WKU Team Assists Nigerian Government With Cave Protection And Tourism Development

November 19, 2007

Bowling Green, Ky. - A joint Western Kentucky University folk studies/geography team recently returned from Nigeria in a project to study and help protect cave systems and develop tourism in the country’s rural southeast.

The WKU group, led by Folk Studies Associate Professor JAK Njoku, is cooperating with Nigeria’s National Commission on Museums and Monuments to explore and document several caves, including the Ancient Cave Temple Complex of Arochukwu, in Abia State near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon.

Dr. Njoku was joined by Chris Groves and Pat Kambesis of the Hoffman Environmental Research Institute within WKU’s Applied Research and Technology Program. An important goal of the group’s effort is to gather documentation on the cave and its history of utilization to support an application, in collaboration with the Nigerian government, to protect the site under the auspices of the United Nations’ (UNESCO) World Heritage Program. 

Dr. Njoku, whose research documents routes by which Africans were brought from the Nigerian interior to the coast as they were sent into slavery, learned in 2004 about the Arochuckwu Cave Temple Complex. The complex contains the “River of Blood,” and thousands of Africans may have been hidden within the cave on the way to be sold into slavery. Unfortunately, after reaching the small village near the cave after a 10-hour drive from the country’s capital, the tribal king there told the group that due to considerations of traditions following several deaths in the village in the days preceding the visit, a trip to the cave was not possible at the moment and the group was invited to return at another time.

The group then explored another cave in the region, called the House of God, which had beautiful natural bridges, large bats and, according to the local tribal chief who led the group to the cave, a giant python that fortunately did not appear during the visit. The group also learned that during the Nigerian (Biafran) Civil War in the late 1960s, thousands of local residents hid in the caves there for protection.  

The WKU team was organized last year after Dr. Renae Speck of WKU’s Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) recognized the potential synergy between Dr. Njoku and the Hoffman Institute within the Department of Geography and Geology, whose members have extensive international experience in the mapping and resource evaluation of significant cave systems, as well as experience with UNESCO scientific programs. 

The goals of the current phase of the effort are to enhance existing relations between WKU and various national, state and local Nigerian government and tribal entities, as well local residents in the vicinity of the Cave Temple Complex, and to gather sufficient information to apply to external funding agencies for support of a major joint US/Nigerian expedition to survey and document the site in preparation for application to UNESCO for “World Heritage” status.

Dr. David Keeling, Geography and Geology Department Head, noted that “collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines is an important element of the department’s international initiatives. Very few problems or challenges facing contemporary societies can be addressed by a single discipline. Partnering with Folk Studies on this project in Nigeria brings fresh perspectives to the various approaches used to evaluate the physical and cultural properties of the cave system.”
               
Photo caption: WKU’s Pat Kambesis with Nigerian colleagues in a section of the “House of God” cave complex. (photo by Chris Groves).

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Chris Groves at (270) 745-5974 or JAK Njoku at (270) 745-5907.