government. By 1956 moves were under way to dethrone him, and there was talk of putting him on trial.
Ameh Oboni went to Dekina. There, in 1956, he took his own life. One account gives the date as 26 June, another as 26 August.
His people have often explained it as a king refusing to be humiliated. Maybe so. Nobody can see inside his mind. What we do know is that a ruler who had been sacred to his people found himself at the mercy of strangers and rivals, and chose not to face them.
The bees came later. Perhaps they are how the Igala answered the British, by remembering a king no one could ever make bow.
