This is the story of the Ekumeku Movement, described by Chinua Achebe as Western Igboland’s earliest and fiercest military clash

The EndSARS protests that held Nigeria to a standstill and forced the international community to pay attention to the plight of young Nigerians in October 2020 has brought back memories of some of the agitations against the British colonial government in southern Nigeria in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

These agitations led to uprisings and violent confrontations between the organised and united locals and the more equipped British forces.

The Battle of Imagbon of 1892 between the British and the Ijebus, the Adubi war of 1918 in Egbaland, the resistance against the Aro expedition in Eastern Igboland in the 1900s, the Ekumeku Movement of the 1880s as well as the Aba women protest of 1929 and the Egba women tax revolt of 1947, were some of the most prominent uprisings against British government in southern Nigeria where the British conquest in West Africa was strongly opposed.

Unlike other parts of Nigeria where the British met little or no restriction, the south, especially the Igbo towns, mounted strong oppositions against moves that threatened their sovereignty. A Nigerian historian and Professor of African Studies, Toyin Falola, in his book ‘Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria’, quoted a British officer involved in the conquest of Kano and Sokoto as saying the Igbos were the ‘most troublesome’ group during the British conquest.

This is the story of the Ekumeku Movement, described by Chinua Achebe as the earliest and fiercest military clash that took place in Western Igboland in the 19th Century.

Ekumeku, according to Omabala Aguleri in the book ‘Igbo History Hebrew Exiles of Eri’, was derived from Igbo words Eku – to blow and Meku – not to be talked about. And it means ‘violent winds that blow, but whose sources or causes one does not see or talk about. It is top secret.’

The Ekumeku wars involved the western Igbo groups – the Aniocha, the Owa and the Kwale in Delta State, who organised guerilla warfare against the British. The 4,180km long River Niger divides the Igbo into eastern and western populations with the largest population occupying the east. Circa 1880s, Western Igbo communities in present-day Delta State, launched the Ekumeku movement to resist the disintegration of their society and to halt the advance of British imperialism.

The war began when the Royal Niger Company (RNC) which had established a trading company at Asaba, after signing a treaty with the town’s chiefs, made moves to hijack political power and impose itself as a legitimate government over the people. With Asaba as its seat of authority, the company started extending economic and political power to other Igbo communities in the region west of the Niger.

The RNC, a British mercantile company operated in what is now known as Nigeria in the 19th-century. It extended British influence in Nigeria and was authorised to administer the Niger Delta and south eastern part of Nigeria.

When it started exerting political power, imposing prohibitive dues on the people, the Western Igbo towns revolted and decided to rid their area of external domination. Their goal was to have an Igboland controlled by the Igbos and free from external control. United by this common goal, they formed the Ekumeku movement and their activities were shrouded in secrecy.

Just like the EndSARS movement which had no defined leadership, the Ekumeku movement had no unified structure, no known leader or commander. Each community involved in the wars took ownership and contributed forces to engage in specific battles.

“The Ekumeku wars were not a sudden outburst but a climax of a long period of a series of attacks,” Achebe wrote. The attacks were not just against the RNC, the Christian missionaries, the British and their interests, indigenous people who had links with the British were not spared. 

Organised under the leadership of a union of titled chiefs, the movement achieved ‘a far-flung coalition’ against British military pressure. 

“The Ekumeku warriors were young men, drawn from the town clubs and secret societies,” Chinua Achebe wrote in his globally acclaimed book, ‘Things Fall Apart’. “They accepted silence and guerilla tactics as their military strategies. Only men who took the oath of secrecy enrolled for service.”

Due to fears of being arrested by the British government, their meetings which were summoned through coded messages were held in secret places. They selected several targets and attacked them simultaneously, creating panic among the European and Christian communities. Their mode of attacks and activities, which was mostly nocturnal, Achebe said, earned the group the nickname – ‘the Silent Ones’. 

The secrecy of the Ekumeku fighters made it difficult to crackdown on the leaders and members. The RNC and the British government which later took over the administration of the RNC only acted based on suspicions in arresting suspected leaders and members. When the British government took over the administration of RNC in 1900, it didn’t stop the activities of Ekumeku.

According to Falola, the British embarked on an indiscriminate arrest of many political leaders and destroyed villages and towns suspected of having links with the movement. This followed a widespread rumour in 1902 that the group was about to launch an attack.

A confrontation between the colonial army and the Ekumeku at Ubulu-Uku in present-day Aniocha South Local Government Area of Delta State, in 1902 led to the fall of the town to the British after a three-day siege.

Felix Ekechi, an Emeritus Professor at Kent University, United States, in his account of the war, said in 1904, the British and missionaries witnessed a new wave of attacks from the movement that forced the British Divisional Commissioner W.E.B Coupland-Crawford to order a military action in the communities where the Ekumeku rebellion had erupted. Soldiers were deployed to Ibusa, Akwukwu, Atuma, Onitsha-Olona, Idumuje-Ugboko and other areas in Delta State and the towns were forced to pay for mission property destroyed and rebuild all the churches and schools.

After the clamp down, 200 fighters were arrested and jailed in Calabar prison where some reportedly committed suicide, many others died of disease and only fine survived.

The African World newspaper, quoted by one of the missionaries, Fr. Joseph Lejuene, reports that it has a good source that “out of 200 prisoners brought from Asaba at the beginning of last year and interned in Old Calabar prison, only five are alive.” With this, there were high hopes that the Ekumeku movement had been crushed, but it was a mere illusion. By mid-1904, the group launched fresh attacks that forced the missionaries to close down night schools.

After a series of confrontations and clamp down, the movement rose again in 1909, mobilising at Ogwashi-Ukwu where its members twice repulsed British forces. Two years later, the British embarked on another preemptive attack, arresting many Ekumeku leaders who were accused of being subversive. By 1914, the British finally crushed the Ekumeku movement and in the same year, Lord Lugard, the then Governor-General of Nigeria declared the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates to form what is now known as Nigeria.