Imagining home: Migration and the Igbo Village in colonial Nigeria

Journal of African History

Volumn 46, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 51-73

  van den Bersselaar, Dmitri ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

African modernities; Colonial; Identity; Migration; Nigeria; Politics; Spatial patterns

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; MIGRATION;

AFRICA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; NIGERIA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WEST AFRICA; WORLD;

EID: 17444368043     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853704000015     Document Type: Review

References (163)

1. For a recent overview of the historiography on Africa, see Thomas Spear, 'Neotraditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa', Journal of African History, 44 (2003), 3-27;
2. see also Wim van Binsbergen, 'Globalization and virtuality: analytical problems posed by the contemporary transformation of African societies', in Birgit Meyer and Peter Geschiere (eds.), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (Oxford, 1999), 273-303.
3. Thaddeus Sunseri, Vilimani: Labor Migration and Rural Change in Early Colonial Tanzania (Portsmouth NH, 2002).
4. Nigerians I spoke to used this term to describe those who were considered as belonging to the community, yet were living away from the hometown. Although the expression is gendered, daughters and daughters-in-law are not consciously excluded.
5. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1996).
6. See Wendy Griswold, 'The writing on the mud wall: Nigerian novels and the imaginary village', American Sociological Review, 57 (1992), 709-24;
7. and Axel Harneit-Sievers, 'Igbo local histories: constructing community in Southeastern Nigeria', in Axel Harneit-Sievers (ed.), A Place in the World: New Local Historiographies from Africa and South-Asia (Leiden, 2002), 31-63.
8. For a broader analysis, see also Axel Harneit-Sievers, 'Making the Igbo "town": local communities and the state in Southeastern Nigeria since the late 19th century' (CD-ROM, 2001).
9. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 179.
10. Jens A. Andersson, 'Reinterpreting the rural-urban connection: migration practices and socio-cultural dispositions of Buhera workers in Harare', Africa, 71 (2001), 82-112.
11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983; revised edn, 1991).
12. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 188.
13. See also Benedict Anderson, Long-Distance Nationalism, World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics (Amsterdam, 1992);
14. Mamadou Diouf, 'The Senegalese murid trade diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitanism', Codesria Bulletin, 21 (2000), 19-30.
15. Richard Rathbone, 'Defining Akyemfo: the construction of citizenship in Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana, 1700-1939', Africa, 66 (1996), 506-25;
16. Ruth Watson, 'Civil Disorder is the Disease of Ibadan': Chieftaincy and Civic Culture in a Yoruba City (Oxford, 2003);
17. Filip de Boeck, 'Domesticating diamonds and dollars: identity, expenditure and sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984-1997)', in Meyer and Geschiere (eds.), Globalisation and Identity, 177-209.
18. Kwame Arhin, West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1979), 109;
19. Joel D. Barkan, Michael L. McNulty and M. A. O. Ayeni, '"Hometown" voluntary associations, local development, and the emergence of civil society in Western Nigeria', Journal of Modern African Studies, 29 (1991), 457-80.
20. As indicated convincingly by Harneit-Sievers, 'Making the Igbo "town"', 223.
21. Charles W. Abbott, 'Hometown associations and ethnic unions', in Toyin Falola (ed.), Nigeria in the Twentieth Century (Durham NC, 2002), 359-78, offers an interesting attempt at categorization.
22. Carolyn A. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves': African Miners, Culture and Resistance at the Enugu Government Colliery (London, 2003);
23. Barkan et al., '"Hometown" voluntary associations';
24. Dmitri van den Bersselaar, In Search of Igbo Identity. Language, Culture and Politics in Nigeria, 1900-1966 (Leiden, 1998).
25. An early example of this in the literature is the case of Mbaise, discussed in detail by Smock, who emphasizes the role of urban migrations, and of the Mbaise Federal Union and the Mbaise Youth Movement. Audrey C. Smock, 'The NCNC and ethnic unions in Biafra', Journal of Modern African Studies, 7 (1969), 21-34.
26. Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Enugu, 1983), 47.
27. Harneit-Sievers, 'Making the Igbo "town"', 217.
28. Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity, Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860-1910 (Portsmouth NH, 1994);
29. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent, 'Ethnicity in Ghana: a comparative perspective', in Lentz and Nugent (eds.), Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (London, 2000), 1-28;
30. on the Igbo case see Van den Bersselaar, In Search of Igbo Identity.
31. The idea that Igbo were more interested in modernity than other Nigerians has long remained popular, especially among Igbo scholars, since it was first formulated in Simon Ottenberg, 'Ibo receptivity to change', in W. J. Bascom and M. J. Herskovits (eds.), Continuity and Change in African Cultures (Chicago, 1962), 130-43.
32. Okwudiba Nnoli, Ethnic Politics in Nigeria (Enugu, 1978), 220-1;
33. Uchenna Anyanwu, 'Igbo easy receptivity to change: fact or fallacy?' (unpublished paper University of Nigeria, Nsukka n.d. [1995]);
34. A. E. Afigbo, Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Nsukka, 1981), 326-9.
35. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves', 33, 43;
36. Susan M. Martin, Palm Oil and Protest: An Economic History of the Ngwa Region, South-Eastern Nigeria, 1800-1980 (Cambridge, 1988), 27;
37. Azuka A. Dike, The Resilience of Igbo Culture: A Case Study of Awka Town (Enugu, 1985), 62.
38. There is scope for confusion here. I will use the term 'village group' mostly when discussing rural communities, but also use 'town' or 'hometown' when presenting the perspective of the urban migrants (in keeping with Nigerian usage of the word 'town'). To indicate what would be called towns in British English, I use the colonial expression 'township'.
39. Victor C. Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (New York, 1965), 44.
40. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves', 37, 72. Brown discusses the Udi area; in contrast, Martin, Palm Oil and Protest, 32, shows that slaves were not all that important in Ngwa.
41. National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan Branch (NAI), CSO 26 27948 (1936).
42. National Archives of Nigeria, Enugu Branch (NAE), RIVPROF 8/15/153 (1931);
43. see also Susan Martin, 'Slaves, Igbo women and palm oil in the nineteenth century', in Robin Law (ed.), From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cambridge, 1995), 175.
44. Age grade systems have been described for the eastern Igbo in Simon Ottenberg, 'Improvement associations among the Afikpo Ibo', Africa 25 (1955), 1-29;
45. for the southern Igbo in Audrey C. Smock, Ibo Politics: The Role of Ethnic Unions in Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge MA, 1971), 28-30 and passim.
46. Dike, The Resilience of Igbo Culture, 82-137;
47. but see for example Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (London, 1987), for a discussion of a title society for women.
48. Griswold, 'The writing on the mud wall', 712.
49. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves', 71, 104.
50. Martin, Palm Oil and Protest, 92, notes that Ngwa remained largely outside the network of labour movement during the colonial period, which might be linked-in addition to moderate population density-to the lesser importance of slave labour in Ngwa as compared to other Igbo areas.
51. NAI, CSO 26 27948, Confidential memorandum on the Osu System, 8 Apr. 1936;
52. David Northrup, 'The compatibility of the slave and palm oil trades in the Bight of Biafra', Journal of African History, 17 (1976), 353-64;
53. Martin, 'Slaves, Igbo women and palm oil', 172-94;
54. Don Ohadike, '"When slaves left, owners wept": entrepreneurs and emancipation among the Igbo people', Slavery and Abolition, (1998), 200-1.
55. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves', 158.
56. Martin, Palm Oil and Protest, 90.
57. P. Amaury Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria: A Sketch of their History, Ethnology and Languages with and Abstract of the 1921 Census (4 vols.) (London, 1926), IV, 34-5, 169;
58. C. K. Meek, The Northern Tribes of Nigeria (2 vols.) (London, 1925), 11, 188.
59. Rhodes House Library, Oxford (RHO), Mss.Afr.s.699 Albert Francis Bridges, Intelligence Report on Uguawkpu Group, Awka Division (1934).
60. Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria, IV, 166-8.
61. G.E.K. Ofomata, Nigeria in Maps: Eastern States (Benin City, 1975), 64-6;
62. John N. Paden, 'Communal competition, conflict and violence in Kano', in Robert Melson and Howard Wolpe (eds.), Nigeria: Modernization and the Politics of Communalism (Michigan, 1971), 115;
63. Victor Bong Amaazee, 'The "Igbo scare" in the British Cameroons, c. 1945-61', Journal of African History, 31 (1990), 281-94.
64. Coleman gives the following figures for Igbo as percentage of the total nonindigenous population in a town: Lagos: 44.6 per cent, Benin 53.3 per cent, Sapele 46.0 per cent, Calabar 70.7 per cent, Kano 38.0 per cent, Zaria 39.0 per cent and Kaduna 40.7 per cent (James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism [Berkeley, 1958], 77).
65. Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity, 223.
66. In this paper, I use the term 'union' and 'association' interchangeably when referring to such organizations. When I want to refer specifically to unions for migrants from one specific village, as different from groups with a broader - ethnic or regional - focus, I use the full term 'hometown association'.
67. NAE, MINESTAB 4/1/250, Cultural organizations (1963), contains correspondence relating literally to hundreds of such unions, including the Medical Dining Club Port Harcourt Province; and ranging in focus from the Akaeze Youth Association to the African Peoples Cultural Organization.
68. H. Smythe and M. Smythe, The New Nigerian Elite (Stanford, 1960), 29.
69. There are no reliable statistics on association membership; newspapers tend to talk about 'mass meetings', but the few minutes of meetings that I have seen indicate a more modest turnout. According to some Igbo elders I interviewed, union membership was obligatory. According to many others, it was inevitable: 'when you were not a member, nobody would look after you or your family' (interview with Chief Onwuemelie, Awka, 17 May 1994). Yet other elders maintained that they had been too busy making a living and looking after their families to be bothered with the union.
70. Barkan et al., '"Hometown" voluntary associations', 463;
71. Lilian Trager, 'Rural-urban linkages: the role of small urban centers in Nigeria', African Studies Review, 31 (1988), 33.
72. NAE, AWDIST 8/1/306, Rules and Regulations of the Awka Band of Charity (1930; ONDIST 12/1/1020, Rules and Regulations of the Enugu Aborigines Improvement Union (1939); and many other examples. This has often been noted in the literature, e.g. Eghosa E. Osaghae, Trends in Migrant Political Organizations in Nigeria. The Igbo in Kano (Ibadan, 1994), 35-6.
73. NAE, ONDIST 12/1/1020, Rules and Regulations.
74. NAE RIVPROF 2/1/87, D.O., Brass, to Resident, Rivers Province, 10 Apr. 1947;
75. PHDIST 3/1/83, Aims and Objects of the Ibo Union Port Harcourt;
76. 'Scholarship fund for Onitsha students', West African Pilot, 2 Mar. 1944;
77. 'Ohafia Union sends N. Abai to America', West African Pilot, 1 Feb. 1950;
78. 'Biase Union meets: secretary awarded Oversea [sic] Scholarship', West African Pilot, 2 Feb. 1950;
79. see also David Abernethy, The Political Dilemma of Popular Education (Stanford, 1969), 109-10;
80. Paden, 'Communal competition, conflict and violence', 129;
81. see also 'Is there discrimination in schools in the north against southern children?', West African Pilot, 3 Mar. 1944.
82. Smock, Ibo Politics, 137, 147.
83. Austin Ahanotu, 'The role of ethnic unions in the development of Southern Nigeria: 1916-66', in Boniface I. Obichere (ed.), Studies in Southern Nigerian History (London, 1982), 161-2;
84. see also the frequent reporting on send-offs and receptions in the newspapers, for example: 'Aguleri people honour Idigo on his rise to senior post', West African Pilot, 28 Mar. 1950;
85. 'Series of send-offs given Mr Chukwuma on his transfer', West African Pilot, 4 Jan. 1949;
86. 'Awka Improvement Union bid Nnajide Anakor farewell', West African Pilot, 30 June 1950.
87. Onitsha ladies stage grand African folk dance in Yaba', West African Pilot, 7 Jan. 1949;
88. 'Lagos Ibo Union honours Dr Zik with variety of dances', West African Pilot, 19 Oct. 1954.
89. NAE, PHDIST 3/1/83, Aims and objects of the Ibo Union Port Harcourt. A more general discussion of the unions' aims can be found in Ahanotu, 'The role of ethnic unions', 166.
90. Proposals for reorganisation Ibadan N.A. are criticised as unfair to strangers', West African Pilot, 29 Feb. 1944;
91. Kedy Nwokedi, 'Onitsha & political moves', West African Pilot, 17 Aug. 1951;
92. 'Chief commissioner must explain why the lbos in Nasarawa were denied Civic Rights', West African Pilot, 23 Nov. 1951;
93. Douglas Anthony, Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power, and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966 to 1986 (Portsmouth NH, 2002) 37-9;
94. Osaghae, Trends in Migrant Political Organizations;
95. and Ulf Hannerz, 'Structures for strangers: ethnicity and institutions in a colonial Nigerian town', in A. Southall, P. J. Nas and C. Ansari (eds.), City and Society in Urban Ethnicity, Life-Style and Class (Leiden, 1985), offer case studies.
96. See for example NAE, CSE 1/85/2815, Letter from 'African inhabitants and residents of the Aba Township', 12 Sept. 1928. It is interesting to note that this progressive union was firmly focused on the urban public sphere, and had no link with any particular hometown. This appears to be reflected in the leadership, as the signatures under petitions I have seen point towards a mixture of people from West Nigeria (including Edo), Sierra Leone and diverse Igbo communities.
97. NAI, IBADAN DIV. I/I 1888, Okonkwo to Senior D.O. Oyo Province, 9 Aug. 1941.
98. Harneit- Sievers, 'Making the Igbo "town"', 214. A number of named examples can be found in P. H. H. Hair Papers (Liverpool): Croasdale Report on Colliery Labour (Enugu, 1938), 19-22.
99. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, 'The process of urbanization in Africa (from the origins to the beginning of independence)', African Studies Review, 34 (1991), 1-98.
100. Josef Gugler, 'Life in a dual system: Eastern Nigerians in town, 1961', Cahiers d'études africaines, 11 (1971), 400-21, and 'Life in a dual system revisited: urban-rural ties in Enugu, Nigeria, 1961-1987', World Development, 19 (1991), 399-409;
101. Chukwuemeka Onwubu, 'Ethnic identity, political integration, and national development: the Igbo diaspora in Nigeria', Journal of Modern African Studies, 13 (1975), 406.
102. Harneit Sievers, 'Making the Igbo "town"', 214.
103. Onwubu, 'Ethnic identity', 406.
104. Uchendu, The Igbo, 38;
105. Josef Gugler, 'The son of the hawk does not remain abroad: the urban-rural connection in Africa', African Studies Review, 45 (2002), 23.
106. Enoch Okpara, Perspectives in Settlement Processes in Igboland: The Case of Okwelle in Okigwe L.G.A. Imo State (Owerri, 1990), 129-31;
107. Trager, 'Rural-urban linkages', 34;
108. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves', 38.
109. Barth Chukwuezi, 'Through thick and thin: Igbo rural-urban circularity, identity and investment', Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 19 (2002), 55-66.
110. Aba Commission of Inquiry: Notes of Evidence: Taken by the Commission of Inquiry into the Disturbances in the Calabar and Owerri Provinces, December 1929.
111. Misty L. Bastian, '"Bloodhounds who have no friends": witchcraft and locality in the Nigerian popular press', in Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (eds.), Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa (Chicago, 1993), 129-66.
112. These are the words of R. B. K. Okafor, addressing the 1950 Ibo State Assembly as Lagos delegate. He also pointed out that 'this bridal price has debarred so many young women from marrying their best suitors, and how prostitution is an inevitable result'. Quoted from 'Ibo State Assembly decides to probe into high bridal price', West African Pilot 2 Mar. 1950.
113. Brown, 'We Were All Slaves', 158.
114. National Archives, Kew, London (PRO), CO 554/1376, J. V. Clinton, Apr. 1957; Ohadike, '"When slaves left, owners wept"', 201-2, observes that osu have remained a despised class to this day.
115. Ahanotu, 'The role of ethnic unions', 171.
116. One of the unions was actually led by a court scribe (NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/ 86, Acting Resident, Owerri Province to S.E.P., Port Harcourt, 5 Mar. 1947).
117. PRO, CO 583 258/30150, Governor of Nigeria to S. of S., 15 Nov. 1943. One of the first scholars to describe this phenomenon was Uchendu, The Igbo; see also Ahanotu, 'The role of ethnic unions'. For more recent developments, see Rex Honey and Stanley Okafor (eds.), Hometown Associations: Indigenous Knowledge and Development in Nigeria (London, 1988); and for development activities of hometown associations among the Yoruba, see Barkan et al., '"Hometown" voluntary associations'.
118. Okpara, Perspectives, 13;
119. Smock, 'The NCNC and ethnic unions', 25.
120. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton NJ, 1996), 109-37;
121. Ebere Nwaubani, 'Chieftaincy among the Igbo: a guest on the center-stage', International Journal of African Historical Studies 27 (1994), 354.
122. PRO, CO 583 214/30018, Annual Report on Southern Provinces for 1935; CO 583 299/1, Record of second meeting of the Colonial Local Government Advisory Panel, 22 Oct. 1948; Nwaubani, 'Chieftaincy among the Igbo', 354.
123. Harneit-Sievers, 'Making the Igbo "town"', 214.
124. Olufemi Vaughan, Nigerian Chiefs: Traditional Power in Modern Politics, 1890-1990s (Rochester NY, 2000), 34-5.
125. Ibid. 36;
126. Watson, 'Civil Disorder is the Disease of Ibadan', 124-8.
127. PRO, CO 583 299/1, Record of second meeting; NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/87 D.O., Degema, to Resident, Rivers Province, 22 Mar. 1947.
128. NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/86, Acting Resident, Owerri Province, to S.E.P., 5 Mar. 1947. The letter provides statistics for the years 1942-6 and notes that the decline in cases brought for local courts is far greater in those areas where town unions are dealing with cases. See also Colonial Office, Nigeria: Report for the Year 1954 (London, 1958), 139.
129. Dilim Okafor-Omali, A Nigerian Villager in Two Worlds (London, 1965), 149-50.
130. NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/86, C. P. Thompsom, D.O., Orlu, quoted in Acting Resident, Owerri Province, to S.E.P., 5 Mar. 1947.
131. There are quite a number of instances of this. See for example the opinions expressed in NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/87, Native Authorities and Clan Unions (1947), the discussions in NAE, ONDIST 12/1/1055, Correspondence with Onitsha Improvement Union (1936-9); ONDIST 14/1/1303, P. H. Ezekpo to Resident Onitsha Province, 28 Feb. 1939; and the brief overview in PRO, CO 583 214/30018, Annual Report on the Southern Provinces of Nigeria 1935 (Lagos, 1937).
132. C. C. Ndulue, Abatete: Political and Economic History and Some Aspects of Igbo Culture (Enugu, 1993), 56-60.
133. Amainyi family meeting Lagos branch', West African Pilot, 18 Aug. 1954.
134. Letters to the Editor: Ejikeme Ogokwu (Port Harcourt), 'How many unions in Udi division?', Eastern Outlook and Cameroons Star, 7 Jan. 1954.
135. A. E. Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891-1929 (New York, 1972), 61-76.
136. Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties. Power in an Emergent African Nation (Princeton, 1963), 52.
137. M. G. U. Anigbo (letter to the editor), West African Pilot, 9 Mar. 1946.
138. Interview Obi Chinwuko, Awka, 15 May 1994; Nwaubani, 'Chieftaincy among the Igbo', 369;
139. Hanny Hahn-Waanders, Eze Institution in Igboland (Nimo, 1990), 32.
140. NAE, CSE 1/85/2815, Aba Progressive Union, 1928; ONPROF 5/1/19, Onitsha Improvement Union, Onitsha. Rules and regulations-1935; ONDIST 12/1/1020 (interestingly, this first mention refers to the change of name of the union from Enugu Aborigines Development Union to Enugu Divisional Union). These 'earliest references' do not refer of course to all existing unions, but only to the sample that I have seen and it is therefore likely that these terms were used earlier on. However, as I have seen hundreds of different unions mentioned in colonial archives, newspapers, interviews and secondary literature, these dates must be taken to at least offer some indication. Also, Barkan et al., '"Hometown" voluntary associations', mention the following Yoruba dates: the Otan-Ayegbaju Progressive Union was founded in 1930, and the Fiditi Progressive Union in 1934.
141. See for instance 'Change of name' [advertisement], West African Pilot 20 Feb. 1950, announcing the change of name of the Awka Band of Charity into the Awka Improvement Union.
142. For a snapshot of the situation in the late 1950s, see the exhibits and memoranda submitted by over a hundred of such unions in PRO, CO 957, Commission on Minority Groups in Nigeria (Willink Commission).
143. Elizabeth Tonkin, 'Zik's story: autobiography as political exemplar', in Karin Barber and P. F. de Moraes Farias (eds.), Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa (Birmingham, 1990), 41.
144. Jan Nederveen Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, 1992);
145. W. M. Macmillan, Africa Emergent (London, 1938).
146. NAE, RIVPROF 1/9/1, Confidential Circular from F. Ruxton, Lieutenant-Governor, Southern Provinces, Lagos, 12 Feb. 1926; see also Harry A. Gailey, The Road to Aba: A Study of British Administrative Policy in Eastern Nigeria (London, 1970).
147. Jonathan Derrick, 'The "native clerk" in colonial West Africa', African Affairs, 82 (1983), 61-74.
148. Joanna Lewis, Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya 1925-52 (Oxford, 2000).
149. Colonial Office, Annual Report on Nigeria for the Year 1946 (London, 1947), 5; NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/87, I. E. W. Schofield to Resident, Calabar Province, Opobo, 27 Mar. 1947.
150. NAE, RIVPROF 2/1/87, Minute by Chief Commissioner re interview Mr Ibeziaku, 4 Mar. 1947.
151. V. C. I. Anene, 'An aspect of Igbo history presented to the first international seminar of the Society for Promoting Igbo Language and Culture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka on Aug. 26 - Sept. 1st 1982' (Unpublished paper 1982).
152. Derrick, The '"native clerk"', 61-74.
153. Stephanie Newell, Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana: 'How to Play the Game of Life' (Bloomington, 2002), 90.
154. PR0, CO 957/7, Minutes of the annual conference of Asaba Union held on the 25th and 26th of December, 1950, at the Native Court Hall; see also the memoranda submitted in PRO, CO 957/20, and Smock, 'The NCNC and ethnic unions', passim.
155. 'Biase Union on the march', West African Pilot, 2 Feb. 1950.
156. 'Mr F. U. Anyiam urges all Ibos to follow examples set by Ibibio & Ijebu groups', West African Pilot, 15 Sept. 1944.
157. 'Eighteenth Ngwa Day is celebrated before over 10,000', West African Pilot, 28 June 1955.
158. 'Scholarship fund for Onitsha students', West African Pilot, 2 Mar. 1944.
159. West African Pilot, 17 May 1950.
160. Okpara, Perspectives, 139.
161. Nigeria. Report for the Year 1954, 139.
162. Harneit-Sievers, 'Igbo local histories', 31-63.
163. Dmitri van den Bersselaar, 'Establishing the facts: P. A. Talbot and the 1921 Census of Nigeria', History in Africa, 31 (2004), 69-102.