WEIRD DEITY

Nigeria, has three major ethnic groups, the Hausa, predominantly in the North, the Yoruba’s, occupies the west and Igbo sits firmly in the east. The southern Nigeria is where most minorities are situated. I’m from Delta state, Delta State is ethnically diverse, having urhobos (the largest and where am from), Ijaw Izon, Isoko, Itsekiri and Ukwuani (later joined Anioma) popularly called delta Igbos.

Talking about deity, I have seen and heard about several deities, like Shango (god Thunder, lightning, justice, dance, virility) of the west, Amadioha is the Alusi (god) of thunder and lightning of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria. He is amongst the most popular of Igbo deities and in some parts of Igboland, he is referred to as Amadiora, Kamalu (which is short for Kalu Akanu), Kamanu, or Ofufe source. But one striking deity I saw in my state among one of the urhobo community (orogun) was iguana.

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Orogun a community in Delta State, I was told the story of how iguana was still being worship even till this present day, despite the spread of Christianity across the country. I decided to get the story behind it. As I was told by a native of the land, Orogun was a warrior, and at the time he was being chased by his enemies during the time of war, got to a river, and there was no way to cross, that was when the gods, came in form of iguana and formed a bridge for he and his people to pass through. When the enemies got to the river, the iguanas disentangled, so the enemies could not cross to chase Orogun and his people and ever since then no native of orogun eats iguana or food made of iguana meat and when you do, your skin turns rough and scaly like that of an iguana. The only way to reserve the curse is to appease the gods. There are several benefit and rule of worshiping this iguana (on a bid to conceive me, because of that "can you hear yourself" look I wore on my face) he added.

There are several rules/benefits why the native still worships the iguana, but the notable ones I will state.

• If anything bad wants to happen, the iguana will appear to you as a warning for you to be careful

-If you're driving and you see an iguana you will have to stop and wait for some minutes

-When driving and iguana is crossing, you have to wait for it to cross and not even try to maneuver.

Funny enough my friend’s father experience something of sort. He was heading to a function in the town, suddenly the iguana was crossing the road, so he tried to maneuver his way, but the iguana kept running in front of his car. (For the non-indigenes, if you mistakenly kill an iguana in the land you have to bury it like a human, i.e., buy a casket, perform the rights and pay some amount money). With that of my friends dad mind, he had to wait until the iguana decided to crawl into the nearby bush as people watches to see if he will crush it with his car. Mind you, to them (orogun native) believes when an iguana blocks your way, it means there's danger ahead, but nothing happened to my dad maybe it's tied only to the native or in their minds. I couldn't help but imagine that a human skin will turn to that of iguana skin.

To me, it's just a myth, and nothing of such can happen. It was some months later a woman was sharing her experience of how a friend of hers (who happens to be a native of the land) skin turned all because she (unknowingly) used a plate that was used in serving food made of iguana meat. She had to appease the gods but some patches/print was still left on her skin. The iguana is like a king to them. When an iguana crawls into their houses, they celebrate, saying the gods have visited them and found them worthy of blessings. Down to this present day, iguana is still being worshipped and their believe is, the iguana was sent by God to protect them and I don't see that believe changing soon.

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Authored by @admiralsp