THE URHOBO, THE ISOKO, AND THE ITSEKIRI
By Samuel U. Erivwo, Ph.D.
FIRST ATTEMPT: PORTUGUESE CATHOLICS AT ODE ITSEKIRI
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
as stated elsewhere,
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,
came in contact with the Urhobo in 1689 in his unsuccessful attempt to
visit Benin from Warri.