A SINISTER FATE: Cannibalism in Africa

DAVID SOULSBY

This is an in-depth study of the practice of human cannibalism in Africa, from the prehistoric to the present day. Africa, the ‘dark continent’, has often been described as a land of savages. This work describes the evidence for cannibalism stretching back to the early stages of human evolution. Hunter-gatherer lifestyles have a far greater antiquity in Africa than anywhere else in the world, and here humans developed the use of tools, meat-eating, hunting, and primitive forms of warfare. There is physical evidence in deep prehistory for intentional damage or modification to hominid bones by other hominids during the defleshing of corpses as a part of some form of mortuary ritual, or simply for food. In the later pre-historic and historical era, however, archaeological evidence becomes exceedingly scarce, so by necessity one must rely upon the ethnographic record.

Unfortunately few native Africans produced written records, so accounts and journals by white explorers, missionaries, traders, and scientists referring to cannibalism are compared to assess the veracity of reports of the practice among African peoples. For historical chapters of the work, the major geographical continental divisions are employed since there are anthropological and social differences between the various regions. The story encompasses mythologies, secret societies, recent civil wars, and the behaviour of some of the world’s most unpleasant dictators. 


Chapters

CHAPTER 3. WEST AFRICA

CHAPTER 3.  WEST AFRICA West Africa is the trans-Equatorial belt stretching from Senegal eastwards to Nigeria, then around the Gulf of Guinea south to Angola, including the western fringes of the Congo basin.  By 2900 years BC Berber and Negro farmers had arrived as far south as the Niger-Benue region in West Africa, establishing cultures such as that of the Nok, the first known Iron Age culture in West Africa.  The Nok, a proto-Bantu group, probably occupied a large part of what is now Nigeria until some 200 years into the Christian era.  They were cultivators who also kept cattle, and are best known for technically accomplished terracotta figurines.  Artistic styles developed by the Nok have influenced much of the art of West Africa, such as that of the Yoruba, in which sculpted heads were popular.  For the Yoruba, the head is the bearer of a person’s destiny, and bronze heads were also made in the kingdom of Benin, where they served as shrines for deceased Bini kings.  Most kings were regarded as gods or the descendents of gods and were spiritually related to fertility and the welfare of the people. 

Nigeria is the most densely populated country on the African continent.  It is comprised of 12 states in four main geographical regions: the coastal mangroves and swamp belt, the forest belt, the northern savannas, and the Jos Plateau.  As a physiographically diverse land, it is inhabited by several hundred varied ethnic groups with their own languages and cultures.  Before the emergence of these ethnic groups, there were indigenous inhabitants in scattered communities.  Ethnic differentiation came along with the process of state formation. 

The first major ethnic group to emerge from the aboriginal continuum appear to have been the Yoruba of western Nigeria, a prominent group in terms of population and culture.  The consensus is that the Yoruba migrated from the north-east of Africa, perhaps Upper Egypt (some say the kingdom of Meroe) or even Arabia, between 600 and 1000 AD.  Yoruba civilization appears to be the result of a small immigrant ruling class merging with an artistic indigenous population, such as the Nok culture.  Linguistically, Nigeria is divided into two main affiliations; in the northern half of the country, the Afro-Asiatic group, and in the southern half, the Niger-Congo cluster, with Benue-Congo and Kwa as language sub-families.  Benue-Congo languages are used by such groups as the Jukun, the Annang, the Efik, and the Ibibio of the Cross River basin; Kwa languages are spoken by such tribes as the Ijo, the Yoruba, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, the Igbo, the Egun, and the Edo of southern Nigeria.  The Cross River basin people of south-eastern Nigeria are linguistically closer to the Bantu of central, eastern, and southern Africa than to those of western Nigeria.  In northern Nigeria, to the fringes of the Sahara, pre-colonial peoples were influenced by Islam, for example, the Hausa, the Ngizim, the Manga, the Buduma, the Margi, the Katoko, and the Bolewa.  A pocket of Nilo-Saharan language affiliation is found among the Kanuri people of the extreme north-east corner of Nigeria, bordering Lake Chad. 

Control of Nigeria by the British began in 1861 with the annexation of Lagos.  It became a separate colony and protectorate in 1886, and came into being in its modern form under British colonial rule in 1914 when the two protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were combined.  The country gained independence in 1960 (Sagay & Wilson 1978; Olaniyan 1983).    The earliest Europeans to reach the Nigerian coast were the Portuguese in the 15th century.  They began trading slaves with the Benue peoples and by the 17th century British slave ships were plying the coast.  In the 19th century, British merchant ships were trading in palm oil and other products from the southern coastal belt.  On the Niger River, British commercial interests were protected from French competition by an amalgamation of trading companies in 1879, which became the Royal Niger Company.  The company administered territories north of the delta, around the Niger-Benue confluence.  An Oil Rivers Protectorate around the delta was established in 1887, which in 1893 became the Niger Coast Protectorate.  There was sporadic resistance to encroaching British power by native chiefs, whose own ability to trade had been hampered, and the policy of the British was removal of these obstacles to trade in the Niger Delta rather than seeking their co-operation. 

A large proportion of slaves exported from Nigeria were procured in the Niger Delta, and there were a number of tribes or states in the delta, such as the Brass (or Nembe), who engaged in slavery and other trades.  They were unhappy at the monopolies enjoyed by the Royal Niger Company.  In 1895, according to Talbot (1926), Crowder (1973), and others, the Brass raided Akassa, a port run by the Royal Niger Company.  They destroyed stores and captured 60 men, taking their prisoners to Nembe (the Brass port), before killing and eating 43 of them. 

In response to this raid, the Brass were ordered by the consul general of the Protectorate to surrender their headmen and weapons, which they refused.  Protectorate troops then entered Brass territory, against strong resistance, and burned down their town.  Representatives of the Brass people stated that the Niger Company was attacked because they initiated hostilities and seized their canoes for smuggling. Among the Brass, cannibalistic sacrifices to native gods had long been a religious rite.  For example, captives were cannibalized, they said, because fetish priests had warned that a smallpox epidemic then raging would not cease until human sacrifices were made.  A decade earlier, a smallpox outbreak had purportedly been halted by a cannibal sacrifice (Geary 1927). 

The Niger Coast Protectorate established its authority over most overseas trade in Nigeria, but was unable to do the same in the old kingdom of Benin, which had withdrawn from trading with Europeans, under decree from the king.    No part of West Africa suffered more from the ravages of the slave trade than the region of south-eastern Nigeria around the mouths of the Niger Delta and the Cross River which enters the Atlantic Ocean at Calabar. Slavery had become the normal condition of the peoples of this coast and, later, the interior.  The strong preyed on the weak and tribe raided tribe, plundering and burning villages, to supply the slave ships with their human traffic for sale to the white men.  The sickly and the old, useless as slaves, were killed and, according to accounts (eg. Donald M. McFarlan, who wrote of the Church of Scotland Mission in Calabar, 1846 to 1946) often eaten in the cannibalistic orgies which rounded off a successful foray (McFarlan 1946).  Furthermore it seems, even those fit for shipment as slaves were concerned that their future lay at the mercy of cannibals. 

Talbot was asked to carry out a census of Nigeria in 1921, and to compile a report on the statistics and ethnography of the tribes of southern Nigeria.  He obtained information personally during travels in the southern provinces, which was corroborated by other informants.  Talbot states that the practice of cannibalism, almost always accompanied by head-hunting, seems to have been fairly universal in the Nigerian tribes with whom he had contact.  

Distribution of cannibalism in southern Nigeria was mainly in those areas east of Warri.  He lists the following tribes (and sub-tribes) as examples practicing cannibalism in a war context: Ibo (sub-tribes Abadja, Alensaw, Aro, Ututu, Ibe, Ekkpahia, southern Ikwerri, Nkanu, Okoba, Onitsha); Ijaw (or Ijo, sub-tribe Kalabari); Ibibio; Bafumbum-Bansaw (sub-tribes Melamba, Bansaw, Bametta); Boki (sub-tribes Boki, Bete, Uge); Ekoi (sub-tribes Akaju, Anyang, Nde); Iyala, and Ukelle.  


Exceptions were the Edo, among whom the eating of human flesh was taboo, and the Yoruba, among whom the practice was mainly a custom restricted to the rulers. 

The Ogboni secret society, comprised of elders and the heads of important families, exerted significant political influence among the Yoruba in pre-colonial times and administered worship of a pantheon of gods.  The god Oro, for example, was originally a spirit that presided over male-oriented mysteries; his voice could be heard in the whirling of bull-roarers, a widespread ancient ritual v instrument.  Male initiates were required to drink the blood of a human or animal sacrificial victim.  Blood might be licked off the head-man’s sword.  Priests of Ogun, the god of iron and of war, would remove the hearts of human victims which were then reduced to dry powder and added to rum.  This mixture would be bought by those who believed that it would give them courage.  Chiefs of the Yoruba would eat part of the head or the heart of their predecessors in office, a necessary ritual and a kind of succession based on gastronomy. 

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