The Transformation of Ebiraland North-Central Nigeria 1880-1960: By Prof. Adam Okene Ahmed Abere

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A SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION OF SOURCES FROM THE PAST

PROF. ADAM OKENE AHMED

Nigerian Defence Academy Publisher Limited Kaduna

AUGUST 2021

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PREFACE 

Between the late 15th and early-17th centuries when they migrated to, and inhabited their present location in the hilly stretch of land south-west of the Niger-Benue confluence area, the Ebira of this study organised themselves into the six autonomous but interdependent clan groups of Okengwe, Adavi, Eika, Okehi, Ihima, and Eganyi. The people’s settlement on the top of the hills, some of which rose as high as 2000 ft was deliberate. Such design served as protective, defensive and security devices that shielded them against any external incursions. They also served as operational position where counter insurgencies were organised and directed against belligerent neighbours, foreignthreats and invasions.

PROVOST NATIONAL DEFENSE COLLEGE NIGERIA

The Ebira socio-political organisation which become consolidated and systematised over time emphasised the dominant position of family both as a unit of control and sanctions, and as a unit of production. Though the arrangements did not favour stratification, they were well knitted in such a way that each layer of family, lineage, clan and clan-group in that order, operated within a set of ancestral laws and code of conduct which helped to put the land on a relative socio-political harmony and indeed, stability. The cosmology of the people recognised the Almighty God as the one Supreme Being. He was nonetheless worshipped through the ancestors, spirit and mother earth. The cosmological conception made eku, the ancestor- personification cult as the compact core of the peoples’ social mores and political organisation. The social relevance of this belief lies in the fact that laws which guided the society were thought to have emanated from the ancestors whose guiding spirits were thought to be constantly watching the people in the living world. The indigenous economy was geared towards domestic consumption and exchange. The experience of Ebira has in fact shown that the pre-colonial economy of the traditional African societies was not subsistently reactionary and disorganised as often assumed by Euro-centric and imperial historiographers. In Ebiraland, production efficiency, division of labour and specialisation were fully exploited, leading to the people taking the advantages of both internal and external economies of scales. In the early 19th century, realizing its potentialities, the Okengwe had specialized in the production of beniseed which it traded and exchanged with the groundnut which the Adavi clan- group and communities in the immediate north of the land, had also become specialists in its production.

However, between 1865 and 1880, the first organised major threat to the political economy of the people was witnessed in the invasion of the Ajinomoh Jihadists. Though the incursions of the Jihadists were unsuccessful as their various onslaughts and skirmishes to turn Ebira into vassalage of the Sokoto Caliphate were skillfully rebuffed, the attempts of the Jihadists launched jointly from Bida and Ilorin, nevertheless, had profound socio-economic effects and therefore, implications on the people and on the land.

AZAD, PALACE, OHINOYI OF EBIRALAND  

The military conquest of the land in 1903 by the British formally brought Ebira geo-polity into the British colonial empire in the then emerging new imperialism. As unwanted intruders, it took the British another one and half decades before they could stem the waves and hordes of violent resistance of the people. However, by 1917, with the installation of Atta Ibrahim as the District Head of Ebira, the British concertedly began to organise Ebira in its own socio- political and economic image. Motivated primarily by material and human exploitation, the British forced political centralization and, in fact, over-centralization on the land. The consequences of this were many as well as diverse. Monetisa- tion which over-turned the indigenous order was unleashed upon the polity. Taxation, hitherto unknown to the people, was equally imposed and its rate continued to increase until 1960. The British developed its cash crops-cotton and beniseedin Ebiraland and its regimented arrangements induced the people to furnish palm oil, kernel and castor seeds to the colonial firms ubiquitously established all over the land. What all these meant was that colonial economy based on deep exploitation, not only had profound effects on the people by its radical transformation of the indigenous economic order, it, in addition, altered the socio-psyche of the Ebira in their conception of wealth and capital accumulation, production and consumption patterns, all of which came to re-align the people’s social relations and cultural fibres.

OKENE CITY 

The wind of change favouring decolonisation and democratisation had their marks on Ebira. Like other parts of the country, the effect of the Second World War 1939-1945, and the impact of the political agitations of the elite influenced the pattern of the formation of political unions and parties in the land. However, what probably made the Ebira experience different from the other areas was the manner in which the various forces ironically spurred and supported by the British political officers, collaborated to bring down both the British local agents and the structure of the Native Authority (NA) system.

Written by

Prof Adam Okene Ahmed Abere

Provost National Defense College 

Abuja, Nigeria. 

The book is 216 pages, 

Published by Nigerian Defence Academy Publishers Kaduna. 

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