Idoma · deity · Idoma traditional religion; continuing · deity
Owoicho is the supreme creator deity of Idoma traditional religion, worshipped across Idomaland in the Benue valley of north-central Nigeria. He is conceived as 'God above': simultaneously transcendent and immanent, the uncreated source of all life who endows every person with an owo (personal soul or life-principle that returns to him at death). Owing to his remoteness from mundane affairs, Owoicho does not govern human society directly but transmits his power through intermediaries, chiefly the earth-divinity Aje and the ancestral collectivity Alekwu, alongside lesser nature deities. He receives no large public cult of his own comparable to that of the ancestors, since approach to him is mediated; he nevertheless underwrites the entire moral and cosmic order.
Domains
creation and cosmos
supreme sovereignty
Powers
to create and sustain the universe and all living things
to delegate the governance of the world to intermediary divinities and the ancestors
Epithets
Owoicho
Sources
Robert G. Armstrong, 'The Idoma-Speaking Peoples,' in Daryll Forde, Paula Brown & Robert G. Armstrong, Peoples of the Niger-Benue Confluence, Ethnographic Survey of Africa: Western Africa Part X (London: International African Institute, 1955).
Solomon Ochepa Oduma-Aboh, 'Re-affirming the Philosophical Foundation of African Traditional Religion: The Idoma Experience of North Central Nigeria,' IGWEBUIKE: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities 4, no. 3 (2018).