Lost history · 1880s–1911
No matching image yet, so this page uses a plain title card instead of a photo.
For about a decade, young men in the towns behind Asaba fought British rule from the bush, at night, and in near silence. The colonial records called it a "wicked club". The elders called it Aya Ekumeku, the Ekumeku wars.
In the 1880s, Asaba, on the west bank of the Niger, was the headquarters of the Royal Niger Company. The company was a British trading firm, but it acted like a government, signing treaties and pushing its authority up and down the river. The towns in the hinterland behind Asaba were western Igbo communities, the people now called Anioma. They had their own kings, their own age-grades and their own ways of running things, and they did not ask for a company to rule them.
The first cracks showed early. According to people the historian Philip Igbafe spoke with, Issele-Uku was where young men and chiefs first turned against their own Obi, in 1893, because he supported the Royal Niger Company and the missionaries.
In 1900, the area passed from the company to direct British government rule. Things got worse, not better. The new administration made rules against parts of the people's religion and politics. It set up native courts, which people hated, and under its protection missionaries spread through the towns. As Igbafe puts it, the people saw all of this as hostile to their whole way of life. The resistance pulled together, and between 1902 and 1910 it fought a long and stubborn war across the Asaba hinterland.
Even a British governor admitted something had gone wrong. Sir Walter Egerton wrote that the rising was due to "an entire want of touch between the political officers and the native communities placed in their charge". In plain words, the officials did not know the people they were ruling.
The movement grew out of societies that already existed in the towns. That is what made it so hard to crush. It was not one army with one headquarters. It was a web of young men's associations spread across many communities, which could hide among ordinary village life and come together when needed.
The British never quite understood it. Igbafe says officials mistook its outward signs for what it really was. In 1902 the District Commissioner at Asaba, Reginald Roberts, collected statements from local rulers. The Obi of Akuku said his people had "formed some bad company". Two chiefs from Ugbodu admitted their people had formed "a company called Ekumeku with no good motive". The Obi of Atuma was blunter: his people had formed it to make war on the government. A local trader named Palmer called it "this wicked club", which made people act friendly in front of officials while plotting behind their backs.
There was another name the British picked up, Otu Ochichi. They seem to have read a lot into it, but Igbafe notes that it simply means a secret society that works at night. That was the Ekumeku style. Members met in secret, moved at night and kept quiet about what they did. The word Ekumeku itself is often explained as something like "do not talk about it". Igbafe got his own explanation of the word from an old man named Emelieze of Ogbenta, in Ogwashi-Uku, who said he was about 86 when they spoke in December 1962.
It had leaders, and the elders still remembered them. One, Awuno Ugbo, was described as the youngest Ekumeku leader, nicknamed Nwanta Ekumeku, the child of Ekumeku.
The British answer was force, again and again. There were military operations in the hinterland in December 1902 and more reports of fighting in 1904. The government passed an Unlawful Societies Proclamation in 1905, which later became an ordinance, so that simply belonging to such a group was a crime. Igbafe's conclusion is that alongside the native courts, special town laws and prosecutions, the colonial government relied heavily on armed force to destroy the movement.
One of the hardest rounds came at Ogwashi-Uku in 1909. The district commissioner wrote ahead to the Catholic missionary there, Father Zappa, warning that troops would soon move against the town. The attack came in November. By 12 December, seven soldiers had been killed and fifteen wounded, and seven carriers killed. The mission house was destroyed, and Father Zappa later asked the government for compensation. After people in Ogwashi-Uku refused to name a murderer, the town was fined £100, plus £20 more for not coming to Ibusa. Even a senior British official called that "very ill-advised" and cut it to £30.
The last fighting came in 1910 and 1911. By early 1912 there was also an ordinance letting the government fine whole towns and villages whenever soldiers or police had to be sent in. That is how a guerrilla war ends under colonial rule. Not with a treaty, but with whole communities paying the bill.
What makes Igbafe's work special is that he went to the people who remembered. In December 1962 he sat with old men in Ibusa, Asaba, Ogwashi-Uku, Ubulu-Uku and Ashama. Obi Mordi of Ibusa was so old he said he was born during the Ngiga war, around 1874, and Igbafe noted that he "still talks firmly". A man named Michael Odu of Ubulu-Uku said he had fought in the 1911 war himself and had kept the gun he used.
The elders had their own name for those years. They called them Aya Ekumeku, the Ekumeku wars, and they told them over with pride.
