By Prof Benedict Binebai
Before the map, there was the river. Before the boundary, there was the community. And before the state, there was the people.
The history of the riverine territories of present-day Edo State cannot be fully understood without confronting the competing narratives of Bini political authority and Ijaw riverine occupation. The question is not simply who exercised political influence over the territory, but who inhabited, navigated, traded across, and established enduring communities within its waterways before the emergence and consolidation of modern state structures.
A chronological and dialectical reading of this history therefore requires a careful examination of the points of convergence and contradiction between Bini and Ijaw historical traditions, as well as the evidence preserved in oral traditions, colonial records, ethnographic accounts, and administrative history. The first position in this historical dialectic is the claim of an Aboriginal Ijaw riverine occupation. The extensive creeks, waterways, and coastal passages associated with the Ovia river system—including areas around Gelegele and adjoining settlements—formed part of a wider aquatic world in which Ijaw fishermen, traders, canoe men, and boat-builders lived and operated. Their relationship with the river was not merely commercial. It was a way of life, sustained by fishing, navigation, trade, settlement, kinship, and a deep cultural understanding of the waterways.
From this perspective, the riverine Ijaw presence predates the later consolidation of inland political authority and the emergence of modern territorial boundaries. The antithesis emerges from the history of the inland Bini Kingdom. The development of the Ogiso and later Oba political institutions represents a distinct historical trajectory centred on the inland Benin polity. The Bini Kingdom developed a sophisticated system of political authority, administration, culture, warfare, and territorial influence that extended beyond the immediate limits of its capital.
Yet the existence and expansion of Bini political authority should not automatically be equated with the original settlement of every riverine community within the wider geographical area. The fact that the Ijaw did not establish the Benin throne does not, in itself, negate their prior occupation of distinct riverine spaces beyond the core of the inland kingdom.
The point at which these two historical narratives meet is the river itself. The waterways became a zone of contact, exchange, mobility, and interdependence between inland Bini society and the coastal and riverine Ijaw world. Ijaw canoe men and experienced pilots possessed an intimate knowledge of the creeks, channels, tides, and coastal routes. Their expertise made them indispensable to the movement of people and goods between the inland kingdom and the Atlantic-facing waterways. Through this ferrying and trading nexus, Ijaw communities became connected to the commercial and political life of the Bini Kingdom. Bini royalty, traders, officials, and goods could move through waterways navigated by people whose knowledge of the aquatic environment was deeply rooted in their own riverine traditions.
This relationship, however, must be understood as a relationship of interaction rather than automatic proof of political or territorial ownership. Trade does not necessarily erase settlement, and political influence does not invariably amount to original occupation. The presence of Bini authority or commercial activity in a riverine area must therefore be distinguished from the question of who first established permanent communities there. The river was a meeting point between two historical worlds: an inland kingdom whose political power expanded towards the waterways and a riverine people whose ancestral life was already embedded in those waterways.
The resulting history is therefore neither exclusively Bini nor exclusively Ijaw; it is a complex historical encounter in which political authority, indigenous occupation, commerce, migration, and cultural exchange intersected. Colonial and post-colonial administrative records further complicate the simplistic narrative that Ijaw communities in the Ovia riverine areas were merely recent occupants or political tenants.
The creation of modern administrative structures did not erase the pre-existing social and cultural identities of the communities that inhabited these territories. Historical records from the colonial and post-colonial periods, including administrative classifications and references to riverine communities, provide an important basis for examining the continuity of Ijaw settlements and identities in the region. Such records should be read alongside oral histories and indigenous traditions rather than treated in isolation, because colonial administration itself frequently reorganised indigenous territories according to administrative priorities that did not necessarily correspond with older patterns of settlement and identity.
The dialectic becomes even sharper with the creation of modern Nigerian states. What was presented as administrative convenience frequently produced enduring consequences for indigenous peoples whose historical territories crossed newly imposed political boundaries. The Ijaw nation, whose ancestral communities and cultural networks extended across the Niger Delta and adjoining riverine territories, found itself divided among several states. This political fragmentation may be described as a form of balkanisation—not necessarily because every boundary was deliberately created to weaken the Ijaw, but because the cumulative effect of successive administrative divisions was the fragmentation of a historically interconnected people. In Edo State, this fragmentation has contributed to a contested narrative in which some Ijaw communities are portrayed as outsiders or tenants within territories that they regard as ancestral riverine homelands.
The consequence is more than a disagreement over nomenclature. When an indigenous people are repeatedly described as migrants in their own ancestral environment, the language of history becomes an instrument of political and cultural displacement. The issue then moves beyond the question of who arrived first at a particular location to the broader question of who has the historical right to claim belonging, ancestry, cultural continuity, and recognition. The contemporary synthesis, therefore, must move beyond the sterile opposition between Bini and Ijaw histories. Recognition of Ijaw ancestral presence in the riverine areas of Edo does not require the denial of Bini history, just as recognition of Bini political influence does not require the erasure of Ijaw riverine identity. A mature historical understanding must allow both histories to exist within their proper contexts. The Bini Kingdom has its own profound political and cultural history; the Ijaw have their own equally profound history of riverine occupation, navigation, settlement, and cultural continuity. These histories intersected, influenced one another, and at times competed, but they should not be collapsed into a single narrative that silences one side. The claim of the Edo Ijaw is ultimately a claim for historical recognition. It is a call to distinguish political sovereignty from ancestral occupation, administrative boundaries from indigenous geography, and historical influence from original settlement.
The waterways of Edo State are not empty spaces waiting to be claimed by whoever later exercised political authority over them. They are landscapes of memory, ancestry, labour, migration, trade, and survival. Their history is written not only in royal chronicles and political institutions but also in the creeks travelled by fishermen, the canoes that carried traders, the communities that grew along the waterways, and the generations that inherited the river as both livelihood and homeland. The challenge before contemporary scholarship is therefore to recover this complex history without reducing it to ethnic triumphalism or historical denial. The Ijaw claim to ancestral recognition in the riverine areas of Edo State should not be conceived as an attack on Bini identity. Rather, it should be understood as an effort to restore historical balance to a narrative that has too often privileged inland political power over riverine indigenous experience. I jaws of Edo state are not claiming the land of Benin, they are only defending their ancestral lands in Edo state.
The final synthesis is therefore clear: the history of the Ijaws of Edo state must be separated from Benin history and Benin political authority. The task is not to manufacture a history of exclusive ownership, but to ensure that no people’s ancestral presence is erased by the later creation of political boundaries. Where evidence establishes indigenous continuity, that history deserves recognition. Where histories overlap, they should be examined honestly. And where historical claims remain contested, scholarship must continue the search for evidence rather than substitute political convenience for historical truth. The territories of the Ijaws of Edo state are more important and permanent than political boundaries. They carry the memory of those who lived upon it, navigated it, traded across it, and passed its stories from one generation to another.
The Ijaws of Edo State before the Rise of Benin
The earliest layer of this history must begin with the riverine environment itself. Long before the modern state of Edo existed, the waterways stretching through the Niger Delta towards the Benin River constituted a complex world of fishing, navigation, trade and settlement. The creeks, rivers and estuaries were not empty geographical spaces awaiting the arrival of later political formations. They were inhabited landscapes in which communities developed systems of governance, economic production, cultural practices and territorial relationships. Within this riverine environment, Ijaw communities established settlements along the Ovia, Okomu and adjoining waterways. Their economic and social life was closely connected to fishing, canoe building, river transportation, farming where conditions permitted, and regional commerce. The rivers and creeks served simultaneously as sources of livelihood, avenues of communication, boundaries and strategic routes of movement. Control and knowledge of these waterways therefore possessed both economic and political significance.
The Ijaw communities in the area were organised largely through decentralised clan and community structures rather than through a single centralised kingdom. Communities associated with groups such as Olodiama, Egbema, Okomu, Furupagha and Gbaraun maintained their own forms of indigenous authority. Leadership was exercised through recognised chiefs or clan heads, councils of elders, family and house systems, and spiritual authorities. In Ijaw political culture, institutions associated with the Ama- Okosuwei or other recognised community heads, depending on the particular community, formed part of the traditional system of leadership. Decisions concerning land, waterways, communal welfare, disputes and customary obligations were generally handled through indigenous institutions rather than through a centralised monarchy.
This decentralised political structure is significant in examining the relationship between the Ijaw and the emerging Benin Kingdom. As Benin expanded its political and commercial influence, contact between the inland kingdom and the riverine communities increased. Relations involved trade, diplomacy, movement of people and goods and, at different times, contestation and conflict. The waterways provided routes through which fish, salt and other products moved between inland and coastal markets, while the arrival of European traders from the fifteenth century onwards further intensified commercial activity throughout the wider Niger Delta.
The existence of interaction with Benin, however, should not automatically be equated with political incorporation. Historical traditions suggest that many riverine communities retained their own leadership structures and customary institutions. The relationship between the Ijaw and Benin was therefore complex and varied across time and place. It could involve commercial exchange, political influence, diplomacy and occasional conflict without necessarily resulting in the uniform absorption of every Ijaw settlement into the centralised political structure of the Benin Kingdom.
Traditions concerning the Ovia River and its ferrymen have also been invoked in discussions of the relationship between Benin and the riverine communities. Such traditions are significant because they point to the strategic importance of the waterways and to the existence of communities that exercised authority over movement through their riverine environment. They should, however, be interpreted alongside oral traditions, written sources, ethnographic records, archaeology and other historical evidence.
Several historical accounts, including writings associated with the Benin historian Jacob Egharevba, have been cited in discussions concerning populations that occupied parts of the Ovia and surrounding riverine areas before or during the early expansion of the Benin Kingdom. Some valid interpretations identify these earlier populations with Ijaw communities. The precise identity, chronology and geographical extent of these early inhabitants remain subjects of historical narratology and the existence of such traditions supports the broader argument that the riverine landscape was already inhabited and socially organised before the establishment of modern colonial and state boundaries.
The Rise of the Benin Kingdom and the Riverine Frontier
The emergence and consolidation of the Benin Kingdom represent a major development in the political history of the region. The Bini achievement in state formation is beyond dispute. The kingdom developed a sophisticated political structure, a powerful monarchy, organised systems of administration and warfare, and a distinguished artistic and cultural tradition. Its political and commercial influence extended beyond the immediate limits of its inland capital. Yet the emergence and expansion of the Benin Kingdom do not automatically drawn the history of the Ijaws of Edo state. A kingdom may exercise political, economic or tributary authority over territories without having founded every community within those territories. The question is therefore not whether the Benin Kingdom existed or whether its influence reached the waterways. The more specific question is whether such influence should be interpreted as evidence that every riverine community was founded by the Bini, or whether some of those communities possessed their own prior histories of settlement, identity and political organisation.
As the political and commercial influence of Benin expanded, the waterways became increasingly important as the link between the inland kingdom and the coast. It was within this expanding riverine frontier that Bini and Ijaw histories increasingly encountered one another. Ijaw riverine communities, according to their traditions, were established within the wider aquatic environment that included areas around the Benin River and the Ovia river system. Places such as Gelegele, Okomu and adjoining riverine settlements remain important to the historical memory of Edo Ijaw communities.
The Ijaw role in this world was not confined to settlement. Their knowledge of the waterways made them important fishermen, traders, boatmen, pilots and navigators. They understood tides, channels and creeks in ways that people unfamiliar with the aquatic environment could not easily replicate. This created a relationship of practical interdependence between the inland Bini political system and the riverine Ijaw world. Goods and people moved between the interior and the coast. Canoes became vehicles of commerce and communication. The riverine homeland of the Ijaws of Edo state became a meeting ground between two distinct historical experiences.
It is therefore important to note that Bini use of Ijaw navigational expertise does not, by itself, prove that the Bini founded every community along the waterways. The historical relationship is more complex. It involved trade, mobility, political influence, interdependence and the coexistence of communities with different forms of authority.
The Benin–Ijaw Encounter: Political Influence and Indigenous Continuity
The relationship between the Bini Kingdom and the Ijaw riverine communities should therefore be understood as a historical encounter rather than a simple story of one people replacing another. The Benin Kingdom’s influence extended towards the waterways, while Ijaw communities maintained their own riverine traditions and modes of social organisation.The Bini narrative emphasises the strength, antiquity and territorial influence of the Benin Kingdom. The Ijaw narrative emphasises riverine occupation, ancestral continuity and the independent history of communities whose lives were rooted in the waterways. A balanced historical account must allow these narratives to be examined within their proper contexts.
The historical truth may therefore lie not in the victory of one narrative over the other, but in recognising that both histories operated at different levels. Benin represented a major inland political centre; the Ijaw represented a wider riverine civilisation. Their histories crossed, interacted and sometimes competed. Thus the task of a functional historian is to distinguish carefully between political sovereignty, tributary relations, commercial influence, navigational activity and indigenous settlement. These are not interchangeable concepts. The history of the Edo riverine territory is consequently and exclusively Ijaw. Recognition of the fact that Benin traded with Ijaw ancestors in the riverine does not require the erasure of Ijaw riverine identity.
The ijaws of Edo state existed long before 1893 when the Oil Rivers Protectorate was declared by the British because of the palm oil trade.this was followed by the establishment of the Niger Coast Protectorate. One of the early British colonial territories in what is now Southern Nigeria.
The Niger coast protectorate was a British protectorate on the coast of the Bight of Benin and Bight of Bonny between 1893 – 1900 with
First Calabar and later moved to Old Calabar which overed most of present-day Niger Delta — Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, and parts of Edo.
The Colonial Transformation: Southern Nigeria Protectorate, 1900–1914
It is interesting to note that the arrival and consolidation of British colonial rule fundamentally altered the political geography of the region. In 1900, the British established the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, bringing together territories previously administered through the Niger Coast Protectorate and those formerly under the administration of the Royal Niger Company. As a result, the coastal and riverine territories within the area that would eventually form part of present-day Edo State came under British colonial authority. The incorporation of Ijaw riverine communities into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate was primarily an act of colonial administration. It did not create their indigenous political institutions, nor did it necessarily erase the customary authority that had existed before British rule. Rather, communities with their own histories and systems of governance were placed within a new territorial framework established by the colonial state. The entangled destiny of the Ijaws, Benin people and other ethnic nationality is not caused by Endo colonial conquest by by British administrative appetite.It is therefore important to distinguish between the Southern Nigeria Protectorate as a colonial administrative structure and the indigenous political organisation of the Ijaw communities. The former was imposed and reorganised by the British; the latter developed naturally and historically within the riverine societies themselves.
The 1914 Amalgamation and Administration through Benin Province
In 1914, the British amalgamated the Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. The administrative reorganisation that followed brought territories inhabited by various Ijaw communities into the wider provincial system of colonial Nigeria.
In 1939 the British colonial government carried out a major provincial re-organization in Southern Nigeria. Thus, Western Ijaws were placed under Western Province. This included: Ijaws of Ondo, Edo and Delta. The Itsekiri-Ijaw mix areas, and later became part of the Western Region. Eastern Ijaws remained under Calabar Province / later Rivers Province. This included: Nembe, Brass, Opobo, Eastern Delta Ijaw, Bayelsa Ijaw. So for the first time, one ethnic nationality — the Ijaw — was administratively divided and governed from two different provincial headquarters: Lagos/Ibadan for the West, and Calabar/Port Harcourt for the East.
The Ijaw communities in the riverine areas associated with present-day Edo were subsequently administered within colonial structures connected to Benin Province and its divisions. Communities and settlements in the Ovia and adjoining riverine areas, including places such as Gelegele and Okomu, became subject to colonial systems of governance, taxation, forestry administration, policing and regulation. The colonial government was particularly concerned with territorial administration, natural resources, trade routes and the management of forests and waterways. This colonial arrangement must not be confused with the precolonial political history of the communities concerned. A community could be administered by the colonial government through Benin Province without having historically been a political province of the precolonial Benin Kingdom. Colonial administrative boundaries were drawn for purposes of governance and did not necessarily correspond to older boundaries of indigenous societies. Thus, the incorporation of Ijaw communities into Benin Province represents an important fact of colonial administrative history.
From the Western Region to the Midwest Region: 1963.
Following the colonial period and the attainment of independence, the Ijaw territory in Edo state became part of the Western Region. In 1963, the Midwest Region was created, separating the area from the Western Region. This period is important because it demonstrates that the existence of Edo Ijaw communities did not begin with the creation of Edo State in 1991. They were already present within the geographical area before the creation of the Midwest Region and remained there through subsequent administrative transformations. The political map continued to change, but the riverine communities remained. The waterways remained. The settlements remained. The cultural identities and ancestral memories of the people also continued.
1967: State Creation and a New Phase of Administrative Fragmentation
In 1967, the military government under General Yakubu Gowon reorganised Nigeria into twelve states, replacing the former regional structure. The territory of the former Midwest Region became the Mid-Western State. This marked another important stage in the administrative history of the Ijaw territory in what is now Edo state. The Ijaw communities were already living in their riverine settlements. They were not created by the state and did not arrive because of the state. The state simply became the new administrative framework within which they lived. To say Ijaws in Edo state are tenants is not only cruel but also dehumanizing..Unfortunately most of these Benin revisionist historians emerged decades upon decades after the honest Benin historian, Egharewa. Old history is original, old history is true history. When old history is modified, it serves colonial, imperialistic and greedy purposes.
The larger Ijaw experience, however, was different. Ijaw communities across the Niger Delta increasingly found themselves distributed among different administrative units. The cumulative result was the fragmentation of a historically interconnected people whose cultural, linguistic and economic networks had developed across rivers and creeks rather than according to modern state boundaries. This is the foundation of the argument concerning the balkanisation of Ijaw identity and ancestral space.
1976: From Midwest State to Bendel State
In 1976, the former Mid-Western State became Bendel State. Once again, the name of the political unit changed, but the riverine communities remained. The Ijaw communities of the territory continued their social and cultural existence within the same geographical environment. Their traditional institutions, ancestral memories and relationship with the waterways did not disappear because the name of the state changed. This succession of administrative names demonstrates an important historical reality: the political unit changed repeatedly, while the riverine communities continued to exist within their ancestral environment.
1991: The Creation of Edo State
The decisive administrative transformation came in 1991, when Bendel State was divided into Edo State and Delta State. The new Edo State inherited riverine communities with long-established histories. The Edo Ijaw communities were now located within the new political boundaries of Edo State. This raises an important historical question: did the creation of Edo State create the Edo Ijaw, or did it simply place an already existing people within a newly drawn political boundary? Historically, the latter formulation is more appropriate. The Ijaw presence in the riverine areas did not begin with the creation of Edo State. The communities existed before the state itself. Administratively, these communities became citizens and residents of Edo State under the Nigerian constitutional order. Therefore the Oba of Benin and the Benin peoples superiority and dominance over other ethnic nationalities in Edo state is mythical imagination, an eldorado dream.
Evidence of Ijaw Historical Presence in Present-Day Edo State
Before the argument about balkanisation can be properly understood, one fundamental historical question must first be confronted: Were Ijaw communities already present in the geographical space that is today called Edo State before the creation of the modern Nigerian state and its successive administrative boundaries? This question is central to the entire debate. If the Ijaw presence in the riverine territories of present-day Edo State is demonstrably older than colonialism and modern state creation, then the Ijaw cannot historically be described simply as a people who arrived in Edo State as a consequence of contemporary political migration.
The evidence for this presence must be approached with historical discipline. It should not rest upon a single source or a single tradition. The strongest historical case emerges from the convergence of several forms of evidence: oral traditions, continuity of riverine settlements, traditional institutions, historical geography, patterns of fishing and maritime trade, colonial administrative records, ethnographic descriptions, linguistic evidence and the successive political records of the Midwest, Bendel and Edo periods.
No single category of evidence is sufficient on its own, but taken together, these sources provide a basis for investigating the long-standing historical presence of Ijaw communities within the riverine space of present-day Edo State.
The first and perhaps most important evidence is the continuity of riverine settlement. Communities associated with the Edo Ijaw, including groups within the wider Apoi, Arogbo and Egbema cultural spheres, maintain traditions of settlement and ancestral connection to waterways around the Benin River and the Ovia river system. Places such as Gelegele and adjoining riverine settlements remain important to the historical memory of Edo Ijaw communities.
These communities belong to a geographical environment whose history is inseparable from fishing, canoe transportation, maritime trade and the movement of people through creeks and waterways. Their historical identity is embedded in the older riverine economy of the Niger Delta.
A second line of evidence lies in the economic character of the region itself. Before the emergence of modern roads, railways and administrative capitals, waterways were principal channels of movement between inland and coastal worlds. Those who occupied and understood these waterways possessed a strategic advantage in fishing, transportation, trade and communication. Ijaw communities, whose civilisation has historically been deeply connected to aquatic life, were naturally positioned within this environment.
A third body of evidence emerges from the relationship between riverine communities existing in well established kingdoms and the inland Benin Kingdom. The very existence of historical interaction between Benin and Ijaw communities demonstrates that the waterways were inhabited and socially organised spaces. Where were the Ijaws while they traded and interacted with the Benin people? They were in their ancestral land. Ijaw canoe men, fishermen, traders and navigators of the maritime territory of Edo state became important intermediaries in the movement of people and goods between the inland kingdom and the coast. This relationship is historically significant because it suggests that the riverine world was not an empty frontier awaiting settlement from the inland kingdom. Rather, it was an already functioning aquatic environment in which communities possessed their own knowledge systems, economic activities and social identities.
The history of the Benin Kingdom and the history of Ijaw riverine occupation can therefore coexist without contradiction. The Bini built and developed a powerful inland kingdom. The Ijaw maintained a distinct riverine world. The two came into contact through trade, navigation and political interaction. The historical existence of one does not require the denial of the other.
A fourth body of evidence emerges from the colonial period. British administration did not create the Ijaw communities of the Edo riverine area. Rather, colonial government encountered and subsequently classified communities that were already living within the region. Colonial records, district reports, ethnographic descriptions, censuses and administrative correspondence therefore become important historical sources for tracing the existence and identity of riverine populations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
These records must be critically examined because colonial classifications were often imperfect and sometimes imposed external categories upon indigenous societies. Nevertheless, they provide documentary evidence that Ijaw communities were present in the region before the later creation of Nigeria’s modern states.
The importance of the colonial record lies precisely in its chronology. The British arrived in a territory that already contained communities, traditional authorities, economic networks and established patterns of settlement. Colonial administration subsequently reorganised those communities into provinces, divisions and districts. Therefore, the fact that a community later appeared within a particular administrative unit does not mean that the administrative unit created the community.
The same principle applies to the successive political transformations of the twentieth century. The Ijaw communities of the riverine area existed before the creation of the Midwest Region in 1963. They remained within the territory when the Mid-Western State was created in 1967. They continued to exist when the state became Bendel State in 1976. And when Bendel was divided in 1991 to create Edo and Delta States, these communities did not suddenly appear in Edo. They were already there.The chronology is therefore significant: the state changed; the communities remained. The administrative name changed; the ancestral geography remained. The political boundary changed; the riverine settlements remained.
The evidence of traditional institutions provides another important dimension. Among the Ijaw, traditional authority has historically been expressed through institutions and titles associated with governance and community leadership. The continued existence of such institutions within Edo’s riverine communities is significant because traditional authority is often a repository of historical memory. The precise antiquity and installation dates of individual traditional stools in the territory of the Ijaws of Edo state are established through community records, oral histories and official documentation.
The evidence of language and cultural continuity is equally important. A community’s historical identity is not determined solely by the political state in which it finds itself. Language, kinship, naming systems, traditional institutions, fishing practices, marriage networks, rituals and oral traditions can preserve memories of origin and belonging across centuries of political change.The persistence of Ijaw cultural identity within the riverine communities of present-day Edo State therefore constitutes another significant element in the historical argument. Historical scholarship on the Niger Delta, including the work of scholars such as E. J. Alagoa, provides a broader context for understanding the antiquity and complexity of Ijaw riverine civilisation.
European and colonial records provide another dimension to the debate. Nineteenth-century explorers and officials, including Richard Burton, recorded aspects of the Benin River and surrounding waterways and described a complex network of riverine settlements and communities engaged in fishing, navigation and coastal trade. Such accounts suggest that the waterways of the western Niger Delta were inhabited by culturally and linguistically diverse populations whose identities were not necessarily synonymous with those of the inland Bini.
Earlier Portuguese encounters with the West African coast likewise point to the importance of riverine and coastal peoples in facilitating maritime commerce and movement between the interior and the Atlantic littoral. The evidence points towards a long-standing Ijaw presence in the riverine territories that now fall within Edo State, a presence that predates colonialism and the creation of modern Nigerian states.This distinction is essential because historical scholarship must resist replacing one form of historical absolutism with another. The objective is not to establish an ethnic monopoly over the entire history of Edo State. Rather, it is to recover the specific history of the riverine Ijaw and place it alongside, rather than beneath, the history of the Bini Kingdom. Consequently, a subalternisation of the Ijaws of Edo state, the propaganda of marginalization to declare them voiceless and invisible, to compel them to lose voice and agency in their God given ancestral land is a falsity of falsity and a capsule of dominant greed.
The historical record points towards a layered understanding of the territory. The inland political history of Benin is real. The riverine history of the Ijaw is also real. The interaction between them is real. What must be avoided is the simplistic assumption that the political prominence of one historical centre automatically erases the prior or parallel existence of communities beyond that centre.
The question of who is older must consequently be handled with precision. The Bini Kingdom possesses a long and well-documented history of state formation and dynastic development. The Ijaw possess an equally long and properly documented and significant history of riverine civilisation extending across the Niger Delta.
Thus the broader historical question of their presence in the region cannot be reduced to the history of the modern state.
When did Ijaw communities become established in the specific riverine territories that now constitute part of Edo State, and what evidence demonstrates their continuity there? These are questions that historical research must continue to answer. The convergence of oral traditions, settlement continuity, riverine economic history, cultural identity and documentary evidence provides a strong basis for investigating an Ijaw presence that reaches back into the precolonial era and survived successive transformations of political administration.
This conclusion is crucial to understanding the later history of balkanisation. If Ijaw communities were already established in these riverine spaces before colonial rule and before the creation of modern Nigerian states, then the subsequent division of their communities across administrative boundaries did not create their presence; it fragmented an existing historical geography.The Edo Ijaw were therefore not made Edo Ijaw by the creation of Edo State. They were administratively incorporated into Edo State by a political boundary drawn long after their ancestral relationship with the river had been established.
The river was already inhabited. The waterways were already travelled. The communities and kingdoms already existed. The history was already being lived. What later changed was not necessarily the existence of the people, but the political name placed over the land and water they had long called home. Thus, the Odiowerenisation of Ijaw kingdoms in Edo state from the palace of Benin is naked subjugation and brutal political cannibalism.
The Politics of Balkanisation: When Administrative Boundaries Fragment a People
The history of state creation in Nigeria raises a larger question about the political consequences of administrative fragmentation. The idea of state creation was, among other things, associated with demands for minority representation, administrative viability, development and, in the Niger Delta context, aspirations for greater self-determination. Chief Dappa Biriye is widely remembered in the history of Niger Delta minority politics for advancing demands associated with greater political recognition and self-determination.
Yet the consequences of successive state creations for the Ijaw have been profound. Ijaw communities are distributed across several states, including Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Ondo and Akwa Ibom. This geographical distribution has created a political situation in which a historically interconnected people often constitute minorities within several separate political systems. The consequence is fragmentation of political voice and, potentially, fragmentation of historical memory.
The history of the Ijaw can become divided according to state boundaries rather than studied as a continuous cultural and historical experience. This is where IJAWS HOLD Chief Philip Asiodu — former Permanent Secretary, Federal Commissioner, and one of Nigeria’s top bureaucrats in the 1970s-80s responsible For Ijaw Balkanisation In Nigeria. He posited in a public lecture in 1980 that the unity and stability of Nigeria and its economic development cannot be threatened by minority agitation considering their small size and population. Phillip Asiodu believes in the protection and exploitation of the Niger Delta oil more than the survival of the oil-bearing people. He reasoned it would be dangerous to create one single Ijaw state. The oil wealth should be spread across several states so that no one ethnic group controls it. This balkanising thought was entrenched in the Nigerian Constitution.
The result may therefore be described as the balkanisation of Ijaw identity: the division of a historically interconnected people among administrative units that can complicate collective political representation, resource claims, environmental advocacy, cultural recognition and historical visibility. The argument for balkanisation must nevertheless be treated as a matter of historical and political interpretation. State creation in Nigeria arose from several competing considerations, and claims that the fragmentation of Ijaw territories was deliberately designed to weaken the Ijaw. The critical historical question is therefore not merely who drew each boundary, but what those boundaries have produced.
The consequences of fragmentation are not merely geographical. They are historical, political, economic and cultural. When a people are divided across several states, their ancestral history can become fragmented, their political influence diluted and their capacity to coordinate claims concerning environmental justice, resource control and cultural recognition complicated. For the Ijaw, the concern is not simply the loss of political power. It is also the gradual erosion of historical visibility. A people can be physically present and yet historically invisible. They can inhabit ancestral land and yet be described as migrants. They can possess a rich cultural history and yet find that history subordinated to the dominant narrative of a political centre. This is why the question of Edo Ijaw history is larger than a dispute over territory. It is also a struggle over memory, recognition and historical visibility.
The Contemporary Synthesis: Recognition without Historical Denial
The way forward should not be based on the erasure of Ijaw identity. The Bini have their history of state formation, monarchy and political influence. The Ijaw also have their history of time honoured existence, navigation, fishing, trade state formation, monarchy, political influence and cultural continuity. Recognition of the Edo Ijaw should not be framed as an assault upon Bini identity. It should be understood as an insistence that the history of the riverine communities be given its proper place within the larger history of Edo State, the Niger Delta and Nigeria.
The Politics of Accommodation and the Recognition of Ijaw Indigeneity
The historical presence and ancestral identity of Ijaw communities in Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers States provide useful comparative contexts for understanding the politics of coexistence in the Niger Delta. These states contain multiple ethnic nations, kingdoms, clans and traditional institutions. Their histories demonstrate that political and cultural plurality can exist within the same constitutional and administrative framework.
The issue, therefore, is not the recognition of the historical significance of the Benin Kingdom or the legitimate place of the Oba of Benin within the traditional history of the region. The concern arises when the authority and historical narrative of one traditional institution are projected in a manner that seeks to subsume, diminish or delegitimise the ancestral identity and political existence of other indigenous peoples within the same geographical space.Such an approach is inconsistent with the plural character of Nigeria’s political history. The Edo Ijaw, like other indigenous peoples, deserve recognition as a people with a legitimate history, a distinct cultural identity and a rightful place within the political and traditional landscape of the territory they have historically inhabited.
The challenge before contemporary scholarship and governance is therefore to replace the politics of domination and historical erasure with a politics of recognition, inclusion and coexistence—one that acknowledges the dignity of every indigenous community and accepts that no single political centre or traditional institution should become the sole author of the history of an entire region.The Ultimate Claim of the Edo Ijaw is indeed a claim to territory, but it is also a claim to memory, ancestry and historical visibility. It is a claim that the story of the Ijaw territories of present-day Edo State must not begin with the creation of a modern state, nor should it end with the authority of a later administrative structure.
The history of Edo State must therefore be read not only from the palace outward, but also from the river inward. It must recognise the history and achievements of the inland kingdom without silencing the history of the riverine peoples. It must acknowledge political influence without confusing it with original homeland , just as it must recognise administrative authority without allowing political boundaries to become instruments of historical erasure.
The river is an archive of existence—a living record of the people who fished its waters, traded along its channels, travelled its creeks and established communities upon its shores. Its waterways have witnessed the rise of kingdoms, the expansion of commerce, the arrival of colonial power and the successive redrawing of political boundaries.
Yet through every transformation, riverine communities endured, carrying their identities and ancestral traditions across changing landscapes of political authority. From the precolonial world to the colonial era; from colony to province; from province to region; from region to Midwest; from Midwest to Bendel; and from Bendel to Edo, political names changed, administrative structures shifted and boundaries were redrawn. But no change of political nomenclature can, by itself, rewrite the history of the people who inhabited these riverine spaces.
The enduring question, therefore, is not merely who governs the territory today, but who lived upon its banks, who navigated its channels, who established communities and kingdoms along its shores, who sustained its economy and whose ancestors forged enduring bonds with its land and waters.That is why the claim of the Edo Ijaw is ultimately a claim for recognition—not a recognition that diminishes another people’s history, but one that restores the place of the Ijaw within the history of the land and waterways they have long inhabited. It is a call for a fuller historical account in which the story of the inland kingdom and the story of the riverine people are both acknowledged, studied and preserved. At the risk of repetion, no political map, however carefully drawn, can contain the whole history of a people.
