AS soon as an Urhobo man or woman dies the family is thrown into jubilation because an opportunity for social recklessness has been opened. Each member or each gate is asked to pay some money and they go on to erect temporary brothels euphemistically called family booths or canopies. Members of each gate or the general family go into a competition of “my Mercedes is bigger than yours”. Some go to money lenders for loans, whilst some sell their properties to enable them massage their egos and give a so called good account of   themselves during the burial ceremonies.

During the burial, expensive clothes, drinks and dance groups are flaunted with wicked devilry. Women, both married and single move, dance, talk, sing and dress with sensual and libidinous suggestiveness. It is, however, instructive to note that in most families when the deceased was alive nobody cared to assist him or her. There is a family that gave one of the most wasteful burials in  Sapele.   It is on record that the deceased suffered from diabetes, but nobody could afford to buy him his dose of insulin.   Another case in  Ughelli was that of a Chief who suffered from stroke. He defecated and urinated on his bed. None of his children could assist. He died out of frustration. But as soon as he died all the children and their friends arranged and held the most terrifyingly explosive burial in Ughelli. Why can’t we care for the living?

Virtually every Urhobo man or woman belongs to one social club or the other. The aims and objectives of such clubs are mainly to assist its members during burials. The clubs have extended their tentacles to the churches. During burials, the groups from the churches are placed side by side with the social clubs, old boys and girls associations, town or village unions, etc. They then start their senseless jamboree. There is so much of boisterous carousal and waste that you will begin to wonder whether these people have no problems like building of schools,hospitals, roads and other welfare facilities in their towns and villages.

As soon as you mention development projects to these ones they develop cold sweat, cold feet and the donor fatigue syndrome. Their greatest love is for this meaningless waste. Sometimes they use these burials as political campaign ground and for snatching other people’s wives.

Burial has become a major industry in Urhoboland. The media is also involved. These senseless burials have become the greatest catalyst of corruption and moral decadence, because everybody wants cursed monies for frivolous extravaganzas.   We know of people who have become financially insolvent and bankrupt because of these burials. Are these lunatic fixations and  deliriums part of Urhobo burial tradition?

The time has come and it is now for Urhobos to start re-orientating their social and traditional thought patterns on burials, to mirror what is reflective of modicum of moral moderacy and discipline. The traditional rulers in their various domains and kingdoms have a great role to play here, by letting burial mongers know where tradition starts and where it stops. They should draw a line between traditional degeneracy and abuse, and where it is loftily lifted up. Any burial that is beyond laid down criteria should attract fines for community development. The blocking of roads for burials must be stopped and the immorality  inherent in most burials must be checkmated. The Urhobos will be lifting up the banner of social decorum if they implosively forestall these antediluvian antics.

They must realise that life is like a tale told by an idiot packed full of sounds and fury, but in the end signifying nothing. Our intellectual binoculars should be able to fathom the fact that life is more than the physical embellishment we put into it. The love of the mundane perishable and frail physical body has dwarfed the eternal essence of life. Man is so pestiferously committed to his solipsistic self centredness that he has become  introspected in materialism. The essayist John L. Motley said “Deeds, not stones are the moment of the great”.   Let Urhobos begin to think of things that will eternalise their names, and not transitory and impermanent hypnotic regression into yahoo-like burials.

The wanton desire for rapacious  acquisition of material things has precipitated the fear of death in man.   A man who luxuriates in wealth fears death, because he feels he will lose those empty things, which strangers will come and inherit and not even his children.

He is tortured emotionally on his death bed and on his way to the top because he must have stepped on so many toes to get to William Thackaray’s “VANITY FAIR”. The wicked are hideously afraid of death because they are not sure of their destination. The Urhobos have become spectacle of ironies and comedy of errors in matters relating to burials. Our highly revered burial tradition is now submerged and sandwiched in and with duplicitous interpolations, which supplies incentive to base and deranged conduct.  Urhobos be civilized in “Burial” matters.

Mr. Bobson Gbinije, a social critic, wrote from Warri, Delta State.