Chukwu

Before the compound is properly awake, a man steps out into the grey light with a kola nut in his hand. The ground is cool and damp under his feet. He speaks quietly, for his wives and children and the day ahead, and the first name he says is not the earth’s, or the thunder’s, or his grandfather’s. It is Chukwu.

The name is two Igbo words pressed together. Chi is spirit, ukwu is great. Elsewhere in Igboland the same high being answers to other names. Around Nsukka he is Ezechitoke. West of the Niger he is Osebuluwa, the one who carries the world. Many call him Chineke, usually explained as the spirit who creates. He is described as generous and strong, the one who holds the knife and the yam, which is an Igbo way of saying that he decides who eats. Wealth, rain and children come from him.

And then, having given them, he mostly stays out of it. Chukwu lives in the sky and does not run the daily business of the world. That is left to the spirits and the ancestors, who are spoken of as his messengers: the earth, Ala, who keeps the moral law; the sun; the thunder; the forces in rivers and markets. Each person also carries a chi, a spirit double made by Chukwu before birth, which holds that person’s lot in life. It is the chi a man bargains with when things go wrong. It is the earth he fears when he has done wrong. Chukwu is further off than either.

So he is rarely fed. The lesser powers have shrines, priests and regular offerings, and it is said that whatever is given to them reaches him at last. Now and then a white chicken is offered to him directly. That is about all.

Nobody has said what he looks like. There are no statues of Chukwu, though the Igbo carved nearly everything else in their spirit world. What survives is a way of looking at the sky. The old people said the clouds were the smoke from his pipe, drifting.

The stories that do put Chukwu to work come from Nri, the old ritual centre of the northern Igbo. In the beginning he sent a man named Eri down from the sky with his wife Namaku. Eri found no land to stand on, only water and soft mud, and he sat down on an anthill and complained. Chukwu sent a blacksmith from Awka with his bellows and a load of charcoal, and the smith blew fire across the marsh until it hardened into ground.

While Eri lived, Chukwu fed his people with food from the sky. When Eri died the food stopped. His son Nri went to Chukwu hungry, and Chukwu’s answer was hard. Nri was to kill his first son and his first daughter and bury them in separate graves. He did. Twelve days later a yam shoot came up from the boy’s grave and cocoyam from the girl’s. The Igbo have eaten both ever since, and the kings of Nri claimed from that day the right to cleanse the land of wrongs and to make peace. It is a grim bargain, and the myth does not soften it.

Whether Chukwu was always the supreme god of all the Igbo is an open argument, and has been for decades. One side holds that he was there from the start. Francis Arinze, later a cardinal, wrote in 1970 of Chukwu as the creator at the head of Igbo religion, and many scholars agree, pointing to the Nri story and to the old personal names that carry his name: Chukwuemeka, Chukwudi, Chukwuma.

The other side is led by the Igbo scholar Donatus Nwoga, who in 1984 published a short book whose title states his case: The Supreme God as Stranger in Igbo Religious Thought. On this view the older Igbo world had many chi and many local powers but no single god over all of them. The name Chukwu was spread across the country by the Aro, a trading people whose oracle at Arochukwu, Ibini Ukpabi, spoke in the name of Chukwu and drew pilgrims from far across the region until British troops destroyed it in the expedition of 1901 and 1902. Then Christian missionaries, needing an Igbo word for God, chose Chukwu and Chineke for their Bibles and sermons, and filled the names with a meaning they had brought with them. The novelist Chinua Achebe added a doubt of his own in a 1975 essay. Chineke, he suggested, may once have meant not one creating spirit but two things side by side, chi and eke.

The argument is not settled. Both sides are still in print.

What can be said is how the god behaves in the tradition as it stands. His power is first and widest. He made the spirits and gave them their work, he sends the rain, and he fixes each person’s portion before birth. His limit is that same distance. He does not come when called in the way a village spirit does. He has no house on earth to visit. A wrong done to the land is settled with Ala, and bad luck is taken up with one’s chi, and Chukwu hears of it, if he hears at all, at the far end of a long chain of messengers. He is everywhere in Igbo names and almost nowhere in Igbo shrines.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Chukwu?

Chukwu is the supreme being in the traditional religion of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria. His name means Great Spirit. He is said to live in the sky, to have made the other spirits, and to give wealth, rain and children.

What does the name Chukwu mean?

Chukwu joins two Igbo words, chi, meaning spirit, and ukwu, meaning great. Other Igbo names for the same being are Chineke, Ezechitoke, Osebuluwa and Obasi di n’elu. Chukwu also appears in many Igbo personal names, such as Chukwuemeka and Chukwuma.

Do the Igbo make sacrifices to Chukwu?

Sacrifices are rarely made to Chukwu directly. Offerings go to lesser spirits and ancestors, and Chukwu is thought to receive them in the end. A white chicken is sometimes offered to Chukwu himself, and fathers name him in morning prayers.

What is the story of Chukwu and the first yam?

In the Nri myth, Chukwu sent Eri down from the sky and had an Awka blacksmith dry the marshy land with his bellows. After Eri died, his son Nri asked Chukwu for food. Chukwu told him to sacrifice and bury his first son and daughter, and yam and cocoyam grew from their graves.

Was Chukwu always the supreme god of the Igbo?

Scholars disagree. Some, such as Francis Arinze, hold that Chukwu was always the Igbo creator. Donatus Nwoga argued in 1984 that the idea of one supreme Chukwu was spread by the Aro oracle at Arochukwu and then fixed by Christian missionaries who used the name for God.

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