WESTERN IJAW AND HER ITSEKIRI NEIGHBOURS IN PRE-COLONIAL TIMES

ABSTRACT

As a history of inter-group relations among the Western-Ijaw and Itsekiri people of middle belt region of Nigeria before 1900, what has been attempted here is really a survey of their inter-group contact. The available findings in this study support the detailed history of their socio-economic and political relations in the pre-colonial time. It is however, important to draw attention once again to a few aspects of this survey. Firstly, it is clear that the unit of operations among the Western-Ijaw and Itsekiri were very small. For most of them the clan was the highest level of political organization. Even for the kingdoms of Western-Ijaw and Itsekiri, the component parts were not well knitted together, and it is an autonomous group. The family was the known unit of operation and brought members together closely. Secondly, there was a great deal of interaction largely as result of trade, the people of Western-Ijaw were in touch with the people of Itsekiri, and trade ensured among them.1 They travelled on foots, by canoes, and displayed their wares especially on their market days but as for the Western-Ijaw which was on urban centre trade took place there at any time. They also engaged in selling from each other clan slaves during the period of the slave trade. Indeed a map of modern Nigeria showing the various roots of trade in this period the people who now make up Nigeria and Delta State are not removed from the other as it sometimes thought and publicly asserted. Finally, the development of the two clan were unequal being that they both dwelt in the forest region, they tended to remain within their smaller units and to engaged in much 53 more limited trading activities, because they mostly use smaller units and to engage in much limited trading activities, because they mostly use foot as a means of transportation but then the Urhobo people being that they were close to main river made use of canoes.2 This unequal development continued, where by Western-Ijaw developed quickly into a major city through the 20th century, and was to be a major factor in the history of the colonial period of Nigeria’s history.2