THE RIVER, NIGER, IN THE EAST - Onyeji Nnaji

One remarkable influence of the Niger River on the east is that it served as a memorable rout to the position where the human population started life in the beginning. The Bible pointed towards east as the birthplace of man. The detailed research work of Rudolph R. Windsor on the origin of the Jews, J.A. Bailey’s elaborate discourse in African Message bothering on the history of Europe and the indefatigable remarks of Ivan S. Van on the history of America clarify issues connected to the fact that the first people were blacks and inhabited the part of the world, Africa known as the east. The supposed allusion of the exact point of the east was untimely solved by the journey of the Niger River. Mungo Park made this point very clear that the Niger seeks the position where the sun rises. The same place is the place of the east. The contribution of Leonard, M.A. in his work, The Lower Niger and Its Tribes, is inestimable in identifying the position of the earth marked as the east. From the research of all these people among others unmentioned, we can clearly the Niger gave a definition to the east, apart from the contribution of sunrise.

Niger created divisions among the inhabitants of the east and places a pointer on the position that is categorically east. Those in the eastern side are called the Igbo, while those in the west have certain mixture that tends to make them think there were not Igbo. The fact that the inhabitants of this general east speak the same tongue is a clear indication that they have the same origin or have been brought together by natural forces. A visit to the ancient period revealed that these populations were one, but perhaps, due to the Niger flooding of old, the population occupying the western bank shifted to the distance where they are seen presently. For as Okwoli remarked, when people from distant places speak the same language of share certain cultural identity that is deeply expressed in their original history, then such people must have come from the same place but separated over a long time. Using Okwoli’s assertion, greater population of the western dwellers would be concluded to have originated from the eastern bank of the Niger.

It is certainly very uncommon to see people having the same cultural tie and history would not group them as belonging to the same ancestry. In the same way, it is very difficult to imagine where Onitsha Ugbo in Delter State and Igbotako, Ososro in Ondo State got their Aju festival if not as a mark of ancestral observances. One may equally ask where the Ikwerre of Rivers State borrowed their version of Igbo language from, since Dr. Pegel remarked that language does not change entirely very fast. As difficult as the inhabitants of all these places cannot state their cases clearly is even the more difficult as the inhabitants of Umuodumu in far Bayelsa State cannot argue their legs out of Igbo ancestry, seeing that at a certain time around 16 century and later, people of the same name, larger in population than the number that could make a village, left the North-Eastern Igbo land known as Nkalaha. These among others gave rise to the question, who are the Igbo?

Looking at it from one side, it looks like a straightforward question that should evoke a simple answer. But it is not truly simple as it looks. The term “Igbo” has been changing its meaning according to time and political climate, different from what it originally implies. It cuts across boundaries reaching out to the precision about who the Igbo neighbours are. And not until the first is settled, there would be little or no information about the neighbours. Now, taking it from its etymological root, the Igbo refer to themselves as a people whose beginning did not emanate from the birth of a progenitor. By this, they insist that they had come from nowhere than the sky. The concept Igbo therefore is sustainable evidence to that evince. Igbo therefore is the amalgam of the phrase, Ndi Gbo, translated to mean “people of the ancient time”. By this view, the existence of the Igbo by the word’s inference evokes the sense of a beginning that is beyond this earthly existence. Maybe this was the reason why the Yoruba brothers insist that Igbo is the name of the Igbo God-father(s). Refreshing this view, Osita Osadebe had always said, Chukwu kere anyi gbo gbo, God created us of ancient without time. And because the entire geographical locale marked out as east was Igbo dominated language users, there was an encouraged brotherhood lifestyle which made it relatively difficult to distinguish between the Igbo and their neighbours.

In the early days when east began to experience spittle of the foreign colour, for instance, some of the European publicists, especially some missionaries and anthropologists, had no difficulty in delimiting who the Igbo were. To these men most of the people east of the Edo and south of Igala, Idọma and Tivi were Igbo either in ethnic stock or in language or in their social structure and institutions or in all the above. To Dr. W. B. Baikie who wrote in 1854, “all the coast dialects from Oru to Old Calabar are either directly or indirectly connected with Igbo”. He further asserted that the Igbo are “separated from the sea by petty tribes all of which trace their origin to this great race”, the Igbo. Major A. G. Leonard, writing in 1906, recorded that it was the view of missionaries and travelers in these parts that people around the coastal regions are all Igbo.

Comparing the language as it is spoken in all of these different localities, the dialectical variations are not very marked, the purest dialect being spoken, as already pointed out, in Isuania and neighbourhood, while the most pronounced  difference is to be found between the Niger dialect, especially  that which is spoken right on the river or on its western bank, and that of the more eastern sections, which lie nearer to the  Cross river and in proximity to the Ibibio. It has been suggested by missionaries and travellers that the languages spoken by the Ibibio, Efik, Andoni, and others have all been derived from Ibo at some ancient period; also that there is a distinct dialectical affinity between the Ijo dialects of Oru, Brass, Ibani, and New Calabar, and the Isuama dialect of Ibo. Indeed, Dr. Baikie, in his Narrative of a Voyage on the Niger, expresses the opinion that all the coast dialects from ' Oru ' to ' Old Calabar ' are either directly or indirectly connected with ' Igbo ' " {i.e. Ibo), which latter, he states. (p. 43).

These conclusions were based on contemporary analysis of linguistic relationships and oral traditions collected from certain Ijọ and Efik-Ibibio communities. If we dismiss the linguistic studies of the period as unreliable, we must concede that these men did not fabricate the claims to Igbo origin which they encountered among the Ijọ and the Efik-Ibibio. In other words at that time, and indeed until three or four decades ago, there were many Ijọ and Efik-Ibibio communities which proudly laid claim to Igbo origin but today would treat such a suggestion as an affront. Here we find a classic example of the trick which time and political consciousness play on historical writing.

Howbeit, just as there were, during the colonial period, people who were prepared to give such a wide ethnological meaning to the term “Igbo”, there were others who gave it a more restricted reading. To this latter group the Arọ were not Igbo because their oracle organization and their extensive trading “empire” showed them up as too “intelligent” and “intellectual” to be Igbo. They were believed to be either a colony of ancient Egyptians, or Phonecians, or Jukuns or Portuguese, or Jews or some other “Semito-Hamitic” group. By the same token the highly evolved priestly monarchy of the Ụmụnri around which the people built up a ritual hegemony covering. People of such opinion may be required to go back memory lean to unearth the population composition of the ancient Nsude/Nsukka civilization which flourished earliest before the nations mentioned above ever were thought to be in existence. The Aro were the first merchants to export iron raw material from the ancient empire to the rest of the Igbo settlement. Their early contact with the Awka revealed the technocracy of the people in the area as belonging to the earliest iron workers. As a people from the part of the Igbo community where the gods show evidences of their existence, the institution of the deity that survived the merchant empire should not be a question.

 

Some Northern and Western Igbo land were believed to prove that they were not originally Igbo, but a colony of Jukuns or of some other Hamitic culture carriers. To the same group of Europeans, the people of Onitsha were not Igbo because they had a centralized political system considered uncharacteristic of the Igbo. They also had a tradition of origin tracing them to Benin. At one point it was thought that physical anthropology which is concerned with the study of bone structure and blood groups would settle all questions such as this. But this does not now appear to be the case especially as physical type is a function of environment and nutritional habits, while blood group may be affected by inter-breeding. Anthropometric studies of Southern Nigeria peoples by Dr P. A. Talbot and Mr. Mulhall produced a number of startling results. According to them their findings showed that the Igbo, previously thought to be a homogeneous ethnic stock, are far from homogeneous. Not only do some Igbo sub-cultural groups differ from one another as regards physical type, but they also manifest significant physical structural similarities with neighbouring non-Igbo peoples and indeed with other African people living far away from Nigeria. On the strength of some of their data, for instance, it was found out that the Onitsha of the Northern Igbo cluster “are nearly identical with the Nyanwezi (ofTanzania) and near to the Swahili”. But invariably, the relationship was that of the Northern Onitsha who migrated to the present day Tanzania as revealed in the Evolution of the Black Race and the Babelic Tales. Neither the Igbo, nor any other Nigerian group can be defined using only anthropometric or serological data, thanks to the blurring effects of past large population movements, intermarriages as well as of identical environmental factors and nutritional habits.

A common sense approach would ignore this entire dispute amongst the egg-heads, placing greater reliance on language and a number of cultural traits. We do not need, it can be argued, an academic head-measurer going about with calipers or an oracle to tell us when we meet an Igbo or enter an Igbo compound. The language, the mode of dress, social institutions like Ọzọ titles, Ọfọ, Njọku, Nmanwụ masquerade, marriage practices, burial rites, settlement patterns, etc., speak louder and clearer than the abstruse research findings and analyses of bespectacled professors. But to adopt this common sense approach is to close ones eyes to the fact that it is not possible to pick out any of these traits and assert that it exists in all Igbo communities and that it is not found in any other community lying beyond whatever may be the accepted Igbo frontier, or that it is accepted by all those who manifest it as the indisputable mark of the Igbo nature. 

Of all the traits which it is possible to single out as marking out the Igbo as a distinct group, the Igbo language is probably the most important, the one that can lay claim to the epithet “pan-Igbo”, as Late Professor Afigbo puts it. But as we have already shown, in the nineteenth century, and in the early part of the twentieth century many, Efik-Ibibio and Ijọ communities were classified as Igbo on the basis of language. Because the Igbanị (Bonny), Opobo and their satellite communities were considered to be Igbo, they were represented in the group of five local linguists who, with Archdeacon Dennis sat at Egbu Owerri and translated the Holy Bible into Union Igbo. Though the Onitsha, Aboh, Nri and Arọchukwu were and are Igbo-speaking they were regarded as non-Igbo by these expatriates for reasons already stated.

Turning towards the northern part of the east, the anthropologist, North-cote Thomas, found that Igala communities living up to a full day’s journey beyond the accepted northern frontiers of Igbo land were Igbo-speaking by the first decade of this century. There is also the fact that if the principle of mutual intelligibility is applied, many of the frontier dialects of the Igbo language would be classified as distinct languages. Cases in point are the Abakaliki cluster of dialects – Izzi, Ikwo, Ezza and Ngbọ. And indeed a few years ago, some linguistic pundits in the Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages at the University of Ibadan issued a paper which, among other things, sought to show that “Igbo” is not a language but a cluster of languages. On the whole they identified for the time being six languages within their "Igbo group". Further research was expected to increase this number. The Ikwerre of the present Rivers State were made to underline this point after the collapse of Biafra by the simple process of prefixing a capital "R” to the names of theirtowns. Inthis way,

Ụmụkurushi became Rumukurushi,

Ụmụigbo became Rumuigbo, 

Umudara became Rumudara,

Umuokoro became Rumuokoro etc.

The primary reason for doing this, after the war, was to make other Nigerians forget that they are or ever were Igbo.

With these problems it is not surprising that delimiting Igbo-land on the ground or on the map has not been easy at all. In the days before politics bedeviled the issue of ethnic identity in Nigeria, neither M. M. Green, Dr. P. A. Talbot, Professor D. Forde nor Mr. G. I. Jones had apparently any difficulty in tracing on the map the imaginary line which divides the Igbo from their neighbours. Following this earlier example Professor M. A. Onwuejeogwu in a one of his publications defined the Igbo Culture area as an area enclosed by an imaginary line running outside of the settlements of Agbor, Kwalle (west Niger Igbo), Ahoada, Diobu, Ụmụabayi (Port Harcourt), Arọchukwu, Afikpo, Isiagụ (Abakaliki area), Enugu-Ezike (Nsukka area) and Ebu (west Niger Igbo). One presumable difficult area in the definition by Onwuejiogwu is the phrase, “outside of the settlements of Agbor, Kwalle, etc”. It evokes further inclusion of the imaginary boundary where possibly, outside the marked area, the Igbo are still traced beyond. Professor Elizabeth Isichei, coming fresh to this area and its problems and either caring nothing for, or knowing nothing about the significance of these imaginary lines, as intoned by Professor Onwuejiogwu, traced the boundary of Igbo land with the usual easy lines in such a way that Port Harcourt and some other parts of Ikwerre fell outside the hitherto accepted Igbo culture area.

From these outstretched explanations, one may still ask, who are the Igbo? Is it those who call themselves Igbo; those who are prepared to take upon themselves the odium which this two-syllabic word evokes in Nigerian politics today? Or is it those who are called Igbo by their neighbours who want to brand them in order to put them at a disadvantage either as political or economic rivals? If the latter, and depending on the political climate, the “Igbo” would include all the people of south-eastern Nigeria, as it did during the pogroms of 1966 thus making possible the killing of Ogoja, Ijọ and Efik-Ibibio high-ranking army officers alongside their colleagues who were Igbo proper. It would also include, from time to time, the Ijebu of Yoruba land whose business practices are often considered sharp and un - Yoruba. It would include the Igbotako, Osoro in the Yoruba Ondo State who did not only have Igbo as their head name, but takes active part in the Ajunkwu ancestral festival celebrated in Obinagu, Udi of Enugu State and many other Igbo language communities. It would also include the christianized peoples of Southern Zaria and Plateau State whose avidity for western education was considered strange as against the context of social values accepted in the old Northern Nigeria.

For sure, there is no valid argument that extricates the inhabitants of Ida communities for repudiating their Igbo origin, looking at the unquantifiable roles of Achadu in Ida Kingship which explicated the simple nature and lifestyle of the Nsukka of ancient time. This apart, Ida has heavy presence of Igbo in her language until this day. Common sense approach to the problem of defining of the Igbo is thus riddled with problems. Yet for lack of a more functional definition, we shall adopt it here and regard as Igbo all those who live within Professor Onwuejeogwu’s imaginary line traced above which, as we said, coincides with the delimitation worked out by other anthropologists of a less political age. With this we are able to attempt a definition of who the Igbo neighbours are.

The role of the Niger River and other rivers within the Igbo settlement from the earliest times to the period of British conquest of the Igbo communities is remarkable in determining the boundary between the Igbo (as an earmarked entity) and their neighbours. Their neighbours in this light are the ethnic nationalities who live along their borders; in the south by rivers and in the north by land. These were the Igala, the Idọma, the Ogoja, the Efik-Ibibio the Ijọ and the Edo. These were the people with whom they interacted on a regular and continuing basis in the different areas of human endeavour – in war, peace, trade, inter-marriage, cultural exchange and so on. Above all it was the will of this new and very powerful neighbours that dictated that Igbo land should be part of the new nation, Nigeria, which they created. It would be thought that their stand during the unhappy events of 1966 – 1970 helped to determine that the Igbo would continue as an organic part of that nation. The other neighbours whom the Igbo acquired as a result of the British conquest were the rest of Nigerian peoples other than the Edo, Igala, Idọma, Ogoja, Efik-Ibibio, and Ijọ already mentioned. Thus British conquest widened the Igbo world, the range of Igbo contact, and has continued to determine what happens to the Igbo and their society.

- The Nature of Relationship with the Boundary Neighbours

Although the Igbo on their own did not range much further than the territories of their immediate neighbours, it was apparent that their relationship with their neighbours was very rigid. There was, for instance, the case cited by Afigbo via K. O. K. Onyioha’s research works which uncovered some oral tradition suggestive of the fact that the famed “Abam” warriors of the Cross River Igbo was born from the timely hiring of the warriors to fight certain Benue valley people in wars of that region. On the strength of this tradition he made the interesting suggestion that it was probably the Jukun who hired these Abam warriors, and that the military power and ascendancy of the Jukun must have been dependent on the immense man power resources of Igbo land. But here it may be observed that the term “Benue valley” covers a wide area which at times is seen to include the Idọma area. Thus it is most likely that it was the Idọma rather than the Jukun who needed the “Abam” to fight their local wars.

Until the colonial period the Igbo had sustained and meaningfully maintained direct contact only with these ethnic nationalities living immediately around them and beyond. There is probably no doubt that some Igbo trade items, especially iron, found their way through the hands of middlemen to the central Sudan and beyond. Trade, perhaps, may form the basis of their second contact after the ancient Nubia was founded by the Igbo race in the Stone Age, according to the information in Evolution of the Black Race. But there is no evidence that a sustained unbroken cultural interchange between Igbo land and the central Sudan in the present day. What has remained as evidence of the early contact had remained with the history of the name Nubia, not much was found for credible proof of economic relationship between the two nations.

(i)Levels of Internal Relationship with Igbo Neighbours.

In the later pages attention will be focused on contacts between the Igbo and such of their neighbours who were known to have evolved fairly large-scale empires or even kingdoms or at least centralized city-states that kept some form of court. Thus we find that while the surviving records and the published works are replete with information and hypotheses seeking to explain contacts between the Igbo on the one hand and the Igala kingdom, the Edo Empire and the Ijọ city-states on the other, there is a virtual dearth of information on Igbo relations with the Ogoja and Ibibio peoples. Since inter-group relationship was discussed largely in terms of military expansion mounted by these kingdoms and empires and leading “inevitably” to the imposition of their institutions and cultural norms on the conquered, it was assumed there was little or nothing to interest the investigator in relations between one “barbarous” acephalous community and another. No history could have been enacted as a result of such contacts.

The only exception to this tendency to neglect the study of inter-group relations on the eastern Igbo frontier was provided by the great attention paid to the Arọ and their activities in this zone. This was possible because, at that time most people talked in terms of an Arọ political and economic empire that ruled south-eastern Nigeria until the British advent. One other result of this prejudiced approach to the history of inter-group relations in this region during the early colonial period was that it was assumed the Igbo were inert in their relationship with the Edo, Igala and Ijọ. Relationship here was not seen as a two-way affair in which the Igbo gave certain goods and services in return for what they received.

On the contrary, it was assumed that it was always the Ijọ, the Edo and the Igala who brought their impact to bear on the Igbo and thus through military conquest and then alien political rule imposed their political institutions, social forms and usages on the Igbo. Keeping with this tradition, G. T. Basden wrote the history of the southern Igbo in terms of Ijọ conquest, while for Dr. P. A. Talbot, the evolution of West Niger Igbo society was explained solely in terms of Benin conquest and political tutelage. For Dr. M. D. W. Jeffreys, Igala impact explained the rise of the Nri, while for Dr. C. K. Meek lgala conquest and rule explained the evolution of Nsukka society. This view of the relationship between the Igbo and their neighbours to the south, west and northwest of them continues to influence the study of Igbo history and sociology as shown by the works of Henderson onOnitsha and Shelton on Nsukka issued as late as the 1970s.

In the previous chapters we have given critical examination and thoroughly traced the movement of evolution of the Igbo race within time to uncover the fact that the Igbo had never been influenced by any of the subsidiary groups around them, instead what was misinterpreted otherwise was the series of peopling of the rest of the communities by the ancient Igbo. The assumption of the influences of the neighbouring communities were based on the observations made by the writer in the later days when the sense of independence had beclouded the mind of the later groups and compelled them to supply data based on their intended independent views. The information contained in the work of Major A.G. Leonard, who wrote in the early 1906 we will find a large gap. A vital question one should ask is, between people who had experienced different trends of civilization over 500,000 B.C. and people who eventually experienced consolidated government as late as 1440AD and later, who should people the other? Such slender evidence that was lent weight by the postcolonial researchers appears very frizzle like the weightless argument of Diop Anta in the search for African genesis.

The first point that should be made here is that the most viable model for understanding the inter-group relationship that built up between the Igbo and their neighbours is one that postulates mutual dependence in harmony and equality rather than one that postulates the subordination of one group to the other. In this model the motive force of inter-group relations is free exchange of ideas, institutions and usages, of goods and services, of populations through migration and marriages. Here exchange implies that one gives what one has in plenty and receives what one lacks. In short people involved in inter-group relationship along the lines of this model do for, or give to, one another what each cannot either do for, or give to himself. This is the case at least for as long as those concerned want cordiality to be the dominant tone of such inter-group or inter-personal contact. If, however, they want to change the tone to one of envy, hatred, bitterness or even open conflict, then they must try to do for, or to give one another what each can do for or give to himself.

A misreading of the meaning and impact of this trend led some historians to account for Ijọ origin in terms of Igbo migrations was necessitated by the later development on the attempts to lend sovereign power to Ijo. To prevent their language and culture being completely swamped by the Igbo, the Ijọ went out consciously to emphasize adoption by immigrants of Ijọ language and culture as a condition for admission into full Ijọ status. Similar pressure was felt by the other neighbours, especially to the north and north-east. The Ezza, Ikwo and Izzi in particular were engaged in a headless policy of territorial expansion exploiting to the fullest the numerical disadvantages of their neighbours in the Ogoja and Idọma areas. Rosemary Harris has documented for us the development of this pressure in the region of the Cross River where the Ikwo appeared to have carried all before them. We also have similar studies for the other portionof the Igbo frontier in the North-east Igbo land called Nkalaha as documented by Nnaji in 2013.

Bearing in mind the technological level of these peoples at that time, Igbo land was more richly endowed with minerals than the areas around her. The central Igbo plateau running north-south from Nsukka is rich in iron ore which was exploited all the way and thus formed the basis for the technological ascendancy of the Awka, Nkwerre and Abiriba during the period. It is now known that the Awka ranged as far afield as the eastern frontiers of Yoruba-land. The only other alternative source of iron for south-eastern Nigeria during this period lay beyond the frontiers of modern Nigeria, in what is today the Cameroons. The iron which trickled in from here into the Cross River basin through the agency of the wandering Ekoi helped to augment the supply of Abiriba smiths. Igbo land also had salt and lead in the Uburu and Abakaliki areas. Again these were exploited to supply some of the demands of the above network of inter-group relations.

Igbo land had rich arable land along the Niger flood plain, to the north-east in the region occupied by the Ogu-Ukwu (Abakaliki and Ọhaọzara), to the north-west in the Anambra valley as well as in the valley of the Asụ River south of Enugu occupied by the Nkanụ. These places, especially the Anambra valley and the Niger flood plains, produced yams and vegetables which helped to swell the southward bound traffic in food crops on which the Ijọ depended. Southern and central Igboland which were not that fertile fell within the palm belt. Even in the days of the slave trade palm produce was important in the economy of this whole region. With the suppression of that inhuman traffic in the 1840s, it became the mainstay of the external trade of south-eastern Nigeria. This meant an enhancement of the economic advantage of the Igbo alongside many of her neighbours.

There was the area of oracles where Igboland enjoyed an unchallenged ascendancy. There was the Ibini Ụkpabị of the Arọ whose influence stretched to the western delta among the Isoko-Urhobo, to Idah and Idọma and to the Upper part of Cross River as well as to the delta. Ibini Ukpabi became very famous and significant when its power to settle disputes was experienced among the adherents like the modern days Okija shrine of Anambra. There were Igwe-ka-Ala of Ụmụnneọha, Agbala of Awka, Onojo Oboni of Ogrugu, Ebe river goddess of Nkalaha and Ojukwu of Diobu whose influence stretched as far as the trading and other contacts of their agents went. Of these oracles the least known to scholars and the general public is probably the Onojo Oboni of Ogrugu and Ebe river goddess of Nkalaha. The hold of this over the Igala, in any case over their royal house at Idah, was far-reaching. By tradition each newly installed Ata of Igala had to consult it in order to attain the much valued ability for impartiality in judgment. Looked at in this light, therefore, this period of south-eastern Nigeria history could be cautiously designated as one marked by Igbo dominance.

But being realistic, the Igbo did not see the situation in that light. Those of them who were in the forefront of these contacts were satisfied to emphasize their oneness with their neighbours across the frontier. To this end they built up mythical charters making them the kinsmen of some of those non-Igbo peoples with whom they had long-standing contact. Thus the official charter of Arọchukwu links that community in an organic manner with a non-Igbo Cross River people known as Akpa, with Ibibio land and with the delta Ijọ. The Igbo principalities of the lower Niger flood plain have charters making them the kinsmen of the royal families of Benin and Idah. The Ndọki of the southern Igbo consider themselves the kinsmen of Bonny, while many Nsukka communities believe they are the descendants of either the first Igala Asadu or of the legendary Igala warrior-giant Onojo Oboni and so on.

In the same manner many of the communities on the other side of the Igbo border conceptualized the above relationship in kinship terms. The Bonny say they are blood relations of the Ndọki, the Efik that they are the descendants of a marriage between an Ibibio woman and an Igbo man, the Benin that Arọchukwu arose from a Benin military outpost, the Igala that they are linked by blood with both Nri and Onitsha, the Idọma that the Arọ arose from a group of Idọma adventurers who left their homeland in search of business and adventure sometime in the 18th century and many other claims. We would like to know where the Igala and Idoma were when Nsukka had her first ever civilization that led to the planting of the stepped pyramids in Nsude and the decay part of that civilization that was marked with flouring iron ore extraction, first of its kind in the entire glob?

(ii)The Narrow Range of Igbo External Contacts

The relatively narrow range of Igbo external contact was determined above all by one factor, the fact that the Igbo were first and foremost an agricultural people bound to their land by traditions and taboos nearly as strong as hoops of steel. Nowhere in, the world, has farming communities been noted for long range travelling. Only a tiny fraction of the total Igbo population felt the urge to travel that was found among the Igbo. And that fraction was made up of those who had detached themselves partially or completely from the land in order to supply either a more generally-felt need or the more exotic needs of a narrow elite class who had developed appetites that could no longer be fully or satisfactorily met from the productive resources of their local communities. In this condition they met new countries independently settled. In another situation, the found a new ground entirely. We have examined the situations discussed in chapter seven above. It is of evidence and very significant with the Igbo settlement everywhere they found themselves to give their land an Igbo name resulting from the situation that warranted their stay and survival in the new land. We have, for instance, the case of Kambaata, the earliest settlers in Ethiopia and the name “Nubia” which was founded from the explicit Igbo word signifying “you people should come”, Unu Bia or Nnu Bia.

There is also another important consequence of the fact that the Igbo are an agricultural people. As peasant farmers their needs were limited, for the most part, to the basic requirements for existence. Very rarely did demands for luxuries develop to any great extent. In terms of these basic needs the Igbo and their neighbours were fairly richly blessed. A survey of the natural resources of south-eastern Nigeria reveals how richly endowed the region is. Whereas, for instance, the central Sudanese had to go as far as the Sahara and beyond for such a basic necessity as salt, the Igbo and their neighbours got all the salt they needed and more from the brine lakes and springs of the Upper Cross River basin and from the abundant sea water of the Bights of Benin and Biafra. Other basic needs like iron, fish, game, clay for ceramics, fibers for weaving, etc. were also easily obtained. It was usually shortages of such basic needs of men as these that compelled many human communities to cross oceanic and sandy wastes in their search and thus to emerge into the limelight of history as great travelers and civilized men. Neither the Igbo nor their immediate neighbours found it necessary to range far and wide to meet the level of being, considered adequate, within their cultural contexts. Knowing no other way of life, they found the way of life they knew adequate and satisfying. And even later, after they had had a peep into the new way of life imported and peddled by the British, the Igbo had no doubt that the way of life evolved and perfected by their ancestors was the best suited for them.

We may agree that inter-group relationship during this period derived, to a larger extent than has so far been realized, from the dominance of the economy by agriculture. The factors of contact which included migration, war, trade and marriage can, to a great extent, be explained in agricultural terms. Four types of migration in the period brought the Igbo into, and kept them in contact with their neighbours. The first was the primary migration which produced the basic demographic spread of the Igbo over the territory they have occupied since pre historic times and the pattern of which is deducible from the legends of migration of the clans and sub-cultural groups.

The second is the secondary migration which filled in the spaces more or less existing between the sub-cultural groups after the emergence of the basic demographic frame of Igbo land referred to above. These secondary migrants were made up, for the most part, of minorities, lineages or other groups whose fortunes within the primary settlements had collapsed as a result of which they were compelled to seek safer and may be richer, havens in the “no-man’s land” then still existing between major population centres. The third type of migration was that of slaves sold to provide domestic hands or farm labour or victims of sacrifice in communities generally outside their clans. The fourth type was that of men and women of free status who moved out of their home communities temporarily or permanently in search of gainful employment as farm hands, carriers, oracle agents, diviners or craftsmen. Whereas the major role of primary and secondary migrations was to bring the Igbo into contact with their neighbours all along the border, the third and fourth types of migrations helped to link Igbo land intimately with the heartlands of their neighbours.

The role of war as a factor of contact in this region and during this period has usually been misunderstood. It is common to assume that wars were more or less endemic not only amongst the Igbo, but also between them and their neighbours, and that these ways usually created serious discontinuities in inter-group relations. But not only were the wars not as endemic as is popularly believed, but they did not necessarily create the degree of discontinuity in inter-group relations usually credited to them. As in other societies, so also here, war was the continuation of' relations by other than diplomatic means. In other words wars here were usually waged by communities whose lives and livelihoods were interlocked to an almost inextricable degree. And they went to war simply because these interlocked interests could not be sorted out to the satisfaction of all concerned by other means. Nor did war usually succeed in sorting them out. The result was that the relationship which preceded the wars, and which continued in one form or another during wars, survived each war.

The point being made here is that no village group in the Nsukka or Nkalaha area, for instance, could go to war or ever went to war with an Ibibio or Ijọ or Igala or Edo village-group. They were simply not in contact and thus had no interlocked relationship that needed sorting out by diplomatic or other means. But the Ndọki, for instance, who had a most dynamic and multifaceted relationship with Annang villages, could, and did go to war with them. So also did they go to war with some Ijọ villages. Where, therefore, there was war as there were from time to time between the west Niger Igbo and the Edo to the west of them, we can be sure there were vital interests at stake and that these interests were the outcome of inter-group contact by other means than by war. Thus whereas the inter-group and border wars of this period between different frontier Igbo village-groups and their counterparts across the border might disrupt for a time trade and intermarriage, they often intensified other kinds of contact.

For instance, the demands of espionage and camouflage so necessary in war would encourage the mutual borrowing of the enemy’s dressing habits and the learning of his language for the purpose of deceiving him and putting him off-guard in order to get the better of him. Furthermore conflicts between village-groups on either side of the border would encourage more wide-ranging travel as each group looked around for powerful new allies, for weapons and for fearsome medicines and medicine-men with which to bewilder and rout its opponent in the battlefield. Important as wars and rumours of wars were in the relationship which built up between the Igbo village-groups on the periphery of the Igbo culture area and their neighbours across the frontier, we must not fall for the easy hut incorrect assumption that warfare was the normal state of relationship here. Frictions, wars and war alarums there were in plenty along the frontiers. But this was no less the case in the inter-group relations of those village-states located in the heartlands of the ethnic nationalities concerned where there was no question of contact with strange ethnic groups.

While no attempt is being made here to paint an idyllic picture of Arcadian peace and tranquility, it must be pressed that the dominant tone of inter-group relationship along the frontiers where Igbo met and interacted with these other ethnic groups was peace. None of these ethnic nationalities was internally self-conscious as a group during this period. Nor was any one ever mobilized in totality against its neighbours. Such cleavages or dichotomies as Igbo/Ibibio, Ijọ /Ibibio, Ibibio/Ogoja, Igbo/Igala or Igbo/Edo which mean so much to certain persons today would have meant nothing to the peoples of south-eastern Nigeria in the period before 1900. It was local rather than global issues that conditioned people perception of the world and their reactions to those they met either in the farmlands or in the markets or along the trade routes. The dominant mood was one of robust parochialism which most times made states-men and leaders criminally blind to the implications of new and wider developments. Thus long after the British had smashed all resistances to their advance between the coast and Abakaliki, the Ezza remained unaware of the gravity of the danger that contact with the colonial administration posed to any south-eastern Nigerian group. As late as 1905 they felt able to tell an emissary of the colonial government that the Ezza recognized no superior authority except the Heavens above and the Earth beneath. Between these two awe-inspiring super human potentates the Ezza said they alone existed as a third force. This idea was still replayed in the encounter with Chief Nwa Iboko of the 1950s who resounded his terminology clearly as, Owa Elu, Owa Ala, indicating that aside the heavenly being and the ancestors in the ground, he regarded nobody.

If divisions and confrontations in south-eastern Nigeria during this period did not run along ethnic lines necessarily or inevitably, it must not be assumed, therefore that the region was more united ideologically than it has been in recent times. Such conglomerate awareness was simply beyond the ken of the people and their leaders. What we are saying, however, is that the people were innocent of the kind of “global” stereotypes and prejudices which today make it “rational”, “just” and even “politically advisable” to visit the sins of one man on any so-called ethnic kinsman of his simply because they share what Afigbo referred to as “innocuous password, kedu?”

Talking about the irrevocable association of trade – whether in the form of the sale of material wares or of cure by medicine men or of occult advice or oracle agents and native doctors – which had helped in sustaining this timeless relationship, it will be more accurate and extensively investigated when the roles of the features that characterized the boundaries as discussed earlier is brought to mind. Indeed, for that era, the term inter-group relationship was understood to mean the exchange of goods and services subsumed under the term trade and commerce. And the Niger had been very relevant in the sustainability of this trade in the regions where it formed the link between Igbo boundaries. Trade as a factor of contact arose from the fact that different communities within this area were differently endowed with resources. Communities were thus compelled to engage in local and long range exchange by the need to transcend their limitations and maximize their advantages. Contact between the Igbo and their neighbours generated by trade during this period can best be understood in terms of response to four main regional pulls.

The Igbo response to this pull was provided by the Awka and Nri, with the Arọ behind whose merchant prowess exceeded every other Igbo settlement; even the border-land Nsukka people among whom the Aro sprung. From this direction the Igbo obtained the horses which played such an important part in their ritual life especially in title-taking and the burial of their Duhu (lord in the words of the North and North-Eastern Igbo land). From this region also came certain highly valued glass beads known to some Northern Igbo as Olomgbo different from the domestic Aka. The Igbo Ukwu hoard excavated by Professor T. Shaw suggests that these two items were already important in Igbo social and cultural life by about the ninth century A.D. With the rise of the Igala monarchy from about the 13th century this region also became important for the supply of a number of other insignia, such as caps and certain bodily apparel so much valued by the titled elite of Northern Igboland, especially by those of them inhabiting the Nsukka, Otuọcha and Awka areas. In exchange for these luxury items the Igbo supplied metal implements made by Awka smiths, medicine and ritual advice from the Nri and Agụleri areas, and slaves collected in an assortment of ways by the Arọ and the Awka who, unlike the Nri, had no moral or ritual compunction about selling human beings or shedding blood in the process.

Second, there was a Niger-ward pull which spilled across the Niger flood plain towards the Edo. In fact the north-westward pull towards Idah mentioned above was an aspect of this pull towards the Niger to which the Igbo and their neighbours responded. The Igala Kingdom rose partly through organizing and exploiting the ancient trade which went up and down the great Niger and on which the wealth of the great empires of the Western Sudan like Ghana and Mali had rested. The quest for this trade is part of t4e explanation for the way in which the lower Niger flood plain from Idah to the Nun estuary was peopled. Here we have a number of communities which have in their population elements from Igbo land, Igala land, Edo land, as well as the Isoko-Urhobo area. It explains to some extent the attempt of the Edo empire of Benin to expand militarily east-ward. This met with only limited success, though penetration by more peaceful and informal cultural methods would appear to have yielded richer and more enduring dividends. The Niger provided a route for the movement of slaves and agricultural produce down to the coast and of imported European wares as well as locally manufactured salt up from the Ijọ zone.

On the third part was an eastward pull towards the Cross River. This river was also, within limits, a highway of commerce especially with the rise of the European trade from the 15th century. Along it slaves, agricultural produce, dried meat and the like moved down to the coast while European wares moved up into the interior. In addition the upper Cross River  was richly provided with salt ponds and springs which helped to supply the salt needs of the Igbo. The Igbo response to this pull was provided by the Abiriba who, as smiths, dominated the markets of the zone for agricultural and other implements and by the Arọ who picked up all the slaves the region wanted to sell as well as provided a quick, if also costly and at times bloody, means of settling complex disputes and meeting other ritual and occult needs through their widely famed oracle of Ibini Ụkpabi.

Finally, there was the southward pull towards the coast. This pull was probably as ancient as the settlement of the Igbo, the Efik and the Ijọ in south-eastern Nigeria. It arose not from the exchange of luxury goods like in the case of the northward pull, but from the exchange of such basic necessities as agricultural produce and manpower from the interior, fish and salt from the coast. It was a consequence, in other words, of the ecological difference between the delta and coast on the one hand and the interior on the other. Whereas the interior had plenty of rich arable land, the delta and coast were lacking in this commodity. Thus while the hinterland peoples produced more than they needed in tubers and vegetables, the coast lacked these, producing mainly salt from sea-water, and fish from the creeks, Naturally a brisk trade developed between the two zones. Indeed the pull towards the Niger and that towards the Cross River were generated by this more basic north-south pull. As we saw, the main line business on the Niger and the Cross River was north-south. What happened was that it generated such powerful attractions that peoples to the east and west of the two rivers rushed in to share in the business. Those who provided the main Igbo response to this north-south pull were the Arọ, and the Nkwerre who were primarily smiths. The Awka were also active here especially in the Niger flood plain, around Abọ, Kwale and Isoko-Urhobo areas.

We may agree that all these factors can, as already mentioned, be explained in terms of the success or failure of agriculture. Major migrations, especially primary and secondary migrations, can be described as a search for agricultural land or a flight from regions whose productivity had declined either from natural causes or from man-made causes like incessant wars and invasions denying the peasants the reward of their labour. Many wars can be explained in terms of contest between neighbouring agricultural communities for farm land. Many conflicts in this period originated as land disputes though as time went on the real causes were forgotten as plain pride, arrogance or even misapprehension and psychological instability became more important.

Trade, as we saw, arose either in order to supply the luxury needs of a small aristocracy who had made their wealth and status from agriculture and thus taken titles, or in order to supplement the resources of a predominantly agricultural region with the products of a manufacturing or trading area. It can be shown that most of the commercial or manufacturing communities of Igboland – the Awka, Nkwerre, Arọ, Abiriba and Nri – are situated on the northern Igbo plateau and its south-eastward extension to Arọchukwu through Bende. From all accounts this ridge saw the earliest settlements of the Igbo. Not surprisingly owing to intensive exploitation over an extended period the fertility of the ridge had started to decline by the onset of historic times thus compelling the Igbo sub-groups "trapped” there to turn their attention from agriculture to the crafts, commerce and the exploitation of oracles and occult cosmology.

The dynamics of this intricate mechanism of contact and inter-action between the Igbo and their neighbours calls for a brief comment if our exposition is to achieve its objective of informing, educating and entertaining. First we should note that the range of contact which obtained amongst the peoples of south-eastern Nigeria was made possible by the geography of the region. Or to put it more modestly and more diffidently the geography of the area did not constitute a severe impediment to inter-group relations. There is none of these ethnic nationalities whose frontiers can be delimited in terms of natural barriers, be they impassable mountains or hills. The result was that the movement of peoples, goods, services and ideas out of, and into Igboland, could take place easily and virtually imperceptibly. As we saw earlier the Cross River and the Niger were important commercial highways up and down which moved peoples, material goods and cultural ideas thanks to the fact that the communities living along their banks and around their deltas were fully acclimatized to their riverine environment. The Igbo plateau running north-south from Nsukka through Awka, Orlu and Okigwe to Bende carried some of the major inland commercial routes of this region both alongside and across it. The peoples of south-eastern Nigeria were thus linked by a maze of routes. Some of these were major in the sense of being all-season and carrying substantial volumes of traffic. Some were minor, being seasonal and carrying only a trickle of the commerce. The researches of scholars have so far uncovered and traced only the major routes.

It presupposes that language should be a big barrier to these huge economic pulls, but the experiences of the individuals concerned was a complete absurdity to such supposition. Those Igbo persons or communities which took upon themselves or were compelled to take upon themselves the business of establishing and maintaining vital links between Igbo land and its neighbours found no difficulty in scaling the language problem. Thus we find that those Awka, Nkwerre, Nri, Arọ and Abiriba who conducted their business outside of Igboland were bilingual or at times even multi-lingual. The fact was that having mastered the language and the cultural usages of one or two zones, say the Igala area, an Awka smithing ward, for instance, would find it easier and more profitable to concentrate on the exploitation of the resources of that zone rather than engaging in hazardous adventures in new regions each time its members undertook business travels. In this way the Igbo built up exclusive sphere of influence respected by their business rivals aamong whom they enjoyed special privileges.

On the political plane we find there were even many more independent units than there were languages or even dialects in the broad sense of the latter term. Each of these political units was jealous of its independence and thus usually suspicious of strangers especially with the rise of the slave trade which tended to take a heavy toll on defenseless women and children. The result was that using its young men who were usually organized into age grades or secret societies (such as ọkọnkọ, ekpe, akang andnmanwụ) or both, each state constantly patrolled its borders, the major roads within its area of jurisdiction and also the markets. But the purpose of these patrols was not to disrupt traffic or trade but to ensure that people were not interfered with in the legitimate pursuit of their business and that the village-group or state was not taken unawares by its enemies or plain marauders. This fact was never appreciated by the British when they entered these parts from the later part of the nineteenth century. This is part of the explanation for the distorted picture of these secret societies and the age grades which dominate the records of the colonial period.

Long distance travelers and business men are usually protected by rules like the today international travelers. Knowledge of these rules and ability to abide by them distinguishedthe business men and professionals from trouble makers and plain pirates. These included, traveling in groups or in caravans and being armed in case of any attack by pirates, the purchase of the protection of local patrons known for their wide ranging influence and contacts, familiarity with the pass-words of the secret societies which operated along ones routes, payment of tolls which went into the maintenance of the young men who cleared the routes and patrolled them.

Looking from the conclusion of the expatriates, it is apparent that this coexistent intelligibility of the ancient merchants was not understood. Northrup, for instance, entitled one of his studies of the pre-colonial trade of this zone as Trade Without Rulers. This astounding title is neither elegant nor without ambiguity. It also seems fully loaded with the prejudices of the colonial period which assumed that where there is no potentate ruling over a large area there are no rulers. As already shown, this region did not lack rulers. On the contrary it had too many of them. It is, indeed, a strange historical and sociological logic which assumes that because there is too much of anything, therefore there is nothing of it. It is not only that the region was not without “rulers” that is people who dominated it and its trade dictated terms. The researches of scholars before Northrup and his own researches also, show clearly that the trade of the region during the period was “ruled” by the Arọ, the Igala, the Awka, the Nkwerre, the Abiriba, the Abọ, the Bonny, Opobo after 1873, the Nembe-Brass and the Efik. And they did so as effectively as the British, the French, the Dutch and the Portuguese “ruled” the trans-Atlantic trade during the same period.

The various contacts the Igbo had made in the past with their neighbouring communities found efficacy in its easy solitude. The easy nature of this relationship was an indication of a common historical tie which the inhabitants felt unconsciously within themselves. The common sense of brotherhood among the neighbours made this idea clearer. And for so, it was very easy for the inhabitants of the different communities to understand one another because common sense had told them that they were one. They proved this consanguinity by calling memory forth to the presence. Nevertheless, in order to exercise certain supremacy over another, they aligned the relationship in a manner that the one considered subordinate would be made to have originated from the maternal side. This would make them seem more original that the assumed subordinate. Such was the tactic employed by other tribes in Nigeria to delaminate the Igbo super-tribal quality, mostly aster the civil war in the 1970s. This condition was the cause of the repudiation of Igbo origin by the neighbouring tribes.