By Emmanuel Ogheneochuko Arodovwe
Renewed hostilities have erupted for the umpteenth time in the city of Warri. As has been common with such tension-soaked combative engagements, lives have been lost, bullet wounds sustained, and buildings and institutions torched. The crisis is linked to the 4th coronation anniversary of the Olu of Warri, traditional head of the Itsekiri ethnic group.
But the point of this article is to commend Senator Ede Dafinone’s cultured and peace-seeking statements in the face of understandable provocation by the Itsekiri group. Even when it was clear that the Itsekiri youths overreached their bounds by marching across Agbarha territory without permission in the guise of celebrating a coronation anniversary, and then chanting provocative statements of “we own Warri”, with men in military uniforms, accompanying them in full ammunition; and then breaking into the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU House), in 18, Okere Road, damaging the gates, shattering its glass windows and desecrating the hall, all in a calculated bid to provoke violent reactions, which they hope to use as excuse to lure the Nigerian military to invade the Urhobo people. But Senator Ede Dafinone’s calm demeanour and uncommon maturity have done so much to douse the tensions, much to the dismay and disappointment of the Itsekiri establishment and war aiders.
Senator Dafinone has called for calm, for roundtable discussions to address the issues and for a lasting resolution to the crisis. But to balance the issues, he has also seriously condemned the usual propensity of the Itsekiri people to invade the UPU House at the slightest provocation, destroy its facilities, and desecrate the institution that the edifice represents. It has happened too often to be ignored and it is commendable that the Senator addressed it.
The UPU House was built in 1980. It is the meeting centre for various Urhobo meetings. It has valuable items kept in it, and it represents the high culture, identity and dignity of the collective Urhobo people. The propensity to always torch the facility at the slightest provocation is what the Senator drew attention to in his speech. That some misguided Itsekiri people who do not deserve mention have challenged the Senator for condemning the act speaks loudly of the miseducation and poor orientation such people were bred with.
Warri is a cosmopolitan city that is jointly owned by the Urhobo, Itsekiri and the Ijaw. The name “Warri”, just as the name “Nigeria” is recent and British in its origin. It is a political concept and geographical expression to designate a territory that had been occupied several centuries earlier by mainly Urhobo people, and then Ijaws to the southeast. The Itsekiri, crucially, were the late comers to the city, and settled around the margins in communities such as Ugbuwangue and Ubeji to the south of the city.
This is how the Human Rights Watch, 2003, describes the three ethnic claimants to the city of Warri:
“Warri itself, the largest town, (though not the capital) of Delta State, is claimed as their homeland by three ethnic groups: the Itsekiri, the Urhobo and the Ijaw. The Itsekiri, a small ethnic group of a few hundred thousand people whose language is related to Yoruba (one of Nigeria’s largest ethnic groups), also live in villages spread out along the Benin and Escravos Rivers into the Mangrove forest riverine areas towards the Atlantic Ocean. The Urhobo, a much larger group numbering some millions related to the Edo-speaking people of Benin City live in Warri town and to the north, on land. To the south and east, also in the swampy riverine areas, are members of the western Ijaw, part of the perhaps ten million-strong Ijaw ethnic group, the largest of the Niger Delta, spread out over several states”.
The Itsekiri dispersal to the Warri area, as well as to Sapele, was as late as the late 19th century, resulting from the setting ablaze of their main settlement, Ebrohimi, now Koko, by the British in 1894 in search of Nana Olomu, the Itsekiri merchant monopolising trade with the Urhobo people, who inhabited the land, which the British were bent on penetrating into.
Crucially, it was another Itsekiri aspiring merchant, Dore Numa, who aided the British in invading the community to defeat his business rival. He would also aid the British three years later, in 1897, in their invasion of Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi of the Benin Kingdom.
As reward for his treacherous and saboteurial actions, Dore Numa was lavished with appointments by the British, including as Political Agent, and Permanent President to the Warri Court of Appeal. It was these appointments that granted Dore Numa a space for his signature beside those of the Agbarha chiefs, in the documents of lease of land to the British, when the latter needed the lands to set up residential quarters (in what is now GRA, Warri), and to build a cemetery for the burial of their domestic staffs, who were mainly from far away Calabar in eastern Nigeria, and had no villages nearby where they could be buried.
Dore Numa, who was from Odogone Village in the Benin River, would later chance upon that window of his appended signature to claim that these lands, and those of Sapele, were his and those of his Itsekiri ethnic group. The Itsekiri claim to Warri and the recurrent crisis that has followed from it has its first remote cause, therefore, in Dore Numa and his treacherous disposition, which has, through the decades, been carried over into the present. Had there not been Dore Numa, Itsekiri would have laid no claim whatsoever to a plot in Warri Township.
The Warri Crisis assumed a fresh heated dimension in 1952, when Chief Obafemi Awolowo, hurting from the Urhobo people’s preference for Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC over and above his AG, lobbied the Itsekiris, promised them to confer ownership of the Warri territory to them through a mere change of nomenclature of the title of “Olu of Itsekiri” as it then was, to “Olu of Warri”. To imagine that it was so simplistic to turn the truth of history by a mere twist of name in an attempt to inflict vengeance on a people who had simply made a political choice in the interest of their people, shows the vindictiveness and shallowness with which Chief Awolowo operated.
The second remote cause of the recurring Warri crisis must therefore be traced to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo of the Yoruba people of western Nigeria.
There is a third remote factor that can be identified. In the aftermath of the 1996 crisis resulting from the creation of the Warri Southwest Local Government Area and the illogical siting of its headquarters in Ogidigben, an Itsekiri community, the Delta State Government led by the then Military Administrator Col. John David Dungs, made a bold move of constituting a panel of inquiry to determine the remote and immediate cause of the crisis and make recommendations. The Panel was chaired by the late Justice Alhassan Idoko from Benue State. The report of the panel was never made public and its recommendations never implemented.
Reliable sources have it that part of the recommendations was the creation of a separate local government area for each of the contending ethnic groups living in the area. If that is done, a proper boundary delineation would then be made such that it would be clear to all who owned where in the area. Clashes and combative relations would also reduce significantly as everyone would mind their business within their local space undisturbed.
This recommendation remains the best to date about the Warri situation. But the recommendations were frustrated allegedly by Itsekiri influential figures within the presidency who felt threatened by that significant recommendation, as it would reveal their treachery in making claims of ownership to a larger territory through the appendage of Warri in the names of the Local Governments. And this is a very significant point.
Part of the lies that Chief Awolowo led the Itsekiris to believe in and live by was that by changing the name of the title to that of Warri, anything at all with the concept Warri attached to it automatically becomes that of the Itsekiri. And so they insisted on having the appendage “Warri” prefixed to the names of the Local Governments as Warri South, Warri Southwest, and Warri North.
The interpretation they gave to this existentiality was that they were the landowners of the three local government areas and were only magnanimous landlords in allowing others to inhabit the space with them. Such was the entitlement mentality that influenced the initial siting of the capital of the Warri Southwest in Ogidigben until violent reactions and superior reason won the day.
In bowing to pressure to ignore the recommendations of the Justice Alhassan Idoko-led Panel of Inquiry, the Military Administrations of Col John David Dungs, his successor Col. Walter Feghabor and all the civilian Governors from Chief Ibori till date, became the third remote culprits in the recurring crisis in Warri.
Distinct Local Governments for the three ethnic groups in the Warri Federal Constituency, as Justice Idoko recommended, remains the viable lasting solution to the problem. The appendage Warri to all the names of the local government areas is misleading and problematic. It only serves the mischievous interest of the Itsekiri group, who believe, misguidedly, that by prefixing the names of the local governments with Warri, then their king, who by another such mischievous act, got his title attached to the same concept, has his suzerainty extended across the territories covered by the local government areas. This is a self-delusion at best and self-deceit at worst.
But it is in this self delusion and self-deceit that the Itsekiri group have revered and have their being. Only in the past three months of the INEC re-delineation exercise, ordered by the Supreme Court, have they been awakened from their self-imposed dogmatic slumber to the stark reality of their pariah minority status across the three local government areas.
The chickens have now come to roost for the Itsekiri people. They have now been found out in their own self-deceit and delusion, thanks to the Nigerian Supreme Court and to INEC. As things stand, the Itsekiri ethnic group may have no representation at the state and federal levels until they seek concession from the Ijaw and Urhobo, the same ethnic groups they have denigrated and derided over the decades. It now appears more likely to be in the Itsekiri interest to call for the implementation of the Justice Alhassan Idoko-led Panel Recommendation which they resisted ab initio under the imagination that their falsehood would triumph over the truth forever.
It is this shocking reality staring the Itsekiri in the face, and the trepidation and frustration that have accompanied it, that they sought to ventilate in marching through Agbarha Streets and breaking into historical monuments, looting cultural artifacts and desecrating halls.
A point to be made about the events leading to this present crisis and the reactions that have followed, especially that of the peace-seeking Senator Ede Dafinone show a consistent pattern. This should be of interest to anyone in search of lasting solutions to the Warri problem.
First, tensions in Warri, since the coronation of the present Olu has always followed from activities in the palace, whether it is the coronation itself or anniversaries of the coronation. In his celebrated maiden speech at his coronation, the king conspicuously and deliberately left out reference to the other three kings in the Warri Federal Constituency, and noted provocatively that his kingdom shares boundaries with only the Oba of Benin. The Olu has proven in his actions over the past four years that he meant what he said in that speech. Unlike his immediate predecessor who went about building bridges of friendship and solidarity with his co-equals, the present Olu appears to be hostile and unwilling to relate with and recognize the legitimacy of the three other royals with whom he shares the Warri territorial space. This is a point that must be paid attention in seeking solutions to the problem.
The second point follows from the first. Without mincing words, it has to be said that the Itsekiri, not the Urhobo, not the Ijaw, have consistently been the aggressors and catalyst for fanning the embers of tensions and war in Warri. Historical records support this position. The signpost of the UPU House was uprooted without provocation about a year ago by the same Itsekiri group until the Delta State Governor ordered them to return it. Just before the delineation exercise proper, it was recorded that the Itsekiri invaded Agbarha community and burnt down a building. The consistency in Itsekiri aggression over the Warri situation must be paid attention to.
Third, the Urhobo have always chosen the path of peaceful coexistence, brotherly cohabitation and progress in the city of Warri. The statements by Senator Ede Dafinone in which he urged for restraint, for dialogue and for seeking common grounds for living together encapsulates the spirit of the Urhobo approach to the situation over the centuries. Despite having the greatest and most convincing evidence of ownership of the Warri city, as it relates to earliest arrival, population strength, linguistic and cultural evidence, etc., Urhobo people have always been peace seekers and peace makers. This is the tradition that the Senator maturedly represented and extended in his admonition to maintain peace and order in the city.
It is hoped that the relevant authorities will heed the senator’s counsel and do all that is needed to give peace a chance in Warri.
A final point is important. The incumbent Governor of Delta State is a Warri boy by all standards. He was born and grew up in the adjoining city of Effurun. He has shown commitment, over the two years of his assumption of office, to turn the landscape of Warri around for good, in terms of infrastructure. There are three overhead bridges under construction in different parts of the metropolis. There are over a dozen road constructions at the different level of completion at the same time. The temperament of the Governor to this vision is not difficult to discern. He understands that Warri has suffered neglect for over three decades, partly for lack of will and commitment on the part of government, but moreso because of the retinue of crises that had distracted government from attending to the city.
The present Governor has demonstrated unparalleled commitment to make up for the deficit by his actions. The present unrests provoked by Itsekiri high-handedness must be nipped in the bud in order not to distract the good efforts of the Governor.
Lastly, it is high time that INEC did the needful and complete the delineation process for peace to reign in Warri. Under no circumstances should INEC or the courts succumb to Itsekiri threat or inducements to cut corners or shy away from the evidence on the ground. A people may choose to deceive themselves and even some others for some time, successfully. But it is impossible to deceive everyone successfully for ever.
– Emmanuel Ogheneochuko Arodovwe wrote in from Warri, Delta State emmaochuko@gmail.com
