Ayirimi Emami: Is there a Warri Kingdom?

Warri, the largest town in Delta doubles as the commercial nerve centre of the State; habouring , among others, a seaport, a refinery cum petrol-chemical plant, the nearby Delta Steel Company, Aladja and an airport. It is a town whose fame as an oil city has brought in its wake an untoward crises among the three ethnic tribes that constitute the main inhabitants, namely; Urhobo, Isoko and Itsekiri, and variously occupying three distinct areas respectively; Agbasa, Ogbeijoh and Okere. The various crises of attrition, which have claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives bother on an undeclared tussle and superiority complex among the three tribes.

Until the advent of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s reign in the then Western Region of Nigeria as Premier, Warri, as a cosmopolitan city, knew all of its peace. The people lived together as one and shared a lingua franca in its acclaimed ‘Pidgin English.’ There were not a few families in Warri whose origin was an admixture of Urhobo/itsekiri or Urhobo/Ijaw or Ijaw/Itsekiri. If doubts abound in this assertion, the likes of Chief Edwin Clark, Sam Amuka – publisher of Vanguard Newspapers, Emmanuel/Francis Okumagba and Chief James Ibori – former Governor of Delta State – would readily clarify. Such was the beauty of the inter-tribal marriages, the unity and love of the people in the Warri to Sapele axis of Delta State. Then Obafemi Awolowo came on the scene to put a sword on the cord of unity in Warri and things fell apart.

While the Southwest celebrates Awolowo as a sage, the discerning Urhobos and Delta Ijaws see in him a contagious plague. His politics of divide and rule is the root-cause of the Warri crises. How? The Itsekiris, who are known to be offspring of the marriage between a Benin prince and an Ijebu woman – hence a corrupted Yoruba as their language – have an ancestral kingdom and homeland in Koko Town. In modern history, it is recorded that King Nana – Olu of Itsekiri, their sovereign head – whose palace was in Koko was dethroned and banished in 1894, exiled to Ghana by the colonial masters, for his involvement in slave trade after the abolition of same in 1833. And so the Itsekiris lived without a king until the immediate pre and post independent era. But following the elections of 1957 in which the Action Group lost to NCNC, Awolowo in his desperation engineered the infamous ‘cross-carpeting’ in the Western Region House of Parliament to become the Premier.

Having succeeded in that scheme, he went for the jugular of those minority ethnic tribes that did not vote for him in the region, which included the then Midwest; now Delta and Edo. By the deeds of Awolowo, the Urhobos were a major sinner in not voting for him; so they had to be punished. First, the Isoko speaking dialect of Urhobo had to be carved out of Eastern Urhobo division, in reward for Chief Thompson Otobo – an averred Awo loyalist. In furtherance of of the punishment, the Urhobos who were the major tribe in cosmopolitan Warri, constituting about 60% of the population, had to be silenced. As such, Warri had to be taken from them. To do that, Awolowo saw an opportunity in the abandoned throne of the Olu of Itsekiri. Through an act of Parliament, he did not only reactivate the throne but upgraded it to a first-class chief, as well as change the nomenclature from Olu of Itsekiri to Olu of Warri. As if that was not enough slap on the faces of the Urhobos and the Ijaws in Warri, he moved the Palace from Koko to Warri – a distance of more than a 100km. Not done, he took his anger to Ajegunle (the popular AJ City) in Lagos and refused to develop it, because as it was then known; Ilu-sobo was an Urhobo town.

That was Awo and his politics of bitterness – a man who never won election in his life – as it relates to Urhobo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, and the town, Warri. Came the discovery of oil in Warri and its creekal environments; and the Olu of Warri and his chiefs, as it were, were well positioned to deal with, and collect royalties from, the oil prospecting companies, particularly Shell PDC and Chevron. That is the genesis of the Warri crises. But the truth remains to be told: There has never been a Warri Kingdom, not in pre or post colonial history, and there will never be. An Awolowo-led administration in the Western Region cannot decree a Warri Kingdom into existence. It has no basis in history. The Urhobos who are the majority in Warri, and indeed, Delta State are contended to live in it as a cosmopolitan town. So too are the Ijaws in whose language the name, Warri, derives. The Itsekiris have an ancestral kingdom in Koko, the palace of Nana still stand as a monument till today; that is a fact in history.

It is, therefore, out of place for people like Chief Ayirimi Emami to address himself as the Uwa-Oyibo-Yami of Warri KIngdom or for the Olu to so claim. In truth, while he answers the Olu of Warri, all and sundry in Warri know that he is Olu of Itsekriri, exercising his reign over them only. Rather than try to covet Warri as their own, the Itsekiris should endeavour, since the other tribes are not contesting the nomenclature, to forge a common front with the Urhobos and the Ijaws to fight the real enemy; the Nigerian State, which has expropriated the hydrocarbon of the Niger Delta to itself for over 55 years. Deltans should not allow the divide and rule politics of Awo in the late 1950s and early 1960s to hamstring the peaceful co-existence of the three tribes in Warri. The subtle crisis that brewed over the naming of the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) could have led to a repeat of the seven years crises in Warri. That senseless bloodletting was precipitated by the naming of a local government area headquarter. It is a shame.

The fact on ground tells us that Warri is the only beauty of Delta State. It behooves the citizenry to strive to develop it further; make it a Houston of Nigeria. Emami, an eminent Itsekiri son has made well for himself as soldier of fortune. My attention was drawn to his advertorial of June 10, 2014, on page-5 of the Daily Independent Newspapers. It was a rejoinder to an earlier advert by some Gbaramatu leaders in Vanguard Newspapers of June 6, 2014 on page-20. While I agree that he has a right to reply, and that he did make some valid and salient points, I wish to admonish that both parties should avoid stoking the ambers of crises. The Warri that we know is a cosmopolitan town; it should please be left in its original status.