Opinion
….the root cause of identity denial in Ikwerre, Oh baby and most Igno tribes in Rivers State
By Professor Chidi Osuagwu
1. THE British project of De-Igbonization of Riverine Igbo/Plot of War against the Igbo has basis in resources control and started actively after the Iva Valley/Enugu Coalmime Massacre of 1949. The British, after World War II, had a policy of using resources from the Colony to rebuild war devastated Britain. Coal, mined at Enugu and shipped to Britain was part of the grand plan. The ‘rebellious’ Igbo had other thoughts. The British were plundering the Igbo coal and paying pittance to the Igbo Coalminers. The Mners protested and the British massacred. The immortal Osadebe song “Onuigbo” memorialises the massacre. The Enugu massacre didn’t end at Enugu. It led to a general strike, led by Michael Imoudu, in Nigeria. It reverbrated across the British empire, particularly, Africa and speed up the independence campaigns. The British marked out the Igbo for destruction, including war. This is the origin of the plot for the Biafra war, which was originally scheduled to take place before or by 1958. Sir Robert Stapledon, Governor of Eastern Nigeria pressed Britain to defer the War.
2. At the time, Britain already knew that some much bigger resource than coal existed in Eastern Nigeria – petroleum. They moved fast to insulate it from Igbo control and influence. Independence, as decreed by the United Nations after World War II, was unrushing and Britain moved fast. They sought to create Rivers Region as outlined below and failed. They moved HQ of Shell Petroleum from Owerrri to Port-Harcourt. They set out to, ferociously, deigbonise the riverine Igbo, recruiting local hyenas to their cause. They used the pretext of the Biafra War they ploted and excuted to destroy the Igbo and Igbo culture in their ‘Rivers Region’ as outlined below.
3 . Kay Williamson is well known to me (she was there when I took my PhD at the University of Port-Harcourt). She was a British agent recruited from University of Ibadan to University of Port-Harcourt. Her sole mandate was to prove that riverine Igbo dialects were Igboid languages and not Igbo dialects. She was executing all kinds of linguistic ‘Bubuyaya’, until Computer programming came up. With Language-markers she had programmed the computer to draw map of Igbo Language Area and Igboid Languages areas. When the computer, based on the Language-markers, could not identify Igboid languages, but classed her Igboids as regular dialects of Igbo, as known by linguists all along, she broke down and died. When she died the Ijaw buried her at Kaiama, their traditional headquarters as national heroine. She was expanding their territory and diminishing the Igbo. Not minding that the majority of the people of Degema Division are of Igbo stock, not Izon, and yet the Igbo, in good faith, accept their Ijaw identity…not claiming them as part of Rivers Igbo. All parties mock the ‘Igbo-Sampson-at-Gaza’!
4. Kay Williamson’s career was in furtherance of a secret colonial office policy document to the Willink Commission of 1957/58. The British had wanted the Commission to create a Rivers Region for 900,000 Ijaw. In effect, de-Igbonizing the Igbo in the then Rivers Province.
5. The Willink Commission put a final seal on the identities of the peoples of the then Rivers Province by:
a. Noting that the number of 900,000 Ijaw claimed by the British Colonial Office memo was fictional. This is because an earlier working document on the population of Rivers Province earlier given to them, by the same colonial officials, had indicated that the Province had a total of 703,000 people. Of these 150,000 were Ogoni of Ogoni Division. 250,000 were Ijaw of Brass and Degema Divisions. 303,000 were Igbo of Ahoada and Port-Harcourt Divisions.
6. The above facts, embedded in the Willink Commission Report, put the final seal on the facts that the peoples of prewar Ahoada and Port-Harcourt Divisions are Igbo peoples and nothing else.
7. It is clear that the British, judging from their hatred and anti-Igbo policies since and the career of Kay Williamson, never gave up on their policy of De-Igbonization, and Ijawization, of Rivereine Igbo at the expense of the Igbo Nation and British profit. It is also, clear, from their heroic treatment of Kay Williamson that the Ijaw are complicit, as default beneficiaries, of the genocidal British machinations against the Igbo.
8. “Phil, our gamble about identity has failed!” was a statement made before his friend, Phillip Nkwocha of Emeabiam, and myself by Senator Obi Wali in 1991. Shortly after that he died for agitating for Igweọcha/Port-Harcourt State. There are, apparently, some self-serving rivereine Igbo still gambling about their identity…and who will, ultimately, fail as Obi Wali lamented.
9. All the current campaign against the possible emergence of an Igbo of true Rivers State origin is part of the British planned De-Igbonization of riverine Igbo for Petroleum’s sake. The tragedy is that Igbo “Harlots-of-Jericho” have been recruited to be the money-chomping face of the evil campaign against the Great Igbo Spirit and Nation. History Will Laugh at Them!!!
10. It is noteworthy that some Ikwerre Igbo elite bought into the ruse for gain. They switched code from distinguishing themselves from being Ikwerre-Igbo (which the British themselves had grouped as part of the Oratta-Ikwerri sub-tribe of the Igbo) in constrast to the Isuama Igbo (a core Imo Basin Igbo from Isuawa in Enugu State to Isuowu in Etche, and including; Isu-ochi, Isu-ikwuato, Isu-Ngele, Isu-Njaba, Isu-Otuakwu, Isu-Obiangwu and from Isu-Ohazara to Ihiala) to contrasting themselves with Igbo.
Regretting the error of playing the enemies game, a prominent Ikwerre leader, Senator Obi Wali, said to his friend, Mazi Phillip Nkwocha, before me: “Phil, our gamble about identity has failed!” Today, based on what his father taught him, his son, Ihunwo Obiwali, is an Ikwerre-reintegrationist-into-Igbo-fold activist. But, many of those his father’s generation took to the Whiteman’s Communion have not recognised that the Church service is over. Gambling about identity is a serious affair. Go ask the African slave-time diaspora.”
14th Jauary, 2025.
C.E.
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