ayomike

13 September 1999

With due respect to J.O.S. Ayomike’s status as an erudite
chronicler of Warri history, I would like to disagree with the
logic underlying his query of the eminent Niger-Delta
historian, Prof. Obaro Ikime, for his candid confession that
he has no knowledge of a legal decision concerning Ogbe-
Ijo. Mr. Ayomike’s article was published in the Vanguard issues
of 16th and 19th July 1999. He argues therein that since Ikime
has acknowledged Itsekiri legal victory over Agbassa and since
Ometan (for Agbassa) claimed Ogbe-Ijo, among other areas, in
his abortive suit, he (Ikime) should treat Ogbe-Ijo as he would
apply the rule of law to Agbassa in Warri.

Stretched to its absurd extremity this argument would mean
that if Ometan had included Okere lands in his claim, his legal
defeat would automatically and incontrovertibly have
bequeathed such lands on the (Itsekiri) defendants. The logic
is palpably specious. The 1928 judgement against Ometan
made no specific reference to Ogbe-Ijo people neither was
there any application that they be joined in a suit that was
technically foreclosed by the (at the time) extant Dore Numa
leases of 1906, 1908 and 1911. These days, people write ‘This
house is not for sale’ on their houses.

Using Ayomike’s own publication, The Ijaw in Warri to resolve
this issue, it would be obvious that the Ogbe-Ijo have always
functioned as a separate legal entity: served eviction orders by
the British in 1895; forcibly ejected in 1908; formally protested
this to the Resident 1933 (the very year Ometan lost his
appeal to the Privy Council, London) took legal action 1956,
however discontinuing 1962 (pp. 20 – 22). It is unfortunate
that Mr. Ayomike would seem to have chosen to ignore facts
that can be so easily ascertained from his own work (to echo
him) Significantly, Chief Sam Warri Esi (for Agbassa/Igbudu)
was a 2nd defendant in the said suit and was in fact awarded
costs of twenty-one pounds consequent on the discontinuation.

It is clear, therefore, that Ogbe-Ijo sought a re-possession of
the land from which they had been evicted even after the
Agbassa case of 1925-33 and without regard to the case. The
Agbassa case itself was made without regard to an earlier
case made in 1922 against Dore Numa by Olu Akengbuwa in
which the plaintiff unsuccessfully laid claim to Ogbe-Ijo and
Alder’s Town. It is trite knowledge in law that res judicata (the
principle that a case that has run its full course can not be
reopened) is only applicable to matters properly adjudicated
between the relevant old parties. New parties are free from
res judicata. On the judicial value of withdrawal of action, the
judgement in Ometan versus Dore Numa (wrongly cited by
Ayomike as 10 Nigeria Law Reports pp. 50 – 52 but actually
Nigeria Law Reports Vol. 9 pp. 46 – 52) makes it clear that a
withdrawal ‘does not amount to an adjudication of the matter
in dispute…’

I honestly think that every case has to be treated in its own
merit and without prejudice to cases made (or indeed unmade)
by others. One is concerned whether Mr. Ayoimike has (to
once more borrow his own words) added some knowledge of
law to his overflowing fountain of historical knowledge. The
grounds on which Ogbe-Ijo remains ‘lost’ till date have no
direct links with the Agbassa situation. Those issues are,
however, outside the purview of the present rejoinder.

What needs to be made clear here is that the roots of the
Ogbe-Ijo struggle reach far into the distant past to a time
when what is thoughtlessly referred to today as Warri
township was a collection of distinct villages separated by thick
bush. At that time, it was unthinkable that any one of these
disparate primary occupants of virgin lands would claim
exclusive ownership of all other people’s villages, bushes,
farmlands and waterways.

Mr. Ayomike also queries the Professor’s failure to resolve the
problem of the ambivalent use of Warri (that is, Warri as Ode-
Itsekiri, Warri as the 20th century new town and Warri as
Itsekiri Kingdom). He then resolves the ambivalence himself by
making copious reference to history and to geography (maps)
to prove that Warri is synonymous with Itsekiri Kingdom. The
implication therefore is that the answer to the Professor’s
question whether the name Warri Kingdom) can ‘apply to the
land occupied by the Okumagba group’ is ‘yes’.

However, details of the victory of Okere-Urhobo in 1973 over
the Itsekiri make this viewpoint (on which Mr. Ayomike’s
castigation of Prof. Ikime is predicated) quite untenable. Part
of the judgement (later upheld by the Supreme Court) states:
‘A point which plaintiffs and their counsel have tried to urge on
this court is that because the land in dispute is in Warri and so
in Warri Division, the Olu of Warri has rights of over-lordship
over it because, as Olu of Warri, he has rights of over-lordship
over all lands in Warri division. The whole argument or view is
erroneous. The Olu, by title, is Olu of Warri, but his rights of
over-lordship relate only to lands of Itsekiri people…’ Earlier, in
1971, the trial judge in Suit No. W/15/1970 (Chief Arthur Prest
versus Itsekiri Communal Land Trust) had stated: ‘For the
avoidance of doubt, especially as there are numerous cases
pending in the Warri High Court on this over-lordship issue, I
hereby make abundantly clear that the defendants have no
power whatsoever in law to exercise the Olu of Warri rights of
over-lordship over lands owned by private individuals and
families in Warri Division’

That Mr. Ayomike chooses to ignore this fact is a little sad and
unfortunate. For, while many objective observers would see
nothing wrong with ‘the use of Warri for Itsekiri
Kingdom/territory as used and known since the 16th century’,
these same people would be baffled by Mr. Ayomike’s definition
of Warri (Itsekiri) territory (or home-land) as all lands within
the old Warri Division. The oblique faulting of the Professor’s
‘categorical’ observation that the Warri Refinery is in Ekpan
land is a casuist derivative of this perspective. The evocation
of the ghost of the Western Region Legal Notice No. 176 of
1955 (which includes good slices of Uvwie land in Warri
Division) does not provide moral justification for this view. If
‘evading to clarify the use of Warri as the Professor has done is
part of the cause of the Warri crises’ (as Mr. Ayomike posits) an
even larger part of it would be the tendency towards the
subsuming of all lands within mere administrative boundaries
under one Sovereign.

The task of keeping a whole quarter of the old Warri Division’s
indigenous population (settled in well over thirty towns and
villages) forever soberly conscious that their ‘places of origin’
are not radically theirs, legally speaking, is daunting. No other
kingdom in the whole of Nigeria has such a phenomenal
assignment: the eternal pacification of extremely large and
militant ‘enclaves of non-indigenous Nigerians’ (to use Mr.
Ayomike’s words) in their conceived precincts. This is why a
Federal Territory backed by a Federal protection force has had
to be canvassed. It is to help keep things in shape. To seek
to further complicate that task with the imperial connotations
of the ‘Jackson line’ (touted to be still legally valid by Mr.
Ayomike) is to invite us all to throw up our hands in despair.
The current efforts are directed towards damage control, not
towards the extension of the frontiers of the crisis.

Many of us have gained and will continue to gain from the
usually brilliant expositions of J.O.S. Ayomike. We therefore
look up to him to rise above local prejudices and
dispassionately apply the rule of law to all parties in the
disagreement.

Majiri Oradjeke.