STORY OF EKUMEKU WAR

STORY OF EKUMEKU WAR 

...All you need to know about it 

The Ekumeku Movement consisted of a series of uprisings against the rising power of the Royal Niger Company of the British Empire by Anioma people in present day Delta State. The British penetration of Nigeria met with various forms of resistance throughout the country. By 1878, the Anioma people (today, nine Delta North LGAs from Asaba to Agbor and Kwale) could no longer stand the open robbery misnamed as free trade, and Asaba people simply refused to buy from, or sell to, Europeans.

This trade boycott was a terrible blow to the British for Asaba was by this time the commercial and political headquarters of British rule. Captain William Allen and T.R. H Thompson wrote on August 31,1841, on the importance of the Asaba market, “At Asaba the natives of Benin come to trade by land, they have no canoes. The Eggarah people bring their produce of the interior.

Those from Aboh bring European goods, when they have them, or salt. The dry land people (from the hilly land behind Adamugu or Damoogoo or Abele bring horses.” That trade boycott of 1878 made the British traders to team up to form the United African Company. Earlier in 1882, Ase (Asaba-Ase, near present day Ashaka and Patani (both in Delta state), had been bombarded because a few individuals were suspected of stealing goods belonging to the British. Even Asaba itself was so thrashed that it never could join in the Ekumeku resistance.

Apart from unfair trade, the Anioma people resisted their being forced to be beasts of burden to carry goods for the Whites or even transport whites who would sit snugly on hammocks. Precisely in 1888, some Asaba people on such a forced march as beasts of burden to Ibusa stopped half way and refused to go any further. The first “native” to complain was shot immediately as a lesson to others.

British forces perpetrated genocide against Ilah people and Aboh people suffered the same fate as punishment for the death of one Mr. Carr, a member of the 1841 expedition who got drowned while on a solitary trip – against expert advice. What ensued, the Ekumeku war itself, has been a frequently retold shallow tale; every village claims that it fought the last and the toughest battle against the British because the revolution was individually organized by various communities.

This was how the the St. Anthony’s College, Ubulu-Uku Whatsap forum discussed the war last week because the school was briefly renamed Ekumeku Grammar School. Before Ubulu-Uku fell by November 5th, 1909 Chief Igbukwu Mordi had brought home the head of a Whiteman who was attacking Ubulu-Uku through the bush from Ubulu-Okiti. His fellow town’ s man Idegwu Ajootokpor (terrible weed), was also a fierce Ekumeku war hero.

The Obi of Ogwashi-Uku first took refuge at Ubulu-Uku when the British sacked his town and later hid at Olor, but no student of the school that was named after the revolution knew of such. In 1902, the people changed from individual and direct confrontation with the British forces to guerrilla warfare. In 1911, the Ekumeku forces were largely defeated but the insurgency lasted till 1914. 

Ogwashi-Uku’s fall in 1911, paralysed the revolution; some 300 warriors, were arrested, tried, and jailed at Calabar. Among them were Chief Ijeh from Issele-Uku and Chief Ibe from Ugbodu. Others were chiefs: Mordi, Odum, Nwajido and Banoba of Idumuje-Unor – heroes all. Those who collaborated with the colonialists were however richly rewarded with appointive posts in the British colonial administration. The kingship tussle that has wracked Ogwashi-Uku till today started when the British dethroned the intransigent king of that time and appointed a collaborator from the Okonjo family.

In the colonial era, the Anioma area was part of the defunct Asaba and Aboh Divisions of Western Region. The British called it the Western Igboland ostensibly to differentiate it from the Igbo east of the River Niger. The uprising  “league of young men,” the “Otu Ikolobia,” in various villages formed the Ekumeku secret organization organized around prominent chiefs such as Dunkwu, Elumelu, Obiora, Idegwu, Chiejina, Ikemefuna, of Onicha-Olona, and Elikwu, Ofogu, Umejei, and Uwechua of Ibusa. Others were Awunor Ugbo and Obi of Akumazi. Obi of Ubulu-Uku, Nkwo and Mordi of Ubulu-Uku, Onwudiaju of Issele-Azagba and Nzekwe,  Nwabuzo Iyogolo of Ogwuashi-Uku and the Obi of Ubulu.

Only members knew how it was organized and where it’s operational bases were at Ogwuashi-Uku, Issele-Uku, Onicha-Olona, Ubulu-Uku, and Ezi, where it fought its fiercest battles with the British forces. The Ekumeku resistance movement existed in many towns in the Asaba hinterland and neighbouring Afemai, except Asaba itself.

It attacked mission stations and colonial government institutions, and their military exploits extended to the neighbouring Ishan people, who collaborated with the Ekumeku warriors by sending reinforcements for the struggle. The constabulary force that attacked Ibusa in January 1898, under Major Arthur Festing comprised 202 African soldiers, 134 carriers, and 8 European officers. In that first battle of the war Ibusa killed some white officers and emboldened the other villages.

Subsequent attacks led by Captain Burdon, on Idumuje-Ugboko, IdumujeUno, Akwuku-Igbo, Atuma, Ebu, Ukala-Okpunor and other proximate communities in 1898, had seven British soldiers, 160 African soldiers, 4 non-commissioned European officers, a medical officer, and many carriers. A Briton, Talbot captured the Ekumeku warriors’ gallantry and heroism: “the dogged resistance of Ekumeku made it to be the stoutest warriors in the course of the British occupation of Nigeria area.” 

The resistance movement inspired the Aro and the Ijebu in Eastern and Western Nigeria and the Mau Mau of Kenya, to later resist the British.