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THE URHOBO, THE ISOKO, AND THE ITSEKIRI By Samuel U. Erivwo, Ph.D. |
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FIRST ATTEMPT: PORTUGUESE CATHOLICS AT ODE ITSEKIRI |
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Reproduced in Urhobo Waado By Permission of Professor Samuel Erivwo |
It is proper that a history of Christianity in Nigeria should begin
with the Itsekiri and their neighbours. Because of their
geographical location the Itsekiri came into contact with Portuguese
priest who accompanied Portuguese explorers in their bid to find a sea
route to India in the fifteenth century. By about 1477 the first
European contacts were made with Benin, and by 1555 Augustinian monks
visited Warri. They were sent by Gasper, who was the bishop of the
diocese of Sao Tome. One of the monks, Father Franscisco a Mater Dei,
baptized the son of the Olu of Warri under the name
of Sebastian.[1]
When Sebastian later succeeded his father he encouraged the work of
the Portuguese missionaries, and indeed allowed his son, Domingos, to
be sent to Portugal and trained for the priesthood.It was hoped that
if this happened the spread of Christianity to the hinterland would be
expedited since indigenous priests would not suffer from the ill
effect of the equatorial climate which imposed a serious limitation on
the work of the European missionaries. However, Domingos was not
able to qualify for the priesthood since he ended his ten years stay
in Portugal by marrying, contrary to the stipulation of the Roman
Catholic Church in respect of those who wish to enter the priesthood.
(His wife was a Portuguese woman.) Some other attempts made later to
train indigenous priest also failed, with the result that the
Itsekiri came to the conclusion that the Almighty did not intend
Africans to become celebate priests![2]
The difficulty of providing trained indigenous priests
constituted a set back to the propagation of Christianity among
the Itsekiri . As already indicated, the climate of the area
was unfavourable to European missionaries; the place was
not only too humid, it was also infested by mosquitoes, the carriers
of malaria which was to be a formidable menace to missionary work in
this area until after 1854. Furthermore, the Portuguese kingdom,
experiencing a period of decline as a result, among other things, of
her loss of naval power, was incapable of supporting Portuguese
priests who worked among the Itsekiri for a long
time.
All this apart, had the Itsekiri themselves
responded favourably to the appeal of the Portuguese
missionaries, Christianity might have taken deep root, and possibly
spread to the hinterland. But they did not. So superstitious were they
of the implication of baptism that they were most reluctant to release
their children for baptism, fearing, as they did, that the children
would die shortly after baptism. Thus, the adverse climate, the
decline of Portuguese empire consequent upon the poverty of that
kingdom and her loss of naval power, the unsuccessful attempts to
train indigenous priests, and the superstition of the Itsekiri ,
all militated against the work of the Portuguese missionaries in
Ode Itsekiri, the capital of the Itsekiri
kingdom.
But these were not the only adverse factors. Perhaps even more
important was the slave trade. The Portuguese priests who came
to the area from the sixteenth century onwards did so in the gunboats
of slave traders. It is even reported that some of them, in a
desperate effort to maintain themselves in the area, participated in
the inhuman trade. Even if it be admitted that on the whole the
Roman Catholic Church at the time did not approve of the slave trade,
yet she took no positive steps to discourage the inhuman traffic in
living tools. Instead, there was an attempt to see the good side
of the inhuman trade: the possibility of converting the negro slaves
once they were transported from the darkness of Africa to the
marvelous light of Christianity which the Church in Europe believed to
be in her possession to radiate. As a matter of fact, most of the
slaves carried from the West Coast did not land in Europe; they were
carried to sugar plantations in Americ where they were treated as
beasts of burden.
No matter in what bright colours the slave trade may be
painted, viewed in retrospect and from the West African stand point,
on no ground can it be justified. Any Christianity, therefore,
which allied itself to such a diabolic force s the Portuguese slave
trade was doomed to fail. Thus the failure of the first attempt
to plant Christianity among the Itsekiri , and in part of what
was later to be known as Nigeria, was, more than any other factor, due
to the slave trade. Before the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth centuries, Roman Catholicism had
practically disappeared from Ode Isekiri.
However, as stated elsewhere[3], in spite of the difficulties which rendered missionary work in the
area of little consequence some impression was made as is evidenced
from the court of the Olu of Warri even today.Even among the
Urhobo in the hinterland some impression was made, especially by
Father Monteleone, a prefect from Sao Tome, who, according to
Professor Ryder[4], came in contact with the Urhobo in 1689 in his unsuccessful attempt
to visit Benin from Warri.