AjaanaOka

Regarding the explanation you provided on how our discussion prompted your re-thinking... I'd very much like to hear more about your "neat" explanation for the Akalaka movement. If for nothing else, then just out of curiosity.

Regarding the Benin claims for Asa... As it turns out, there are hardly any intelligence reports written on Asa. I have not come across any, and historians like Oriji have noted that hardly anything was written about them during the colonial period. Only one author I know of (Nwaguru) cited an intelligence report from 1920, but I have not been able to source a copy from anywhere. There is though some documentation from the Native Court era. In 1927, J. Jackson wrote an assessment report on the Asa Native Court area. In it, he stated that based of the local claims, the villages can be grouped into two "origin" groups; those who claim to have come "from Ikwerre" and those who claim to have come "from Ngwa". Benin was supposedly not mentioned in this assessment report, neither was the claim of being "from Benin". That said, it is always possible that such detail could have been inadvertently (unintentionally) eclipsed due to the fact that the Asa are so "obviously Igbo". If anyone were to ask my opinion, I would say that there are a few things we can consider. The "Asa homeland" is claimed to be in the vicinity of Obigbo. Recently (since the 1970s), we've seen a common trend of "from Benin" within the stretch of Ekpeye to Obigbo. In one way or another, various wards or compounds within the communities in this stretch tell of a "from Benin" migration. I would say that it is very possible that those wards migrated with and/or settled among the Ipu and Oza. The current socio-political mood in southern Nigeria has made it possible to use these stories as anchors to further the traditions of Benin origin and/or migration.

As for actual “from Benin” claims in the Ngwa/Asa/Ndoki axis, it is really only the Umueze (Ndoki) that have a definitive tradition of Benin migration that was shared with colonial administration. Umueze is also the only community with a clear early history of Ijaw relationship and a Central Delta migration claim. However, they also are recent settlers in the area, having arrived in the late 18th century. But now that Umuokobo, Ohanku, Ohambele, etc. constitute a clan alongside the Umueze (i.e. they are all now Ndoki), it is easy to see how (as time goes by in the reconciliation of a clan identity) both the traditions of Benin migration and the traditions of Ijaw relationship can also be adopted by these communities alongside their pre-existing traditions.

So long story short, while I have not read any intelligence reports where the Ipu and Oza stated that they come from Benin, I do not think it far fetched to at least expect individual or some collective compounds and wards that do have such a tradition within Asa.

As for the 17th century dating provided in that article that Igboid shared, to make a long story short, I would certainly say it is too late of a date, especially if we want to believe the Ngwa traditions that claim they expanded to "Igolo Oma" before Bonny became a kingdom. In fact, we can ignore the Ngwa traditions regarding Igolo Oma, focus on the traditions of Bonny itself and still get an earlier approximation than the 17th century. Alagoa and Fombo note in their research of Ijaw traditions that the account with respect to Bonny acknowledges Ijaw sojourning among Ngwa (in what is now Ndokiland) prior to the Ijaw expanding to Bonny. If the Ijaw expansion into Bonny occurred that that 14th/15th century timespan, it suggest Ngwa expanded from their own “homeland” long before the 17th century. However, to make a long story long... In a way, I do agree with that 17th century dating, it actually matches up with one aspect of the working chronology I have. I’ll demonstrate how/why later.

Yes, after all these many years, I finally do have a working chronology, thanks in large part to you and the culmination of all our discourse over the years. I’ll share it in the next post. Of course, it is just a working chronology and always stands to be revisited in light of new information. I’ll provide the details of the working chronology below, and I can expand on particular parts of it as well if you want. The following comes from attempts at examining the traditions of various Igbo-speaking and non-Igbo speaking groups in the area. Also, to be 100% transparent, I have completely thrown out the Umunneoha tradition of origin that has become so popular both among the academia and within Ngwa circles. I have thrown it out is due to the following reasons:

1. Accounts of events pre and post Imo from groups within the Ngwa side of the Imo

2. The entirety of Mbaise, which many Ngwa communities claim to share affinity, recognize the existence of Ngwa on the east side of the Imo, pre-Isuama. Mbaise also does not acknowledge a migration origin from Isuama.

3. We have established here on NL numerous times that Jones & Forde’s reconstruction of dispersion within Igboland (and the “homeland hypothesis” that developed from it) only sufficiently explains Isu/Isuama movements.

4. Jones & Forde’s assertion that the Ngwa came from Orlu is based off the claims of some known villages in Ngwa that remember migrating from Amaigbo or the Amaigbo axis. These communities traditions do not reflect the traditions of founding settlements (typically known as Okpuala) within the Ngwa.

5. The claim of migrating from Umunneoha actually first surfaced in 1973 in Nwaguru’s book. Nwaguru was Ngwa and he himself believed in the central homeland hypothesis and sought to reconcile Ngwa traditions with the hypothesis. He did so by furthering Jones & Forde’s misinterpretation of the Imo legend. The Imo legend was never a tradition of origin (in the sense of a migration). Rather, it only served to affirm kinship with Mbaise and establish the time from when Ngwa clan identity began. It was a response to the sudden environmental changes at that time.

AjaanaOka

My working chronology for Ngwa expansion

Nfulala; Pre-WADP (West African Dry Period); Pre-1000s

The stretch of communities from Ahiara (north-central Mbaise) to Nsulu (north-eastern Ngwa) constituted a large block of autochthonous communities. They do not acknowledge a single common ancestor, and save for a few short distance migrations in this contiguous space, the communities claim to have originated in their current location; what is locally called "Nfulala". Based off my working chronology, I presume that many of these communities had developed into clans of their own by this period (before the Little Ice Age). They may share claims of kinship with one or two other clans and share common tutelary and ritual aspects (though often times without the memory of a common ancestor). However, the idea of a unifying name for these communities did not exist.

For instance, Oboama and Umunama in south-central Mbaise acknowledge kinship but don't recall the name of their common ancestor. The set of ten loosely integrated villages (or village-groups?) in north-western Mbaise (Ahiara) mention a common ancestor, but no idea where he came from. Aside from the "Imo" legend, the Ukwu clan in northern Ngwa does not have traditions that acknowledge any "brothers" among the surrounding communities, and just as with Ahiara, the Ukwu group acknowledges a single common ancestor among themselves but with no statement of where he may have come from. Nsulu and Ntigha (northern and north-eastern Ngwa are two large groups that do not have any memory of a common ancestor, but acknowledge that they are brothers. There is also the claim that they are from the Ukwu group, but the Ukwu group claims to be unaware of a migration. I could go on, but I'll assume the context is relatively clear.

I gave this a dating of pre-1000s for two reasons:

1. I have no idea how long this period lasted. I am aware of an incident where archeological artifacts that were discovered in the area dating to 9th century B.C. Memory of anything beyond the current modern composition of village-groups is lost. So it’s difficult to speculate on the dynamics pre-1000s outside of general things like “being an Iron Age society”.

2. It gives enough of a distance in time that I believe is reasonable to account for the adoption of "Ngwa" as an ethnonym. It is well-established that the "Ngwa" ethnonym is tied to the development of the Imo, but the communities claim to have been living in the area while the river was still a shallow stream, and the original course of the Imo (according to Oboama Umunama, Ubahi, etc.) ran elsewhere. These communities acknowledge the existence of the other groups at this time, affirming the existence of this autochthonous stretch and affirming the lack of an “Ngwa people”.

Expansion During the WADP; 1000 - 1400

Initially, I had assumed the area shared a related set of traditions that encoded the event of the Imo, but after our conversation some time ago about the Little Ice Age, I shifted the the point of my focus and started doing more digging, research and interviewing. It turns out there are traditions that encode the memory of early long-distance movements during periods of dryness. This has led me to consider these early expansions as potentially distinct from the massive and more well-known "waves" that are associated with the academia's current understanding of Ngwa migrations. From what I gathered, there are communities in the southernmost parts of Ngwa, like Ihie, Obokwe, and even Ohuru (in Asa) and Umuagbai (in Ndoki) that are part of this early population dynamic. For the working chronology, placing this event within the early phases of the WADP made the most sense for a few reasons.

1. Some of the Ngwa communities in this axis have traditions that assert their movement while the Imo was still shallow. This suggest the the river beheading event had not yet occurred.

2a. There are two kinds of ofo I want to contrast. The lineage ofo and the Ngwa clan ofo (known as Ofo Asoto). When someone migrates and establishes a new compound or community, they can also (or in effect, they also) establish a new lineage ofo. You can consider this as a system of deriving ancestral authority between communities.

2b. Now that I've established that context, I'll continue. Southern Ngwa communities do not possess any of the Ofo Asoto that are claimed to have been created and distributed when the Ngwa clan consciousness was birthed. There also exist no derivatives for the Ofo Asoto, unlike the lineage ofo. This suggests to me that there were some early southern expansion prior to the development of Ngwa clan consciousness.

3. It is generally thought that Ngwa expansion occurred in large, condensed waves. The expansions that birthed southern Ngwa communities like Ihie, Obokwe and Ohuru (among others) are also grouped into this. However, when I considered these groups' traditions, the sort of single-track idea that Ngwa chronology can be characterized by a fluid series of large population expansions (within a short span of time) did not make sense. It did not make sense that a period associated with the Ngwa's greatest population boom would also be associated with a dry period that would have limited population growth. But something else does; the wet interlude. With this in mind, I decided to associate early southern movements with the first phase of the WADP and effectively separate them for the more well-known large population expansions.

4. As part of the working chronology, I concluded that the expansion from Umuagbai into Igolo Oma might have likely occurred prior to the wet interlude. So I included the expansion of Bonny here. However, there is also a secondary larger expansion during the middle/late part of the Portuguese era that brought additional Ngwa into Bonny and established Igwe Nga, present day Ikot Abasi (not Opobo).

By my chronological estimates, early Ngwa contact with Asa occurred in this time, and it is likely the case that the Asa did not get too far in before making contact with some early Ngwa. To illustrate, the Ipu and Oza claim a west-to-east migration up to the point where their trajectory turns acutely south to north. As we’ve demonstrated earlier already, spacial distributions can tend to change flow when faced with an obstruction in their path or when crossing streams. Save for Ohambele and the Ibeme, Asa communities spacial distribution from Obigbo is almost 100% in a northerly direction. This breaks their west to east flow which they should have been free to continue, if we believe the claim that they inhabited the area up to the 17th century without Ngwa contact. So I suspect early contact occurred at this time, which gave birth to the Asa ethnonym. Then a later, larger wave of contact occurred after an Ngwa identity had become firmly established and this is what is remembered.

The Wet Interlude & the beginning of an Ngwa identity; 1400 - 1500

As part of my working chronology, the first of my considerations is that the first half the WADP saw the decimation of previous bodies of water that cut deeper into the western part of Mbaise. The wet interlude seemed to me like a good candidate for explaining both the sudden the development of the Imo river and the development of an Ngwa identity.

I placed the time frame between 1400 and 1500 for three reasons, mainly:

1. It is my suspicion that this period is responsible for birthing the infamous Imo legends. No other time period makes sense when I consider the environmental aspects of the development of the Imo. The impact on oral traditions further supports this. Miri Ojii (the stream that used to be there before the Imo) is said to have so quick and so exponentially overflowed its bank. Prior to having knowledge of the Little Ice Age, I always assumed that this event spanned the course of at least a few generations (perhaps a century or more), because oral traditions have the habit of condensing time. However, knowledge of the Little Ice Age makes it more believable now that the event happened within a much shorter timespan than I initially imagined, and it would explain why it had such a profound impact in the area that it became heavily encoded into oral tradition. A river beheading that takes 100+ years would likely not have had the same impact. The previous dryness coupled with the sudden surge of a new river though makes sense, and I can see how this can happen within a generation or two (unlike the four generations I conceived of years ago).

2. The impact on the way of way of life or the local communities. I put this within the 1400 - 1500 to overlap the event with the end of the first half of the WADP and the early part of the wet interlude. I wanted to see if I could use it to reconcile some details about the way of life of the communities. For the local communities, the ethnonyms that came surfaced with the Imo legend were "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" (for the fact that villages on the western bank engaged in roasting their yam) and "Ngwa Nzem" (for the fact that village on the eastern bank were considered lucky by their counterparts on the western side of Imo). I alway used to ask myself what was the basis for this dichotomy. Why would Mbaise need to adopt the practice of roasting? And why would Ngwa be considered lucky? With the WADP in mind, I considered that the impact of the drought could have been severe enough that water scarcity prevented the practice of boiling yam. In contrast, oral traditions encodes the idea that villages on the eastern bank boiled their yams, potentially indicating that the region of their settlement saw better relief from the dryness than their western counterparts. It's difficult to really say why this is the case other than the established worldview that "Ngwaland" is considered highly arable, compared to Mbaise which has far less arable land. Whichever the real case, the dichotomy between "Ngwa Nzem" and "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" was born.

3. The final reason for why I placed this time frame between 1400 and 1500 is to account for the Iwhnerneohna wave of migration. According to Ngwa oral traditions, Igwuocha is settled by them in a migration led by an Ngwa hunter. According to the Etche, Ngwa presence (both "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" and "Ngwa Nzem" ) is already noted in the region before the establishment of Umunneoha. According to the Okrika, the movement of the Obio (in Ikwerre) can be placed at around late 1600s/early 1700s. Finally, the Obio acknowledge the tradition of "Ngwa Gbaka" and "Ngwa Owhnuhnu". Okrika’s placing of the Obio in PH by the late 1600s/early 1700s presented some dating complications. I initially had a later date for the development of Ngwa clan consciousness, but I decided to shift it to 1400 - 1500 as an overlap between the WADP and the interlude. It allowed (what I believed would be) a reasonable amount of time for the internal dynamics between Ukwu and Umuoha group to play out and establish the defining events in Ngwa clan history that would then allow me to reconcile Obio’s use of “Ngwa Gbaka” which is different from the original “Ngwa Nzem”.

The Formation of the Ngwa Clan Identity; 1500

We are finally at the point where my working chronology meets up with the academia. The academia has struggled in defining when exactly Ngwa clan consciousness developed. Based on my chronology, I estimate it developed in the 16th century. I used to always wonder about this era in Ngwa history because it seemed so very condensed. In oral tradition, this period is told as though it occurred before the expansions. I guess in a way it did, but it’s also recounted as the “founding period” in which northern Ngwa is settled and everyone else expands from there, but that isn’t quite the case.

I’ll reiterate briefly as a refresher. The stretch of communities from Ahiara to Nsulu represent nfulala. Sharing no memory of a common ancestor, but having traditions that may link them with one or more others communities within this stretch. The events that finally culminated in the development of the Imo reshaped the identities a bit. Communities like Ukwu (who as mentioned before had no traditions of acknowledging any “brothers”) became "brothers" with Umuoha and Avosi. Umuoha "lost" its brotherhood with Obizi (in Mbaise) on the West side of Imo (though Umuoha and Obizi do not acknowledge a common ancestor, they do acknowledge kinship). Onye Ukwu assumed the position of seniority, Nwoha became his “junior brother” and Avosi their “younger brother”. The story then became that these three brothers first settled at the Okpuala village in Ukwu group before dispersing to their current village groups.

One other variant of this story is that there were actually eight brothers; Ukwu, Nwoha and Avosi from one mother, Nsulu and Nte (Ntigha) from another. Ngwu (Ovungwu) and Okwu (Ovokwu) from yet another mother, and Ntu (Mbutu) as a son of Nwoha.

Yet another variant of the story has it that Ukwu, Nwoha and Avosi were the three brothers. They settled at Okpuala in Ukwu and Nwoha and Avosi moved out to establish their own village-groups. Nwoha has seven sons, three of which were Ntu, Ngwu and Okwu, who founded Mbutu, Ovungwu and Ovokwu respectively. Nsulu and Nte were apparently from Okpuala in Ukwu as well and moved out to establish their own village-groups.

In reality these changes in the story don’t actually reflect kinship, but rather the internal civil conflict that occurred shortly after the development of the Imo. In short, the Ukwu group (which had assumed seniority and authority) got into conflict with the Umuoha group. The various stories I shared above reflect the sides that were drawn during that conflict. The Nsulu and Ntigha groups sided with Ukwu group. The Mbutu, Ovungwu and Ovokwu groups sided with the Umuoha group. The Umuoha group were essentially branded as separatists, undermining the self-ascribed seniority and authority of the Ukwu group. The conflict is stated to have gotten so serious that a truce of sorts was needed. A meeting was called for the village heads of these eight groups, and this became the defining moment in Ngwa clan history. The Ofo Asoto were christened and given to the eight village heads. The Nkpe constitution and ritual was instituted along with the Ala Ngwa deity. Okpuala-Ngwa in Ukwu group officially became the clan cultural capital, and from this point forward the Ukwu group adopted “Ngwa” into their ethnonym to become “Ngwa Ukwu”. The tradition shifted from “Ngwa Nzem” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu” to “Ngwa Ukwu” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu”.

The idea of Ngwa as we know it today starts here.

The Large almost Fluid Population Expansions; 1600 - 1800

This is the point where I may finally give some credit to the Asa 17th century claim, and as I said earlier, it’s interesting that I arrived independently on a similar conclusion. The difference is that I believe the 17th century dating only sufficiently accounts for those communities that disbursed after the resolution of the Ukwu and Umuoha conflict in northern Ngwa. For instance, it is well-acknowledged in Ngwa oral traditions that Igwe Nga, Igolo Oma and several other communities within the Asa/Ndoki axis are Ngwa, but these communities (including some in southern and eastern Ngwa) do not reference the “Ngwa Ukwu” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu” traditions, suggesting dispersal prior to this defining moment. On the other hand, Iwhnerneohna (Obio) acknowledges the tradition of “Ngwa Gbaka” and “Ngwa Owhnuhnu”. In fact, the use of “Gbaka” (i.e. Imo/Ukwu) is telling. It shows that the Iwhnerneohna movement likely occurred after the shift in traditions from “Ngwa Nzem” to “Ngwa Ukwu”.

Anyhow, this is also the point where we can see alignment between my working chronology and some of the known works in the academia. The large waves that gave birth to the large Ngwaukwu-Ugwunagbo village-group occurred at this time. The Aba la Ohazu settled around this time as well. Eastern Ngwa also saw an influx of post-conflict Ngwa people. Expansion northwards and northwestward also occurred helping to people communities like Obowu and Umuahia. In a way, they somewhat overrun the communities that were part of earlier expansions.

Modern Ngwa; 1880 - Present

The British arrived and made ethnic borders more rigid and the Ngwa body currently consists of the seven LGAs in Abia.

ChinenyeN:
AjaanaOka

My working chronology for Ngwa expansion

Nfulala; Pre-WADP (West African Dry Period); Pre-1000s

The stretch of communities from Ahiara (north-central Mbaise) to Nsulu (north-eastern Ngwa) constituted a large block of autochthonous communities. They do not acknowledge a single common ancestor, and save for a few short distance migrations in this contiguous space, the communities claim to have originated in their current location; what is locally called "Nfulala". Based off my working chronology, I presume that many of these communities had developed into clans of their own by this period (before the Little Ice Age). They may share claims of kinship with one or two other clans and share common tutelary and ritual aspects (though often times without the memory of a common ancestor). However, the idea of a unifying name for these communities did not exist.

For instance, Oboama and Umunama in south-central Mbaise acknowledge kinship but don't recall the name of their common ancestor. The set of ten loosely integrated villages (or village-groups?) in north-western Mbaise (Ahiara) mention a common ancestor, but no idea where he came from. Aside from the "Imo" legend, the Ukwu clan in northern Ngwa does not have traditions that acknowledge any "brothers" among the surrounding communities, and just as with Ahiara, the Ukwu group acknowledges a single common ancestor among themselves but with no statement of where he may have come from. Nsulu and Ntigha (northern and north-eastern Ngwa are two large groups that do not have any memory of a common ancestor, but acknowledge that they are brothers. There is also the claim that they are from the Ukwu group, but the Ukwu group claims to be unaware of a migration. I could go on, but I'll assume the context is relatively clear.

I gave this a dating of pre-1000s for two reasons:

1. I have no idea how long this period lasted. I am aware of an incident where archeological artifacts that were discovered in the area dating to 9th century B.C. Memory of anything beyond the current modern composition of village-groups is lost. So it’s difficult to speculate on the dynamics pre-1000s outside of general things like “being an Iron Age society”.

2. It gives enough of a distance in time that I believe is reasonable to account for the adoption of "Ngwa" as an ethnonym. It is well-established that the "Ngwa" ethnonym is tied to the development of the Imo, but the communities claim to have been living in the area while the river was still a shallow stream, and the original course of the Imo (according to Oboama Umunama, Ubahi, etc.) ran elsewhere. These communities acknowledge the existence of the other groups at this time, affirming the existence of this autochthonous stretch and affirming the lack of an “Ngwa people”.

Expansion During the WADP; 1000 - 1400

Initially, I had assumed the area shared a related set of traditions that encoded the event of the Imo, but after our conversation some time ago about the Little Ice Age, I shifted the the point of my focus and started doing more digging, research and interviewing. It turns out there are traditions that encode the memory of early long-distance movements during periods of dryness. This has led me to consider these early expansions as potentially distinct from the massive and more well-known "waves" that are associated with the academia's current understanding of Ngwa migrations. From what I gathered, there are communities in the southernmost parts of Ngwa, like Ihie, Obokwe, and even Ohuru (in Asa) and Umuagbai (in Ndoki) that are part of this early population dynamic. For the working chronology, placing this event within the early phases of the WADP made the most sense for a few reasons.

1. Some of the Ngwa communities in this axis have traditions that assert their movement while the Imo was still shallow. This suggest the the river beheading event had not yet occurred.

2a. There are two kinds of ofo I want to contrast. The lineage ofo and the Ngwa clan ofo (known as Ofo Asoto). When someone migrates and establishes a new compound or community, they can also (or in effect, they also) establish a new lineage ofo. You can consider this as a system of deriving ancestral authority between communities.

2b. Now that I've established that context, I'll continue. Southern Ngwa communities do not possess any of the Ofo Asoto that are claimed to have been created and distributed when the Ngwa clan consciousness was birthed. There also exist no derivatives for the Ofo Asoto, unlike the lineage ofo. This suggests to me that there were some early southern expansion prior to the development of Ngwa clan consciousness.

3. It is generally thought that Ngwa expansion occurred in large, condensed waves. The expansions that birthed southern Ngwa communities like Ihie, Obokwe and Ohuru (among others) are also grouped into this. However, when I considered these groups' traditions, the sort of single-track idea that Ngwa chronology can be characterized by a fluid series of large population expansions (within a short span of time) did not make sense. It did not make sense that a period associated with the Ngwa's greatest population boom would also be associated with a dry period that would have limited population growth. But something else does; the wet interlude. With this in mind, I decided to associate early southern movements with the first phase of the WADP and effectively separate them for the more well-known large population expansions.

4. As part of the working chronology, I concluded that the expansion from Umuagbai into Igolo Oma might have likely occurred prior to the wet interlude. So I included the expansion of Bonny here. However, there is also a secondary larger expansion during the middle/late part of the Portuguese era that brought additional Ngwa into Bonny and established Igwe Nga, present day Ikot Abasi (not Opobo).

By my chronological estimates, early Ngwa contact with Asa occurred in this time, and it is likely the case that the Asa did not get too far in before making contact with some early Ngwa. To illustrate, the Ipu and Oza claim a west-to-east migration up to the point where their trajectory turns acutely south to north. As we’ve demonstrated earlier already, spacial distributions can tend to change flow when faced with an obstruction in their path or when crossing streams. Save for Ohambele and the Ibeme, Asa communities spacial distribution from Obigbo is almost 100% in a northerly direction. This breaks their west to east flow which they should have been free to continue, if we believe the claim that they inhabited the area up to the 17th century without Ngwa contact. So I suspect early contact occurred at this time, which gave birth to the Asa ethnonym. Then a later, larger wave of contact occurred after an Ngwa identity had become firmly established and this is what is remembered.

The Wet Interlude & the beginning of an Ngwa identity; 1400 - 1500

As part of my working chronology, the first of my considerations is that the first half the WADP saw the decimation of previous bodies of water that cut deeper into the western part of Mbaise. The wet interlude seemed to me like a good candidate for explaining both the sudden the development of the Imo river and the development of an Ngwa identity.

I placed the time frame between 1400 and 1500 for three reasons, mainly:

1. It is my suspicion that this period is responsible for birthing the infamous Imo legends. No other time period makes sense when I consider the environmental aspects of the development of the Imo. The impact on oral traditions further supports this. Miri Ojii (the stream that used to be there before the Imo) is said to have so quick and so exponentially overflowed its bank. Prior to having knowledge of the Little Ice Age, I always assumed that this event spanned the course of at least a few generations (perhaps a century or more), because oral traditions have the habit of condensing time. However, knowledge of the Little Ice Age makes it more believable now that the event happened within a much shorter timespan than I initially imagined, and it would explain why it had such a profound impact in the area that it became heavily encoded into oral tradition. A river beheading that takes 100+ years would likely not have had the same impact. The previous dryness coupled with the sudden surge of a new river though makes sense, and I can see how this can happen within a generation or two (unlike the four generations I conceived of years ago).

2. The impact on the way of way of life or the local communities. I put this within the 1400 - 1500 to overlap the event with the end of the first half of the WADP and the early part of the wet interlude. I wanted to see if I could use it to reconcile some details about the way of life of the communities. For the local communities, the ethnonyms that came surfaced with the Imo legend were "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" (for the fact that villages on the western bank engaged in roasting their yam) and "Ngwa Nzem" (for the fact that village on the eastern bank were considered lucky by their counterparts on the western side of Imo). I alway used to ask myself what was the basis for this dichotomy. Why would Mbaise need to adopt the practice of roasting? And why would Ngwa be considered lucky? With the WADP in mind, I considered that the impact of the drought could have been severe enough that water scarcity prevented the practice of boiling yam. In contrast, oral traditions encodes the idea that villages on the eastern bank boiled their yams, potentially indicating that the region of their settlement saw better relief from the dryness than their western counterparts. It's difficult to really say why this is the case other than the established worldview that "Ngwaland" is considered highly arable, compared to Mbaise which has far less arable land. Whichever the real case, the dichotomy between "Ngwa Nzem" and "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" was born.

3. The final reason for why I placed this time frame between 1400 and 1500 is to account for the Iwhnerneohna wave of migration. According to Ngwa oral traditions, Igwuocha is settled by them in a migration led by an Ngwa hunter. According to the Etche, Ngwa presence (both "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" and "Ngwa Nzem" ) is already noted in the region before the establishment of Umunneoha. According to the Okrika, the movement of the Obio (in Ikwerre) can be placed at around late 1600s/early 1700s. Finally, the Obio acknowledge the tradition of "Ngwa Gbaka" and "Ngwa Owhnuhnu". Okrika’s placing of the Obio in PH by the late 1600s/early 1700s presented some dating complications. I initially had a later date for the development of Ngwa clan consciousness, but I decided to shift it to 1400 - 1500 as an overlap between the WADP and the interlude. It allowed (what I believed would be) a reasonable amount of time for the internal dynamics between Ukwu and Umuoha group to play out and establish the defining events in Ngwa clan history that would then allow me to reconcile Obio’s use of “Ngwa Gbaka” which is different from the original “Ngwa Nzem”.

The Formation of the Ngwa Clan Identity; 1500

We are finally at the point where my working chronology meets up with the academia. The academia has struggled in defining when exactly Ngwa clan consciousness developed. Based on my chronology, I estimate it developed in the 16th century. I used to always wonder about this era in Ngwa history because it seemed so very condensed. In oral tradition, this period is told as though it occurred before the expansions. I guess in a way it did, but it’s also recounted as the “founding period” in which northern Ngwa is settled and everyone else expands from there, but that isn’t quite the case.

I’ll reiterate briefly as a refresher. The stretch of communities from Ahiara to Nsulu represent nfulala. Sharing no memory of a common ancestor, but having traditions that may link them with one or more others communities within this stretch. The events that finally culminated in the development of the Imo reshaped the identities a bit. Communities like Ukwu (who as mentioned before had no traditions of acknowledging any “brothers”) became "brothers" with Umuoha and Avosi. Umuoha "lost" its brotherhood with Obizi (in Mbaise) on the West side of Imo (though Umuoha and Obizi do not acknowledge a common ancestor, they do acknowledge kinship). Onye Ukwu assumed the position of seniority, Nwoha became his “junior brother” and Avosi their “younger brother”. The story then became that these three brothers first settled at the Okpuala village in Ukwu group before dispersing to their current village groups.

One other variant of this story is that there were actually eight brothers; Ukwu, Nwoha and Avosi from one mother, Nsulu and Nte (Ntigha) from another. Ngwu (Ovungwu) and Okwu (Ovokwu) from yet another mother, and Ntu (Mbutu) as a son of Nwoha.

Yet another variant of the story has it that Ukwu, Nwoha and Avosi were the three brothers. They settled at Okpuala in Ukwu and Nwoha and Avosi moved out to establish their own village-groups. Nwoha has seven sons, three of which were Ntu, Ngwu and Okwu, who founded Mbutu, Ovungwu and Ovokwu respectively. Nsulu and Nte were apparently from Okpuala in Ukwu as well and moved out to establish their own village-groups.

In reality these changes in the story don’t actually reflect kinship, but rather the internal civil conflict that occurred shortly after the development of the Imo. In short, the Ukwu group (which had assumed seniority and authority) got into conflict with the Umuoha group. The various stories I shared above reflect the sides that were drawn during that conflict. The Nsulu and Ntigha groups sided with Ukwu group. The Mbutu, Ovungwu and Ovokwu groups sided with the Umuoha group. The Umuoha group were essentially branded as separatists, undermining the self-ascribed seniority and authority of the Ukwu group. The conflict is stated to have gotten so serious that a truce of sorts was needed. A meeting was called for the village heads of these eight groups, and this became the defining moment in Ngwa clan history. The Ofo Asoto were christened and given to the eight village heads. The Nkpe constitution and ritual was instituted along with the Ala Ngwa deity. Okpuala-Ngwa in Ukwu group officially became the clan cultural capital, and from this point forward the Ukwu group adopted “Ngwa” into their ethnonym to become “Ngwa Ukwu”. The tradition shifted from “Ngwa Nzem” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu” to “Ngwa Ukwu” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu”.

The idea of Ngwa as we know it today starts here.

The Large almost Fluid Population Expansions; 1600 - 1800

This is the point where I may finally give some credit to the Asa 17th century claim, and as I said earlier, it’s interesting that I arrived independently on a similar conclusion. The difference is that I believe the 17th century dating only sufficiently accounts for those communities that disbursed after the resolution of the Ukwu and Umuoha conflict in northern Ngwa. For instance, it is well-acknowledged in Ngwa oral traditions that Igwe Nga, Igolo Oma and several other communities within the Asa/Ndoki axis are Ngwa, but these communities (including some in southern and eastern Ngwa) do not reference the “Ngwa Ukwu” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu” traditions, suggesting dispersal prior to this defining moment. On the other hand, Iwhnerneohna (Obio) acknowledges the tradition of “Ngwa Gbaka” and “Ngwa Owhnuhnu”. In fact, the use of “Gbaka” (i.e. Imo/Ukwu) is telling. It shows that the Iwhnerneohna movement likely occurred after the shift in traditions from “Ngwa Nzem” to “Ngwa Ukwu”.

Anyhow, this is also the point where we can see alignment between my working chronology and some of the known works in the academia. The large waves that gave birth to the large Ngwaukwu-Ugwunagbo village-group occurred at this time. The Aba la Ohazu settled around this time as well. Eastern Ngwa also saw an influx of post-conflict Ngwa people. Expansion northwards and northwestward also occurred helping to people communities like Obowu and Umuahia. In a way, they somewhat overrun the communities that were part of earlier expansions.

Modern Ngwa; 1880 - Present

The British arrived and made ethnic borders more rigid and the Ngwa body currently consists of the seven LGAs in Abia.

1) Nice stuff, well I've always noticed a strong commonality among the villages within Nsulu areas of Ngwa land and the mbaise people in imo State which makes me to start thinking that it is either they migrated before the situation that has to do with the crossing of Imo River/ roasting of Yam or they never migrated rather a situation inwhich an unexpected natural occurrence happened, something like over flowing water divided them from their relatives in Imo state .
What I meant by commonality is the names of the villages around Nsulu and other places related to them, the commonality that I'm speaking about is not really about the Ngwa language they speak .

2) I've noticed that many various Igbo groups in Imo State traditionally divide themselves into two namely Ihite and Ikenga inwhich I'm wondering could Ezi na Ihite Mbaise be a product of this old/ancient Igbo grouping of Ihite and Ikenga, what about various places in Ngwa with the name Ihie and places with name like Ezi could there be any connection to this same old/ancient Igbo grouping that I'm talking about?.

ChinenyeN:
AjaanaOka

Regarding the explanation you provided on how our discussion prompted your re-thinking... I'd very much like to hear more about your "neat" explanation for the Akalaka movement. If for nothing else, then just out of curiosity.

Okay. So this is the hypothesis I have had in my head for years.

The current traditions say that after leaving Benin, Akalaka lived in the Aboh/Ndoni area before confrontations forced him to leave with his family. I have always interpreted these 'confrontations' to be an allusion to the violent encounters and displacements that followed the founding of the kingdom of Aboh, which are mentioned in the traditions of the Aboh and their neighbours. The Akri (also called Akili and Akarai), the aborigines of the Aboh site were forced north and across the Niger to found some communities in the Ogbaru area of Anambra State. Some Isoko groups like the Uzere who had initially settled close to the Aboh site were also forcefully expelled. Same is true of some Ijo groups, like the Beni; and a group remembered in Aboh traditions as Iwelle who are probably Itsekiri trading and fishing colonies established in the Ase Creek area before the founding of Aboh.

So the traditions do suggest that the founding and consolidation of the Aboh state resulted in the movement of people away from the head of the Niger Delta. I believed that the Akalaka movement belongs to this episode of Niger Delta history.

Dapper (the Dutch writer) mentioned a state that is most likely Aboh ("Gaboe" as one of the states that was flourishing on the Bight of Benin by the 1640s; and oral traditions suggest that Aboh was founded during the time of Benin's warrior-kings (late 15th/16th centuries). Thus I dated these displacements of peoples around the head of the Delta (including Akalaka) to around the 16th century.

The presence of a few 'Akala' place-names in Ekpeye suggested to me that perhaps it was some of the Akri (Akarai) fleeing across the Niger from Aboh violence that came into Ekpeye. The term Akalaka (Kraka in some versions) itself sounded to me like it could be connected to Akarai/Akri.

In this hypothesis, the aboriginal Ikpachor would be the ancient Igboid population of the area; and their language (Ekpeye) survived the Akalaka (Ukwuani) invasion.

I had also interpreted the stories of 'coming from Benin' that is found on this southern corridor as far as the Asa/Ndoki area as some sort of knock-on effect occasioned by Aboh-induced migrations in general and this Akalaka invasion of the Orashi area in particular. It all seemed...neat to me.

ChinenyeN:
AjaanaOka

My working chronology for Ngwa expansion

Nfulala; Pre-WADP (West African Dry Period); Pre-1000s

The stretch of communities from Ahiara (north-central Mbaise) to Nsulu (north-eastern Ngwa) constituted a large block of autochthonous communities. They do not acknowledge a single common ancestor, and save for a few short distance migrations in this contiguous space, the communities claim to have originated in their current location; what is locally called "Nfulala". Based off my working chronology, I presume that many of these communities had developed into clans of their own by this period (before the Little Ice Age). They may share claims of kinship with one or two other clans and share common tutelary and ritual aspects (though often times without the memory of a common ancestor). However, the idea of a unifying name for these communities did not exist.

For instance, Oboama and Umunama in south-central Mbaise acknowledge kinship but don't recall the name of their common ancestor. The set of ten loosely integrated villages (or village-groups?) in north-western Mbaise (Ahiara) mention a common ancestor, but no idea where he came from. Aside from the "Imo" legend, the Ukwu clan in northern Ngwa does not have traditions that acknowledge any "brothers" among the surrounding communities, and just as with Ahiara, the Ukwu group acknowledges a single common ancestor among themselves but with no statement of where he may have come from. Nsulu and Ntigha (northern and north-eastern Ngwa are two large groups that do not have any memory of a common ancestor, but acknowledge that they are brothers. There is also the claim that they are from the Ukwu group, but the Ukwu group claims to be unaware of a migration. I could go on, but I'll assume the context is relatively clear.

I gave this a dating of pre-1000s for two reasons:

1. I have no idea how long this period lasted. I am aware of an incident where archeological artifacts that were discovered in the area dating to 9th century B.C. Memory of anything beyond the current modern composition of village-groups is lost. So it’s difficult to speculate on the dynamics pre-1000s outside of general things like “being an Iron Age society”.

2. It gives enough of a distance in time that I believe is reasonable to account for the adoption of "Ngwa" as an ethnonym. It is well-established that the "Ngwa" ethnonym is tied to the development of the Imo, but the communities claim to have been living in the area while the river was still a shallow stream, and the original course of the Imo (according to Oboama Umunama, Ubahi, etc.) ran elsewhere. These communities acknowledge the existence of the other groups at this time, affirming the existence of this autochthonous stretch and affirming the lack of an “Ngwa people”.

Expansion During the WADP; 1000 - 1400

Initially, I had assumed the area shared a related set of traditions that encoded the event of the Imo, but after our conversation some time ago about the Little Ice Age, I shifted the the point of my focus and started doing more digging, research and interviewing. It turns out there are traditions that encode the memory of early long-distance movements during periods of dryness. This has led me to consider these early expansions as potentially distinct from the massive and more well-known "waves" that are associated with the academia's current understanding of Ngwa migrations. From what I gathered, there are communities in the southernmost parts of Ngwa, like Ihie, Obokwe, and even Ohuru (in Asa) and Umuagbai (in Ndoki) that are part of this early population dynamic. For the working chronology, placing this event within the early phases of the WADP made the most sense for a few reasons.

1. Some of the Ngwa communities in this axis have traditions that assert their movement while the Imo was still shallow. This suggest the the river beheading event had not yet occurred.

2a. There are two kinds of ofo I want to contrast. The lineage ofo and the Ngwa clan ofo (known as Ofo Asoto). When someone migrates and establishes a new compound or community, they can also (or in effect, they also) establish a new lineage ofo. You can consider this as a system of deriving ancestral authority between communities.

2b. Now that I've established that context, I'll continue. Southern Ngwa communities do not possess any of the Ofo Asoto that are claimed to have been created and distributed when the Ngwa clan consciousness was birthed. There also exist no derivatives for the Ofo Asoto, unlike the lineage ofo. This suggests to me that there were some early southern expansion prior to the development of Ngwa clan consciousness.

3. It is generally thought that Ngwa expansion occurred in large, condensed waves. The expansions that birthed southern Ngwa communities like Ihie, Obokwe and Ohuru (among others) are also grouped into this. However, when I considered these groups' traditions, the sort of single-track idea that Ngwa chronology can be characterized by a fluid series of large population expansions (within a short span of time) did not make sense. It did not make sense that a period associated with the Ngwa's greatest population boom would also be associated with a dry period that would have limited population growth. But something else does; the wet interlude. With this in mind, I decided to associate early southern movements with the first phase of the WADP and effectively separate them for the more well-known large population expansions.

4. As part of the working chronology, I concluded that the expansion from Umuagbai into Igolo Oma might have likely occurred prior to the wet interlude. So I included the expansion of Bonny here. However, there is also a secondary larger expansion during the middle/late part of the Portuguese era that brought additional Ngwa into Bonny and established Igwe Nga, present day Ikot Abasi (not Opobo).

By my chronological estimates, early Ngwa contact with Asa occurred in this time, and it is likely the case that the Asa did not get too far in before making contact with some early Ngwa. To illustrate, the Ipu and Oza claim a west-to-east migration up to the point where their trajectory turns acutely south to north. As we’ve demonstrated earlier already, spacial distributions can tend to change flow when faced with an obstruction in their path or when crossing streams. Save for Ohambele and the Ibeme, Asa communities spacial distribution from Obigbo is almost 100% in a northerly direction. This breaks their west to east flow which they should have been free to continue, if we believe the claim that they inhabited the area up to the 17th century without Ngwa contact. So I suspect early contact occurred at this time, which gave birth to the Asa ethnonym. Then a later, larger wave of contact occurred after an Ngwa identity had become firmly established and this is what is remembered.

The Wet Interlude & the beginning of an Ngwa identity; 1400 - 1500

As part of my working chronology, the first of my considerations is that the first half the WADP saw the decimation of previous bodies of water that cut deeper into the western part of Mbaise. The wet interlude seemed to me like a good candidate for explaining both the sudden the development of the Imo river and the development of an Ngwa identity.

I placed the time frame between 1400 and 1500 for three reasons, mainly:

1. It is my suspicion that this period is responsible for birthing the infamous Imo legends. No other time period makes sense when I consider the environmental aspects of the development of the Imo. The impact on oral traditions further supports this. Miri Ojii (the stream that used to be there before the Imo) is said to have so quick and so exponentially overflowed its bank. Prior to having knowledge of the Little Ice Age, I always assumed that this event spanned the course of at least a few generations (perhaps a century or more), because oral traditions have the habit of condensing time. However, knowledge of the Little Ice Age makes it more believable now that the event happened within a much shorter timespan than I initially imagined, and it would explain why it had such a profound impact in the area that it became heavily encoded into oral tradition. A river beheading that takes 100+ years would likely not have had the same impact. The previous dryness coupled with the sudden surge of a new river though makes sense, and I can see how this can happen within a generation or two (unlike the four generations I conceived of years ago).

2. The impact on the way of way of life or the local communities. I put this within the 1400 - 1500 to overlap the event with the end of the first half of the WADP and the early part of the wet interlude. I wanted to see if I could use it to reconcile some details about the way of life of the communities. For the local communities, the ethnonyms that came surfaced with the Imo legend were "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" (for the fact that villages on the western bank engaged in roasting their yam) and "Ngwa Nzem" (for the fact that village on the eastern bank were considered lucky by their counterparts on the western side of Imo). I alway used to ask myself what was the basis for this dichotomy. Why would Mbaise need to adopt the practice of roasting? And why would Ngwa be considered lucky? With the WADP in mind, I considered that the impact of the drought could have been severe enough that water scarcity prevented the practice of boiling yam. In contrast, oral traditions encodes the idea that villages on the eastern bank boiled their yams, potentially indicating that the region of their settlement saw better relief from the dryness than their western counterparts. It's difficult to really say why this is the case other than the established worldview that "Ngwaland" is considered highly arable, compared to Mbaise which has far less arable land. Whichever the real case, the dichotomy between "Ngwa Nzem" and "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" was born.

3. The final reason for why I placed this time frame between 1400 and 1500 is to account for the Iwhnerneohna wave of migration. According to Ngwa oral traditions, Igwuocha is settled by them in a migration led by an Ngwa hunter. According to the Etche, Ngwa presence (both "Ngwa Ohnuhnu" and "Ngwa Nzem" ) is already noted in the region before the establishment of Umunneoha. According to the Okrika, the movement of the Obio (in Ikwerre) can be placed at around late 1600s/early 1700s. Finally, the Obio acknowledge the tradition of "Ngwa Gbaka" and "Ngwa Owhnuhnu". Okrika’s placing of the Obio in PH by the late 1600s/early 1700s presented some dating complications. I initially had a later date for the development of Ngwa clan consciousness, but I decided to shift it to 1400 - 1500 as an overlap between the WADP and the interlude. It allowed (what I believed would be) a reasonable amount of time for the internal dynamics between Ukwu and Umuoha group to play out and establish the defining events in Ngwa clan history that would then allow me to reconcile Obio’s use of “Ngwa Gbaka” which is different from the original “Ngwa Nzem”.

The Formation of the Ngwa Clan Identity; 1500

We are finally at the point where my working chronology meets up with the academia. The academia has struggled in defining when exactly Ngwa clan consciousness developed. Based on my chronology, I estimate it developed in the 16th century. I used to always wonder about this era in Ngwa history because it seemed so very condensed. In oral tradition, this period is told as though it occurred before the expansions. I guess in a way it did, but it’s also recounted as the “founding period” in which northern Ngwa is settled and everyone else expands from there, but that isn’t quite the case.

I’ll reiterate briefly as a refresher. The stretch of communities from Ahiara to Nsulu represent nfulala. Sharing no memory of a common ancestor, but having traditions that may link them with one or more others communities within this stretch. The events that finally culminated in the development of the Imo reshaped the identities a bit. Communities like Ukwu (who as mentioned before had no traditions of acknowledging any “brothers”) became "brothers" with Umuoha and Avosi. Umuoha "lost" its brotherhood with Obizi (in Mbaise) on the West side of Imo (though Umuoha and Obizi do not acknowledge a common ancestor, they do acknowledge kinship). Onye Ukwu assumed the position of seniority, Nwoha became his “junior brother” and Avosi their “younger brother”. The story then became that these three brothers first settled at the Okpuala village in Ukwu group before dispersing to their current village groups.

One other variant of this story is that there were actually eight brothers; Ukwu, Nwoha and Avosi from one mother, Nsulu and Nte (Ntigha) from another. Ngwu (Ovungwu) and Okwu (Ovokwu) from yet another mother, and Ntu (Mbutu) as a son of Nwoha.

Yet another variant of the story has it that Ukwu, Nwoha and Avosi were the three brothers. They settled at Okpuala in Ukwu and Nwoha and Avosi moved out to establish their own village-groups. Nwoha has seven sons, three of which were Ntu, Ngwu and Okwu, who founded Mbutu, Ovungwu and Ovokwu respectively. Nsulu and Nte were apparently from Okpuala in Ukwu as well and moved out to establish their own village-groups.

In reality these changes in the story don’t actually reflect kinship, but rather the internal civil conflict that occurred shortly after the development of the Imo. In short, the Ukwu group (which had assumed seniority and authority) got into conflict with the Umuoha group. The various stories I shared above reflect the sides that were drawn during that conflict. The Nsulu and Ntigha groups sided with Ukwu group. The Mbutu, Ovungwu and Ovokwu groups sided with the Umuoha group. The Umuoha group were essentially branded as separatists, undermining the self-ascribed seniority and authority of the Ukwu group. The conflict is stated to have gotten so serious that a truce of sorts was needed. A meeting was called for the village heads of these eight groups, and this became the defining moment in Ngwa clan history. The Ofo Asoto were christened and given to the eight village heads. The Nkpe constitution and ritual was instituted along with the Ala Ngwa deity. Okpuala-Ngwa in Ukwu group officially became the clan cultural capital, and from this point forward the Ukwu group adopted “Ngwa” into their ethnonym to become “Ngwa Ukwu”. The tradition shifted from “Ngwa Nzem” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu” to “Ngwa Ukwu” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu”.

The idea of Ngwa as we know it today starts here.

The Large almost Fluid Population Expansions; 1600 - 1800

This is the point where I may finally give some credit to the Asa 17th century claim, and as I said earlier, it’s interesting that I arrived independently on a similar conclusion. The difference is that I believe the 17th century dating only sufficiently accounts for those communities that disbursed after the resolution of the Ukwu and Umuoha conflict in northern Ngwa. For instance, it is well-acknowledged in Ngwa oral traditions that Igwe Nga, Igolo Oma and several other communities within the Asa/Ndoki axis are Ngwa, but these communities (including some in southern and eastern Ngwa) do not reference the “Ngwa Ukwu” and “Ngwa Ohnuhnu” traditions, suggesting dispersal prior to this defining moment. On the other hand, Iwhnerneohna (Obio) acknowledges the tradition of “Ngwa Gbaka” and “Ngwa Owhnuhnu”. In fact, the use of “Gbaka” (i.e. Imo/Ukwu) is telling. It shows that the Iwhnerneohna movement likely occurred after the shift in traditions from “Ngwa Nzem” to “Ngwa Ukwu”.

Anyhow, this is also the point where we can see alignment between my working chronology and some of the known works in the academia. The large waves that gave birth to the large Ngwaukwu-Ugwunagbo village-group occurred at this time. The Aba la Ohazu settled around this time as well. Eastern Ngwa also saw an influx of post-conflict Ngwa people. Expansion northwards and northwestward also occurred helping to people communities like Obowu and Umuahia. In a way, they somewhat overrun the communities that were part of earlier expansions.

Modern Ngwa; 1880 - Present

The British arrived and made ethnic borders more rigid and the Ngwa body currently consists of the seven LGAs in Abia.

This is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.

Let me take some time to digest it and perhaps share my thoughts.

letu:
2) I've noticed that many various Igbo groups in Imo State traditionally divide themselves into two namely Ihite and Ikenga inwhich I'm wondering could Ezi na Ihite Mbaise be a product of this old/ancient Igbo grouping of Ihite and Ikenga, what about various places in Ngwa with the name Ihie and places with name like Ezi could there be any connection to this same old/ancient Igbo grouping that I'm talking about?.

I have actually looked into this. I have dubbed this pattern of naming settlements as “dual-naming”. It is very common in the central Igbo area, but could not determine a corresponding pattern on the Ngwa side of Imo. Most Ngwa communities do not have follow a dual naming, and in communities that do have some sort of dual naming, the “Ezi” and “Ihite” name is not used. For instance, we have Oria la Uga in Ntigha, Ezi la Ife in Ndeakata, and Osi la Oji in Amavo, just to make a few. But it does not seem to be the same thing as the “Ezi na Ihite” pattern found in central Igbo”. There are several Ihie’s in Ngwa (around at least 5), but none that I know of have claimed to go by any other name that uses “Ezi”. So for the time being, I considered that the “Ezi na Ihite” pattern is not a feature of ancient Ngwa settlements.

The closest to “Ezi na Ihite” that we have in the area is with Mbaise. Yet, even with the case of Mbaise, the “Ehi la Ihite” (how they say Ezi na Ihite in the local dialect) seems recent, because it seems there was a different expression used; Ohuhu la Avuvu. This is something I have been meaning to dig into a bit more. I have not been able to speculate on when/how the area could have come to be known as Ezinihite, as I have not yet been informed of any oral traditions that speak about it. Perhaps I should pick back up on that research soon.

AjaanaOka:
Okay. So this is the hypothesis I have had in my head for years.

The current traditions say that after leaving Benin, Akalaka lived in the Aboh/Ndoni area before confrontations forced him to leave with his family. I have always interpreted these 'confrontations' to be an allusion to the violent encounters and displacements that followed the founding of the kingdom of Aboh, which are mentioned in the traditions of the Aboh and their neighbours. The Akri (also called Akili and Akarai), the aborigines of the Aboh site were forced north and across the Niger to found some communities in the Ogbaru area of Anambra State. Some Isoko groups like the Uzere who had initially settled close to the Aboh site were also forcefully expelled. Same is true of some Ijo groups, like the Beni; and a group remembered in Aboh traditions as Iwelle who are probably Itsekiri trading and fishing colonies established in the Ase Creek area before the founding of Aboh.

So the traditions do suggest that the founding and consolidation of the Aboh state resulted in the movement of people away from the head of the Niger Delta. I believed that the Akalaka movement belongs to this episode of Niger Delta history.

Dapper (the Dutch writer) mentioned a state that is most likely Aboh ("Gaboe" as one of the states that was flourishing on the Bight of Benin by the 1640s; and oral traditions suggest that Aboh was founded during the time of Benin's warrior-kings (late 15th/16th centuries). Thus I dated these displacements of peoples around the head of the Delta (including Akalaka) to around the 16th century.

The presence of a few 'Akala' place-names in Ekpeye suggested to me that perhaps it was some of the Akri (Akarai) fleeing across the Niger from Aboh violence that came into Ekpeye. The term Akalaka (Kraka in some versions) itself sounded to me like it could be connected to Akarai/Akri.

In this hypothesis, the aboriginal Ikpachor would be the ancient Igboid population of the area; and their language (Ekpeye) survived the Akalaka (Ukwuani) invasion.

I had also interpreted the stories of 'coming from Benin' that is found on this southern corridor as far as the Asa/Ndoki area as some sort of knock-on effect occasioned by Aboh-induced migrations in general and this Akalaka invasion of the Orashi area in particular. It all seemed...neat to me.

Ahh. I see... and I guess it it prompting you to reconsider the hypothesis due to the potential difficulty of reconciling the Ikpachor lect as the lect that survived to become Ekpeye. After all, the Ikpachor would not have been isolated and so their lect should also have been caught in the continuum. If indeed the Ikpachor language survived the Akalaka migration, then it might stand to reason that Ekpeye would have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility with the rest of Igbo. Or something to that effect. I think I can understand better now how our conversation would go against this hypothesis in some way.

There is still merit to your hypothesis in some aspects. What you consider as a potential knock-off of Aboh-induced migrations is actually acknowledged by some communities. There are definitely communities in the southern stretch (sprinkled through Ikwerre region and into the lower part of Echie) that claim a migration specifically from the Ndoni region. I don’t know when those migrations could be dated. I did not try looking into it, but perhaps at least some of them could be related to this event. So there’s definitely something to be explored here. Who knows if it might even upend some of our conversation up to this point. Thanks for taking the time to share it.