The common mentality amongst Nigerians is to always associate the Igbo with the stereotype “east” even thou the eastern Nigeria from an objective geographical perspective is Taraba and Adamawa State.
South East geographically includes Cross River and Akwa Ibom states.
However the general perception is that Igbos come from East of the Niger and once you cross the Niger bridge at Asaba you are in Igbo land.
But is this really true??
Of course not..
Igbos certainly did not spring from the soil and certainly did not come from the East.
Archeology and anthropology demonstrates that the dispersal of the proto kwa peoples from the fertile Volta-Niger basin following the desertification of the Sahara >6000 years ago, brought the ancestors of the Yoruba and Igbo into this part of the country, yes the Igbo more accurately migrated from a Northwesterly direction.
This is attested by the fact that Yoruba oral legends often speak of the Igbo as their neighbours in the distant past.
As the Igbo took on their new environment, a branch of the Igbo split in two with one half settling on the Western half of the Niger River and the other half crossing the River.
This means that there is a branch of the Igbo which never crossed the Niger…
They are the Ikas.. they are aboriginal to the lands they currently occupy.
This group formed the foundational framework for what would become the Enuani, Ukwuani and Oru clans of the Igbo today.
Thus as Igbos were settling down in the Eastern part of the Niger, they were settling down at the same time on the western end.
Clues even indicate that the Igbo settlement on the Western side was far more extensive than it is currently but for Benin expansion using Portuguese firearms.
The Ikas have no tradition of coming from anywhere but trace their origin to a primordial figure called Ogele.
The other group which crossed the Niger went on to form the precursor of what is today Northern Enugu (Nsukka) and northern Ebonyi groups which probably explains the myriad of linguistic and cultural similarities between the three groups despite the distance of separation.
Thus much of the igbo subgroup on the western side of the Niger is aboriginal. People need to remove that mentality that they came from the East. The West Igbo towns with histories of migration from Nri, Awka, Isu, Owerri etc are recent settlements known as secondary migrations. This aboriginal population are the reasons why the numerous tales of migrations of warlords from Benin did not constitute a language or cultural shift amongst the people who were more numerically than the new settlers.
Likewise it is foolish to treat migrations from the western part of the Niger as returnees… e.g the Akarai (Ogbaru), Onicha, etc.
Where were they returning to? They were fleeing their original homes because of wars.
Mentalities such as these is why one day Edo and Urhobo would wake up and tell Igbos in Delta State to return to “their homeland” in the East.
Credit: Charles Alozie.
