The usefulness of useless knowledge as a confirmatory evidence in Aro oral traditional history

"The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge"

By Professor Chris Aniche Okorafor

Mazi Ukwunta Maduagwu Okoroji resident in Obunozu Umuaku Isuochi of Nneochi Local Government, Abia State, is about 85 years old. This assumes that one accepts his claim that he was born about sixteen years after his father had fled from Aro to Calabar in 1902. He has been consistent in his received narratives that when Aro military defense collapsed, his father and the other notable Aro men-folks fled by the light of the full moon and merged into the population of neighboring clans before resettling in sundry places. By chance, I have come across a calendar relating to this period with the complement of the phases of the moon, tidal movements, sun rise and sunset. Timing in the calendar was given in Universal Time format equivalent to Greenwich Mean Time. This was then fit into the twenty-three Aro weeks duration of the war from December 24th 19(} 1 to March 26th 1902, as per the following extract from my contribution to the publication 'Perspectives In Aro History & Civilization - The Splendor Of A Great Past' by Mazi Azubike Okoro and Ben Ezumah:-

"The final push to crush Aro began paradoxically for a Christian British army, with Christian chaplains, on the eve of the day of peace to all men of goodwill- December 24th 1901. Some have appropriately interpreted this as unequivocally indicative of the aims and objective of the Aro expeditionary campaign. It was not to "pacify" the territory, nor to implant Christian principles on the "natives". The British High Commissioner could not have put it better. He stated in his dispatch of March 24th, 1902, that it was to teach Aro "who had persistently resisted any interference on the part of the white man .... a salutary lesson", and that the campaign "had clearly demonstrated to them the power of a government that intends to rule them and control their country" .

"In defeat, Aro was still its characteristic self. It objected to a meeting with the frontline white military commanders quartered in Amanagwu

where their barracks were pitched. They bravely insisted on discussing only with the British High Commissioner in person. They were conceded this on Avor day March 26th 1902 in a neutral soil, Bende. They did not just secure Ralph Moor's audience, but also had the meeting extended to the second day in their unsuccessful attempt to negotiate the retention of Aro autonomy within defined limits, namely the removal of the troops to Itu and the non-interference with the political Structure of the town including the traditional religious practices relating to Ibn 'Ukpabi."

It is observed that there was definitely a full moon the end of the military conflict. This would tend to confirm or at least, lend credence to more of the facts available from this respected Mazi. What a great help it would be if we would all exploit the memories of our passing-on elders of eighty years and above, to record on tape or paper whatever they may recall of their parents' and elders' narratives on Aro and Aro Settlements. These if passed on to the Editor of Aro News would be collated for consistency and verification with other related but better known facts, as a means to sieving out actual events of our past. Such seemingly slight bits of information are often times very material in the establishment of evidence. We should also bear in mind the principle of "the usefulness of useless knowledge" and therefore be very weary in discarding the so called tales of our ancestors. This is the major thrust of this article - namely, that no information should be regarded as valueless in circumstance of decision making under uncertainty. This is one of the great maxims in management science which we should attempt always to adhere to. The following Table relates to the phases of the moon about those two D-days. The times indicated are precise and adjusted from the Universal Time of the calendar to that in Aro on those particular "days. An approximate coordinate used generically for Aro in calculating the pertinent times in these phases of the moon is 5°.25'N and 7°.52'E.

CONFIRMATORY PHASES OF THE MOON

 D-day-1       Dec 24th 1901 Tuesday Avor

Full Moon .      Dec 25th 2001 Wed 01:16am Nkwo

  

New Moon March 10th 1902 Mon 03:50pm Avor

First Quarter March 16th 1902 Sun 23:13pm Eke

Full Moon March 24th 1902 Mon 04:21 am Eke

 D-day-2         March 26th 1902 Wednesday Avor

Last Quarter     April 1st 1902 Mon 07:24am Nkwo

 

"There is time for every purpose under heaven"

On a not so much unrelated topic, we acknowledge that among all races, ancient and modern, Christian, Non-Christian, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, you name it, there are set times for every thing. The Yuletide or Christmas season would now appear to start early as a result of its undue commercialization. The big city shops start decorating, stocking and advertising for Christmas sales by end of November. This is at a time that the calendar reads' Advent' and the faithful are still shriving their souls of dirt in order to be worthy receptionists of the good tidings and blessing of Christmas. Christians do not calendarically countenance this by changing either forward or backwards the time honored day of December 25; The same applies to other feast days, Easter, Ed-el Kabir, Yom Kippur, Jamastamir and all other religious observations. There is a set time for each of them and they are kept strictly to such times. Was this not implied also from what Qoheleth (The Preacher) proclaimed in Ecclesiastes Chapter Three when he stated that "to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven"? Was this also indicated in the "evil and unfaithful generation that asks for a sign" in Matthew 16? Some go to the extent of saying that there is a common trend used in determining or predicting the timing and duration of festivals in order to gain the advantages of the predominant planetary influence ruling any given date, time and place combination. Some are said to misapply this in the pseudo-science of astrology which claims a completely inherent correspondence of earth's time and space with the stars and planets. The ancients employed aspects of this correspondence in determining their religious events and we inherited several of them. May be there is nothing to them, but we still keep most of those times and days. Man still sleeps at night quite unlike the bats and other nocturnal animals. People given to night shifts have been shown by medical research to live less fulfilled lives, more emotionally disturbed and with shorter life spans than those who sleep at nights. Even those who consistently go to bed much after their local midnight time have been shown to end up being less efficient and creative in whatever they do. What are jetlags which people suffer when they cross time zones, if not trying to keep awake when their biological clock says it is bedtime and vice versa? Students who go to bed before 11 pm and do not rise before 4 am tend to do better than those who read beyond midnight but still get not less than five hours sleep. There must therefore be some benefits lost in not keeping to the times of the seasons. Every farmer, hunter, trader, every professional knows this. What applies to an individual applies to a group of individuals, a community and a group of communities. The other side of the coin is that doing a thing out of its due time, would inevitably import disharmony or non-congruence of auspicious factors. The basic ancient Philosophy of “Ako b’ije," still prevails. This concept should therefore be retained in the determination of our new yam festival period as variations off the traditional dating may be suspected of accounting for the mismanagement that occurs on such compromised date establishment.