For certain, Emenike led a crusade against injustice in Umudi clan.
Everyone talked good of him. Men and women stood strongly against the new dispensation - the intruding of white men and openly made the children understand it. As for the intruders as they were known and called, they could separate homes and friends and could make a whole clan hate itself in a day. It was better not to allow them than to allow them in and crying afterward. The white man was never trusted.
Udoka had left his wife and two children and ran out from the house and had gone to Mbata where the white men were. It was also the home of his mother. As the story had it, few children were allowed by their parents to go to school to learn the white man’s language, but these men never allowed their children to worship the white man’s god. Udoka though, had grown to a man would go to the tree close to the place where the children were taught and would be listening. By this act, Emenike had ruled him off from being a member of his family. He could not be his son as he lived. It was not said just that way. The elders were involved. He could come home to claim headship of his sons if he learnt he had died.
“I am saying this because no one knows what happens to him in the next moment. If he ever comes home to lay claim on anything, ekpenta would claim him. No one lays claim over headship of his brothers while his father is still alive, but we pray not to bury our children. For having left the clan, he has lost his stand in my household. Agumba would take up from me if I am not found. Did I make my point clear, elders?”
“Yes,” they all answered.
Dike and Okoye had since joined their ancestors. Umeka had grown old and the fear was that no one would succeed them as priests except Emenike. These men acted as the head and spokesmen of the nine villages who administered justice in the clan. They were talented orators and their voices never trembled when they spoke. But they could not continue with the dead and their memory. The living would continue to pick from where they stopped.
Asika, the son of Dike and Uwanuakwa, who had been fighting over a land, had all died and few others who knew the fact about the land did not care to be bold enough in speaking the truth. Instead, the case became an avenue for the villages to gather once in every four market days to satisfy themselves with up wine brought by the two disputants according to custom and tradition. It was said that when there was a land dispute, the one with a large barn would plant his yams. That was done until the case got settled. It was done this way, because the yam owner should not just allow his yams to rot away. Sometimes, the land was banned from public trespass.
As for this land dispute, it had taken long. When it all started, the elders brought omu and scattered it out of its file. It was a symbol of sanctity and warning of what should be kept as sacred. It was all the role of elders. They would demand for adjournment for some reasons when they knew the truth.
Asika, who was the owner of the said land, had visited Emenike for itummanya. Itummanya was the step an offended person took to receive justice. It was a means used to sue one in the court of the elders to make the elders set a time for a matter to be discussed. That morning, he had met him well in his barn arranging the barn for the new yam. They greeted and asked about the welfare of their individual families.
“Nna anyi, Emenike, a handshake that extends beyond the elbow results in something else. It could be a fight or holding one for punishment. I brought this wine against Uwanukwa who has been farming on my land for years. He knows it is my land, but as a brother, I would always allow my kinsman to find for himself food to eat, to farm in my land, to feed his children. That was the way of our fathers. I told him I would use that land in the next planting season. That was my sin against him. And some two planting seasons ago, he sent words back to me saying I lost my mind. I have told him to stop working on it and the condition of the land before it was given to him, but he refused to stop working on it. Have I done anything wrong by allowing him in the first place? He told me openly that if a young man is not prudent in seeking what killed his father, what killed his father may also kill him. Therefore, I am suing him in your authority with this pot of wine for him to appear in the gathering of the elders to come and answer before them why he is stepping on my toes and watch me feel the pain,” he said.
He sipped the wine to confirm that he was presenting it wholeheartedly to the elders and that it was free from anything.
“You have done wonderfully well. I am sorry for not presenting kola; you ran in, in haste and talked so, it escaped my memory,” Emenike pleaded.
“Don’t mind, let the day eat the kola,” Asika and the man that came with him said.
“The tree that is by the side of the road always has a knife cut. But it is an honour for me to hear this. You are wiser than your age. Knowing but not telling it is what kills an old man. Hearing but not heeding is what kills young men. No one gets a mouthful of food by picking between another person's teeth. What belongs to you, belongs to you. It should not be given to anyone else. I have seen the wine. Don’t fear for anything, you have come to the right place to lay bare your heart and complaint,” Emenike said.
He paused for a while and remembered something.
“If the wisdom of a child fills a basket, you must add things to the basket to make it contain the elder's wisdom as well. It is good these days when the younger generation consider themselves wiser than their sires to see a man remembering the custom left for him by his fathers.
“Your father in the grave will always be happy for you in the ancestral land. I fear and mourn the younger generations, but I commend you for understanding the bond of kingship. I bewail the falling standard of young men, because okra does not outgrow the planter. Go. I vow in the name of arusi onammiri, justice will be met. If you throw the bird up, you have shown him the way to his mother's home. You have come to the right place. Go, I have no more to say to you.”