Ibo Land Tenure

Africa ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 309-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. I. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Cross River ◽  
Culture Area ◽  
The North ◽  
Marginal Group ◽  
Single Culture ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
The Cross ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThe Ibo-speaking people of Eastern Nigeria can be regarded as a single culture area which may provisionally be subdivided into five main divisions: Northern or Onitsha, Southern or Owerri, Western or Ika, Eastern or Cross River, and North-eastern or Abakaliki. The first two divisions, whose boundaries correspond very roughly to those of the Administrative Provinces of Onitsha and Owerri, contain the bulk of the population; the Western occupies the Niger riverain region and the forest country beyond, and their culture has been influenced by that of the Edospeaking tribes farther west, and by Benin; the Cross River Ibo are another marginal group whose affinities with the ‘Semi-Bantu’-speaking tribes on the eastern bank of that river have yet to be studied; while the North-eastern Ibo are a specialized group that has developed, in comparative isolation, a culture and a social structure better adapted to the savannah country in which they live. The remarks which follow refer mainly to the Northern, Southern, and Cross River Ibo; the North-eastern Ibo system differs in many important respects; the Western has not been studied. The terms used in defining Ibo social groupings have been explained in Africa, vol. xix, No. 2, p. 151, and in places where this may cause confusion the ‘official’ or alternative term is given in brackets.

Ecology and Social Structure among the North Eastern Ibo

Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. I. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Typical Structure ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThis paper is concerned with the North Eastern Ibo and specifically with its four principal tribes, the Ezza, Ikwo, Izi, and Ngbo. I hope to show by a comparison of the structure of these four tribes with that of more typical Ibo tribes that distinctive features of their social structure are the result of a modification of this typical structure in response to the conditions of a new environment.

The Social Structure of Modern Bamako

Africa ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Meillassoux
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
North Bank ◽  
Niger River ◽  
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The Town

Opening ParagraphAccording to a partial census taken in 1960, Bamako city has about 130,000 inhabitants. Small by Western standards, it is still by far the largest city in Mali. At the time of the French conquest Bamako had only between 800 and 1,000 inhabitants; it was the capital of a Bambara chiefdom, grouping about thirty villages on the north bank of the Niger river, with a total of about 5,000 people. The ruling dynasty was that of the Niaré, who, according to their traditions, came from the Kingi eleven generations ago (between 1640 and 1700). For defence against the neighbours and armed slave-raiders fortifications were built around the town and a permanent army of so-fa (horsemen) was raised. Soon after its foundation Bamako attracted Moslem Moors from Twat who settled as marabouts and merchants under the protection of the Niaré's warriors. Among them, the Twati (later to be called Touré) and the Dravé became, alongside and sometimes in competition with the Niaré, the leading families.

The History of Trade at Ikom, Eastern Nigeria

Africa ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Harris
Keyword(s):  
Total Population ◽  
Forest Reserve ◽  
Nineteen Twenties ◽  
Cross River ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Commercially Important ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
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Opening ParagraphIkom, on the Cross River and with a total population of just over 7,000 in 1953, lies near the boundary between Nigeria and southern Cameroons. It has been commercially important in recent years, as was indicated, for example, by the presence there in 1953 (the date of the last fairly reliable census) of over 1,500 Ibo. But the Ibo are newcomers, and this paper is concerned with examining earlier patterns of trade as they had developed down to the nineteen-twenties. More recently the people of Ikom have derived their prosperity from the exploitation of their soil, which is eminently suitable for producing cocoa. According to a visiting soil scientist in the 1960s, there are in the locality 140 square miles of suitable cocoa land, which in fact is so plentiful that although two-thirds of it was still held in a forest reserve there was in 1966 no public pressure to have any portion released for agriculture. The affluence based on cocoa is, however, recent; the traditional path to prosperity and influence was through participation in trade, especially trade with Mamfe to the east and with Calabar on the coast, principally along the Cross River.

Changes in the Marriage System of the Okrika Ijo

Africa ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Niger Delta ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Family Organization ◽  
Eastern Group ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
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Eastern Edge

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I shall present some data on the marriage and family organization of an Eastern Ijo town, and shall try to analyse changes in this organization against the background of broader social changes affecting the area.Okrika is the chief town of the Okrika section of the Ijo-speaking people of Nigeria. The Okrika dialect, with Kalahari and Bonny, falls into the North-Eastern group of dialects which are partially interintelligible with Brass-Nembe but not with the Central-Western dialects. The Ijo occupy the greater part of the Niger Delta. The Okrika section consists of eight towns and dependent villages on the extreme eastern edge of the Delta, where the saltwater creeks and mangrove swamps give place to the extensive dry ground of the mainland. Administratively, Okrika forms part of the Degema Province of the Eastern Region of Nigeria. With three other communities of the section, Okrika itself is sited on an island about half a mile long and a quarter broad.

The Place of the North-Eastern Transvaal Sotho in the South Bantu Complex

Africa ◽  
1938 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Jensen Krige
Keyword(s):  
Total Population ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
Effective Barrier ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Game Reserve ◽  
Olifants River ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThe Sotho of the North-Eastern Transvaal Lowveld occupy an area with fairly well-marked geographical boundaries. To the east, the Game Reserve, low-lying, unhealthy, very sparsely populated even in the old days, remains an effective barrier to contact with and further migrations from the Shangana-Tonga of Portuguese East Africa. South are the Olifants River and the towering Drakensberg range curving north-west then northwards to merge into the well-marked escarpment on the west dividing Lowveld from Highveld. On the north the Klein Letaba river roughly demarcates our area from the Venda and the Shangana-Tonga of the Knobnose Location. The Sotho-speaking Venda of Tswale and Moila, who fall well within this area, resemble in culture their Sotho-ized neighbours more than their own Venda kin to the north; but the Shangana- Tonga, who occupy most of the lower-lying eastern and north-eastern portion of the area and comprise at least one-third of its total population, are unassimilated strangers of different stock coming from the north-east and east. They have been entering since about 1840, usually in small bands, at first seeking the protection of and subjecting themselves to the Sotho owners of the land. On the arrival of the white man, some of their headmen were granted independent locations which have served as nuclei for the building up of more united tribal groups. (See accompanying map.)

Ward Organization among the Yakö

Africa ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryll Forde
Keyword(s):  
Main Group ◽  
Cross River ◽  
River People ◽  
The Cross ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThe Yakö of the Middle Cross River area of Obubra Division in SE. Nigeria live in five compact villages a few miles apart, each of which was formerly autonomous in its political as well as its ritual organization. They have a common tradition that their forebears all came from Okuni, a settlement some 50 miles away up the Cross River, from which they came overland, for they were not river people, in several parties and over some years. Among the Yakö settlements distinction is made between those in which the original migrants settled—that is, Idomi, where stopped a section of the main group which founded Umor, Umor itself, and the separately settled community of Nko—and the remaining villages of Ekuri and Nkpani which are held to have been founded a generation or two later by local migrations, following dissensions, from Umor.

The Ohu System of Slavery in a Northern Ibo Village-group

Africa ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. G. Horton
Keyword(s):  
Average Density ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
District Officer ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
History Of ◽  
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The Village

Opening ParagraphThe village-group of Nike occupies an area of some 200 square miles to the immediate north-east of Enugu, capital of the Eastern Provinces of Nigeria. It comprises 24 villages with a total population of 9,600, a figure which gives the average density of the group as 48 per square mile—one of the lowest in Ibo country.Traditions in neighbouring groups, as well as in Nike itself, affirm that before the advent of the British Administration the people of Nike were the principal slave-traders in northern Ibo-land. The first mention of the group in the history of colonial Nigeria appears in an account submitted by the Assistant District Officer, Obubra, of some exploratory journeys undertaken amongst the northern Ibo in the year 1905. Remarking, with the true empire-builder's sang-froid, that ‘the whole area seems relatively quiet and well-disposed…cannibalism and human sacrifice are more or less general’, the officer encloses an interesting sketch-map of the north-eastern section of Ibo-land which shows the Nike group to have been the main trading cross-roads of the whole of this area.

Sunnyside and the North

Sunnyside ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 122-145
Author(s):  
Laura Wright
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Border Area ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
The Third ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern

This chapter considers the distribution and meaning of the 116 historic North British Sunnysides and 63 Greens given in the Sunnyside Gazetteer, and the distribution and structure of the Sunnyside of X and Greens of X construction. Sixteenth-century Medieval Latin Sunnysides are exerpted from the Records of the Sheriff Court of Aberdeenshire and the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland AD 1620-1633. The distribution when plotted forms three main groups: the first is the north-east of Scotland bounded by the Grampians, the second is the Central Lowlands, and the third is the border area of the Eastern Lowlands of Scotland and North-Eastern England divided by the Cheviots. The practice of ‘vesying the sunny side’ as a means of land-tenure division is described in North British and Nordic cultures. It is posited that the Sunnyside of X and Greens of X construction is Old Norse.

Land Tenure among the Nsaw of the British Cameroons

Africa ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis M. Kaberry
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Average Height ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThe Nsaw are a section of the Tikar people who are believed to have come originally from the region of Bornu and to have established themselves near Tibati in what is now the French Cameroons. About 300 years ago small bands, some under the leadership of sons of the King, broke away and eventually reached Bamenda. The sequence of the various migrations is confused, but among the last was probably that of the Nsaw under their Paramount Chief, the Fɔn. They are a negroid people who speak a semi-Bantu language, and they now number approximately 32,000. Their territory, some 700 square miles in area, is bounded on the east by the frontier of the French Cameroons, on the south by the Ndop Plain, on the west by Oku (an independent sub-tribe of Nsaw), and on the north-west and north by Bum and Nsungli. Most of it is high rolling grassland at an average height of 5,000 feet above sea-level, but the landscape, nevertheless, presents an appearance of alternating woodland and meadow, for in the villages, which are anything from one to five miles apart, compounds are overshadowed by tall dark groves of kola trees, while along the numerous streams are plantations of raffia palm.

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