| 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 cliché, 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.