Odinala

Odinala, also called Omenala or Odinani, is the traditional religion and customary law of the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria, and the kingdom of Nri in the northern Igbo heartland was its ritual centre. The supreme god Chukwu stands over lesser spirits, whose demands diviners called dibia learn through afa divination.

Ancestors are held to guard their lineages from the spirit world, and some return by reincarnation within the family. The priest-kings of Nri, the Eze Nri, were said to descend from the sky being Eri, and they spread their authority over roughly a quarter of Igboland by sending out converts who bound communities by ritual oath rather than by force.

Nri's influence lasted into the 1500s. It then waned from the 1700s as Benin and Igala rose and the Atlantic slave trade grew.