₦airaland Forum

The Aros, also known as umuchukwu (children of the supreme God and custodian of the great chukwu of Arochukwu – ibini Ukpabi), are a people whose home base in the city of Arochukwu is the last Igbo settlement before the cross river in the south-eastern region of the area now known as Nigeria. Log before the Portugese and the British arrived at the coast of West Africa, the city-state of Arochukwu had developed into a highly organized and progressive power, supported by a heirarchy of preists and chiefs who were agents of the all-powerful (God), ibini Ukpabi, the Aro God. The Aros were highly respected and appreciated within the Igbo and non-Igbo lands of eastern Nigeria. The Aro man was regarded as a sacred being not to be attacked, killed or looted of his merchandise, for such an act against the Aro man brought instant punishment on the perpetrators. Given the protection the Aro man had, from both the influence of ibini-Ukpabi and the Ohafia/Abam warriors, he enjoyed free trade within the region. This resulted in the Aros traveling long distances in varous directions away from their homeland to set up out-posts for trading purposes. Most of the se outposts survived till this day as Aro settlements away from the Aro homeland.

These Aro settlements maintained their allegiance to the Aro homeland and to the Eze Aro, who is the supreme leader of all the Aro people, towns and settlements the world over. We the Aros, like the Jews, take great pride in our culture and identity wherever we go. Though we may settle among other cultures away from the Aro homeland, we still maintain our customs and traditions. The Aro state empire unfortunately suffered a devastating setback with the coming of the British which resulted in the Anglo-Aro war in the turn of the century. The mysticism surrounding the ibini-Ukpabi was destroyed by the British army, and the well organized Aro system of government and infrastructure were recklessly dismantled by the British.


There are over 100 Aro Communities in Nigeria. Until the British firmly established authority in what became Nigeria in 1901, various peoples of Nigeria moved freely and settled in different parts of the country. Some settlements were achieved by peaceful means, others were through a mixture of diplomacy, localized wars and negotiations. Whereas Aro Okporoenyi and Izombe typifies the first category, Aro Ndizuogu and Ndi-Eni (Ndikelionwu, Ndiowu, Ndiokparaeke, Ndiokpalaeze, Ajalli, etc.) are of the second order. Some Aro settlements (communities) within the second order (diplomacy and negotiations) signed away their rights (of conquest) recognized at that time by international law as the strongest right of any nation. Aro Ikwere, Aro Cameroon and Aro Ajalli, among others, have either lost their settlements or are in heated micro-battles with dominant cultures for their independence and sovereignty. The history of the Aros goes back to the Igbo migration and foundings of the kingdom of Arochukwu. Before Igbos started arriving in the 17th century, Ibibios lived in many scattered communities between the Imo and Cross Rivers where they arrived through the Benue and plateau area. Population pressure caused Igbo migrations from the north into the Ibibio areas starting in the 15th century.

Tensions escalated especially when the last and heaviest phases of migrations occurred in the 17th century. The Aro-Ibibio wars and the migration of the Akpa from east of the Cross River, formed the nation. This began during the turning point of the 17th century to the 18th century. The Igbo and Akpa alliance, defeated the original inhabitant Ibibios after several long years of warfare. By this time, the slave trade was popular in the hinterland. The mid-18th century saw the start of mass migrations of Aro businessmen and slave raiders. Priests of Ibini Ukpabi, spread the religion and the Aro Confederacy was in power. Aro culture and influence spread, until it went into a downfall during the last quarter of the 19th century. This was due to the abolition of slavery and the penetration of the Europeans, mainly British colonists. After tensions finally led to bloodshed, the Anglo-Aro war took place from 1901-1902. This resulted in Aro dominance being drastically decreased enough for British to occupy eastern Nigeria. Not only did the Aro suffer a defeat but a terrible loss of importance and influence throughout the settlements.

The Aros have a very rich tradition. One factor is the Ekpe society which is a sacred cult originally from east of the Cross River. The highly religious and judicial cult took a major part in Aro cultism. The use of the writing system, Nsibidi, was based on secret societies like Ekpe. Another is the Ibini Ukpabi shrine, who was a mediating god among the Aros. They influenced neighbours and allies before the British invasion. The shrine was used for selling slaves during the slave trade. The Ekeleke masquerade activity was important in Aro settlements rather than Ekpe. Brought from the Aros in the western Niger Delta, it eventually spread to the Oguta area. They also were known for wearing the popular "George" cloth. The Ikperikpe warrior dance was very famous among warriors in the old days and continues to be practiced.

These parts of their culture were borrowed by or influenced their neighbours during the Confederacy era.

"IBO-GUT"


You hated our forefathers, for not to you homage pay.
You could not understand how a people so simple could
yet be so advanced.

They saw your wealth and power, and intimidated were not.
For you had met a people with a government,
more advanced than any you had seen.

You had met a people that practiced democracy,
before you knew what it was.

You had met a people that spiced their sentences with parables.
To them nothing was impossible.

"Let the worst happen, so we can see it", they would say.
You had met a people that believed in themselves and their
personal CHI(GOD).

"It is not where a man starts, but where he ends, that's important",
they would say.

Yes, you hated our forefathers for,
"claiming a quality that belongs only to the gods".
These are ingrates, you shouted.
We should not have educated them.
We should have left them the primitives they were.
We should have expelled them from our empire.
We will use the might of the WESTERN WORLD, and in their place
put them.

We will make it an impossibility, for them, their dreams realize.

We have taken your worst, and yet survive we do.
We have learnt and lived your way, and is emptiness we now see.
You believe in scarcity, we in abundance.
You believe in subduing Nature, we in oneness with Nature.
Your elders you lockup in the house of rejects,
our elders are an integral part of us - for a link to the past
and future are they.

You separate the physical from the spiritual,
we believe both are one and the same.

We have learnt your way, and now, back home we go.
"Nno (welcome)", our forefathers will say, "you have done well".
We will take the best from you.
And once more Africa will be the shinning beacon it once was.

Nnaemeka M Onumonu (The Sculptor)
-posted to igbo-net, 08/27/97


*************


http://magazine.biafranigeriaworld.com/nonumonu/2003dec01.html

The oral tradition says merely that Eri came down the Anambra to unify the surrounding settlements …

By 994, Eri had probably fully established his authority over settlements in the middle Anambra valley. Eri came down from the sky. God sent him. He canoed down the river Anambra and established a place now called Eri-aka. … Eri’s authority to rule and his power over men were derived from Chukwu, the Great Creator as expressed in myth.

NRI KINGDOM AND HEGEMONY, A.D. 994 TO PRESENT.
By Maazi M. A. Onwuejeogwu (Prof.)

We are now faced with a myth in this same form as the folklore; Eri is sent by Yah to already existing settlements.

An interesting question that might arise would be, why these particular settlements? Why go to total strangers or was he going back to his people? We know that Ndi Igbo rarely if ever marry outside their nation, until recently. Does this then mean that there are blood ties between the new-comers and those that were already in the settlements? Will this not explain why absorption was complete even without war?
To make it even more interesting, consider the term “Chi”, why is it that half way across the globe in both China and Japan, they have this same word that has very nearly the same meaning with the meaning of Chi in Ala Igbo? Was there a very old civilization that encompassed the whole world? Did remnants of that civilization survive?


Spirituality:

“The traditional philosophy and religious beliefs of the Nri like that of other Igbo peoples, are interwoven and centered on five interdependent major concepts which are as follows: Chukwu, Alusi, Uwa, and Ike Mmadu.”

He continues,

Chukwu is the Great Creator of all things. The Great Creator has four major aspects which are manifestations of his existence. First, Chukwu is Anyanwu, in the symbolic meaning of “the sun”. Nri believe that as the sun’s light is everywhere so is the presence of Chukwu manifested everywhere; as the sun is all powerful so is Chukwu all powerful and as the sun is the light that reveals things so is Chukwu the source of knowledge. Secondly, Chukwu is Agbala, manifested in the fertility of the earth and the beings that inhabit it. Thirdly, Chukwu is Chi, manifested in the power and ability of living things to procreate themselves from generation to generation. Fourthly, Chukwu is Okike, manifested in the creation of everything visible and the invisible. Chukwu as Okike creates the laws that govern the visible and the invisible. These laws are neither good or bad. They are simple laws that enable things to work. Both good and evil are the products of the invisible “beings” and “forces”, the Alusi.

NRI KINGDOM AND HEGEMONY, A.D. 994 TO PRESENT.
By Maazi M. A. Onwuejeogwu (Prof.)


Maazi Effiong, this is one of the most simple and yet most complete definition of Yah that I have come across, and remember this definition was handed down thousands of years ago to our fore-parents. In fact this definition also include and explain what some now call the laws of science.

I am reminded of the presentation made by Maazi Justin Akujieze (Dr.), also of Ekwe Nche organization, in the same conference in Ithaca, New York. His topic was: An Alternate Model to the Big Bang Theory otherwise known as “UWA WARA AWA”. Using both Igbo philosophy and writing (Nsibidi or Nsibido -in the beginning), he was able to show that there were two Big Bangs not one.
Amazing?
Why should it be, does all knowledge not belong to Yah?
Were the secrets of the universe not revealed to our fore-parents by Yah?
Did they thousands of years ago not understand the importance of the Sun, is that not why they gave it the name, “Anyanwu – the eye that never dies”?
If the eye dies will the world nor cease to exist?
Did they not call humans , “Mma Ndu – The beauty of life or the masterpiece of life”?
One can then understand why life was very precious to them, for if you could not give life, why should you take it? Is the modern world not finally acknowledging what our fore-parents had always know, “that we are all connected”!

Below is a copy of a letter to Ekwe Nche Organization from the Palace of Eze Nri, Maazi Obidiegwu Onyesoh, Nrinweelana II (personal data have been removed). The highlighted portion should make you shake your head in amazement:



PALACE OF
EZE NRI – NRINWEELANA II

(The Custodian of Igbo Custom and Tradition & Keeper of the Ancestral Homeland of Ndi – Igbo)

Date: 11th July 2002
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE RECEIPT OF YOUR
LETTER DATED JUNE 17, 2000.
I am directed by H. M. Eze Obidiegwu Onyesoh, Nrinweelana II, the custodian of Igbo culture and civilization to acknowledge the receipt of your all important historical letter of 17th June 2002. The letter got to him on the 6th of July instant. The revelation in your letter is very interesting as it justified and confirmed to its logical satisfaction what OLAUDAH EQUIANO, the famous Igbo slave who gave graphic details of his ordeal in some of his books “THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE OF THE AFRICAN” 1789. AND EQUINO’S TRAVELS”. Abridged Edition by Paul Edwards, 1967, Heineman London…

There is another book by (A SLAVE BOY ANAESO ARCHIBALD JOHN MONTEITH) a native helper and Assistant in the Jamaican Mission at New Carmel – 1854 publication. A research fellow from the University of West Indies Jamaica through the University Ibadan African Studies Dept. came to the palace of Eze – Nri on the 23th Tune 1994 led by the Prof. Maureen Warner Lewis Ph.D. Abridged copy of the book is enclosed , you can cross check with the Prof. For further collaborations. It is further reported that Anaeso Archibold John Monteith’s descendants contributed over 30% of the population of the West Indies.

H. M. Nrieweelana II is delighted to note that the contribution and resilience of Ndigbo kidnapped from /within the territory of Nri Kingdom who believed in the sacrilege of the human being, who believed in the equality of the human race that all human being are equal before God (Chukwu). With the Supreme Being – Chi – Ukwu the creator.

The early Nris were divinely endowed with the quality of human value, that no human mortal has the divine authority to enslave the other – hence their courage. They would rather kill themselves than be subjected to slavery. This dogma is one of the tents of NRIOLOGY. NRIOLOGY is the concept of Nri-ness, i.e. Equality of human being, that all people are equal before God. Thus the following principles :- Nris do not discriminate against Osu cast. If an Osu cast reaches the kingdom of Nri, He/She ceases to be Osu, Nri did not capture/kidnap people as slave. Hence every one in the kingdom is a free born – (Amadi), Nri were the recipient of children who cut the upper teeth first, they were regarded as (Nwa Alu) and dumped away. The community where such happened would find Nri agents, who will bring these unfortunate human beings to Eze Nri who will declare them clean, they lived freely in the kingdom and integrated.

The popular Aka-Nri were never born in Nri but were picked up from different communities by agents of Eze-Nri. These people were born dwarf. The Non-Nris associate them with ALU (Nso) and called them UMU ALU or NWA ALU. They were brought to Eze-Nri who declared them clean and gave them full human right and citizen of Nri Kingdom. The EZE-Nri empowers them by conferring the Ozo title on the male and Ada Eze on the female. These are the concept of Nriology.
A Book on this by H. M. Eze O. Onyesoh is on the making. H. M. salutes your courage. You may route all information through his son …..
Hope to hear from you on your planned programme
Thanks Sincerely,
CHIJIOKE. O. IFEKA
(PALACE SECRETARY)
Maazi Effiong, allow me to append below part of the highlighted part:

The early Nris were divinely endowed with the quality of human value, that no human mortal has the divine authority to enslave the other – hence their courage. They would rather kill themselves than be subjected to slavery. This dogma is one of the tents of NRIOLOGY. NRIOLOGY is the concept of Nri-ness, i.e. Equality of human being, that all people are equal before God. Thus the following principles :- Nris do not discriminate against Osu cast. If an Osu cast reaches the kingdom of Nri, He/She ceases to be Osu, Nri did not capture/kidnap people as slave. Hence every one in the kingdom is a free born – (Amadi)

You can see that our fore-parents thousands of years ago talked of equality of all and were strongly opposed to slavery or the cast system.

The spirituality or should I say the way of life of the ancient Igbo can be found in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, both books of the Bible. We already know that lots of Igbo words are either same as or very similar to Hebrew words.


Again I ask who or what is Igbo?

People’s General, below is some information about Igbo as written by James Africanus Horton in 1868, in his book, WEST AFRICAN COUNTRIES AND PEOPLES:

Among the Egboes, women hold a superior rank in the social scale; they are not regarded, as among other tribes, as inferior creation and doomed to perpetual degradation, but occupy their 'rightful status in society'.

The Egboes are considered the most imitative and emulative people in the whole of Western Africa; place them where you will, or introduce to them any manners and customs, you will find that they very easily adapt themselves to them. Stout-hearted, or, to use the more common phraseology, big-hearted, they always posses a desire of superiority, and make attempts to attain it, or excel in what is praiseworthy, without a desire of depressing others. To them we may apply the language of Dryden - A noble emulation beats their breasts.

Place an Egboe man in a comfortable position, and he will never rest satisfied until he sees others occupying the same or a similar position.

It is a peculiar law among the Ibos, that when the inhabitants of one town are at war with another, and one part or division of the town will not join in the war, they can, without molestation, visit their relatives in the town which is at war with a division of their own, whether men or women, no person touching them. Strangers living in the country might visit the belligerent towns freely, without apprehension, because they are said not to have a hand in their quarrels. Should there be an intermediate town between the two contending towns, neither the one nor the other can step over the intermediate one to attack his enemies without a due notice and permission from the intermediate one, unless they beat their way in a roundabout direction to affect their purpose.

The religion of the Egboes is Judaism intermixed with numerous pagan rites and ceremonies.
The Egboes cannot be driven to an act; they become most stubborn and bull-headed; but with kindness they could be made to do anything, even to deny themselves of their comforts. They would not, as a rule, allow anyone to act superior over, nor sway their conscience, by coercion, to the performance of any act, whether good or bad, when they have not the inclination to do so; hence there is not that unity among them that is found among other tribes; in fact everyone likes to be his own master. As a rule, they like to see every African prosper.

Among their own tribe, be they ever so rich, they feel no ill-will toward them. A poor man or woman of that tribe, if they meet with a rising young person of the same nationality, are ready to render him the utmost service in their power. They give him gratuitous advice, and 'embrace him as their child', but if he is arrogant and overbearing, they regard him with scorn and disdain wherever he is met.

Hopefully we have started painting a picture of the Igbo, although still fuzzy, at least we do have a picture. A nation of kings and queens, who once they make up their minds, can be extremely unbending whether right or wrong.

“Unto a Land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiff-necked people: lest I consume thee in the way.”

Exodus 33 : 3

Even Yah, who has a special love for Igbo had to keep his distance from Ndi Igbo, now we begin to understand what the Western world got themselves into by stirring a hornet’s nest when they shipped Ndi Igbo to the New World! Yes, the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba leaders are about to find out the prize of trying to exterminate the children of Yah.

Maazi Effiong, as you can see, I have not even scratched the surface on this topic. All I have done is muddy up the waters. But that is precisely my aim. Hopefully, the experts will go back and re-examine the Igbo question.

I am remindeded of the poem, “The Blind Men and the Elephant”. Allow me to conclude this part of our update with that poem. I have reproduced the poem below in the hope that we will not make the mistake of the blind men and dismiss the views of others off-hand, for no one can put his hands around the topic “Igbo”.

frican peoples have long relied on oral accounts to learn about their past. But the down side of this tradition remains its vulnerability to embellishment. The absence of written records, passage of time and the hunger for greatness have made the method the most unreliable. Egypt is one good example. In the face of mounting evidences, the archaeological findings in Egypt have continued to generate intense racial politics. In the same vein, the quest for political and social mobility in Igboland has progressively turned her history into a subject of differing interpretations.




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Addressing the historical factors that shaped the modern Igbo was vital for the knowledge of not only the present and future generation of Ndigbo, but for none Igbos alike. Thus, modern day discussions on this particular subject, for posterity's sake, should be devoid of politics.

In that context, to divorce either the Igala or the Benin influence from the modern Igbo cultural evolution would be a travesty of history. The evidence of the cross cultural mix appears to be genuine. Thus, the debate should instead focus on the extent of each one of these rich cultures on the other, especially the issue of settler and aborigine in the western Igbo region, and as well as in the East. This particular aspect has not only heightened the interest of eastern Igbos, It has equally generated a quiet acrimony amongst the western Igbos. I mean those of them who had remained steadfast with their Igbo roots, and the others who would defend their claim of Benin ancestry vigorously. The future implication of this situation in the context of Nigeria's contemporary politics is what I'll comment on later in this thread.

According to several sources, Igbo people evolved over a long period of 4000 BC to 500 AD in Igboland through waves of migrations. Oral accounts stated that her northern neighbours migrated into her heartland in search of fertile land and rich marine life. The majority of which were Igalas. The Igalas settled amongst the locals east of the Niger, altering the historiography of many towns in today's Anambra state. Affected also, were parts of the present Oshimmili local government in Delta state.

Anambra state is of course 96 percent indigenous Igbo, however, there are traces of Igala history in some communities of the following local government councils of the state--Ayamelum, Ihiala, Oyi, Awka North, Aniocha, Dunukofia, Onitsha North, Ogbaru, Anambra East, Njikoka, Anambra west, Onitsha South, and Awka South. The migration did not only affect the area known today as Anambra state, a sizeable portion of Enugu state's communities have Igala ancestry as well. Thus, it would be right to call it a reverse migration, occurring about eight hundred years after which Eri was reported to have founded the modern Igbo nation with its set of unique religious doctrine. It was also a period one of his sons, Onoja, was said to have departed northwards and founded the Igala land.

Eri's children were listed as Nri-Ifikuanim Menri, Agulu, Onoja (founder of Igala), Ogbodudu, Onogu and his only daughter, Iguedo. Together and respectively, his off-springs were instrumental to founding the towns of Aguleri, Igbariam, Ogbunike, Nando, Nri, Enugu-Ukwu, Nteje, Enugu-Agidi, Oraeri and so many other settlements in the East and West of the Niger. It is indeed difficult to draw a line between Igbo and Igala history.

Having said that, P.E. OKWOLI, a native Igalan, and renowned historian stated that in the ancient times, new rulers from the Igbo communities of Igala ancestry must go to Igala to be taught kingship rituals and ceremonials. Although he mentioned that Igala and UMUERI towns are related, but added that UMUERI needed not to go to Igala for any sort of tutelage. An exemption that might explain Nri-Ifikuanim and Agulu's seniority to their younger brother Onoja, the founder of Igala.

P.E. Okwoli further stated that

"In Nsukka and the rest of Igboland, there is a popular masquerade, which is called Agabaidu, and this is a significant cultural point. In Nsukka, the word Agabidu is used to refer to an eminent man, while it is used to refer to a King in Igala. Also Asadu is the word for kingmaker among the Igbo, while it takes the form of Achadu among the Igala. There are some other words which are signs of close cultural ties shared by both Igala and the Igbo. These include Atama, which means Chief Priest in both languages. Among the Igala, Atta means father, among the Igbo it refers to the eldest person. Ajogwu means warrior among the Igala and the Igbo"
The town of Asaba shares similar history with those others in Anambra and Enugu states. Before its "modern founder", Nnebuisi migrated from Nteje in the Anambra region to join his Igalla father who was a resident, Asaba was aboriginally inhabited by Ugboma and his lineage. Ugboma was a farmer from AWKA in the present Anambra state. (H. Vaux, 1934), (Asabausa.com). The aboriginal group assimilated those of Nnebisi and vice versa, and the refugees from different parts of Benin Empire. Nnebisi eventually renamed the town AHABAM, also meaning "I've chosen" In the Igbo language. Thus, Asaba's historical trajectory, geographical location, culture and language constitute the bulk of its overarching Igbo credentials.

On the other hand, during the course of Benin Empire's military expansion, some of the descendants of prince Odigbo of Nri who founded Ogwashi Uku, migrated back East, Anambra region precisely, and co-founded the settlement known today as Nsugbe. Their village, Umu-Ogwari, installed the first Obi of Nsugbe in about 1550 AD. Obi Ofili, the last king, was dethroned by the British in 1875.

Quite often, it is the Benin theory of Onitsha history that is widely circulated in the media, especially in the internet. Other accounts of Onitsha history would suggest that Onitsha is a federation of differing lineages, arriving at different times in history. Again, Igala is one of them. And what could be the most revealing part of Onicha history is the IGUEDO factor. The Iguedo factor is one of the ancient folklores in the communities of Anambra region of Anambra state. This is a rural and agrarian region that would gain nothing from claiming Onicha affinity. But, again, there is an Igbo proverb that says " the direction in which a crying baby points his fingers, would either indicate the location of his mother or father"

Their versions of the tale were though inconsistent like all others, but collectively, what was clear and consistent in their various versions were that the beginning of Onicha was not outside Igboland, and that the lady, IGUEDO, was central in the evolution of Onicha. The folklore states that Onicha descended from Iguedo, the daughter of Eri. The historical lady is still highly revered in some parts of the town. The Iguedo clan is made up of the neighbouring towns of Ogbunike, Nando, Umuleri and Awkuzu. Onitsha is geographically contiguous to Nsugbe, an UMUERI town, and shares dialectical similarities with these communities.

The people of Ogbunike reported that as recent as the1940s, Onitsha indigenes traditionally joined the Umu-Iguedo clan to celebrate "Olili-nne-Iguedo"; an annual festival that brings the descendants of Iguedo together in the town of Nando. The elders of Ogbunike community made this public in an explanatory letter to the Resident Officer, Onitsha province, dated 12th October, 1932. The signatories insisted that Onicha was an off-spring of Iguedo. However, the District Officer, on 29th November 1932, after consultations, replied thus:

"The Umu-Iguedo (sic) Towns certainly have an Onitsha relationship---but with only one quarter thereof---that is, OGBOLI. It would not be practicable to divorce OGBOLI from the rest of Onitsha and I do not think that Mr. Bridges has recommended this....."

This account, however, might be disputed in some quarters in Onicha today, even in Ogboli. But an account of this nature, that comes from neighbouring communities that have long existed before Benin's influence on Onicha, cannot be totally dismissed. Of note, is the import of the current Nri Kingdom, which cited the town of Onitsha as one spot of her ancient diaspora settlements.

While not dismissing the totality of Benin's influence on Onicha, research of Onitsha families reveals the presence of unrelated bloodlines that today appear as members of the same family. There are two types of such bloodlines. The first type consists of families that have established their own autonomy after having constructed mythical genealogies, including inventing nonexistent offspring for the founder, to pass themselves off as part of the direct line of descent. The second type consists of families that did not separate from the family into which they had merged. They share the same names and history. It is only during ritual matters, when they are excluded from performing certain rites, that it becomes obvious they are not part of the genealogical line. Investigation often reveals that the latter branches may have been the line of a domestic servant, slave, or an immigrant who lived with the family. (Nkiru Nzegwu, Elizabeth Isichei 1978, 104-107)

Curiously, the only four Ogboli settlements in Igboland have continued to embrace Nri/Eri ancestry. These are the OGBOLI villages of Nkwerre in Imo state, Atuma, Issele-Uku and Igbuzo in Delta state respectively. Infact, the IGUEDO factor is a huge one in that another Onitsha village, UMUIKEM, undisputedly traces their origin to the town of Umuikem in Nando, a member of Umuiguedo clan as well. On the other hand, Olosi and Obi-Ikporo villagers are mostly the descendants of Onitsha daughters married to non-indigenes. Time was, when the matrilocal custom of Onicha mandated non-indigene bridegrooms to settle down in Onitsha with their Onicha brides. An assimilation system known as "Idigbe" or "Mgba" (Nkiru Nzegwu).

On the other hand, the etymological question raised by the existence of Onicha Ezza--Ebonyi state, Onicha Uboma--Imo state, Onicha Nwenkwo--Imo state, Onicha Mbaise--Imo state, Onicha Nweorie---Imo state, Onicha Ngwa--Abia state, Onicha nweafor--Imo state, Onicha Amairi--Imo state, Onicha AmiyiUhu--Abia state etc., would continue to offset the notion that the origin of the word Onicha was outside Igbo-speaking land. What would have made these Onichas in the east to be pronounced and spelt the same way with the other Onichas who claims Benin ancestry, is what many stake holders would be interested to know.

Questions are being asked from both sides of the divide. The present generation are locked in the thinking of what logically can be the truth and what can not in these oral stuffs.

teelacruz:
Nollywood star, Kenneth Okonkwo and the immediate-past Commissioner for Enugu Capital Development Authority, Ikechukwu Ugwuegede, are gearing for a showdown over who gets the PDP House of Representatives ticket for Nsukka/Igbo-Eze South Federal Constituency on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Okonkwo, who became a household name after his role in the award-winning ‘Living in Bondage’, is one of the many Nollywood stars that have dumped acting for politics ahead the 2015 general elections.

He is however, facing stiff opposition from Ugwuegede, who appears to be more familiar with the political terrain having resigned as commissioner just few weeks ago to run for the same position.

Ugwuegede, who exuded so much confidence while speaking to journalists after submitting his nomination form, said he remained the aspirant to beat among all the contenders for his party’s ticket, including the immediate past chairman of Nsukka Local Government Area, Tony Ugwu.

He expressed dissatisfaction with the way Nsukka/Igboeze South federal constituency was represented in the House of Representatives and promised, “to render effective representation” to the people if elected.

He said there was need for leaders who have the interest of the people at heart, to make themselves available for selfless services to their constituency for effective representation.

The former commissioner said If elected he will attract as much Federal projects that are community friendly to his constituency. “I believe there is so much we can get from the National Assembly which we have not gotten”, he said.

He affirmed Governor Sullivan Chime of Enugu State as the party leader even as he said that contrary to the widely speculated crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the state, the party structure was in the firm grip of the Asogwa-led State Executive Council, SEC.


http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=91562

WAS ANDY A LAWYER, THIS ONE HE WEAR WIG....I BET HE NEVER PRACTICED FOR ONE DAY

funny oldies...kids watching violence cartoons, can u imagine my kid watching violent cartoons, with nuditites

VERY OLD ONE

penzino:
you beat me to it.

LOL

NOW SESAME STREET

IT USED TO BE BAD GOVERNANCE, THEN CAME EBOLA THEN CAME CORRUPTION THEN CAME 419 NOW THE WORST IS NOW TERRORISM,

PLS CAN SOMEBODY LET ME GO HOME


HOME SWEET HOME, ALWAYS ASHAMED OF MY GREEN STUFF AT THE AIRPORT...KEEP ASKING

WHY US


ARE WE THE ONLY.....HMMMM

The scientific basis for preferring women who are curvy is because women who are more shapely are seen as more fertile and have bodies which are better equipped for child bearing.

Also, curvy women live longer, are smarter and can produce healthier and smarter offspring. A study suggests that women with thicker backsides and thighs may have a reproductive advantage. Extra fat in these areas contain omega-3 fatty acids to help moms and their baby's brain during pregnancy.

While most men prefer wider hips which come with smaller waists, men's preference for breast size actually differs based on culture and also various other factors.

1) Poorer men prefer larger breasts

Studies by psychologists have shown that men experiencing relative resource insecurity (those who lack material goods, perceive themselves as not having as much money or resources as they would like to) would find larger breasts more desirable than men experiencing resource security (those who have material goods).

Their research was conducted across 266 men in Malaysia. The men from low socioeconomic backgrounds rated larger breast as more attractive than men from medium socioeconomic backgrounds, who in turn endorsed larger breasts as more attractive than men from high socioeconomic backgrounds.

Reason being? The study suggests that one view on women’s breast size is that it acts as a “signal of fat reserves, which in turn advertises access to resources”.


Curvy Scarlett Johansson (Actress from The Other Boelyn Girl,
Captain America and The Avengers).Rated sexiest woman alive by Esquire

2) Sexist men prefer larger breasts
Another type of men who prefer larger breasts are generally those who hold sexist attitudes.

According to a study from the University of Westminster, men who exhibit sexist attitudes towards women are also likely to have a preference for large breasts. The findings, which show a connection between sexism in men and breast size, involved 361 white men from 18-68 years of age being shown 3D models of women with a range of breast sizes.

The research found that the largest percentage of men (32.7 per cent) rated medium-sized breasts “most attractive”, followed by large (24.4 per cent) and then very large breasts (19.1 percent). The majority of men interested in large to very large breasts admitted to displaying behavioral traits of sexism and hostile attitudes towards women.

The study concluded that men perceive large breasts as “traditional” femininity and “perceive women as meek and weak”. The researchers of the study said, “it is arguable that benevolently sexist men perceived larger female breasts as attractive because larger breast size on a woman is associated with perceived femininity”.


3) Men who prefer smaller breasts are those who want a submissive partner
The third type of men who generally prefer smaller breasts are those who prefer a submissive partner who is easy to control.

According to psychologist, Stuart Fischoff,. Ph.D., men who like women with small breasts are generally seeking a more submissive, non-threatening partner. He explains that women with smaller breasts are generally seen as not trying to compete with other women who have larger breasts, and therefore will be loyal.

--


Curvy Priyanka Chopra
If you enjoyed this entry, the specific subject which studies the science of attraction is - Social Psychology or Evolutionary Psychology.

This topic is very interesting to me because I am not the type of person who buys the cliche statements: "Everyone is beautiful in their own ways" or "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder".As a practical and logical person, I prefer to trust scientific standards of attractiveness and beauty.

While there are some differences, thereexists objective universal standards of attractiveness on which most of us can agree on.

Human are basically animals. Subconsciously, we care about survival, successful reproduction and raising of our off spring. People find the opposite gender beautiful when they exhibit features which signal four key traits...

(1) Fertility - The ability to produce healthy offspring and provide for them (hip waist ratio, breasts)
(2) Sexual Arousal / Interest (redder lips, darker eyes, dilated pupils)
(3) Health (good skin, long legs)
(4) Youth (large eyes, small noses etc)
* Men are not judged by women so much on physical attractiveness but rather on ability to provide i.e. wealth, stability

Most recent evidence finds that people like faces that possess both Adult Sexuality and Infantile faces: large eyes and a small nose, full sexual lips, and a strong jaw and chin (Cunningham, Barbee, & Pike, 1990).

However, there are some interesting exceptions on how people perceive attractiveness and why we do not always pair with the partner we deem the most attractive or able to provide:


1. Cultural reasons do affect one's perception of beauty.



Popular taiwanese actress - Ruby Lin

According to a study by Michael R. Cunningham of the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisville, generally men of all races prefer women who had "neonate large eyes, greater distance between eyes, and small noses" and that "shiny" was also deemed attractive because it is indicative of "neonate vitality".

However, among all the men, there was a "difference" in the preferences of Asian and white judges with Asian judges preferring women with "less mature faces" and smaller mouths than the White judges.


2. Some studies have shown that men prefer to settle down with less attractive women.
This is due to some research which has shown that better looking women are generally likelier to cheat.


3. People can compensate poorer physical attractiveness with other factors
Matching hypothesis (first introduced in the 1960s) states that people tend to pair up with others who are equally physical attractiveness due to realistic constraints. People settle for mating within “their league” whether they want to or not.

However, recent research has shown that there are greater instances of complex matching, which occurs when people are able to attract partners far more physically attractive than themselves by offering compensatory assets—say, status, power, or financial standing. i.e. Rich middle aged balding fat man with gorgeous young model


4. Sometimes those who have a high level of physical attractiveness seek less attractive mates in order to wield more power and control over them (‘settler’).

Conversely, less attractive people may attract more attractive mates because they are more likely to yield to their whims (‘reacher’). eg. average looking girl and wealthy guy who could have easily gotten someone of a higher standard in terms of attractiveness with his money.



Ending off, I would just like to say that if you are not fat but dieting and exercising a lot, aiming to be skinny to be more attractive to guys... please don't. Besides being unhealthy, numerous research has shown that guys don't really care about "skinny" but find women of healthy weight and who are curvy more attractive.

So, please don't be fooled by media portrayal and also pressure from your friends. All these trying to lose weight to be super skinny will only make you look like some a rectangular block or pre-pubescent kid.

notobs:
Nonsense all because i punch holes in your fraud, thats what cowards like you do, resort to name calling when they are exposed.

Ete calabar

I gave u linker...mr nsibidi inventor...i laugh in obudu

notobs:
You are intellectually bankrupt and a dishonest person of the highest order, You can never pervert our cultural heritage. Stop giving your people a bad name, there is so much scholarstic evidence to disprove revisionist history. The truth stands out in the midst of all your lies.

But i told u never quote me again

If u want an intelligent talk relax if u cos me to act...i can give it to u

I just dont want to mess this thread up...otherwise u will get it


Eat nsi be di nne gi

MissMeiya:
Who are the Culture mods? Can this deranged notobs be banned? This is dementia in progress.

My dear he has made the whole thing a dickk measuring contest and i warned him not to quote me


Now nsibidi is in all the culture if old south eastern region just like the four market days system

The question is not who invented it...we dont have proof but how do we refine it and use it

true2god:
Stop jumping around like a kid, you will gain nothing. Nsibidi originated from efik\ibibio and spread towards aro, bende,afikpo and some other Igbo tribes as a result of geographical proximity and cultural interaction.

The letter you are typing with originate from anglo-saxon and the romans, and they are not making noice about it. I am sure you have 0% or no understanding of the insibidi script at all. So chill and stop ranting like a small kid that is new on nairaland.

I have told him that...too much dogs aint good u know

IyfeNamikaze:
yes, the dot above the arch represents the northern region, the dots at the left and right represents the southwest and southeast region while the lower dot represents the southsouth region. the Y represents the niger and benue rivers.

You see i am in order..as the origin of nsibidi there is no way i can authoritatively say that its ibo or ibibio thing..it might even be from south cameroon

MissMeiya:
@christopher123 The tombstone thing is incredible. I had no idea.

we are here to learn you know, so we aint competing..you have a great thread, i must confess

IyfeNamikaze:
about a symbol for the word "Nigeria ", here is something I was able to come up with. look at it and let me know whether you understand it or not. it's a very simple sign /symbol, anyone who knows how to hold a pen or pencil can recreate it

the Y sign represents the two major rivers (Niger and Benue) while the dots represents the cardinal points

thats nice

"Seventeen Stones" Cemetery

This cemetery is a small, abandoned rural burial ground adjacent to an iron furnace in Pedlar, Amherst Co. Virginia which operated from the Civil War to the mid-1880s. The cemetery passed from its last owner to George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in 1916, and was the subject of the 2005 doctoral dissertation of Rachel Malcolm-Woods, who in 2003 claimed to have found "a system of graphics that to the outsider looks like a decorative design....in African American quilts as early as 1750". Malcolm-Woods was also cited as the expert who had "translated" the embroidery on a crazy quilt from the African Akan language, a claim she has neither confirmed or denied.

Illustration of "woman" and "congress" headstones (dissertation p.3)

The basis of Malcolm-Woods's dissertation is her conclusion that the cemetery's headstones are engraved with "Nsibidi, an ancient Ejagham writing system from Nigeria" (dissertation p.2) demonstrating "the existence and survival of an Igbo community despite the subjugation of slavery" and "the maintenance of African rituals and beliefs in antebellum Virginia" (dissertation p.1) Approvingly citing Hidden in Plain View (so far as to use the book's title as the heading for Chapter 4 (dissertation p.104), she draws a connection between the "quilt code" symbols and the marks on the headstones (dissertation p.41).
Malcolm-Woods obtained the assistance of James Madison University and a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant to have the stones conserved and removed to the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia. Her resume lists numerous presentations on the cemetery; she received a Distinguished Dissertation fellowship from the University of Missouri/Kansas City, whose Media Relations department actively promoted the project, and has applied for a NEH Grant for a PBS documentary on Igbo symbols.

By her count (dissertation p.13) the cemetery has been featured in at least 75 national and international news stories; it has also appeared in journals including Black Issues in Higher Education and Folk Art Messenger (the journal of the Folk Art Society of America). African-American Heritage Virginia included the cemetery among those listed on its website (screenshot here).

Malcolm-Woods says that only two headstones in the cemetery are inscribed with names and dates. One of these (and the only one Malcolm-Woods transcribes) is among four identical headstones whose backs are carved with what she identifies as the nsibidi "journey" symbol (dissertation p.131). This stone belongs to "Mrs.SA. Downey," born 1839, died 1894 (dissertation p.163).

Malcolm-Woods notes (dissertation p.10) that a Downey descendant (whom she does not identify by name or race) told her that the cemetery's last owner was C.E. (elsewhere she says C.M.) Wood, that Mrs. Downey's maiden name was Wood, and that she wanted to be buried with her own family. In an endnote (dissertation p.256), Malcolm-Woods indicates the grave is probably that of the wife of white furnace worker Samuel Downey (one of several Downeys so employed, all of whom are white), adding that one source says Mrs. Downey was related to William Wood. In the text itself, she states that evidence of Mrs. Downey is "nowhere to be found in census, marriage, birth or death records" (dissertation p.163) and that census records "show Samuel Downey listed but not his wife."

Malcolm-Woods concludes that since a slave named Charles owned by William Wood worked nearby in the 1820s (dissertation p.113-115, 163), and decades after her death Mrs. Downey's husband and children were buried in another county, both C.E./C.M. Wood and Mrs. Downey were black (dissertation, p.256). That conclusion, according to Malcolm-Woods, simultaneously supports and is supported by the appearance of the carved headstones, despite what she admits are fundamental differences from Igbo stones in overall design, motifs, execution and carving methods (dissertation p. 134 (image of Igbo stone), 137 (image of Igbo nsibidi) 150-162).

With the encouragement of Robert Farris Thompson (among whose acolytes is Maude Wahlman, coordinator of the Art History doctoral program in which Malcolm-Woods was enrolled), she pursued the project. However, the two archaeologists Malcolm-Woods cites say they repeatedly expressed serious doubts about any African connection. Contrary to the the scenario implied in the dissertation (p.2), archaeologist and African-American cemetery specialist Lynn Rainville says Malcolm-Woods contacted her, asking about African cemetery symbols. Rainville told her she had never seen any but gave her drawings of two stones she had only recently seen and whose engravings she had not yet identified. Forest archaeologist George Tolley says he even pointed out Downeys in a later census, asking Malcolm-Woods what she would say if it could be proven the cemetery was actually from a Euro-American family. He says she responded that "if so, they would have been engrossed in the African culture and thus used the symbols on the tomb stones." Malcolm-Woods mentions only Tolley, and only as evidence of how "rarely do white locals give proper credit for antebellum historical contributions made by African Americans" (dissertation, p.4)

To those familiar with American vernacular architecture, the cemetery's "nsibidi" stones' dimensions, motifs, and chamfered edges bear a striking resemblance to the parts of a conventional mantlepiece in the ubiquitous "Italianate" style introduced in the 1870s by English architect Charles Eastlake and found throughout American and English interior design. Such an origin would not be surprising. Malcolm-Woods herself notes that beginning in the 1870s a slate mantlepiece manufacturer operated in the area.


http://ugrrquilt.hartcottagequilts.com/woods

MissMeiya:
Absolutely. Creation does not occur in a vacuum. Everything and everyone is influenced by something else. Always. Fighting over ownership is childish. Unless you get it on paper before anyone else does. Then they call that copyright

Re: nastiness LOL. I, of all people, would never judge.

Marks and objects in cemeteries that look merely decorative to the uninformed eye may be African signs and symbols. This iconography in cemeteries can be divided into three categories: 1) sign systems of African origins, 2) secular objects as surrogates for ideograms and 3) revival of African traditions, interpreted in new ways. Examples of such African retentions (subconscious transmissions from prior generations) exist in burial grounds and established cemeteries, particularly in the Southern United States.

A cemetery in George Washington National Forest in Amherst County, Va., is a good example. For decades, observers have commented that the gravestones had “strange marks.” Recently, these marks have been identified by this writer as African ideograms originating in Nigeria. The gravestones are inscribed with what appears to be Nsibidi, an Igbo writing system, confirming the survival of Igbo traditions during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Made of high-quality blue slate indigenous to the area and mined from a local quarry, the stones show little damage from weather or time. Subsequently, the place was named the “Seventeen Stones Cemetery.”

The stones were probably engraved between 1770 to 1830, when the Igbo Diaspora was at its height in Virginia. At that time, the Igbo people comprised approximately 70 percent of the blacks in Virginia, a larger percentage than in any other Southern state.

A star symbol at the top of one stone, signifying “congress” or “unity” has similarities to the Kongo cosmogram that depicts the life cycle of birth, life, death and the afterlife. The cosmogram symbol has equal perpendicular crossbars or lines, sometimes contained in a diamond shape or a circle. Here, the linear symbol in the lower register appears to be a combination of the sign for “individual” and “this land is mine.” Together the signs mean the deceased has joined the realm of the ancestors. Both symbols are enclosed in a rectangle, denoting their association. A line separating the symbols emphasizes they are separate but one.

Igbo ideograms were important elements of religious practice and served as mnemonic devices associated with religion and with moral and historical narratives. In Igbo death and burial traditions, Nsibidi symbols honoring the ancestors were thought to protect the deceased. The most appropriate place to honor one’s forefathers was the cemetery. At times, the deceased were consulted for help with day-to-day problems. Items such as chickens, rum and schnapps were offered as gifts for the deceased during a grave-side ceremony.

Source: http://www.folkart.org/mag/cemetery/cemetery.html

phreakabit:
A logographic shorthand project rooted in
Nsibidi script.

Based largely on court and county documents as well as the recently published transatlantic slave database, Douglas Chambers uses the circumstances surrounding the 1732 death of Ambrose Madison, the paternal grandfather of President James Madison, to reconstruct the history of the Igbo slaves in Virginia. Thus, the book is primarily about the dominant role of enslaved Igbo in the formation of early Afro-Virginia slave culture and society. In the words of the author, it discusses "the process of historical creolization in eighteenth-century Virginia .. . .[which] effectively mean[s] the Igboization of slave community and culture" in the region (p. 18). The book breaks into two parts: part 1 consists of chapters 1-4, and part 2 consists of chapters 5-10.

Three slaves, two men and a woman, were accused of causing Madison's death by poisoning. They were tried and found guilty. While one of the accused, a male slave owned by a neighboring planter, was executed for his alleged lead role, the other two, owned by Madison, were punished by whipping and returned to his estate.

As a foundation for his thesis, Chambers attempts to trace the history of the enslaved Africans from their points of embarkation in the Bight of Biafra and, more specifically, Calabar to their disembarkation in Virginia. Thus, while part 1 of the study focuses on the Igbo and their culture and society during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, part 2 centers on the experiences of the enslaved in Virginia. The author argues that the emergence and expansion of Aro influence in Igbo region, as the foremost slave merchants, and the demise of Nri hegemony in the north-central Igbo region in the mid-eighteenth century resulted in increased exportation of Igbo people out of the Calabar and the Niger Delta ports.

According to the author's calculations, the Igbo accounted for about 1.3 million of the 1.7 million people exported from the Bight of Biafra during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Out of a total of 37,000 Africans that arrived in Virginia from Calabar in the 1700s, 30,000 were Igbo (p. 23). The significance of this pattern of slave trade between Calabar and Virginia, Chamber argues, is that the increased exportation of enslaved Igbo from their homeland to the Chesapeake region coincided with the expansion of colonial settlement from the Upper Tidewater to the fertile Central Piedmont, an era when the transatlantic trade transformed the region into a slave society that was dominated by the Igbo and their culture.

In 1721, Ambrose Madison inherited an estate at Mt. Pleasant from his father-in-law. To secure title to this estate, he purchased newly imported African slaves and sent them there to clear and cultivate crops. In early 1732, he moved to the new estate with his family. Six months later, while still in his mid-thirties, he died, allegedly as a result of poison. As the author states, while Madison's biographers and hagiographers helped to create a general impression that he died a strange death at a very young age, his family members attributed his death to a poisoning conspiracy involving two of his slaves and an outside male slave. To buttress his claim that Igbo slaves were responsible for their master's death, Chambers, in a chapter of only five pages, attempts to link the use of poison as a weapon of slave resistance to the enslaved Igbo in Virginia and the Caribbean colonies.

This is very subjective, since the knowledge and use of plant medicines to heal the sick, placate the spirits and punish enemies and deviants was not the exclusive prerogative of the enslaved Igbo.

In part 2 of the book, which focuses on Virginia, the author delineates five phases of the creolization of Mt. Pleasant (later Montpelier), namely, the Charter generation (1720s-1730s), the Creolizing generation (1740s-1760s), the Creolized generation (1770s-1790s), the "Worriment" generation (1800s-1820s), and the Ruination generation (1830s-1850s). The charter generation of Atlantic Africans marked the development of Mt.

Pleasant as a regional slave community of the Madison family with twenty-nine slaves. It was an era when enslaved Africans employed their cultural heritage to adapt to their new environment. They not only employed their expertise in tropical agriculture to cultivate tobacco and corn, but also put into use their knowledge of herbs and plants to make preventive, curative, and poisonous medicines. Upon Madison's death, his family shared his slaves between his two quarters: the Home House and Black Level, an action which signifies a new settlement pattern.

The Creolizing generation of the Montpelier slave community saw a steady growth in the slave population, resulting largely from inheritance and births. Under the leadership of James Madison Sr., the family embarked on major construction projects that made each of their quarters resemble a small village. They also established large tobacco barns, corncrib, and a mill. Wealth generated through slave labor enabled Madison to enhance his economic and political status. For closer supervision and increased productivity, he broke his slaves into small workforces and deployed them annually to live in different quarters in a rotating order. However, following the building of the Home House and the slave quarter, the Walnut Grove, Madison brought many of his slaves to stay at the core Montpelier community in the late 1760s.

The Creolized generation (1770s-1790s) marked the high point of Montpelier as a slave community that was centered on the Walnut Grove, with over hundred slaves in the mid-1770s (p. 129). While tobacco remained the main export crop, Madison was able to diversify his business operations to include blacksmithing, carpentry, and brandy distilling. He also added wheat and hay to his list of crops. Before he died in 1801, Madison also invested in plows, scythes, and other grain-cultivating tools which facilitated increased production and specialization by the slaves.

The "Worriment" (1800s-1820s) and "Ruination" (1830s-1850s) generations marked the death of James Madison Sr., the disputes over the division of his estates, the first substantial separations of slaves from the home community, the death of President Madison, and the final divestment of what was left of the Montpelier community. By 1860, under a new owner, the Montpelier slave population had been so drastically reduced, either through intra- and inter-state slave trade or the manumission process, that only twenty slaves were left on the estate.

As the author aptly observes, in spite of the predominant role of enslaved Africans in the development of Mt. Pleasant and their contribution to the rise of the Madison family to regional prominence, historians have tended to overlook them, focusing on Montpelier only as the family home of President Madison. A few of the blacks mentioned in the historiography of the Madisons were Sawney, Billy Gardner, Granny Milly, Paul Jennings, and Surkey. Paul Jennings, who published a small pamphlet in 1865, was a sixteen-year-old house slave at the White House in 1814, attending to the president until his death, and Sawney accompanied the young James to his college in New Jersey and served as his manservant. He also served as an overseer, cultivated yams and cabbages, and raised chickens before his death in the 1830s.

In the last chapter, the author tries to reinforce his claims that Igbo slaves killed Ambrose Madison and that their predominance in Virginia gave them the opportunity to lay the foundation of the Afro-Virginian culture and community. For this purpose, he uses the personal names of the enslaved to mark their individuality and to connect them to the Montpelier slave community and the broader history of the region. The author mentions names such as Calabar (male), Eboe Sarah (female), Juba (male,) and Breechy (male). He also uses yams (a staple food) and okra (a vegetable) as evidence of the foodways of

Igbo origins, as well as "mojo" for charms, and the slave "Jonkonnu" (a Christmastime slave masquerade), all in the attempt to make a case for what he calls "creolized Igboism" in Virginia. Chambers also associates the eighteenth-century low-fired ceramic cooking pots and eating bowls (generally called colonoware) with the enslaved Igbo. According to the author, the "description of precolonial Igbo potting technology fits quite well with what is known of eighteenth-century Virginia colonoware . . . [and] gourds (calabashes) were another important Igbo material cultural item that continued in Virginia" (pp.172-173).

Other material culture the author lists in the book, as signifying Igbo connection, are dugout canoes, styles of fences, blue glass beads, and an iron sculpture which he claims evokes the kinds of figures made from wood or clay that littered southern Igbo "mbari" art or even "ikenga" (p.174). The author identifies musical instruments such as box drums and the "banjo" stringed instrument as uniquely Igbo. He also points to slave patterns of settlement, Igbo belief in reincarnation, the practice of not celebrating birthdays, and the nudity of enslaved children and youths as practices which resonated in Afro-Virginian culture and suggest the dominance of Igbo influence.

The author draws on the extreme lactose intolerance among Virginia's black adults of the nineteenth century and the related notion that the Igbo and Yoruba were the only major African ethnic groups with a known lactose intolerance (p.186). In addition, he says that the high proportion of Igbo women in the colony might have given them disproportionate influence in the socialization of Creole children.

As a counter-thesis to that of the author, it should be noted that yam-growing was and is not peculiar to the Igbo; more importantly, North American yams are actually sweet potatoes, not the "genus Dioscorea" associated with West Africa. Similarly, the paraphernalia associated with the Christmastime slave masquerades that the author links with the Igbo were actually more related to mid-twentieth-century Kalabari masks.

As for calabashes, as the author notes, these were used as gourds in Virginia; by contrast, calabashes were used as cups, bowls, and drinking ladles in Igbo society. Regarding musical instruments, while many central African peoples called their version of stringed gourd "mbanza", there is no Igbo name for the musical instrument the author identifies as "banjo." The author believes that most of the enslaved Igbo who came from Calabar were from the north-central Igbo region, the home to the famous Umudioka woodcarvers.

I would argue that the absence of carved doors and panels in Virginia undermines the idea of a north-central Igbo provenance of Calabar slaves and a pervasive Igbo presence and culture there. While there may be some credibility in the above claims, it is apparent that some of the cultural practices attributed to the Igbo in this study were neither unique nor exclusive to them. To start with, the Igbo were not the only enslaved Africans who originated from the Niger Delta and Calabar ports, and ended up in Virginia. There were also the Ibibio, the Efik, the Andoni, the Ubani, the Okrika, the Kalabari, and, later, the Ejagham, the Ekoi, the Idoma, the Igala, and even the Hausa and Nupe--captives from the nineteenth-century Muslim-engineered wars.

Besides, Virginia had slaves from the Yoruba, the Akan area, Mande, Fulani, Angola, the Congo basin, and Madagascar. The period covered by the book also coincided with the Islamic militancy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Senegambia, an upheaval that resulted in the enslavement of the natives.

Virginia was, in other words, a very multi-ethnic slave society. The lack of attention to other Africans in Virginia and the related neglect of their obvious contributions to the development of the region is a major weakness of this study.

It is clear that the author's interpretation and analysis was handicapped by his limited knowledge of Igbo history, culture, and language. For instance, he erroneously regards the Nri as the "first Igbo" (pp. 36-38) and treats them as founders and leaders of the entire Igbo nation. This explains why he spends considerable time in discussing the Nri kinglist and genealogical history, which is less important for purposes of his study; the book would have benefited more if he had instead focused on the Aro, Nike, Abam, Aboh, Ngwa, Ndoki, Nkwerre, and others who participated in the transatlantic slave trade. It is also erroneous to claim that the Nri were the only people in Igbo society with the power to cleanse abominations. The author asserts that the "expansion of Aro merchant warlord settlements" (p. 35) in the mid-eighteenth century led to the growing power of client village groups within Nri area. However, no examples of such Aro-client villages in north-central Igbo region are provided.

It is misleading to suggest that there was no cassava in the region until the twentieth century and that "fufu in Igboland was invariably made of yams, not cassava" (p. 40). Cassava was introduced in different parts of Igbo region at different points in time. While some areas started cultivating and processing the crop in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, others adopted it in the twentieth century.

Moreover, fufu was also made from cocoyam, unripe plantain, and banana and, later, cassava. The incident attributed to the "Nkwerre," who supposedly plundered Onitsha women traders when they brought European goods to the Nkwerre markets, and the author's interpretation and suggestion that the women were molested for usurping males' trading prerogative that violated Nkwerre taboo, are examples of his limited knowledge of Igbo society and history. The town in question was Nkwelle, which is twenty miles from Onitsha, not Nkwerre, which is much farther away. Moreover, Onitsha women were famed traders who not only bought and sold local and European goods, but also had direct commercial relations with European merchants from the moment the latter arrived in Onitsha.

As studies on the development of trade and commerce in the Onitsha region show, it was not until the twentieth century that Onitsha men, who regarded trade as women's work, began to take part in trade with the European firms.

The author's claim that "Igbo people brought the term ['buckra'] into English" (p. 110), as in "buckra ," a term used by slaves to refer to their white masters, is doubtful. While "buckra" might be a corruption of Ibibio "mbakara" ("mb" equals plural; "kara" equals to encircle, rule, or abuse), one cannot see the connection of this word with the Igbo. Similarly, he suggests that the slave name "Juba" was Igbo (meaning: "ji" for yam and "uba" for canoe, literally translated to mean "yam barn", "and that Juba" could actually be translated into Igbo words for "ask /enquire," or "refuse," or "possession of wealth" (ji-uba), or "plentiful yam." It is more likely that "Juba" was an Akan name (as in the case of Akan female name in South Carolina and Jamaica) than Igbo name.

In spite of the drawbacks I have pointed out, and occasional typographical errors, the author has assiduously provided an African-centered perspective that helps in our understanding of the circumstances surrounding the death of Ambrose Madison in 1732 and the development of his family into a prominent regional, and indeed, national economic and political power, as well as the contributions of his slaves in achieving these feats and to the foundation and growth of slave culture and society in Virginia. The book represents a limited but significant contribution to the history and historiography of slavery and, therefore, a valuable resource to students and scholars in the study of Africa and the diaspora.

Based largely on court and county documents as well as the recently published transatlantic slave database, Douglas Chambers uses the circumstances surrounding the 1732 death of Ambrose Madison, the paternal grandfather of President James Madison, to reconstruct the history of the Igbo slaves in Virginia. Thus, the book is primarily about the dominant role of enslaved Igbo in the formation of early Afro-Virginia slave culture and society. In the words of the author, it discusses "the process of historical creolization in eighteenth-century Virginia .. . .[which] effectively mean[s] the Igboization of slave community and culture" in the region (p. 18). The book breaks into two parts: part 1 consists of chapters 1-4, and part 2 consists of chapters 5-10.

Three slaves, two men and a woman, were accused of causing Madison's death by poisoning. They were tried and found guilty. While one of the accused, a male slave owned by a neighboring planter, was executed for his alleged lead role, the other two, owned by Madison, were punished by whipping and returned to his estate.

As a foundation for his thesis, Chambers attempts to trace the history of the enslaved Africans from their points of embarkation in the Bight of Biafra and, more specifically, Calabar to their disembarkation in Virginia. Thus, while part 1 of the study focuses on the Igbo and their culture and society during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, part 2 centers on the experiences of the enslaved in Virginia. The author argues that the emergence and expansion of Aro influence in Igbo region, as the foremost slave merchants, and the demise of Nri hegemony in the north-central Igbo region in the mid-eighteenth century resulted in increased exportation of Igbo people out of the Calabar and the Niger Delta ports.

According to the author's calculations, the Igbo accounted for about 1.3 million of the 1.7 million people exported from the Bight of Biafra during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Out of a total of 37,000 Africans that arrived in Virginia from Calabar in the 1700s, 30,000 were Igbo (p. 23). The significance of this pattern of slave trade between Calabar and Virginia, Chamber argues, is that the increased exportation of enslaved Igbo from their homeland to the Chesapeake region coincided with the expansion of colonial settlement from the Upper Tidewater to the fertile Central Piedmont, an era when the transatlantic trade transformed the region into a slave society that was dominated by the Igbo and their culture.

In 1721, Ambrose Madison inherited an estate at Mt. Pleasant from his father-in-law. To secure title to this estate, he purchased newly imported African slaves and sent them there to clear and cultivate crops. In early 1732, he moved to the new estate with his family. Six months later, while still in his mid-thirties, he died, allegedly as a result of poison. As the author states, while Madison's biographers and hagiographers helped to create a general impression that he died a strange death at a very young age, his family members attributed his death to a poisoning conspiracy involving two of his slaves and an outside male slave. To buttress his claim that Igbo slaves were responsible for their master's death, Chambers, in a chapter of only five pages, attempts to link the use of poison as a weapon of slave resistance to the enslaved Igbo in Virginia and the Caribbean colonies.

This is very subjective, since the knowledge and use of plant medicines to heal the sick, placate the spirits and punish enemies and deviants was not the exclusive prerogative of the enslaved Igbo.

In part 2 of the book, which focuses on Virginia, the author delineates five phases of the creolization of Mt. Pleasant (later Montpelier), namely, the Charter generation (1720s-1730s), the Creolizing generation (1740s-1760s), the Creolized generation (1770s-1790s), the "Worriment" generation (1800s-1820s), and the Ruination generation (1830s-1850s). The charter generation of Atlantic Africans marked the development of Mt.

Pleasant as a regional slave community of the Madison family with twenty-nine slaves. It was an era when enslaved Africans employed their cultural heritage to adapt to their new environment. They not only employed their expertise in tropical agriculture to cultivate tobacco and corn, but also put into use their knowledge of herbs and plants to make preventive, curative, and poisonous medicines. Upon Madison's death, his family shared his slaves between his two quarters: the Home House and Black Level, an action which signifies a new settlement pattern.

The Creolizing generation of the Montpelier slave community saw a steady growth in the slave population, resulting largely from inheritance and births. Under the leadership of James Madison Sr., the family embarked on major construction projects that made each of their quarters resemble a small village. They also established large tobacco barns, corncrib, and a mill. Wealth generated through slave labor enabled Madison to enhance his economic and political status. For closer supervision and increased productivity, he broke his slaves into small workforces and deployed them annually to live in different quarters in a rotating order. However, following the building of the Home House and the slave quarter, the Walnut Grove, Madison brought many of his slaves to stay at the core Montpelier community in the late 1760s.

The Creolized generation (1770s-1790s) marked the high point of Montpelier as a slave community that was centered on the Walnut Grove, with over hundred slaves in the mid-1770s (p. 129). While tobacco remained the main export crop, Madison was able to diversify his business operations to include blacksmithing, carpentry, and brandy distilling. He also added wheat and hay to his list of crops. Before he died in 1801, Madison also invested in plows, scythes, and other grain-cultivating tools which facilitated increased production and specialization by the slaves.

The "Worriment" (1800s-1820s) and "Ruination" (1830s-1850s) generations marked the death of James Madison Sr., the disputes over the division of his estates, the first substantial separations of slaves from the home community, the death of President Madison, and the final divestment of what was left of the Montpelier community. By 1860, under a new owner, the Montpelier slave population had been so drastically reduced, either through intra- and inter-state slave trade or the manumission process, that only twenty slaves were left on the estate.

As the author aptly observes, in spite of the predominant role of enslaved Africans in the development of Mt. Pleasant and their contribution to the rise of the Madison family to regional prominence, historians have tended to overlook them, focusing on Montpelier only as the family home of President Madison. A few of the blacks mentioned in the historiography of the Madisons were Sawney, Billy Gardner, Granny Milly, Paul Jennings, and Surkey. Paul Jennings, who published a small pamphlet in 1865, was a sixteen-year-old house slave at the White House in 1814, attending to the president until his death, and Sawney accompanied the young James to his college in New Jersey and served as his manservant. He also served as an overseer, cultivated yams and cabbages, and raised chickens before his death in the 1830s.

In the last chapter, the author tries to reinforce his claims that Igbo slaves killed Ambrose Madison and that their predominance in Virginia gave them the opportunity to lay the foundation of the Afro-Virginian culture and community. For this purpose, he uses the personal names of the enslaved to mark their individuality and to connect them to the Montpelier slave community and the broader history of the region. The author mentions names such as Calabar (male), Eboe Sarah (female), Juba (male,) and Breechy (male). He also uses yams (a staple food) and okra (a vegetable) as evidence of the foodways of

Igbo origins, as well as "mojo" for charms, and the slave "Jonkonnu" (a Christmastime slave masquerade), all in the attempt to make a case for what he calls "creolized Igboism" in Virginia. Chambers also associates the eighteenth-century low-fired ceramic cooking pots and eating bowls (generally called colonoware) with the enslaved Igbo. According to the author, the "description of precolonial Igbo potting technology fits quite well with what is known of eighteenth-century Virginia colonoware . . . [and] gourds (calabashes) were another important Igbo material cultural item that continued in Virginia" (pp.172-173).

Other material culture the author lists in the book, as signifying Igbo connection, are dugout canoes, styles of fences, blue glass beads, and an iron sculpture which he claims evokes the kinds of figures made from wood or clay that littered southern Igbo "mbari" art or even "ikenga" (p.174). The author identifies musical instruments such as box drums and the "banjo" stringed instrument as uniquely Igbo. He also points to slave patterns of settlement, Igbo belief in reincarnation, the practice of not celebrating birthdays, and the nudity of enslaved children and youths as practices which resonated in Afro-Virginian culture and suggest the dominance of Igbo influence.

The author draws on the extreme lactose intolerance among Virginia's black adults of the nineteenth century and the related notion that the Igbo and Yoruba were the only major African ethnic groups with a known lactose intolerance (p.186). In addition, he says that the high proportion of Igbo women in the colony might have given them disproportionate influence in the socialization of Creole children.

As a counter-thesis to that of the author, it should be noted that yam-growing was and is not peculiar to the Igbo; more importantly, North American yams are actually sweet potatoes, not the "genus Dioscorea" associated with West Africa. Similarly, the paraphernalia associated with the Christmastime slave masquerades that the author links with the Igbo were actually more related to mid-twentieth-century Kalabari masks.

As for calabashes, as the author notes, these were used as gourds in Virginia; by contrast, calabashes were used as cups, bowls, and drinking ladles in Igbo society. Regarding musical instruments, while many central African peoples called their version of stringed gourd "mbanza", there is no Igbo name for the musical instrument the author identifies as "banjo." The author believes that most of the enslaved Igbo who came from Calabar were from the north-central Igbo region, the home to the famous Umudioka woodcarvers.

I would argue that the absence of carved doors and panels in Virginia undermines the idea of a north-central Igbo provenance of Calabar slaves and a pervasive Igbo presence and culture there. While there may be some credibility in the above claims, it is apparent that some of the cultural practices attributed to the Igbo in this study were neither unique nor exclusive to them. To start with, the Igbo were not the only enslaved Africans who originated from the Niger Delta and Calabar ports, and ended up in Virginia. There were also the Ibibio, the Efik, the Andoni, the Ubani, the Okrika, the Kalabari, and, later, the Ejagham, the Ekoi, the Idoma, the Igala, and even the Hausa and Nupe--captives from the nineteenth-century Muslim-engineered wars.

Besides, Virginia had slaves from the Yoruba, the Akan area, Mande, Fulani, Angola, the Congo basin, and Madagascar. The period covered by the book also coincided with the Islamic militancy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Senegambia, an upheaval that resulted in the enslavement of the natives.

Virginia was, in other words, a very multi-ethnic slave society. The lack of attention to other Africans in Virginia and the related neglect of their obvious contributions to the development of the region is a major weakness of this study.

It is clear that the author's interpretation and analysis was handicapped by his limited knowledge of Igbo history, culture, and language. For instance, he erroneously regards the Nri as the "first Igbo" (pp. 36-38) and treats them as founders and leaders of the entire Igbo nation. This explains why he spends considerable time in discussing the Nri kinglist and genealogical history, which is less important for purposes of his study; the book would have benefited more if he had instead focused on the Aro, Nike, Abam, Aboh, Ngwa, Ndoki, Nkwerre, and others who participated in the transatlantic slave trade. It is also erroneous to claim that the Nri were the only people in Igbo society with the power to cleanse abominations. The author asserts that the "expansion of Aro merchant warlord settlements" (p. 35) in the mid-eighteenth century led to the growing power of client village groups within Nri area. However, no examples of such Aro-client villages in north-central Igbo region are provided.

It is misleading to suggest that there was no cassava in the region until the twentieth century and that "fufu in Igboland was invariably made of yams, not cassava" (p. 40). Cassava was introduced in different parts of Igbo region at different points in time. While some areas started cultivating and processing the crop in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, others adopted it in the twentieth century.

Moreover, fufu was also made from cocoyam, unripe plantain, and banana and, later, cassava. The incident attributed to the "Nkwerre," who supposedly plundered Onitsha women traders when they brought European goods to the Nkwerre markets, and the author's interpretation and suggestion that the women were molested for usurping males' trading prerogative that violated Nkwerre taboo, are examples of his limited knowledge of Igbo society and history. The town in question was Nkwelle, which is twenty miles from Onitsha, not Nkwerre, which is much farther away. Moreover, Onitsha women were famed traders who not only bought and sold local and European goods, but also had direct commercial relations with European merchants from the moment the latter arrived in Onitsha.

As studies on the development of trade and commerce in the Onitsha region show, it was not until the twentieth century that Onitsha men, who regarded trade as women's work, began to take part in trade with the European firms.

The author's claim that "Igbo people brought the term ['buckra'] into English" (p. 110), as in "buckra ," a term used by slaves to refer to their white masters, is doubtful. While "buckra" might be a corruption of Ibibio "mbakara" ("mb" equals plural; "kara" equals to encircle, rule, or abuse), one cannot see the connection of this word with the Igbo. Similarly, he suggests that the slave name "Juba" was Igbo (meaning: "ji" for yam and "uba" for canoe, literally translated to mean "yam barn", "and that Juba" could actually be translated into Igbo words for "ask /enquire," or "refuse," or "possession of wealth" (ji-uba), or "plentiful yam." It is more likely that "Juba" was an Akan name (as in the case of Akan female name in South Carolina and Jamaica) than Igbo name.

In spite of the drawbacks I have pointed out, and occasional typographical errors, the author has assiduously provided an African-centered perspective that helps in our understanding of the circumstances surrounding the death of Ambrose Madison in 1732 and the development of his family into a prominent regional, and indeed, national economic and political power, as well as the contributions of his slaves in achieving these feats and to the foundation and growth of slave culture and society in Virginia. The book represents a limited but significant contribution to the history and historiography of slavery and, therefore, a valuable resource to students and scholars in the study of Africa and the diaspora.

MissMeiya:
Absolutely. Creation does not occur in a vacuum. Everything and everyone is influenced by something else. Always. Fighting over ownership is childish.

Re: nastiness LOL. I, of all people, would never judge.

but do you realize that some slaves in the americas maintained there nsibidi culture of writing, we have been robbed of our heritage, Nigeria with its tribalistic phobism will never allow this form of writing to materialize but they will prefer western form of writing.....

this is the neo colonialist attitude of ours has affected all ramification of uor lives]


i congratulates the aros, the abiribas,the ibiobios or efiks(i dont know which one now) for giving us this unique writing

MissMeiya:
Thank you. I would have edited the OP to highlight that part, but once it hit the front page, it got locked.

Indeed, the word Igbo gets some people very worked up.

i just dont know why

MissMeiya:
@christopher123

You are awesome! Thanks for adding new content to the thread! Now I've learned something too!

And that's what we're here for, right, guys? Group hug!

Thank you dearie, I wanted to let them understand that this is no dicckk measuring contest


some people invent nsibidi (maybe the ibibios or igbos)
some people refined it (maybe the igbos or ibibios)


that is what we cant categorically say due to lost of data and archaeological evidences but one thing is that it is in both cultures.... so we are not contesting, this is just an intellectual discourse


your welcome, thanks for such an awesome thread


its refreshing and intellectual


hope i was not nasty in anyway?

The Igbo borrowed it from the Ibibio, Efik, and Ekoi who are related ethnic minorities of Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The Ibibio word “Nyibi” which means turn in English, is the root of Nyibidi. Nyibidi means turning. The play was usually accompanied with drummings. The drum is called Ibit. The drum for the ruling Crown is called Ibit Itam. Itam means crown, hat, or headgear. Ekpe was indeed the governing deity and Ibit Itam was one of their major plays. Ukara means governance or government in Ibibio. Ukara cloth is worn by those in the government of Ekpe. The Ekpe and even Ekpo masquerade of old used to dance in a circular motion in order to induce a trance-like effect or feeling. Hence Nyibidi. Ibibio is the largest language of the Cross River and Akwa Ibom territories. Efik, Ekoi, Annang, Oron, Eket, Qua, Ibeno, Okobo,etc. are all variations of Ibibio. The Ibibio owned and controlled Arochukwu until they lost it in 1634 to the allied forces of the migrating Igbo and the Akpa. The Igbo slaves of the Ibibio rebelled and joined forces with the Akpa who were themselves of Ibibio origin. The Ibibios left both Arochukwu and their ancient Long Juju, but those who remained continued to run the oracles and influence the Igbo converts/practitioners of Ekpe. The Ibibios and Efiks taught Nsibidi to the Igbos through the Ekpe society. The chief language used in Ekpe is Ibibio. The Ibibios and Efiks knew Arochukwu as Ibom and Mbot Abasi. Mbot means creation. Abasi means God. Therefore, Mbot Abasi means the creation of God or, simply, the people of God. While in Arochukwu, the Ibibio leaders had a secret society called Ekpe. Ekpe means leopard or lion. The leadership operated (and still does)in an esoteric manner. Only members are privy to the innerworkings of the group. They developed an elaborate system of logograms through which their ideas, knowledge, and activities were recorded. Nyibidi which means turning (going in circles), evolved into Nsibidi. Nsibidi is Ibibio for what is at play or, what’s playing? Nso = what. I(as in letter “e” = is. Bidi = play or playing. NSO-I-BIDI (NSIBIDI) or NSO-I-BIRI(NSIBIRI) means what’s playing? What’s at play? Therefore, Nsibidi means what is playing or, what’s at play? Nsibidi was later adopted as the name for the writings associated with Ekpe society. It is true that the Europeans found most of the Nsibidi script among the Ekoi, but it is really of Ibibio origin. When Aro and their allies conquered the Ibibio in 1634, they took over the oracle but retained its priests, with Loesin as the chief priest. It was he who later initiated Aro indigenes into the cult as priests. IBINI UKPABI is the IGBO corruption of IBIT UKPABI. Some say the Igbos used the word IBINI as homage to the slave-raiding Oba of Benin who caused their migration to Arochukwu. After the IBIBIO lost AROCHUKWU, the Igbos renamed the Ibibio deity IBI ITAM (Drum of the Crown). They called it IBIT UKPABI. IBIT is IBIBIO for DRUM. UKPABI is an IGBO name. The corrupted version, IBINI UKPABI, is what they use these days. Since Arochukwu(Mbot Abasi in Ibibio or God’s creation/people in English) is the spititual center of the Igbo race, you can say that their ‘holyland’ is actually of Ibibio origin. I’ll call it the IBIBIO CIVILIZATION OF AROCHUKWU. The Ibibio created it and that explains why the Aro deities have mostly Ibibio names.

The Igbos could not fully adapt Nsibidi because translation from Ibibio into Igbo had too many constraints. Original meanings of Ekpe society’s Nsibidi often got lost in translation.

“There was no war between Aros and Ibibio -what happened was what one would accurately describe as a coup. The Aros who were assistants (slave by Europeans) at the Ibritam Shrine organized a coup with the help of Ekoi, Akunakuna, and Igbos and seized the shrine from their Ibibio masters. Talbot** put the date at 1300 -1400 based on the geneaology and calculation of the ages of relatives of informant who claims their forebears were in charge of this shrine -we dispute this because the informant forebears couldn’t have been incharge since religious affairs in Ibibio land was entrusted to the group known as Annang today ,and this informant came from a different group. However, Talbot also based his date from Aro informant. We still think that the date was much earlier. However the consensus is that the Aros were in possession of the shrine before trade with the Portuguese and later Slave trade with Efik and later the Ijaws-Bonny and kalabari when Ibibios prohibited transportation of people across their territory.”
“Obot Okon Ita or Obinkita(an Igbo corruption of the name) was the capital of the Ibibio kingdom of Obong Okon Ita and Ibom(nation in Ibibio) before its conquest by Igbo and Akpa invaders in 1690–1720. This town is significant in Aro History because Obinkita became the center where defeated Ibibio warriors were judged.ion in Ibibio. This is why all Aro villages assemble at Obinkita during the Ikeji festival. Obinkita is now one of the 19 villages of Arochukwu.”
“Agwu Inobia or Eze Agwu the man that was the founding father of igbo Arochukwu

Agwu Inobia or Eze Agwu was one of the founding fathers of the city of Arochukwu, the third largest city in Abia State in southeastern Nigeria. He was the descendant of Nna Uru (a immigrant from the Igbo heartland to the Obong Okon Ita area) and king of the Eze Agwu clan centered in their capital the Amanagwu city-state. As new settlers, the Eze Agwu clan was resisted by the regional power Obong Okon Ita which led to the start of the Aro-Ibibio Wars. The war initially became a stalemate. Both sides arranged a marriage between the king of Obong Okon Ita and a women from the Eze Agwu clan in an attempt for a peaceful coexistence. The marriage eventually failed to bring peace but eventually played a decisive role in the war.

King Agwu Inobia invited Priest Nnachi from the Edda group near Afikpo to help him break the stalemate and win the war. When he arrived, Nnachi and Eze Agwu allied with prince Kakpokpo Okon of the Ibibio kingdom of Obong Okon Ita. Kakpokpo Okon was the son of the marriage between the Igbo women of the King of Obong Okon Ita. The Eze Agwu/Nnachi faction decided to help Kakpokpo attempt to overthrow his brother king Akpan Okon and the coup was heavily resisted. Nnachi called on an Eastern Cross river group known as the Akpa for help. The Akpa are said to have possessed guns and are credited for introducing the weapon to the region. Princes Osim and Akuma Nnubi led Akpa soldiers to help fight against the Ibibios. The alliance between Eze Agwu, Nnachi, Kakpokpo Okon, and the Akpa eventually defeated the Obong Okon Ita forces (1690–1720) under the leadership of Osim Nnubi. As a result of the Aro-Ibibio Wars, the alliance formed the Arochukwu kingdom. Akuma Nnubi was appointed king of Arochukwu in the place of his brother Osim Nnubi who died during the end of the war. Prince Kakpokpo Okon died and the Ulu Okon dynasty was assimilated into the Eze Agwu lineage. The Amanagwu was incorporated as the first of the 19 city-states of Arochukwu and Eze Agwu became one of the three lineages of Arochukwu.”

“The other major slave-exporting state was a loose confederation under the leadership of the Aro, an Igbo clan of mixed Igbo and Ibibio origins, whose home was on the escarpment between the central Igbo districts and the Cross River. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, the Aro built a complex network of alliances and treaties with many of the Igbo clans. They served as arbiters in villages throughout Igboland, and their famous oracle at Arochukwu, located in a thickly wooded gorge, was widely regarded as a court of appeal for many kinds of disputes. By custom the Aro were sacrosanct, allowing them to travel anywhere with their goods without fear of attack. Alliances with certain Igbo clans who acted as mercenaries for the Aro guaranteed their safety. As oracle priests, they also received slaves in payment of fines or dedicated to the gods by their masters as scapegoats for their own transgressions. These slaves thereby became the property of the Aro priests, who were at liberty to sell them.”