By Akanimo Sampson
In a daring table-shaking outburst, a great grandson of a renowned slave merchant in Akwa Ibom State is linking the long-standing hatred the core Oro indigenes have for the Ibibio people to the old conflict between slave masters and slaves.
“That bitterness has been passed down through generations, but without telling the younger generation the full truth about their slave origins”, says Elder S.T.O Eshiet Uruan, the great grandson of Esiet Essien Udo of Edik Afaha.
Though Udo was a great slave merchant, his great grandson is claiming that the Oro people are constantly attempting to rewrite history because of the emerging political pressure from the Ibibio people.
This bombshell is exploding as the undying dispute in Akwa Ibom with the controversial Ibom Deep Seaport that was ignited by the Oro ethnic nationality is currently becoming a nightmare for the Oro people.
As their littoral and the Atlantic shoreline status is seriously being challenged, the great grandson of the slave merchant is at the moment compounding their woes.
In a table-shaking post on Coastal Ibibio Aborigines, a socio-cultural political platform, the great grandson of the slave merchant states that what is known today as Oro ethnic group, is a recent political creation.
“It was put together only a few years ago mainly to stand against the Ibibio by the ethnic Oro-speaking people for their own group interest”, says Elder Uruan.
According to his bombshell post, the Oro people were allegedly
solidified by the late Brigadier U.J. Esuene, who was a Military Governor of the old South-Eastern State, an Ibibio from Ekid.
“In 1971, Esuene created the Oron Division out of Eket Division. At that time, the Okobo people sent a memorandum to the Akilu Panel of Inquiry saying they were not Oro people and did not want to join the Oron Division. They preferred to remain in Eket Division”, he states.
Meanwhile, the native Oro-speaking people have consistently maintained that they are not historically Ibibio, and are not related to the Ibibio.
But, the problem is that they are now trying to force their identity on other minority groups within the Oro nationality. For Urban, they have succeeded in using the name “Oro” as a general name for all the clans in Oron Federal Constituency.
Going by some historical allegation and some early documented accounts, the native Oro-speaking people were originally said to be slaves. According to the great grandson of the slave merchant, they were allegedly bought by Uruan chiefs from the Bioko area in the present-day Equatorial Guinea and brought to work on Ibibio plantations.
“It is worth noting that most of Oron local government areas, except the Idua Asang area and a few other areas, were originally Ibibio farmland”, he said, pointing out that early European writers also recorded facts that support this.
For instance, P.A. Talbot, a colonial officer who worked in Oron, wrote that the Ibibio did not sacrifice their own people to Abasi Ekong, the God of War. Instead, they sacrificed “Oron women” who were not of their nation.
“There are also other historical records showing that the Ibibio did not sacrifice Okpo Eket, Idua, Effiat, Mbo or Enwang people. The only group recorded as being sacrificed were the Oronians — the native Oro-speaking people.”
“Of all the Oro groups, it is mainly the native Oro-speaking people who are described as very confrontational and with a strong sense of entitlement and natural hatred for the Ibibio and Annang but whereas Okobo, Enwang, Afaha Okpo, Effiat and Mbo do not possess such attributes”, he adds.
The slaves, the table shaker went on, are also the ones pushing to revise history, possibly because they are not proud of their background. “The Palestine and Ijaw origins was invented by these people to obliterate their true history, but whereas each clan in Oro Nation holds the history of their origins.”
In Akwa Ibom, Okobo, Enwang, Mbo, Effiat and Okpo people are all viewed with suspicion by the Ibibio because they have been grouped under “Oro” by the Oro people. Yet even inside the Oro ethnic group, the non-native Oro groups are still allegedly being profiled and treated differently by the native Oro.
Interestingly, the Oro people also agreed in their own memorandum that Okobo should not be included in the Esuene proposed Oron Division. At that time, Enwang, Mbo, Okpo Eket and other minority groups had very little voice. So they were only represented by Oro elites, hence they were clamped into an Oro Division which later changed into Oro ethnic group.
According to the slave merchant great grandson, before 1971, Enwang, Okpo Eket, which is presently called Afaha Okpo, Mbo, Effiat and other minority groups did not see themselves as “ethnic Oro. n fact, Effiat and parts of Okobo considered themselves to be ethnic Efik.”
He said the name “Akpakip Oro” or “Oro Ukpabang” originally referred only to the Oro-speaking people of Oron and Urue Offong/Oruko. “It did not include Idua Asang and other minority groups within the Oron/Urue Offong area”, says the table-shaker.
The evolution of “Oro” as an ethnic bloc, in reality only favours the native Oro-speaking people. Other groups, according to him, are still being treated as outsiders, disclosing that when Chief Ekpenyong Ntekim, a legal practitioner from Okobo wanted to run for the Senate, the native Oro-speaking people rejected him, saying he was not a “real Oro man.”
That, perhaps, explains why during Ntekim’s entire tenure as Attorney General and Justice Commissioner during the Akpabio administration, the native Oro-speaking people kept complaining that the position should have gone to an Oro man and that Oro was not well represented in government.
“The native Oro people have found a way to use others within the Oro bloc to their advantage. They are only interested in the population for political reasons, and it always favours them”, says the slave merchant’s great grandson. “They only pretend to accept Mbo because of its oil and its strategic position close to the Atlantic Ocean. Hence, today, it is only Oron and Mbo that benefit from the ethnic bloc.”
However, the slave trade era in Nigeria historically spanned from around the 15th century to the middle of the 20th century. It was divided into the trans-Atlantic export period, which climaxed between the 17th and 19th centuries, and the subsequent suppression of internal domestic slavery under British colonial rule.
During the Trans-Atlantic era – 15th to 18th century, the Portuguese traders initiated regular contact in the 15th century, followed later by British, French, and Dutch merchants.
While coastal and interior kingdoms like the Oyo, Benin, and the Aro Confederacy engaged in the trade, the era between 1807 and 1850s witnessed the abolition and smuggling phase as Britain legally abolished its trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807 and began naval enforcement, though illegal shipping and regional trading persisted through ports like Lagos and Badagry.
From the late 19th to the middle of the 20th century heralded the internal suppression phase. Though the overseas trade shrank, local and domestic aspects of the trade persisted deep within the hinterland of Nigeria.
The British colonial administration progressively fought and criminalised internal slave practices, bringing a complete end to the institution by the 1940s.
Key Historical Ports
Badagry: A primary coastal exit point in southwest Nigeria for captives sent to the Americas. Calabar and Bonny were the major trading hubs along the Bight of Biafra in the then Eastern Region of Nigeria, while Lagos, was a prominent commercial outlet for slave ships during the 18th and 19th centuries.
