Legend · c. 1770–1934 · Tradition
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Four ruling houses, a first king remembered as wicked, and a murder that emptied the royal town for a century and a half. The Okpe of Delta State tell how they wandered, fought, sold each other, buried a live goat to end a war, and finally came home.
The Okpe live in the heart of Delta State, in the land now split between Okpe and Sapele local government areas. Their country runs across about 500 square kilometres of dry land, mangrove, swamp and river, bordered roughly by the Ethiope, the Warri River and the Urhiapele. Their neighbours include Warri, Uvwie, Agbarho, Oghara, Jesse and Agbon. Among the peoples of Delta State, the Okpe say they have the largest kingdom of all.
The history kept by the Okpe Union of North America, an association of Okpe people abroad, begins with four sons: Orhue, Orhoro, Evwreke and Esezi. From them came the four ruling houses of the kingdom. In time, the houses agreed that the crown would go round among them in turn, so that no single family could hold it for ever. The Union credits this rotation with keeping peace and fairness in Okpe to this day.
But the first turn went badly. The first king chosen under the system was Esezi I, who carried the title Orodje of Okpe and is placed in the years around 1770 to 1779. The Union's account uses a hard word for him: he was, it says, reputed to be wicked.
The other three houses, Orhue, Evbreke and Orhoro, plotted together and killed him. Then they made war on his family, the Esezi house, and drove them out of the royal town, Orerokpe, which was then called Adane Okpe.
You might think the three winners would then settle down to share power. They did not. They fell out among themselves, and their quarrels wrecked the town. By around 1780, the account says, Orerokpe was empty. It would stay that way for 150 years.
So the kingdom that had built a careful system for sharing the crown lost its first king to murder, and its capital to its own fighting, within about ten years.
For the next century and a half the Okpe lived without their old centre. During those years they set up two capitals, one after the other.
The first grew up at Ugolo in about 1840, where a man named Idiemor was chosen as head of the clan. Trouble came quickly. Idiemor quarrelled with the Amuokpe house, led by Orholor, and Orholor was killed. Orholor's son, Odjegba, would not accept it. He declared himself independent. His mother was Itsekiri, and he used that tie to raise Itsekiri allies. With them he beat the Okpe of Ugolo, took many of them captive, and sold them into slavery.
In the end the Okpe made up. They removed Idiemor and, in 1890, moved the capital from Ugolo to Odjedi. They even made peace with the Esezi house, the family driven out a century before. As head of all the Okpe they chose the oldest man, Anovwan of Ughoton, with the title Okpaku Okpe. The account even remembers his officials: the official called his otota, Odiete son of Owhebor of Oha, and his chief executioner Okolo of the Orhue house. Odjegba, the man who had sold his own people, sat among the senior members of this new government.
It did not last. In 1897 an Odogun chief named Eyaju murdered a woman. The British had arrived by then, and they demanded that Eyaju be handed over. The Odogun, the ruling council, refused, saying the matter fell under native law. The British broke up the council, arrested Eyaju and sent him away to Calabar. That was the end of the Odjedi government.
With the Okpe divided, neighbours took their chance. In 1898 a man called Ikweghwu of Agbarho kidnapped a girl from Oha, and a bloody war followed. According to the account, it ended only when the Osuivie of Agbarho buried a live goat in the ground, a solemn oath known as the Ochurhobo.
More fights followed. Oha fought Ovu in 1919. Then in 1927 British taxation split the Okpe again. Chief Egbele of Onyeke revived the Odogun at Odjedi, named himself head of all the Okpe, and refused to pay taxes. Men such as Temisan, Mujakporue and Echerusi backed him.
But three senior elders, Kogoro, Agbaifo and Akalusi, would not accept him. They set up a rival Odogun at Orerokpe, the empty old capital.
Here the story turns on an oracle. The Edion oracle told Owhere to make a sacrifice. Chief Ayomanor of Owhere carried it out. Then he did something nobody had done in 150 years: he rebuilt his house at Adane, the old heart of Orerokpe, and became head of the Okpe faction based there.
Slowly the two sides came together. Egbele's group made peace with Ayomanor. In 1931, under British protection, the whole Odogun met again at Orerokpe. In 1934 it was officially recognised and gazetted. After about a century and a half, the Okpe had their capital back.
The throne came back too. The second Orodje, Esezi II, reigned from around 1945 to 1966. The Union remembers him as a believer in democracy and says he was one of the kings who went to the 1957 constitutional conference in London on the road to Nigeria's independence. The third, Orhoro I, reigned from about 1972 to 2004. He had been to a Catholic school, served in the police, earned a business diploma in Britain and ran a company. The fourth, Mujakperuo Orue I, is a retired major general of the Nigerian Army.
Look at the names: Esezi, Orhoro, Orue. The same houses that tore Orerokpe apart in the 1770s now take turns on its throne, which is just what the rotation was meant to do.
