Rooster Figure and the Ancestral Altars of Iy’Ọba n’Uselu

This interview is about the Benin cockerel, which is either a bronze or carved wood object. The first cockerel, according to the interviewee, was created around 1520, when Ọba Ẹsigie established and dedicated an altar in honour of his mother, the first Iy’Ọba of Benin, Queen Idia (Idiaro), popularly known as Idia N’Iye Ẹsigie. The interviewee speaks about the status of every Benin woman as a daughter and a sister; a wife and a mother, whose greatest aspiration and achievement is being the mother of the Ọba. The cockerel signifies the ascendancy from the status of an ordinary woman, then being a queen, and finally becoming Iy’Ọba. He uses figurative expressions like ‘Ọkpa n’Usẹlu, nọ ma riẹ izobo, nọ ma giẹ omwa vbe e re’ meaning (cockerel of Uselu that does not eat the sacrifice of mashed yam mixed with palm oil and would not allow another cock to eat it) as one of the appellations of the Iy’Ọba Ọba. Oronsaye asserts that the figure shows the ingenuity of the Benin artist/people. Oronsaye stated that about 18 cockerels were collected from different Iy'Ọba altars at Uselu in Benin during the British colonial military invasion, February 10 to 22, 1897.