COMMENTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN AFIKPO DIVISION, SOUTH EASTERN NIGERIA
| Date | 01 January 1956 |
| Author | Simon Ottenberg |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1956.tb00508.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1956 |
COMMENTS ON LOCAL
GOVERNMENT
IN
AFIKPO
DIVISION
3
COMMENTS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN AFIKPO
DIVISION, SOUTH EASTERN NIGERIA
By Simon Ottenberg
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
The State
College
of Washington
Note.-The
material
for
this
paper
was collected
whilst
the
author
was
an
Area
Research
Fellow of
the
Social Science
Research
Council of New
York,
1951-53;
and
with
the
aid
of a
grant
from
the
Program
of African Studies,
Northwestern
University,
Evanston,
Illinois.
THE
preparation of this paper was stimulated by
the
discussion of local
government reform in
the
Afikpo Division presented by Mr. Livingston Booth
in a recent issue of this
journal'.
The present writer was engaged in anthro-
pological research in the Afikpo village group in Afikpo Division between
December, 1951, and February, 1953. This was
the
period when
the
Afikpo
Divisional Council was first organized
and
went through its first growing pains
.•
The following comments are based on observations made only during this
period
but
it is believed
that
they have validity for the present time as well.
They are
not
meant
as a criticism of the local government or of Mr. Livingston
Booth's discussion of it. Rather, their purpose is to make explicit a few points
and problems which struck
the
writer, as an anthropologist, as being of impor-
tance
and
of interest. They are made from
the
point of view of a researcher
who was
not
connected with government, who was not an administrator dealing
with practical everyday problems.
If
they
have
any
value it is because this
Independent position gave
the
writer the opportunity to see
the
situation of
cultural change in a somewhat different light
than
the
administrators
and
to
place somewhat different values on various aspects of the situation of change.
Probably most of what is written here is known to
the
administrators in
the
Afikpo area,
Traditional Alliances and Conflicts
Among the sixteen village groups, or '
clans'
as they are sometimes called,
'Yhich
today
comprise Afikpo Division there was, in
the
traditional culture,
httle political
authority
beyond the village-group level. Certain village groups
Were
related through distant kinship ties
and
these groups usually possessed
a common sub-culture
and
a feeling of unity. As a rule
they
remained on
peaceful terms with each other,
but
had
traditional outside enemies.
For
example, the south eastern village groups in Afikpo Division-Afikpo, Unwana,
Edda,
and
Okpoha-were
of common origin, possessed a common sub-culture,
and were
not
normally in conflict with each other. As individual village groups
･ｾ｣ｨ
fought other village groups within or outside of
the
present Afikpo
DIvision
and
occasionally they joined together in a loose confederation to
Wage
war against acommon enemy, for example, to fight non-Tho tribes on
the
east side of
the
Cross River.
The northern Ibo groups within
the
Division,
the
so-called Oha Ozara group,
Were
not
all of a common origin
but
possessed a similar sub-culture
and
common
trading interests centred around
the
large
market
at
Uburu
and
the
trade
routes
that
extended northward from it, though
the
influence of Aro Chuku traders
from south of the Afikpo area was strong in this trade. Warfare, when it
occurred, was generally with groups outside of
the
Oha
Ozara village groups,
though a few notable exceptions have occurred.
J1J, D.
Livingston
Booth,
"Oiling the Wheels of Local Government in Eastern Nigeria,"
ournal of African Administration, Vol.
VII
:
No.2,
April, 1955, pp. 55-64.
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