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Urhobo Historical Society |
I Can See Clearly Now:
A Review of
By
F. M. A. Ukoli, F.A.S.
Oboiroro of
Retired Professor of Zoology,
Presented at the Fifth Annual Conference of Urhobo Historical
Society at Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun,
The opening pages of the Preface dealt telling blows to the veracity
of the frequently touted reasons for what has now come to be known as
the Warri Crisis. The first of the assumptions, one can even say
myths, to be exploded is this: it is not true that the minority
Itsekiri are being oppressed by the mighty Urhobo majority. On the
contrary, it is the Agbassa1 and Okere Urhobo who, though are in
the majority, suffer humiliation and injustice at the hands of the
Itsekiri who dominate the politics of the area. Next to be debunked is
the assertion that there was a case between Agbassa people and the
Itsekiri in the 1920s which the Itsekiri won. There was no such case
at all; the Agbassa sued Chief Dore
Numa, not as an Itsekiri man or as their
representative, but as a Political Agent of the British. Furthermore,
the verdict of that case was based on "bare-faced fraud" given by a
corrupt colonial court invoking the doctrine of
overlordship of Itsekiri King over
Itsekiri lands which clearly did not extend to Agbassa lands. It did
not apply to Ugborodo land either.
This is an Itsekiri community who successfully prosecuted their case
in court. In any case, there had been no Itsekiri king for 78 years
before the case. Dore
Numa was no king!
Most importantly, the Itsekiri establishment continues to cite this
judgement to support their claim of ownership of Warri even though
several subsequent judgements have
repudiated the validity of the doctrine of
overlordship. Whatever the case may be, it
is expected that the Land Use Decree (now Act) which is enshrined in
the Nigerian Constitution should have put paid to this disgraceful
chapter of the legal history of the western Niger Delta.
But most damaging to the case of the Itsekiri establishment are two
significant revelations from a close examination of the so-called
Protection Treaties which the British signed with the "Chiefs and
Peoples" of the Niger Delta (and elsewhere in
The book under review is the outcome of recent fierce war of words
between the Itsekiri Leaders' Forum whose chief spokesperson is J. O.
S. Ayomike and the Urhobo Historical
Society under the leadership of Peter Ekeh. Professor Ekeh drew first
blood by reproducing these treaties verbatim, posting them in the
website of the Urhobo Historical Society, Urhobo
waado, and publishing his incisive
analysis and commentary on the available evidence. Not only that, he
delivered a seminal lecture in October 2001 in which he canvassed his
deductions based on a rigorous scrutiny of these treaties. He asserted
that Agbassa people owned Warri. The implications of the conclusions
arising from this brilliant exercise in scholarship cut the Itsekiri
establishment to the quick, and it was not surprising that their
response was vitriolic in its abusive style. By the time the Editorial
and Management Committee of UHS made their submission to the
Danjuma Presidential Panel on the Warri
crisis incorporating all the main issues in the debate about the
treaties (Chapter 11), the battle line was already drawn, with both
sides trading critiques and counter critiques. Ekeh's treatment of the
Treaties is contained in Chapters 2 & 3 while the Itsekiri
Leaders' Forum's challenge is published in Chapter 5. This is followed
by the stand of the Editorial Committee on the status of these
treaties as regards the issue of the ownership of Warri in Chapter 6.
Then a series of critiques of Itsekiri Leaders' Forum essays follows.
Ekeh analysed the contents of these
treaties in Chapters 7 & 10 while Chief Daniel Obiomah gives a
wide ranging review in Chapter 8. Oke
Sikere beams the searchlight on Ayomike's
literary style in Chapter 9, while
Onoawarie
Edevbie examines the doctrine of
overlordship, one of the cardinal pillars
on which the Itsekiri claims to ownership rests in Chapter 12. The
book ends at Chapter 13 in which Ekeh responds to Professor
Itse
Sagay's unexpected and startling
allegation, like a bolt from the blue, that the Urhobo have joined
forces with the Ijaw "to drive the Itsekiri from their villages and
'Warri territory'".
This forms the main body of the book. If that were all, the UHS would
have fulfilled their ultimate mandate of telling the truth about the
Niger Delta. But the inclusion of a hitherto unpublished
treatise written by the legendary Urhobo leader, Chief T.E.A.
Salubi in 1952 was like icing on the cake.
In it the chief presented a glimpse of the history of the western
Niger Delta and chronicled the bloody conflict that was the
consequence of the change of title from
Olu Itsekiri to
Olu of Warri by Chief
Obafemi
Awolowo's government in 1952. This paper,
written over half a century ago gives us an eye witness account
of the unfortunate events of that era, as it were, from the ring side.
The paper, rendered in the chief's inimitable style, demonstrates both
a remarkable degree of knowledge and forthrightness and
a thoroughness in the analysis of
historical events, the hallmarks of his publications in the
internationally reputable
Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria. This is what earned him the well-deserved award of an honorary
degree of Doctor of Letters from
Another significant contribution by UHS being a society of
intellectuals, mostly academics in the Diaspora is striving to raise
the intellectual tone of debate of the issues. People should be free
to conduct academic analysis of issues and engage in intellectual
discourse dispassionately and without
rancour. Surely, there are universally
accepted norms, or ethics if you like, governing the conduct of
intellectual discourse in the civilized world. Hitherto, the
literature on the Warri crisis has been
characterised by the combative style of
writers who resort to gratuitous insults and ad
hominem. By so doing, they hope to
bring their opponents into contempt and public ridicule, thereby
calling their credibility to question. Writers invariably assume,
according to Sikere, that all readers are
gullible and have neither the inclination nor time to verify sources.
So they sometimes cite a string of references which Obiomah says
smacks of name-dropping. But much worse, according to
Sikere, they indulge in selective
referencing, quoting only from books and passages therein that favour
their case; sometimes crediting authors out of context, distorting
original sources, deliberately misinforming, misinterpreting
quotations and purposely withholding relevant information with the
assurance that the original sources will be out of the reach of the
average reader.
UHS by adopting three major approaches has, according to Ekeh, "tried
to erase such obscurantism from the history of Urhoboland and that of
the western Niger Delta". First they have begun publishing books that
are either out-of-print or not widely available. Then they have
started to reproduce the so-called British "Treaties of Protection" of
the western Niger Delta and posting them in the website, Urhobo
waado (http://www.waado.org). This they hope will serve to democratize our history so that
information is no more than the price of a visit to the website at the
nearest cybercafe. People should now be
able to scrutinize and interpret documents and make up their minds
without the spin from Itsekiri establishment or Urhobo loyalists
alike. By taking advantage of advances in information technology, one
no longer needs to be a conventional historian to be able to dabble in
the study of history or the writing of history.
But more importantly, the adoption of these approaches has helped to
throw new light into our understanding of the main issues underlying
the Warri crisis, so that, at the end, the fair, non-partisan reader
should be able to declare like this reviewer, "I can see clearly now!"
as the following few examples will show.
It is no longer excusable to continue to rely on the Itsekiri
Leaders' Forum version of Urhobo-Itsekiri historical relationships in
Warri. A re-examination and re-interpretation of the evidence, using
modern tools and techniques have shown it, according to Ekeh, to be
"bogus and illogical in the extreme". The
authenticity of the British Protection Treaties with the "Chiefs of
Benin River and Jekeri territory (in
It is an exercise in futility to continue to cite outdated court
judgements in support of ownership of
Warri. The judgements on which the
Itsekiri establishment rely are the
product of corrupt British colonial imperialist policies, what
Obiomah describes as "the age of British jingoism, trickery and
truculence". Two examples of this can be cited. The colonial
authorities made sure, through corruption and complicity that Chief
Dore Numa, the
British Political Agent won every one of the numerous cases brought
against him even, by his fellow Itsekiri. No useful purpose can be
served by insisting on citing the notorious case of a judgement given
in favour of Numa in 1925 by the infamous
British judge T.D. Maxwell against whom a clear case of conflict of
interest has been established.
Why do the Itsekiri continue to favour all the legal cases they won
in the Numa era as evidence that they own
Warri, while turning a blind eye to more recent
judgements in favour of the Urhobo? It is
invidious for the Itsekiri establishment, on behalf of the otherwise
sophisticated and law abiding Itsekiri people, to choose to uphold
decisions of a colonial judicial system which has been severely flawed
and to ignore decisions of courts of superior jurisdiction like the
Supreme Court of Nigeria. Why do they persist in assuming the
anti-democratic posture of flouting the Nigerian Constitution in which
the Land Use Decree (now Act) of 1979 is firmly enshrined?
The Itsekiri establishment in this day and age, clings to the
doctrine of overlordship with all the
oppressive features of feudalism it exhibited in medieval
It was fraudulent to invoke the power of
overlordship of the
Olu when there was no king at the time of
the leases or the trial. It is true that
Dore once styled himself as the
Olu. But
Dore was an impostor who was discredited
by the Itsekiri for cheating them and misusing his authority. There is
difference in the understanding of the meaning of ownership. The
Itsekiri claim is absolutist; Warri is owned by the King of Itsekiri,
while the Urhobo and Ijaw claims are limited; i.e. they do not exclude
ownership of portions of Warri by other communities. And yet,
ironically, it is the Itsekiri who are the settlers in the Warri
District, while the natives are Ijaw and
Sobo tribes, as published in the Southern
Nigeria Civil Service Handbook of 1904. It is therefore understandable
that in its submission to the
Danjuma Panel UHS declared that it is "the
Itsekiri establishment's absolutist and obdurate approach to
From such studies, it is possible to deduce the source and cause of
the inter-ethnic conflicts persisting in the Warri area to this day.
They include:
The breach of the spirit of the British Protection Treaties.
The appointment of Chief Dore
Numa as their Political Agent in Warri
District was done in bad faith. As expected, he then surreptitiously
proceeded to lease Urhobo lands to the British in the absence of those
with whom they entered into agreement in the 1890s. By so doing, the
seeds of inter-ethnic conflicts which, according to Ekeh "have ruined
Undue reliance by the Itsekiri establishment on corrupt
judgements and duplicity of the
British.
In particular, their insistence that the 1925 judgement is still valid
and that overlordship
means that all Itsekiri are overlords, even
if they are not landlords in
Lack of political will by successive governments, (colonial,
military, federal and state) to come to
grips with the problem and take the right and just decision. There is
every reason to believe that the recommendations and conclusions of
the Nnaemeka
Agu and
Idoko Commissions set up by government in
1993 and 1997 respectively to resolve the disputes over the ownership
of Warri are forgotten on the shelves gathering dust because they do
not favour the interests of the influential Itsekiri establishment. It
is not far-fetched to surmise that a similar fate awaits the report of
the Danjuma Presidential Panel submitted
in 2003 believed to be "favourable to the
indigenous people of
Why this fascination with the name Warri in preference to the
traditional Itsekiri? At a time when all Nigerian ethnic
nationalities are going back to their roots and rejecting corrupt
versions of their names and identity, the Itsekiri establishment
insists on adopting what at best is a foreign name, or at worst a
corrupt version of Iwere. Everything
originally bearing Itsekiri is now replaced by Warri:
Olu Itsekiri, chieftaincy titles of
Itsekiri kingdom, names of clubs and societies etc. are now changed to
reflect Warri. Why is Warri more important than Itsekiri? It is as if
the name Itsekiri is a term of
dishonour to be rejected in favour of
Warri. How can the Itsekiri live with this blatant paradox? Obiomah
asks rhetorically in his book, Who Owns Warri?" There is nothing in
the history of the western Niger Delta to justify this attraction that
remains the root of the deadly conflict in the region. For example;
the 1911 British Intelligence Report on the Itsekiri by Pender lists
all Itsekiri settlements with the names of their village heads. Warri
was not one of them. The revered Itsekiri historian, William Moore in
his book, History of Itsekiri, used the title
Olu of
Itsekiri more than 20 times, but
nowhere in the book did he use the title
Olu of Warri. Most of the members of the
Itsekiri establishment are not indigenes of
From their studies it has become clear to UHS that an adoption of a
live-and-let live approach is the only viable answer to the Warri
problem. They sound a note
of admonition; "while the Itsekiri
establisment concentrates all its wealth
and resources and its attention on Warri
�the Itsekiri countryside is dying from neglect�we all have a duty to
seek to improve Urhobo and Itsekiri rural areas which are today
terribly endangered. While we quarrel over Warri, our rural
communities are dying. Our streams are drying up. Pollution is killing
our fishes, animals and plants". In the words of the well-worn clich�,
we should all do well to sheathe our swords.
If all sides to the conflict harken to
this call, then Peter Ekeh and his Editorial and Management Committee
of UHS would, through this book, have fulfilled their mandate as
expressed in their motto: "Serving Urhobo history and culture and
advancing the welfare of the Niger Delta, particularly its
environment."
F. M. A. Ukoli,
F.A.S.
Oboiroro of
Effurun
1
The people of "Agbassa" of old, now
prefer to be addressed as Agbarha-Warri or Agbarha-Ame. However, in deference to historical reference consistent with the
use of the term in the book, I shall adopt the name Agbassa in this
review.