URHOBO HISTORICAL SOCIETY RESPONDS TO ITSEKIRI
CLAIMS ON WARRI CITY AND WESTERN NIGER DELTA
URHOBO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Web sites: http://waado.org;
http://urhobo.kinsfolk.com
E-mail: UrhoboHistory@waado.org Fax: (707) 276-2340
General T. Y. Danjuma
(Rtd.)
Task Force On Warri Crisis
Presidency
Dear General Danjuma:
Response
to Itsekiri Leaders� Forum and
�Warri� National Council
By Urhobo Historical Society
In March 2002, a
member of
Itsekiri Leaders� Forum challenged the publication of �Protection
Treaties,�
which the British made with Itsekiri Chiefs of Benin River in 1884 and
1894 and
with the Agbassa of Warri District in 1893, in Urhobo Historical
Society�s web
site. Itsekiri
Leaders� Forum complained that:
Urhobo Historical
Society
exchanged
correspondence with Itsekiri Leaders� Forum on these
allegations.
(Please see Appendix I.) We believe we conclusively proved to the Forum
that it
was completely mistaken in these allegations.
We are therefore
disappointed to
read from the submissions by the Itsekiri Leaders� Forum and �Warri�
National
Council to President Olusegun Obasanjo
and to the Danjuma Panel on the Warri
Crisis a
repetition of these same allegations. The Itsekiri submissions have now
been
published in www.itsekiri.org.
In these
circumstances, we think it is only proper for Urhobo Historical Society
to let
the Danjuma Task Force on the Warri Crisis
know what the issues are and to trace their
significance for
understanding the legitimacy of the claims of the indigenous Agbassa
and Okere-Urhobo peoples to the ownership
of
We will also
discuss associated
problems that were raised in the course of our exchange with Itsekiri
Leaders�
Forum in 2002 that touched on the following issues:
(ii) Ownership of
(iii) Itsekiris� claims to
(iv) In addition, we seek to present facts that will show the historical conduct of the Itsekiri establishment � not the Itsekiri people � that has created, in large measure, the atmosphere for continued conflict in the Western Niger Delta.
(v) We will finally urge the Danjuma Panel to look to the similar circumstances of
SIGNIFICANCE
OF BRITISH TREATIES OF PROTECTION WITH
ITSEKIRI OF
The British
�Treaties of
Protection� were the legal basis for colonial rule in the Western Niger
Delta.
The British signed �Protection Treaties� with the Chiefs and people in
all five
nations of the Western Niger Delta, namely, Itsekiri, Isoko,
Ukwuani, Ijaw, and Urhobo. These treaties defined two elements of these
communities. First, they defined the native authorities with whom the
British
entered into agreement. Second, they indicated the territories of the
authorities with whom the British had treaty obligations.
We are happy that
the Itsekiri
Leaders� Forum has pleaded and placed before the Danjuma
Task Force on the Warri Crisis the importance of the Treaties that the
British
made with Itsekiri Chiefs in 1884 and 1894 and with Agbassa and other
indigenous communities of
British Treaties of Protection with the
Itsekiri of
The above is the
actual title of
the
British Treaties of 1884 and 1894 that the British made with the
Itsekiri.
(Please see Appendix II.) Two features of these Treaties are relevant
for
Itsekiri claims on the ownership of
First, the King
of Itsekiri has no
legal standing in these treaties. This is not a matter of a careless
omission.
On the contrary, in the
1884 Treaty the word �King� was deliberately
deleted
from the printed form of the Treaty. This was so because in 1884,
kingship was
dead among the Itsekiri. It was a matter whose discussion was forbidden
among
the members of the Itsekiri merchant aristocracy who usurped royal
powers. The
1894
version of the Treaty was handwritten and it updated the 1884
Treaty. In
this latter edition of the Treaty, the King of Itsekiri was totally
omitted.
Second, the 1884
Treaty specified
the territories of the Itsekiri. What was specified originally when the
Treaty
was signed on
Nowhere in the
two Treaties of
1884 and 1894 was Warri ever mentioned as part of Itsekiri territory.
The
Itsekiri never asked for Warri territory to be added to the Treaty, as
they
clearly pressed for
British Treaties of Protection with Agbassa
and other Urhobo Communities in the District of Warri (1893)
In March 1893,
British imperial
agents entered into Protection
Treaty obligations with several
communities in
Warri District. The most prominent of these was the Treaty with
Agbassa
which
was signed on
The Agbassa
Treaty, as well as the
other Treaties in the Warri neighborhood, clearly specified the lands
of the
Protection Treaties as those located in Warri District.
Itsekiri Leaders� Forum�s False Allegation of
Forgery of British Treaties With Urhobo
Communities in
Warri District
We were stunned
by the extent to
which the Itsekiri establishment would go to oppress the indigenous
peoples of
It is important
to understand
clearly what the Itsekiri establishment is alleging. Mr. Ayomike
did not claim, nor does the Itsekiri
submission before the President
and the Danjuma Panel assert, that
Urhobo
Historical Society, which
published these documents, forged them. They are alleging that the
British
forged them and that we knowingly published a forgery. It will
not be
difficult to show that the allegation of forgery is false and baseless.
First, we refer
to the Itsekiri
establishment�s claim that the Agbassa Treaty, as well as the other
Treaties
with Ogunu and Ejeba,
had
�no signature of Her Majesty�s Representative on it.� We invite the
Panel to
inspect page 3 of the Agbassa
Treaty (copy attached). In it is the
signature of
�Arthur E. Harrison� under which is the notation �Acting Vice Consul.�
There is
a further unreadable signature of a witness to the thumb prints of the
officials who signed on behalf of the Agbassa people. These features of
a
signature of Arthur E. Harrison as Vice-Consul and of a witness to the
Urhobo
Treaty makers are true of the Ejeba and Ogunu treaties which the Itsekiri submission
also wrongly
faulted. It is therefore false to claim, as the Itsekiri submission to
the
President did, that there was �no signature of Her Majesty�s
Representative on
[the treaty].� Mr. Arthur E. Harrison was in fact a high official of
the
British Colonial Government.
Second, it is
insufficient and
grossly disingenuous for the Itsekiri submission to say casually that
R. A.
Alder was an interpreter for the Agbassa people. The authors of the
Itsekiri
submissions evidently hope that the members of the Panel might not know
who R.
A. Alder was.
Third, there is
further complaint
in the Itsekiri submission that there was �No Forcados
Vice-Consulate stamp� on the Agbassa Treaty. But why is that important?
We
invite the Panel to inspect the Itsekiri
Treaties of 1884 and 1894. The
Itsekiri Treaties, like the Agbassa Treaty, do not bear any such
stamps.
Whether the Treaties were stamped or not was an internal administrative
matter
for British colonial offices. The British were setting up
administrative
arrangements and moved offices from place to place; these places
included Forcados, Warri, and Sapele. The
agreements carry the
letterhead of Queen
Fourth, there is
another complaint
that the Agbassa Treaty was dispatched to
Fifth, the Itsekiri submission quoted
Professor Obaro Ikime
as accepting a
citation from
We urge the Panel
to regard the
Itsekiri establishment�s complaint on this matter to be utterly
frivolous. More
than that, we urge the Panel to regard the Itsekiri establishment�s
patently
desperate and frivolous objection to the Agbassa Treaty as a clear
indication
that it will do anything to ensure that the indigenous peoples of Warri
City
are denied any opportunity to prove that Warri City lands are theirs.
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC PEOPLES OF THE
One of the most
provocative and
vexatious practices mounted by the Itsekiri establishment is the
labeling of
Urhobo and Ijaw communities in
Four prehistoric
peoples, the beginnings of whose existence date to immemorial times,
inhabit
the Western Niger Delta. These are the Ijaw, Ukwuani, Isoko,
and Urhobo. Of these, the Ijaw and Ukwuani are considered to be
aborigines of
the region. It is unknown, and it is probably unknowable, for how long
the
Ijaws have been in the swamps of the Western Niger Delta. Their
language is
estimated by linguists to be thousands of years old. Similarly, the
Ukwuani
have been in the region for thousands of years, although influences of
Urhobo
and
In addition to these four prehistoric
peoples, there is one historic nationality in the
Western
Niger Delta. The Itsekiri are a historic
people in the sense that the beginning of their existence can be dated
accurately. Their existence began more than thirty years after the
arrival of
the Portuguese in the Western Niger Delta in 1485. Unlike the
prehistoric
peoples, they know how the name Itsekiri was given to them. They are a
nationality that is less than five hundred years old. Unlike the
prehistoric
peoples who have been in the region of the Western Nigeria Delta and
its
geographical neighborhoods for thousands of years, the Itsekiri evolved
from
transient Yoruba-speaking fishing communities who were consolidated
into a
distinct nationality by a fugitive Benin Prince, called Ginuwa,
and his descendants in the middle decades of the sixteenth century.
Whereas the
prehistories of the Ijaw, Isoko,
Urhobo, and Ukwuani can be said to be immemorial,
events of Itsekiri history are largely memorial.
Most prehistoric
societies predate
royalties that emerge in them. Indeed, such societies provide internal
resources that allow royal institutions to develop. What is remarkable
about
the Itsekiri is that royalty preceded the rise of Itsekiri culture and
society.
Historians do not like to say that societies and their cultures were
created,
because they usually rise by their own dynamism. However, in the
Itsekiri case,
it is fair to say that Itsekiri society and culture were created by
Prince Ginuwa and his dynasty.
But Ginuwa
was helped to survive by the generosity and accommodation of Urhobos
and Ijaws.
It was an Urhobo community of Oghareki
that protected
the fugitive Giunuwa when he left
Thanks to the
benevolence of their
hosts, that is, Urhobos and Ijaws, Ginuwa
and his
descendants were eventually enabled to build up Itsekiri nationality
from the Mahins and other Yoruba-speaking
alien fishing communities
who, to use a phrase employed by the premier Itsekiri historian William
Moore,
�squatted on the sea-shore near the Benin River�
(see William Moore, History of Itsekiri,
page 13). With the help of the Portuguese and other European traders, Ginuwa�s descendants built an Itsekiri
nationality from
these communities that were previously alien to the Western Niger
Delta. (See
Appendix IV.) But it must be
noted that though sparsely
populated, the areas of the Western Niger Delta occupied by the new
comers to
the region were not empty. The Itsekiris, the new arrivals, lived with
the Ijaw
and Urhobo in several of these communities.
It is against
such prehistory and
history of the Western Niger Delta that the wrongful practice of the
Itsekiri
establishment in labeling Urhobo and Ijaw communities in
Colonel H. L. Gallway,
who coined the name Sapele from the Urhobo name of Urhiapele, also coined Warri, at
about the same time in the early 1890s. The Ijaw say that Warri was
coined from
an Ijaw word �wari� (meaning �house�),
which was the
name of their fishing community in an area of modern Warri before
British
colonization. The Itsekiri say that it was coined from �Iwere,�
which they claim was another name for Itsekiri � although, unlike the
term
Itsekiri, its etymology and origin are unclear. Iwere
is almost certainly not of Itsekiri or local origin. It is meaningless
in
This is how Daniel Obiomah explains the
origin of Iwere and Warri: �The
name Warri is foreign, like Escravos, Forcados, and
In order to build
a new colonial
Vice-Consulate in the Western Niger Delta in the 1890s and 1900s, the
British
needed land. The lands in the area were mostly farmlands owned by
Urhobo
communities of Agbarha and Okere. The
Itsekiri and
Ijaw were not farmers. There were also Ijaw fishing communities on the
shores
of
In other words,
the native and
indigenous population of
Unlike
traditional boundaries,
modern Local Government boundaries are an artifact of politics. The
Itsekiri
were well favoured in these territorial adjustments by British colonial
politics and by the Action Group Government that took over from the
British.
But these local government boundaries do not negate the facts of the
prehistory
of the region or the history of
ITSEKIRI ESTABLISHMENT�S CLAIMS OF OVERLORDSHIP AND
OWNERSHIP OF
One of the
strangest myths that
the Itsekiri establishment has perpetuated in
Overlordship was a Medieval European doctrine of land
holdings that
rests on two constructs: landlords and an overlord. Landlords exercise
their
ownership as rights to the properties of the land. They may own the
land
totally by exercising ownership rights that cover all aspects of the
land, including
mineral resources and water resources. Or, their ownership rights may
be
limited to farming or buildings, in which case, rights to minerals and
water
resources on their lands belong to the sovereign as overlord. Or, the
sovereign
as overlord may be entitled to collect taxes on the properties of
landlords.
Two aspects of
this doctrine of overlordship need to be
further identified, because they
have relevance for their application in the case of
Modernization of
It was this
doctrine that was
applied in the judgment of 1926 in the legal suit brought by the
Agbassa people
of
Several aspects
of that colonial
judgment of 1926 should be reiterated, because they have been
misinterpreted
and misused by the Itsekiri establishment. First, that judgment never
took away
the landlord rights of the Agbassa people. Those rights were subjected
to the overlordship rights of the Olu of
Itsekiri. But those overlordship rights
have since
fallen to other court judgments and legislative enactment. Second, the
judgment
of 1926 at no time conferred on the Olu,
King of
Itsekiris, or the Itsekiri people, the rights of landlords of the
contested
lands.
That neither the
King of Itsekiri
nor the Itsekiri people have been conferred with the rights of
landlords as a
consequence of the 1926 court judgment can be seen in their tenancy
circumstances in
Olu Erejuwa II, the first of the
Itsekiri kings to settle in
Most of the
Itsekiri notables who
followed their King to the new royal headquarters in
Such vagrancies
in Itsekiri royal
residences in
The section of
the Greater Warri
metropolis where the Itsekiri have ample and firm rights as landlords
is Ugbuwangue. The Itsekiri
establishment�s attempt to impose
the Olu�s overlord rights on this Itsekiri
enclave of
To all intents
and purposes, the
doctrine of overlordship was dead by
virtue of that
1971 judgment. Its final rites of burial were performed in 1979 when
the Land
Use Decree of 1978 was enacted into law as Land Use Law of 1979.
We believe it is
the
responsibility of a Federal Government Panel on the Warri crisis to
make it
clear to the Itsekiri establishment that it is on the wrong side of
history. In
any case, we suggest that the choice before the Task Force on Warri
crisis is
between Itsekiri establishment�s claim of Itsekiri overlordship
and the Land Use Law of Nigeria which forbids such a claim.
In their position
paper of
Geographically,
By way of ancestry, Itsekiri cannot
claim
By way of land ownership,
All of the above
glaring facts
have not prevented the Itsekiri establishment from claiming
There is another
aspect of the
Itsekiri establishment�s claim about Itsekiri homelands that should be
addressed. They say that they have no other homelands other than
Three things need
to be said in
reply to this frequent complaint from the Itsekiri establishment.
First, these
towns and cities were built through the hard labour of Urhobo, Ukwuani,
Ijaw,
and Isoko who value their ancestral
villages and
towns. The Itsekiri have large territories and beautiful islands that
deserve
to be well developed. These include Jakpa,
Bateri, Ugborodo, Oberienda, and Koko. But the Itsekiri establishment has
abandoned the
Itsekiri countryside in its insatiable quest for collecting �overlord�
rents in
Second, Urhobos
do not all develop
their towns as common properties. There are no common Urhobo towns.
Their towns
and cities belong to their subcultural
units whose
indigenes built them. For example, Abraka
has been
built and developed by the Abraka subcultural
unit of Urhoboland.
Third,
THE
ITSKIRI ESTABLISHMENT AND THE PERMANENT CRISIS OF THE
(ii) Ukwuani is surrounded by the following five ethnic nationalities: Ika, Western Igbo, Isoko, Urhobo, and
(iv) Urhobo is surrounded by the following five ethnic nationalities:
(v) Aside from the Ilaje of Ondo, Itsekiri has the following three ethnic nationalities as neighbours inside the Western Niger Delta:
A hard question to ask is the following: Why do the Itsekiri have problems with their neighbours, both in historic times and in contemporary times? Anyone from the Western Niger Delta will readily come to the conclusion that Itsekiri�s difficulties with its neighbours cannot be because of the ordinary Itsekiri. The ordinary Itsekiri is pleasant and kind. The perennial crisis in the Western Niger Delta has come from the Itsekiri establishment.
Since the
ascendancy of the
Itsekiri establishment to power, following the collapse of the Itsekiri
monarchy in mid-nineteenth century over the Itsekiri establishment�s
machinations, Itsekiri affairs have been dominated and tormented by the
activities of the Itsekiri establishment, with untoward consequences
for the
ordinary Itsekiri. In important ways, the ordinary Itsekiri has been
the main
victim of the greed of the Itsekiri establishment. Indeed, the onset of
mass
poverty of the Itsekiri countryside, which has become chronic,
coincides with
the rise to power of the Itsekiri establishment in mid-nineteenth
century.
But the baneful
consequences of
the overreaching activities of the Itsekiri establishment range well
beyond the
internal affairs of the Itsekiri into those of Itsekiri�s
neighbours. A limited catalogue of the Itsekiri establishment�s
interferences
in the affairs of its ethnic neighbours, leading to aggravation of
tensions in
the western Niger Delta, is in order and instructive for understanding
the
meaning of the current Warri crisis in the larger context of the
history of the
region.
(i) The
vehemence and audacity of the Itsekiri establishment burst into the
open in the
early 1890s when it reacted violently to the expansion of British
trading
interests beyond Itsekiri into Urhobo lands and also to the Protection
Treaties
which the British entered into with Urhobo communities. The Itsekiri
merchant
class resorted to the wanton kidnapping of Urhobos on the River Ethiope and
(ii) A few years
after the
resolution of the above problem, the British recruited and received the
active
support of the Itsekiri establishment in its war against
(iii) A major
icon of the Itsekiri
establishment under early British colonialism in the western Niger
Delta, Chief
Dore Numa, who
was a
Political Agent of the British Colonial Government for the district,
violated
the region by leasing Urhobo, Ijaw, and Itsekiri lands to the British
without
the knowledge of their owners. Taken to court for such outrageous
behaviour, Numa
pleaded the overlordship of a non-existing
Itsekiri
monarchy. British colonial courts corruptly awarded Numa
victories in these cases.
(iv) Although
these disputes were
tried as cases between individual Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo landlords,
on the
one hand, and Dore Numa
as
a Political Agent of the British Colonial Government on the other hand,
the
Itsekiri establishment claimed that Numa
was
representing the Itsekiri and that his victories of overlordship
conferred on the Itsekiri the ownership of various lands in the Western
Niger
Delta. Consequently, it took various communities to British colonial
courts in
the 1930s, following Numa�s death in 1932.
In the
first instance, its members sued Okpe-Urhobo for possession of Sapele.
They
lost. But they also sued for possession of various towns along the
River Ethiope, extending up to the Ukwuani
town of
(v) In 1952, the
Itsekiri
establishment maneuvered a new Action Group Government of Western
Nigeria to
change the title of the King of Itsekiri from Olu
of
Itsekiri to Olu of Warri, in a blatant
attempt to
impose the supremacy of the Itsekiri establishment on the other four
ethnic
nationalities of the Western Niger Delta by an act of governmental
fiat. There
was uproar throughout the entire region, resulting in loss of lives and
properties. It also resulted in the change of the name of
(vi) The
Itsekiri establishment was alone in the Western Niger
Delta in opposing the creation of Midwest Region in the region�s
campaign for
independence from
(vii) The
Itsekiri
establishment was alone in the Western Niger Delta in opposing the
creation of
the
(viii) Secession
is not the stuff
that ordinary political leaders boast of before the President of the
Federation
of Nigeria. In their submission to the President on 7th
April 2003,
Itsekiri Leaders� Forum and �Warri� National Council vowed as follows: �We have decided to leave [Delta] State
willy-nilly . . . We shall declare our homeland to be outside this
state on a
given day. On that day of declaration, we shall state where we shall
be.� We suggest to the Itsekiri
establishment that it needs to learn to live in peace with its ethnic
neighbours and to respect the neighbourhood of the Western Niger Delta.
The
Itsekiri will remain neighbors to Urhobos and Ijaws who have received
them into
their region and have co-habited with them in the Western Niger Delta
for
almost five centuries now. Before embarking on a self-serving and
ill-advised
experiment in secession, the Itsekiri establishment needs to be
reminded that a
huge number of ordinary Itsekiris currently live in Urhobo lands and
other
lands outside Itsekiri territories. We believe that it is in the
interest of
such ordinary Itsekiri that the Itsekiri establishment should work for
peace in
the region instead of threatening secession. After all, ordinary
Itsekiris have
always been prepared to live in peace with other groups in the Western
Niger
Delta. We suggest that the Itsekiri establishment will do well to
follow the
goodliness of the ordinary Itsekiri, scale down its greed, and work for
peace
in the Western Niger Delta. It must learn to live in peace with its
neighbors
and it must make a commitment to respect the rights and the
sensibilities of
its neighbors.
The above
instances have been
cited in order to argue two points. First, all regional crises in the
Western
Niger Delta, from the close of the nineteenth century up to the present
time, have been connected with the activities of the
Itsekiri establishment. Some would even argue that the Itsekiri
establishment
has instigated all of them. Second, the present Warri crisis must be
seen as
part of a long series of crises that the Western Niger
Delta has had to
deal with as a result of the activities of the Itsekiri establishment.
We must add the
following
statement to this presentation. Urhobos have no problem with the
ordinary Itsekiri,
the lavish propaganda of the Itsekiri establishment notwithstanding. By
some
estimates, more Itsekiri now live in Urhobo lands than live in Itsekiri
lands.
In spite of the misbehaviours of the Itsekiri establishment, we trust
that the
Urhobo people will continue to help the ordinary Itsekiri who have
after all
been the helpless victims of the quarrelsomeness of the Itsekiri
establishment.
The Itsekiri establishment is generally viewed as trouble makers in the
Western
Niger Delta. Unfortunately, that image has unfairly rubbed off on
ordinary
Itsekiris whom we consider to be decent people and good neighbours.
THE
HISTORIC EXPERIENCE OF
Modern-day Calabar
is a tri-ethnic city, made up of three different ethnic nationalities: Efik, Efut, and Qua. The name Calabar was given by the Portugese
in the 15th century, just as Nigeria's other sea-ports and rivers of
Lagos, Forcados, Escravos,
Port
Harcourt, Ethiope, Sapele, and Warri were
given their
names by Europeans, mostly Portuguese. Calabar is the
section of
Greater Calabar
City which was settled by the Efik. Nearby
were the
territories of the Qua and Efut.
In modern times these distinct territories have grown into one another,
resulting in Greater Calabar, just as
The Efik came
into prominence in a
fashion that is similar to the Itsekiri experience, albeit with
important
differences and in a different historical neighborhood. The following
is an
account of Efik origins provided by one of
its
intellectuals: �The Efiks migrated to what
is present
day Calabar through Adamawa
across the
The Efik intellectual adds that the Efut and Qua
migrated from
The contrast between the Itsekiri and the Efik becomes much more pronounced as we probe
further into
their histories. The Obong of Calabar
has remained relatively strong. Unlike the Itsekiri case where kingship
collapsed under the weight of deadly opposition from the merchant
class,
kingship among the Efik has been
continuous. There is
no parallel to the Itsekiri establishment in Efik
history. The Efik have therefore
maintained relative
harmony in their dealings with neighboring ethnic nationalities,
despite the
huge advantages it had as a group that supplied middlemen in the trade
between
the interior peoples, particularly the Ibibio, and European traders,
including
a horrendous experience of the slave trade. More remarkably, Efik has shared the resources of the modern city
of
As the Danjuma
Panel on the Warri
crisis weighs its options, it is important to explore the Calabar
experience as a model for
OUR
APPEAL
The current Danjuma
Task Force, set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo, is not the first commission organized
by the
Federal Government or a State Government to find answers to the Warri
crisis. Both
the Nnaemeka Agu
Commission
of 1993 and the Idoko Commission of 1997
recommended
the creation of separate councils, one for each of the three ethnic
groups in
First, we appeal
to the Danjuma Panel to determine the
reasons why earlier
recommendations on the Warri crisis were not carried out. We think
those
recommendations are important and fair and should be accepted by the Danjuma Panel. If they are not accepted, then
those of us
from the Western Niger Delta would want to know why they were not
accepted and
implemented.
Second, we appeal
for a clear
understanding of the constitutional rights of all Nigerians to have a
say in
how they are governed. All that the indigenous peoples of
Third, we appeal
to the Danjuma Task Force to understand
the request of the Itsekiri
establishment for what it is. It is an attempt to recruit the power of
the
Federal Government of Nigeria in the oppression of the indigenous
peoples of
Fourth, we appeal
to the Danjuma Task Force to hear directly
from the indigenous
peoples of
Fifth, and
finally, we ask and
pray that the Danjuma Task Force will be
able to
probe the depth of the Itsekiri establishment. It has encamped in
Sincerely
Members
of Editorial and Management Committee
Urhobo
Historical Society:
Ovie Felix Ayigbe,
B. Pharm.,
R. Ph.; Onoawarie Edevbie,
M.A., M.Sc.; Peter P. Ekeh, Ph.D.; Edirin Erhiaganoma, M.Sc.; O. Victor Ikoba,
M.S.N.E., MBA, P.E.; Joseph E. Inikori,
Ph.D.; Isaac James Mowoe, Ph.D., J.D.; O. Igho Natufe, Ph.D.;
Emmanuel Ojameruaye, Ph. D.; Aruegodore
Oyiborhoro, Ed.D.; Ajovi Scott-Emuakpor, M.D., Ph.D.; Elehor O. Urhiafe-Bobson,
B.A. (Fine Arts).
APPENDIXES
I. Issues in the Interpretation of
British "Treaties of Protection" in the
II. British Treaties of Protection with
Itsekiri Of Benin River (3 documents).
III. British Treaties of Protection with
Urhobo Warri
District (4 documents)
IV. Urhobo-Itsekiri Relations. Response to Itse Sagay by Peter
Ekeh
V. An Ethnic Map of
VI. British Colonial Proclamation (1894)
Banning War Canoes
in Rivers of Western Niger Delta.
REFERENCES
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1969.
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