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whose shrines the Oba keeps within a cycle of
periodic rites and rituals. The Oba remains the
de facto owner of all Bini land, while the state
theoretically holds all land in trust for the people.
Benin City was surrounded by three huge
earthworks that involved considerable engineering
skill. According to Graham Connah (1975) it
must have taken a labour force of about 5,000
men working ten hours a day for seven days a
week for about nine months to complete the
gigantic bank and ditch of the innermost walls,
these being the most sophisticated of the three.
Thus the walls are the culmination of a
thousand-year long process that created the
world’s longest earthworks: some 10,000 miles
of banks and ditches in a reticulated complex
covering about 2,000 square miles up to the
neighbouring Edoid Ishan chiefdoms to the nor-th
west of Benin City (Darling 1984). Three rings of
interconnected earthworks are discernible; two
of which are ascribed by oral traditions to the
rei n of the 5th king, Oba Oguola, at about the
13 il Century and were intended to serve as a
defence mechanism against menacing giants
(Akpanigiakon). The same version credits the
same king with ordering the network of village
walls to be constructed along the city models.
The innermost walls (the third) are credited to
the reign of Oba Ewuare (1440-1473 AD) who is
said to have ordered their construction to check
the massive exodus from Benin City occasioned
by his reign of terror. Medicine pots were placed
at all nine entrantes to the city through the walls
which were also manned by able-bodied men. At
the annual Igue festival these shrines are still
propitiated to prevent malevolent spirits from
attacking the village with epidemics or untimely
deaths arising from accidents. Unpropitiated
spirits are banished to the ancient rival kingdom
of Udo to the south-west.
The earthworks and city wall had been perceived
as barriers between the spirit world and the real
world, a limbo of restless spirits into which the
corpses of deceased people who had no sons to
perform their mortuary rites were dumped by the
community. The main city wall was perceived as
impregnable until 1897 when the rackets of the
invading British Army defied the gods, forcing the
Oba out of the city into refuge in one of the
outlying villages. With their mystical and physical
defensive functions breached, the walls tended
to lose their aura in the lives of the Bini people.
Their continued association as limbo for disposa1
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Authenticity and Integrity in an African Context
of wastes and the unwanted has aggressively
intensified with urban pressure, creating
environmental hazards in floods, erosion and
refuse dumps! However, the moats serve as
visual metaphors acting as unwritten codes,
boundary and space makers in ordering space
during burial processions and those associated
with installation of chiefs and titled men as well
as helping to resolve conflicts over land. The
present kings’ coronation routes in 1979 were
ordered and mapped by their association with
walls and moats in relation to extant shrines
(Eboreime 1979). The walls helped to define the
built-up areas of the city which was divided into
two unequal parts; the Ogbe (Royal Section) to
the south-west and the Ore (the town), to the
north-east. The occupational guilds, numbering
forty-fifty wards, were located in the town.
Surrounding the major residential area of the
town were a number of isolated settlements that
lay outside the main inner walls but within a
second wall, a kilometre or SO farther out. The
seven Councillors of State, Uzama (king-makers),
had and still have their villages outside the inner
walls of the City. Wide roads were constructed
from the palace to each of the Uzama villages.
The roads provided the framework upon which
straight streets were laterally laid. Ritual
specialists and toll collectors resided at the entry
points/gates to the city (Onokerhoraye 1995).
As this layout and residential pattern have remai-
ned more or less the same to this day, SO are the
associated rituals, the processions, and the
myths which reinforce Benin tradition and
identity within the pluralistic structure of Nigeria’s
modern nation state, where ethnie solidarity is
more instrumental than party affiliation in
negotiating for centrally controlled resources.
The politics of authenticity
In spite of the global importance of Benin City, its
history, architecture, earthworks and traditions, it
has been difficult until recently to take the
nomination of Benin City beyond what it was in
1997. The complexity of the Benin material was
accentuated by the conflicts of the principal
stakeholders, the Government and the Oba.
While the military government had a radical
perception of development which at times
involved the demolition of monuments and the
alteration of the age-long pattern of settlements,
the Oba was rather circumspect of radical
changes. Time was required for more consultations