The death of Ikenwoli Godfrey Emiko – the King (or Olu) of Warri – was announced in the same week as that of Prince Philip. Established in the fif

Essay | Royal Families by Simon Okotie

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2021-10-21 00:00:07

The death of Ikenwoli Godfrey Emiko – the King (or Olu) of Warri – was announced in the same week as that of Prince Philip. Established in the fifteenth century by the Itsekiris, an ethnic group in the Niger Delta area of modern-day Nigeria, the realm is an offshoot of the Kingdom of Benin. Rumours had been circulating of the monarch’s death from Covid complications in December, with the official announcement coming on Monday 5 April.

My father, who came to the UK sixty years ago this year, was an Itsekiri. He met my mum, a working class white woman, at Gilbey’s Engineering in Barking, east London, in the mid-Sixties. She had trained at Mile End Hospital and the Royal London, and was visiting the factory as a nurse. Her parents didn’t attend the wedding, or speak to the couple for six months after I was born, but were eventually reconciled. We moved to rural Norfolk when I was nine, my grandparents having retired there. My grandfather’s heart attack and subsequent stroke meant mum had been travelling back and forth, with us in tow, to care for him, until we finally made the move permanent. His funeral – at the newly opened Mintlyn Crematorium in King’s Lynn – was my first.

My father also suffered a stroke, in 1994, surviving until 2000. He is buried in a small church that was the centre of the local community in the village where we lived. As a writer, I am the self-appointed family historian, something that even my two competitive brothers would surely not dispute. This role involves an acknowledgement of impending death, and the time with my father in the six years following his stroke are extremely precious to me, despite his suffering and his diminished state, not least because of the stories he told of the Nigerian side of our family. I had always known that dad was the eldest son of an Itsekiri chief, but it must have been during this period that I learnt more: that my grandfather had been personal secretary to the Olu and that his youngest wife (of four) was the King’s sister.

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