Saving The Heritage Sites Of Benin

By PRINCE PATRICK ORONSAYE


Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration. According to the World Heritage Committee in 1996 these heritages are our touchstones, our points of reference and our identity. Heritage means everything and in the western world, it has developed into a whole industry.
Thus properly packaged for tourism, our heritage sites are expected to foster economic growth through foreign exchange earnings and an increase in revenue and, at a second level, an improvement in the people’s well-being in the areas of job creation, revenue/income distribution and balanced regional development. In this respect tourism is described as an industry although it has no single production characteristics or defined operational parameters.

Heritage Tourism is also multi-faceted and its economic dimension cannot occur without inputs of a social, cultural and environmental nature.
In spite of the aforementioned benefits enumerated, even those sites that been declared National heritage places are still being deliberately destroyed by our own people. One of such sites is the Ogiamien Palace.
i. THE OGIAMEN’S PALACE:
Located on the Sokponba Road in the heart of Benin City, this is the only surviving architectural edifice that survived the 1897 British Punitive Expedition to Benin. At the time it was declared a National Heritage Site in 1961, the ancient building that contained 13 courtyards is built entirely of compressed mud. As a result of lack of funds and deliberate neglect by those in charge and the unfortunate recalcitrant position adopted by the family, this National Heritage is fast dilapidating. There is the urgent need for conservation and protection.

ii. THE GREAT BENIN EARTH WORKS
In the tropical rainforest of Southern Nigeria and in the heart of the ancient Benin Kingdom lies the longest and most extensive earth construction created by a pre- mechanical culture and civilization; these are the Benin Earthworks.
Created over a millennium ago in the depth of the rainforest zone, these Benin earthworks with a total length of 16,000 (sixteen thousand) kilometres are more than 5 (five) times longer than the Great Wall of China and the total volume of earth moved in the construction is well over 37,000,000 (Thirty seven Million) metric units well over 100 (one hundred) times the amount of material used in building the Great pyramid of Choeps in Egypt.

The Benin earth works extend over 6500km (six and a half thousand square kilometers) and over 1 50,000,000(one hundred and fifty million) man-hours was use in the construction of these earthworks in a complicated network of delineating enclosures.
By 1975 after Prof. Grahame Connah’s survey, it became clear that the so called ‘Benin City outer walls’ were not just Yoruba-like structures of ‘urban settlement growth’ as
theorized by him, but that the Benin City earthworks were a small peripheral part of a much more extensive pattern of rural earthwork enclosures made up the Uzama villages, Uselu, Ugbowo, Egor, Ova, Evbuotubu Iya, etc which reflect the wider processes of indigenous state formation.

According to Professor Shaw in 1978 the Benin rural earthwork enclosures reflect the possible demographic, cultural and socio-political developments of the Edo people in first Millennium AD. For well over ten centuries, one millennium, the tropical rainforest borne witness to these massive earthworks and during the same period, traditional control had preserved this great edifice.
In the last four decades since the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) took over the responsibility of management and protection of these earthworks from the Traditional Institution, the onslaught on this greatest pre-mechanical have intensified.

The sudden ‘Oil Wealth” brought prosperity to Nigeria and the city of Benin expanded in leaps and bounds. To meet the requirement of providing housing for a modern metropolis, huge sections of the tropical rainforest that hitherto had provided the green cover for these earthworks, were and are still being destroyed. The buffer zones that were created on both sides of these earthworks over eight centuries stretch over 150 kilometres around Benin City Urban.

These section of the earthworks were surveyed by Prof. Graham Connah in 1961 and within the period the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) took over the responsibility of managing the Heritage Site, the land constituting the buffer zone were sold and are still being sold as building plots with the active connivance of some unscrupulous Government officials in the Survey department of the Edo State Ministry of Lands and Survey and Traditional Ward Plot Allotment Committees,
Today officials from the National Commission for Museums and Monuments(NCMM) who are supposed to issue official clearance from the individual to erect buildings are no longer in charge.
Furthermore, individuals especially some Enigie of the villages in the northeast section of Benin City rural, are guilty of deliberately filling the moats by bulldozing huge section of the walls of the earthworks into the moats and selling them as building plots. Here again the devious acts are made possible through the active connivance of some state officials in the Survey department, the Traditional Ward Plot Allotment Committees to the detriment of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments,

Even these Museums officials whose responsibility is the surveillance of these earthworks, are desk-bound and when they are out on surveillance, they are forced to turn a blind eye to those perpetuating these wanton destruction of the greatest evidences of the Edo Civilization for the fear of their own lives.
Sadly, these earthworks are the greatest accomplishment of the Edo civilization and since the National Museum has failed to ensure their continuous existence, there is the need for all Benins and indeed all Nigerians to assist in their conservation and protection.
iii. THE OGlE OBAZAGBON’S PALACE:
Located off the Sokponba Road at the ldogbo axis, this architectural edifice was built during the reign of Oba Osemwende is the only surviving architectural edifice that survived the 1897 British Punitive Expedition to Benin in the lkpoba-Okha L. G. Area axis.

Of the almost 8 courtyards in this ancient building that is built entirely of compressed mud only two are surviving. As a result of lack of funds and deliberate neglect by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, this Live-in National Heritage, is fast dilapidating. There is the urgent need for conservation and protection.
Permit us at the this juncture to commend the efforts of the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the Executive Governor of Edo State in his current move to address the issue of ensuring the survival of the Benin Earthworks.

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