Continued from yesterday
Only Talbot imagined partial Ijaw connection – initially: “The people of Bonny … are a mixed Ibo-Ijaw race, the Ibo portion is said to have come down from Azumini several hundred years ago and…intermarried with the earlier Ijaw settlers.” Talbot afterwards discovered: “According to Captain Crow, at the end of the eighteenth century…inhabitants of Bonny…(were) chiefly a mixture of the Eboe, or Heebo, and the Brass tribes … Bonny and the towns on the low line of the coast on either side of it were originally peopled from the Eboe country…before the commencement of the slave trade …”.
Talbot verified from a Bonny chieftain: “Okolo-Ama (“Curlew Town”) is the original name of Bonny. Its founder was a hunter who came from Azumini down to the sea…” On Ikwerre, a lexicon still gestating when (Foreword), “Most…matter contained herein was…1914-1916,” Talbot continued: “Ibo…(of) this region, the inhabitants of which, though undoubtedly of the same stock as those dwelling further northward, are known among themselves as Ihura-Onhia” (face or front of country). Iruoha in Union Igbo, for revealing Igbo to explorers; Iwhuruowhna around Obio-Akpor dialect.
All authorities, six European (Adams, Cardi, Crow, Jones, Leonard, Talbot), indigenous Bonny chieftain, foremost African historian, and a colonial Bonny-embracing declaration, were unanimous that Bonny is Igbo, emphasising: “The Ogoni division is divided from the Brass and Degema divisions by a broad arm of the sea which runs up to Port Harcourt, and by a long stretch of Ibo territory which culminates in this town. Port Harcourt is an Ibo town.” In metropolitan cities, “non-indigenes” usually outnumber “indigenes;” hence, “the indigenous branch of the Ibos…out-numbered by Ibos from the hinterland.” Igbo favour a continuing respect for that “broad arm of the sea,” “long stretch of Ibo territory” to the coast separating Ijaw from Ogoni.
Wanting Igbo disappear from coast and “live in the hinterland beyond the delta,” Bonny’s Ndoki founders become Ijaw, Jaja founding Opobo for Ijaw, Igbo communities being “Igboids” or “small/independent ethnic nationalities” besides “homogenous” Ijaw, and justifying ethnic-cleansings against “conquered communities,” look extreme. “Cultural intolerance … is not … unusual … It has been exercised by speakers of the languages of conquering groups over the ages … which then supplanted the languages of the conquered communities, causing … language shift”. Then, “people who live in zones of linguistic and cultural transition face acute problem of identity”. “Conquering groups,” “conquered communities,” “language shift,” “new data from oral traditions”10 altering original data; ought these be routes to Bonny ownership?
Reasons Igbo hardly respond to Ijaw claims abound. First, disharmonies of unjust governance discourage likely reminders about them. Second: stalwarts needed time to digest whether becoming “majority” anywhere, either from trade, ethnic-cleansings, etc translates into founder or owner. Another: many territorial claims were basically addressed in Willink’s, and the delicate relationship between Ijaw and Igbo groups (Ijaw’s “Igboids”), require patience to enable brothers respect others’ rights. Then, not every Ijaw seems interested in transferred animosity against Igbo cousins and, they, like great Professor Kimse Okoko, late President-General of the INC and friend of this writer, need be upheld. Lastly: it’s not Igbo alone that Ijaw stalwarts regularly taunt: the AkwaCross, Bini, Itsekiri, Urhobo, Yoruba, with own coastal histories, had been targets of Ijaw territorial vehemences, except that Igbo seem the choicest scapegoats. Examples:
Ijaw Tribe
Some Ijaw “histories” root for ready-made lebensraum than truths, claiming almost the 895-mile coastline as Ijaw. See the Sunday Guardian of June 05, 1994, pages A14, A20 and June 12, 1994, page A14; declaring the Yoruba “land-based,” never coastal, by the Ijaw Ethnic Nationality Rights Organisation of Nigeria, “the authentic political mouthpiece of the Ijaw” led by Chief George Albert Weikezi (President General) and D. M. E. Odondiri (Secretary General); Sunday Guardian of June 05, 1994, pages A14 and A20, making insinuations on “landlocked” Igbo or so, with efforts to excise Bonny and Opobo from Igbo history; possibly also reason for the Ondo’s Ilaje and others condemning an “Ijaw national agenda to overrun the entire coastal region of the nation . . .”. See The Guardian, Tuesday, November 24, 1998, page 15 or so, and also complaints from Bini, Yoruba – Sunday Guardian, April 10, 1994, pages A14–15, and the Saturday Guardian, December 04, 1993, page 18, on similar issues.
Claimed Ijaw dispersals were mainly Igbo movements
Imo River valley made Ndoki to Opobo and Igweocha to Bonny competing Igbo contiguities: The “route of migration through the Ibo hinterland … sojourn in the region of the Imo valley in the territory of the Ibo-speaking Ndoki … Bonny traditions claim that the Ndoki had originally come with them, from the Ijo Central Delta to settle in” places “…that Ibo people already lived . . .”11. So, stories abound of Igbo Deltaic movements, like the “Ijaw dispersals” that were essentially Igbo migrations, as the above-acknowledged Ndoki migration from central Delta to rejoin other Ndoki where “Ibo people already lived!” Problems usually arose once Ijaw joiners started dragging ownership with Igbo hosts. It’s hypothetical if without the Igbo, including attractive Abandoned Property, British House Rule Proclamations and Ordinances, Ijaw brothers may not have remained a largely canoe-house wandering “nation” by close of 20th century.
Many are puzzled why cousins that played no part in founding or developing Bonny, none in an 1869 Bonny Revolution that was an affair between two illustrious Igbo sons, Oko Jumbo and Jaja, triggering the creation of Opobo, and almost none in centuries of Bonny-led trans-Atlantic history, are very pertinacious to “found” and “own” these ports? Jaja wasn’t Ijaw or “sold” to Ijaw family; so, what is the link to Ijaw?Central Delta problems are largely man-made, not soluble by harming others. For, the Great Balancer buried enormous wealth beneath Ijaw to overcome them if corruption permits. With Nigeria’s complimentary ports and lands potentials, seeking pounds of flesh would dissipate energy needed for ports riparian poles of development to promote prosperity and peace nationwide.
Therefore, let “new data” go with the unfortunate past. For, Ijaw claims on Bonny and Opobo; “re-interpretations” of oral traditions; their so-called linguistics, glottolinguistics, lexicostatistics; and devotees’ reliance on such ingenuities, greatly abuse coastal history targeting Igbo; ridicule Eastern ancestors’ goodly relationships; mislead youths trusting leaders for honest inspiration; and suggest discomfort that Igbo survived unwarranted riverine ethnic-cleansings. How “Ijaw settlements gradually emerged in the territories of the Igboid peoples” are recorded. Falsifications dishonour illustrious Igbo pioneers; European explorers,’ missionaries’ and administrators’ testimonies; bespeak a LASAT (Late Arrival Superior Aggression Theory) syndrome, and scorn centuries of unparalleled Bonny-centred Igbo trans-Atlantic sacrifices, which constituted a primary source for Black Western hemispheric presence, the plantation Americas, part-industrial Europe, the Abolitionist movement, the ensuing struggles for national liberation and independence, and foundation for later-day global civil rights revolutions.
Igweocha, Bonny, Opobo, symbolise centuries of globalised Igbo modern history. Africans shouldn’t allow these contributions to human progress wiped off memory. Late Obong Idongesit Usoro appealed: “Let us . . . be fair to one another, and work in synergy, to create value . . .” Relatives in same corner of the earth should appreciate the wisdom of a purposeful God, and build a live and let live mutually fair existence listening to such wise counsels.
Concluded.
Prof. Igwe is of the Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
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