Yaku-Keji

Yaku-Keji is the great tutelary deity of Wukari, capital of the Jukun and seat of the divine king. She is described in the scholarship as the mother of all creation, believed to make everything including the rain, and her worship centred on prayers for productivity and peace. Villages and districts of the Wukari federation brought their produce to her shrine in thanksgiving for peace and security and to avert misfortune, so that her cult also expressed political loyalty to the capital. Annual Yaku-Keji festivals remain among the celebrated cultural heritages of the Jukun of Wukari.

Domains

• creation
• peace and prosperity

Powers

• to make all things, including the rain, and to grant productivity and peace to the land
• to shield tribute-paying villages and districts from misfortune

Relations

• subordinate to: Divine KingThe cult of Yaku-Keji is maintained at the capital Wukari under the ritual paramountcy of the divine king, the Aku Uka, to whom the federation's tribute was directed.C. K. Meek, A Sudanese Kingdom: An Ethnographical Study of the Jukun-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria (1931) (secondary); Victor Ukaogo and Adihikon Tanko, "Linguistic and Cultural Practices in Jukunland: Contrasting Features of Resurgent Tradition" (2020) (secondary)

Sources

• Yaku-Keji is the tutelary deity of the Jukun capital Wukari, described as the mother of all creation, who supersedes the family deities and receives tribute from the villages of the federation in exchange for peace, productivity and protection.: Victor Ukaogo and Adihikon Tanko, "Linguistic and Cultural Practices in Jukunland: Contrasting Features of Resurgent Tradition" (2020) (secondary); C. K. Meek, A Sudanese Kingdom: An Ethnographical Study of the Jukun-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1931) (secondary)