Peace happily returned to Rivers, Ijaw nationalists having precipitately weighed-in for Fubara, turning party affairs ethnic, and leaving Wike with barely feeble support. Rivers State is a contrivance emphasising power over harmonious development, another expression of a flawed Nigerian structure awaiting statesmanly healing, hopefully under a modern democratic secular state of equal laws and equal applications built on civilised Common Law principles in an organically restructured true federalism. Never force strange bedfellows into marriage merely to spite another. Rivers disproportionate volatility is not from multi-ethnicity, but due to a malign doctrine of Igbo landlocking undergirding it, whereof Igbo communities, nicknamed “Igboids,” are decoupled from their hinterland kith and kin; Bonny, Opobo, parceled to Ijaw trusteeship; leaving Andoni, Ogoni, askant. Negative contradictions of sharing booties of machination are behind Rivers problems, and until resolved the “fire next time” could be unimaginable.
Crosscheck history, even Willink’s, unlike today’s Abandoned Property beneficiaries, no Bonny king, no mainstream Rivers Igbo leader, whether Amabibi Nsirim, Emmanuel Aguma, Francis Ellah, Jackson Mpi, Nwobidike Nwanodi, Obi Wali, albeit pursuing Ikwerre rights like Anioma, Waawa, preferred life with Ijaw in a COR state or wherever to life with fellow Igbo speakers. Ijaw sought self-determination ideally in an all-Ijaw state; Ogoni demanded self-rule; each group with their ports. With these facilities blockaded, frustrated Igbo diverted to Lagos for import-export and North for trade. Everything expensive became done to develop Rivers and Niger Delta (13% derivation, Amnesty, East-West road, NDDC, Niger Delta Ministry, Ogoni clean-up, etc), except the one cheap policy that can do so: lifting the economic blockade against the East by reopening Port Harcourt, Bonny, Opobo ports for Igbo use! Otherwise, aside few elites, the structured poverty in and beyond Rivers would intensify, with bitterness and recurring violence everywhere.
Organic restructuring will relink Kalabari Ijaw to Bayelsa; Ogoni and Andoni form their state; and Igbo, insulted as “Igboids,” reunite with their hinterland stock to recreate an Eastern pole of development spanning the Middle Belt to Maiduguri, with minimised pressures on Lagos escalating a Western pole spanning to Sokoto. Five coastal regions: East/Igbo, West/Yoruba, Southeast/AkwaCross, Southwest/Bini-Ijaw-Ishan-Isoko-Itsekiri-Urhobo, South/Andoni-Ogoni; and five riparian complements: North/Hausa and Fulani, Northeast/Kanuri, etc., Northwest/Nupe, etc., Northcentral/Jama’a Federation-Plateau Highlands, Middle Belt/Idoma-Igala-Tiv, meet requirements of contiguity, relative cultural homogeneity, true federalism; substantially solves the national question of ethnic relations, class question of power distribution between formations; and by minimising wars for central power, enhances national stability.
Central to Rivers problems are Ijaw claims on Bonny, Opobo, and Rivers Igbo ignoring them procured uneasy calm. But in hasty defence of Fubara Ijaw leaders re-implied the narrative of three Ijaw families migrating to Igboland; after four generations left Igboland to open Bonny around the 12th century; in 19th created an Opobo extension; with Ijaw sojourn in Igboland making it appear as if it was Igbo that opened Bonny. Or, Ijaw and Igbo fought war, and Bonny and Opobo became trophies? Apart some politicians, distinguished Professors Alagoa and Kay Williamson, feed this complex narrative:
Ijaw’s Bonny narrative
Opuamakuba, the eldest atop high priest Alagbariye and Okpara Asimini, of three “Ijaw” families, purportedly led a “dispersal” from “Central Niger Delta” into Ndoki and, reaching Bonny, that “Ijaw” eldest and first leader inexplicably transformed into second leader under an Igbo Okpara Ndoli who only joined the group at his Ndoki community, but surprisingly became first ruler and only king of Bonny over “the Ijaw.” Quote: “Of the Ibo-speaking Ndoki … Okpara Ndoli … joined the migrants in the area,” and “In the genealogies of the founders,” stood alone as “King Okpara Ndoli.” A “joiner” of group became its first ruler, its only king! Great grandson of Opuamakuba, Prince Edimini, fifth Bonny ruler, being Ndoki-born, proves that the claimed migrants spent over four generations (father, son, grandson, great grandson) in Igboland.
Is “first and only” not founder? Assuming the migrants were Ijaw, which they weren’t, on what basis would anybody become first ruler and only king over others if he wasn’t leader of the expedition and founder of the settlement? Should Igbo courageously lead Ijaw to Bonny or Opobo only to abandon Igbo people or ascribe the feat or ownership to Ijaw? Can a “joiner” fabricate a first position in an order of leadership preexisting him? Can original migratory teams still be intact after four generations? Must Ijaw first live with Igbo before founding Ijaw settlements? Could a great grandfather have embarked upon new adventures? Recently, attempting some “answers,” Ndoki’s Okpara Ndoli vanished from “only King” status, replaced with “migrant” Asimini (with “Okpara” silent) as “first crowned King” – yet, unexplained why Igbo, as “King” or “Leader” was head over “Ijaw.”2 Whereas Bonny Kings and indigenes proudly trumpeted their Igboness to European explorers, under Origin and Migration, organisers threw more surprises at guests during the Silver Jubilee of reigning Edward I: “Bonny (an European corruption of Ibani) people are Ijaw, who left their homeland in the central Niger Delta Area … present day Bayelsa State passing through … Ndoki territory to their present location in Eastern Niger Delta about the 11th century.”
Ijaw claims over the eastern coastline and Igbo ports of Bonny and Opobo are unjustified
If blood is anything Igbo and Ijaw should cooperate. Igbo opened their Igweocha, Ubani, Opobo ports; Ijaw their Akassa, Brass, Burutu; others theirs. Easterners intermixed, without dragging territory or hindering another maritime life despite European contacts. European commerce proceeded with negligible antagonism between “tribes.”
Nigerian shoreline is characterised by discontinuities: bays, bights, channels, estuaries, water-bodies opening for maritime nationalities contiguous territories to their coasts, ports and territorial waters. Moving eastwards: Yoruba: Apapa, Lekki, Tin Can ports; Benins: Gelegele, Ughoton; Itsekiri: Ode Itsekiri, Ogidigben; Urhobo: Sapele; Ijaw: Akassa, Brass-Nembe, Burutu; Igbo: Bonny, Opobo, Port Harcourt; Ogoni and Andoni: Ngo, Onne; AkwaCross: Bakassi, Calabar, Ibaka, Oron. etc. Ijaw brothers blanketing anywhere into “ownership” beyond Burutu and Kalabari River, doubly blocks the Igbo around the Rio Real and Imo basin, and undermines these peaceful organic traditions.
Revisions should end; the hopes of repeated lies becoming “truths,” if successful for Bonny, Opobo follows in the “foundings” by Ijaw; while with Rivers Igbo “de-Igbonised” or blackmailed, Port Harcourt becomes Ijaw co-owned, rendering Igbo balkanised, deprived their ports, and checkmated by Ijaw. Reciprocating ancestral affections and Igbo pre-oil shared prosperity seem a much worthier alternative. Or “booties of war”? Igbo-Ijaw ancestors never fought; never will, for Igbo hardly met Ijaw along the ever-busy Igweocha-Ubani, Azumini-Opobo waterways, and despite colonial divide and rule, at major historical moments true Eastern lights always embraced. Thus, many Igbo, civil, military, though fought on federal side, never demanded Brass, Burutu, to punish Ijaw brothers for “luring” Igbo into war by suggesting Biafra to terrified Easterners.
Bonny’s global testimonies:
Coveting Bonny shows hatred for truth: “European visitors speculated on the origin of the Ibani…from the Ibo…Adams thought the Ibani language was similar to Ibo…also thought the rulers of both Bonny and Elem Kalabari were of Ibo origin. De Cardi asserted that “the Bonny people claim to be descended from the Ibo tribe…Leonard published two traditions of Ibo origin…Talbot postulated an early Ijo migration followed by an Ngwa Ibo group. Dike accepted… tradition of the Ngwa hunter, Alagbariye. Jones related the Ibani to the Ndoki…from the “central Ijo area.”
To be continued tomorrow
Professor Igwe is of the Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
