That the Aro and Arochukwu have been in the process of Igbonisation, as Dike and Ekejiuba called it, because of the sheer weight of Igbo population and Culture in the neighbourhood, does not alter their fundamental archeology and history as a synthetic people who exist beyond Igboland
By Chidi G Osuagwu
Imperialism is Identity-stripper!
Egypt and the Arab Spring
The invasion of Africa, in the last more than one thousand years; first by Arabs, then Europeans has meant the gradual reduction of Africans to corpses; living dead. The identity-stripped and personality-warped is a living dead. Unless one understands this, he would not understand what is wrong with Africa; wrong with us. If we now have bad governance in Africa, not based on the Oma n’achi (the knowledgeable leads) principle, it is because ‘ozu’ are ruling Africa. The post-invasion (after slavery and colonialism) chief problem of Africa is the crisis of identity. Some short stories will illustrate this point.
Sometime in 2009, I went for a conference in Morocco. They gave participants a cocktail party at which two bands entertained. One band was Arab, the other Amazigh (Berber).
It was clear the Arab band was playing non-African, while Berber band played African music. The Arab band had only men (sharia-compliant!), while the Berber band had males and females, like Africans would. The lead female dancer moved across to where I, the darkest man in the audience of mainly white people, sat and asked me to dance. We danced.
Later I got to understand that the Berbers, 52% of the population, whose culture the Arabs suppress in the name of Islam are intensely nationalistic; pan-Africanist. They would rather identify with black Africa and have an identity than identify with Arabs in the name of Islam and lose their identity. Unless we understand this identity crisis in North Africa, we cannot understand why the so called Arab spring has run into a desert storm.
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The Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, for instance, are salafists; like Boko Haram in Nigeria, who are Arab cultural purists; identity-strippers! They ran into trouble because they are trying to strip others, like Coptic Christians, of their identity. The Egyptian Army intervened to avert a civil war, like President Anwar Sadat did in 1982 and got shot for it.
Aro roots of Ikwere identity crises
In 1991, Babangida regime created new states without creating Igweocha or Port-Harcourt as requested by Igbo people of Rivers State, led by Senators Obi Wali and Francis Ellah. A short while later, I accompanied Mazi Philip Nkwocha, a friend of Obi Wali’s, to visit him at his home in Umuigbo. As Senator Wali saw us enter his house, he shouted at his friend “Phil, what happened?” His friend retorted, in surprise, “Obi about what?” “How come you people asked for Igbo States without including Port-Harcourt?” Wali further asked his perplexed friend. At this point I had to speak up to minimize the confusion. I knew something they both didn’t know.
Now to consider the Aro a purely Igbo people; and hold Igbo responsible for Aro mischief is the height of identity confusion. One day, the Cross-river Ejegham, who own the Ibini-Ukpabi soul of the Aro system, the Ibibio who control the social organizational Ekpe and the Akpa that supplied some fighters will turn around and blame the Igbo, from among whom a few medicine men were coopted, for inventing Ibini-Ukpabi and Aro slavery
In 1991 Emeka Omeruah, from Imo State (later Abia), was Military Governor of Enugu State, while Anthony Ogugua, from Anambra (later Enugu) was in Imo State. As the agitation for states heated, these two Governors, quietly, set up a committee to harmonious Igbo demand for States. I was a committee member.
Four states were identified; Abia, Anioma, Enugu and Port-Harcourt. Outreach groups were constituted to reach out to the Igbo in the different states. But events were moving so rapidly that the group decided to go with only demands that would not elicit identity confusion. Port-Harcourt was dropped, for this reason, for the Igbo there to do the best they could under the circumstance.
Hearing this Senator Wali sat still for a long while, then said “Phil, our gamble about identity has failed! You will buy me three traditional Igbo dresses.
I will attend this year’s Ahiajoku Lecture, and seek to deliver that of next year”. He never made it! He was assassinated a short while later, his friends believed, for his continued Port-Harcourt State creation agitation. When I read later that Dr Wali’s son, Ihunwo, was one of the leaders of the Congress for the Liberation of Ikwerre People, COLIP; an ‘Ikwerre-back-to-Igbo-fold’ youth movement, whose mission is to wean Ikwerre off Biafra-war propaganda, I knew where he was coming from.
Identify-confusion is a horrible disease. Barack Obama’s greatest political strength is his very early decision to be African-American and nothing else. He knew where his father came from; and where his mother came from. Those who pretend in America that they are, socially, half-white and half-black, for example, end up as friends of psychiatrists.
“Our gamble about identity has failed!” That statement, by a man who, a short while later, was murdered; for his just state-creation aspiration, still haunts one to this day. And no one can understand the current crisis in Rivers State without understanding the identity crises there. For instance what it means to be Ijaw, but not Izon or ‘core-Ijaw’. And, to be Igbo-speaking, but not Igbo? Or, in fact, all of the above. Not to talk of Ogoni ‘war-of-all-against-all’.
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When I observed to Senator Wali that his person epitomized the Ikwerre identity dilemma; his very village is Umuigbo (Igbo-children/Igbo descendants/Igbo people), but he too claimed not to be Igbo, his response pointed to the great depth of our identity crises. He told us that his problem was not Igbo identity, as such, but Aro-Ikwerre domination. He informed us that he used to attend the Council meeting of the Village deity priesthood with his father. Even as a child, who carried his father’s stool, it struck him that of the seven stools of the Council, the small Aro population in Umuigbo controlled four. That information struck me.
Famous writer, Elechi Amadi, had given me a variant of this Aro-Ikwerre problematic tale in 1985. We had served together on an interview panel at the then Rivers State College of Education, Port-Harcourt. He told me he had no problem with Igbo identity, but had problem when the Aro-Ikwerre, during the Nigeria-Biafra War, plotted to kill him. Now, it seems the Ikwerre suffer from a significantly misdirected anger.
They are, in this case; holding their Isuama-Igbo (Ikwerre, traditionally, distinguished between ‘Ikwerre and Isuama’; not ‘Ikwerre and Igbo’) kinsmen, who are ethically more related to them than to the Aro, accountable for Aro domination.The Early British, before oil became a factor of ethnic classification in the Lower Niger, had a cultural sub-group of the Igbo they called Orratta-Ikwerre (that is Owerri-Ikwerre, in current usage), who, both call the heartland Igbo as Isuama. Ekwensu wu amaghi ihe! The Devil is Ignorance! The solution to our identity crises, then, is ‘Know self, know other!’
Now to consider the Aro a purely Igbo people; and hold Igbo responsible for Aro mischief is the height of identity confusion. One day, the Cross-river Ejegham, who own the Ibini-Ukpabi soul of the Aro system, the Ibibio who control the social organizational Ekpe and the Akpa that supplied some fighters will turn around and blame the Igbo, from among whom a few medicine men were coopted, for inventing Ibini-Ukpabi and Aro slavery. That would be a most uncharitable treatment of truth, but the world is a clever place.
That the Aro and Arochukwu have been in the process of Igbonisation, as Dike and Ekejiuba called it, because of the sheer weight of Igbo population and Culture in the neighbourhood, does not alter their fundamental archeology and history as a synthetic people who exist beyond Igboland. Aro exist, physically and culturally, at the very Igbo border (that is why they are called Aro-okeigbo; Igbo-boundary-Aro).
An informed internet site gives the following information on the Aro Confederacy: Created: 1690; Capital: Arochukwu; Official languages: Igbo, Ibibio, Ijaw …etc; …; Dissolved: 1902 (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Aro_Confederacy). Where, then is the pure ‘Igbo Aro’? Aro sins cannot be visited on the Igbo or Ibibio, who were the chief victims; leaving off the coastal Ijaw and Efiks; who were the ultimate slave-traders, in direct contact with European slavers.
Closer home, and happier; Okenze BG Okonkwo, Obowu Development Association President-General, visited the Abuja branch recently. He was surprised to have some attendant introduce himself as Obowu man from Amachara, Umuopara, in Abia State.
Luckily my brother, High-chief BC Osuagwu, whose wife is, logically, High-lolo was present to explain. A branch of our Umuabazu-Umunachi people migrated to Amachara. They, of course, retain the name Umuabazu as the branch of our Umuikwe kindred retains the name Umuikwe at Ogbodi, Umuopara.
As Opara Asonye (father of Dr. Michael I Okpara) said in an interview, in 1977 “Umuhu and Okaiuga are Ohuhu. My grandfather Onyemobi said we came from Obowu. We all came from Obowu because the names of the villages on both sides are the same.” Former Provost of AICE, Owerri, from Umunwanwa Umuopara, Prof SN Nwosu, had also asserted in a television Interview some years ago, that Umuopara people migrated from Obowu, which explains the presence of my people at Amachara and Ogbodi. Also, my mother’s Ehume Obowu people migrated to form Ehume Umuopara. When the last Eho (totem tree of Eho-ume; Ehume) died, in the early 1950s, I saw them come for the funeral, in long lines, with their celebration guns firing in Uwuwuru-egbe.
If we recall; when the British colonial soldiers thought they had defeated Obowu, in 1911, our Mbaloha (Ohuhu and Umuopara) kinsmen started shelling them from across the Imo River to their discomfiture, forcing Britain to negotiate with Obowu. Would their ill-informed descendants come to Obowu’s support today, in similar circumstane? Can we now appreciate the cost of loss of identity-consciousness between us and our Ohuhu/Umuopara kinsmen?
It was not of-course a one way flow of solidarity. Support flowed from Obowu to our Mbaloha kinsmen, too. As Isichei’s Igbo Worlds informs “When we were children, Abam people came to Aguebi-Umuagu … two villages appeared at once with their guns, attacked and finished Abam people. Abam people never escaped each time they strayed into Ohuhu because we are Abam in our own way.
In those days, before our people went to war they were prepared by medicinemen … Some of the medicine men came from Mgbowo or Obowo and Ugwueke. The most famous came from Obowo … captains were chosen by the medicine men through a test.” Solidarity of Obowu kinsmen kept Ohuhu free from slave raiders. And later solidarity of Ohuhu helped sustain Obowu dignity in encounter with British colonialism. Identity is everything! No identity, no dignified existence!!
With independence from Britain struggle, Obowu recovered her old socio-political rhythm; producing from her roots some of the best leaders; heroes and heroines Eastern Nigeria has had in modern times.
Obowu, and her Etiti confederates, in recovery, have also earned the admiration of others such that former Biafran leader, General Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu could say, in 2002, “They tell me the best things in Igboland come from Etiti (the collective name for Obowo and Uboma now divided into two local govts); I, also, am from Etiti”. This paper is part of a movement for Obowu identity recovery and rectification, which hopes to set the pace for other peoples of Igboland and Africa. We should expand the discourse in an organic fashion. We should talk next with our Uboma (including Nsu) confederates, then our Ohuhu and Umuopara (Mbaloha) kinsmen, followed by Ezumoha-Isuama, all-Igbo and, then, all Africa (including African Diaspora).NDU M IKENGA NDU M IHITTE
•Chidi G Osuagwu, PhD is of the Department of Biomedical Technology Federal University of Technology, Owerri, delivered the piece at this year’s Ezumezu Lecture, a colloquium organized by the Obowu Development Association (Federated), on the 16th of August, 2025 in Obowo.
•Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly of the writer/author and do not represent the views of The Daily Crucible.
