The history of agitation for separate States within Nigeria’s federal structure dates back to the colonial period.. It gained formal expression during the sittings of the Willink’ Minorities’ Commission of 1958, when several minority ethnic nationalities submitted memoranda requesting autonomous States as Nigeria moved towards independence from Britain in 1960 under a federal arrangement.
During this period, the people of the territory now known and referred to as Anioma, alongside other non-Yoruba groups in the then Western Region, agitated for a separate State. Although this agitation did not immediately succeed, it culminated in the creation of the Midwestern Region in 1963. The Anioma territory is composed of three broad ethno-linguistic groups—Enuani (Aniocha/Oshimili), Ika, and Ukwuani (Ndokwa/Ukwuani), spread across nine Local Government Areas within present-day Delta State.
Colonial Administrative Trajectories of Anioma
Nigerian formally emerged as a colonial State on January 1, 1900, when the British assumed control of territories previously administered by the Royal Niger Company. This marked the commencement of systemic territorial delineation into administrative and political units.
From this period onward, the present-day Delta North Senatorial District-the Anioma homeland was successfully grouped under the Niger Coast Protectorate (1900—1914), the Central Province of the Southern Protectorate (1914—1939), and the Western Province/Western Region (1939—1963), all being different administrative formations. It came under the South-South geopolitical zone in 1996, a formation that has no administrative autonomy, but could serve as a sphere for regional co-operation.
Between 1914 and 1939, the Central Province of the Southern Protectorate of Nigeria grouped Anioma communities alongside the Edo, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Isoko, Ijew as well as, the Onitsha-Ogbaru and Isuama communities east of the Niger ( in present day Anambra State, and parts of Enugu and Imo States). When the Central Province was dissolved in 1939 and replaced with the Eastern and Western Province—using the River Niger as the boundary, Anioma territories were administratively transferred to the Western Region.
This decision marked the formal geopolitical separation of the Anioma from Igbo communities east of the Niger, a development that did not go dawn wekk with some sections of the constituents at the time.
It is important to stress that colonial administrative decisions were never neutral. They were shaped primarily by imperial convenience and the strategic interests of British rule in West Africa. Numerous scholars have argued persuasively that such arrangements were part of a broader divide-and-rule strategy, designed to weaken indigenous cohesion and forestall unified resistance against colonial rule and other associated activities of foreign interests.
Language, and Identity without Geopolitics
Prior to 1800, the autochthonous peoples of what later became Nigeria identified themselves primarily by village, clans or micro-ethnic affiliations—ndi mmba na mmba. Political geography as it is understood today did not exist. Linguistic varieties formed dialect continua, with mutual intelligibility across adjoining communities. Languages at this stage functioned mainly as a marker of community, ritual life, and local belonging, not of geopolitical identity. Early European missionaries and administrators, relying on their anthropological, ethnographic, and socio-linguistic surveys, were the first to impose defined broad linguistic and cultural boundaries for purposes of administration, census, evangelism and formal education.
Notably, Nigeria’s modern geopolitical labels—East, West, North, and South, possess no pre-colonial linguistic or anthropological legitimacy. They were neither derived from latitude-longitude co-ordinates, nor rooted in indigenous spatial consciousness or worldview. Rather, their emergence was a product of colonial administrative convenience, designed to simplify governance rather than reflect historical or ethno-linguistic realities. The closest approximation of these labels to actual geographical measurement—based loosely on latitude and longitude, occurred during provincial administrative arrangement between 1914 and 1939. Even then, such classification remained bureaucratic constructs rather than authentic representations of Nigeria’s complex pre-colonial spatial and cultural sphere.
The externally imposed classification—Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Hausa, Ijaw and others, served the ends sought by their creators, but throw up challenges for the indigenous people. First, dialect continua were frozen into bounded languages, often privileging certain dialects as standard. Secondly, language became politicized retroactively—descriptive labels used by missionaries and colonial administrators were later misinterpreted as primordial ethnic identities, a proxy for political representation, territorial claims, and resource allocation, despite their originally non-geopolitical role. Thirdly, the imposed identities gradually became the basis of anachronistic narratives of ancient ethnic blocs, migrations, and hegemonies that never existed in the forms now imagined.
In this sense, geopolitics did not emerge organically from language; rather, language was conscripted into geopolitics—thus identity hardened not because linguistic differences increased, but because administrative borders, missionary reference, census categories, and later, the exigencies of nationalist competition demanded fixed labels.
Understanding these latent consequences of the externally imposed classification is crucial for debates in contemporary Nigeria—be it about indigeneity, state creation, minority rights, or cultural ownership. This is because it reminds us that many present-day identity crisis are less the inheritance of deep antiquity than the afterlife of colonial classification layered into much older, far more fluid social worlds.
The Igbo as a Broad and Recent Identity
The Igbo identity, like Anioma itself, is a relatively recent standardized construct. Before the nineteenth century CE, there were no homogenized ethic labels such as Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, or Hausa as collective identities. As noted earlier, these labels emerged largely through European missionaries and colonial interventions, particularly Bible translation, schooling, and census classification.
The early European linguists and ethnographers identified a core Igboid linguistic continuum, centered on such areas as Nsukka, Afikpo, Igbo-Ukwu, Nri, and Awka-Orlu upland. Archaeological evidence from sites including Opi and Leija, which date continuous human settlement to approximately 3000-2500 BCE further reinforced the antiquity and cohesion of this zone. On this basis, scholars consistently recognized Afikpo/Edda, Bende, Ngwa, Nsukka, Nkanu, Igbo-Ukwu/Nri, Awka-Orlu and Owerri as constituting the Igboid group.
Peripheral but linguistically related dialect clusters—such as Ezza-Izzi-Ikwo-Mgbo (EIZZIM), Isu (Isuama)—Onitsha and related riverine dialects along the Niger, Ika, Enuani and Ukwuani (Anioma), Andoni—Ndoni, Ibani—Opobo, Ikwere and Ekpeye among others, were classified within the igboid family on the basis of degrees of mutual intangibility, not claims of singular ancestral provenance. Crucially, early researchers also documented significant cultural syncretism in these peripheral territories, an expected outcome of prolonged contact with neighboring non-Igboid populations.
As George T. Basden noted in Among the Ibo People of Nigeria (1920: Pg. 28): “The Ibos are distributed over the greater part of the Central Province of the Protectorate…. and then spread across the Niger to the confines of Benin.”
This historical record directly contradicts contemporary assertions that Igbo identity is exclusively confined to territories east of the Niger or that Anioma communities lie outside the Igbo cultural and linguistic sphere. Such claims collapse under scrutiny once linguistic methodology, archaeological evidence, and early ethnographic documentations are properly considered.
It is pertinent to emphasize that this broad, inclusive linguistic classification is not peculiar to the Igboid family. Comparable frameworks exist among other Nigerian language groups, most notably the Yoruba, which encompasses dialect clusters of Ijebu, Ijesa, Egba, Oyo, Ife, Ijesha, Owo/Akoko, Ondo, Ikale/Ilaje (Igbomokun), Egbado (Qwori/Yewa), Ekiti, Igomina, Iyagba and Okun, among others—groups that maintain internal diversity while remaining linguistically coherent.
Anioma: Ancestry, and the Myth of Bini Predominance
While Anioma is undeniably heterogeneous and non-monolithic, the claim of Bini ancestral predominance is not supported by credible evidence.
The argument often relies on the presence of influence of Bini chieftaincy systems as well as certain individual names-such as Imudia, Obaigbena, Irabor, Ugbejie, Jegbefume, Osadume, Aghedo, Omorogie, Ekhuase, Ekhator, Igunbor, and odiase, among others. However, the chieftaincy influence did not erode the republican spirit engrained in the ancient Igbo community life, and socio-political organization. For instance, as customary among Igbo communities; there are no Imperial Majesties in Anioma. On the other hand, the Bini personal names are largely confined to border communities—especially in Ika South LGA, contiguous with Edo State. Beyond this narrow corridor, their occurrence is marginal.
By contrast, Igbo names such as Olise, Okonkwo, Enunwa, Onyenenue/Onyenelue, Mordi, Ashiedu, Nwanze, Ugbechine/Ugbekile, Okonta, Nzekwe, Enuma, Osakwe, Odogwu and Dike, among others are far more widespread across Anioma communities. This empirical imbalance points not to Bini predominance, but to long-standing assimilation into the broader Igboid socio-linguistic sphere alongside other influences. Moreover, all members of other Nigerian linguistic and cultural families, including the Bini, and Yoruba, refer to Anioma people as Igbo—ovwi igbo, omo ibo. Prominent Bini legend narrators recorded the territory as Igbo land conquered and brought under the Benin Empire.
Geopolitics and the South East Question
The argument that Anioma must remain within the South South geopolitical zone, often justified on the basis of non-Igbo ancestry is internally contradictory. It concedes heterogeneity while simultaneously erecting a rigid exclusionary logic.
The South—South, as presently constituted, lacks coherence on spatial fronts: Geographically—there is no meaningful contiguity or spatial logic. Linguistically—multiple unrelated languages coexist with no continuum of mutual intelligibility. Anthropologically—cultural systems are diverse and often mutuallyexclusive.
Conclusion
Anioma is a modern political construct, not a primordial ethnic formation. Its people are plural in ancestry, syncretic in culture, and historically fluid in political affiliation. To oppose a South East alignment for an autonomous state for the territory on the grounds of identity purity is neither historically defensible nor logically coherent
What remains conspicuously absent from the opposing argument is a clear articulation, grounded in evidence of what Anioma would materially lose by exiting the South—South or what concrete harm it would suffer by aligning with the South East.
Moreover, historical administrative precedents undermine claims that Anioma alignment with the South East would be anomalous. Nigeria’s geopolitical zones are not constitutional entities; they possess no legal or administrative sovereignty. They are informal political constructs shaped by elite negotiation, rather than historical cultural necessity.
In a debate of this nature, emotion, fear and narrow political calculations are poor substitutes for reasoned analysis, but ultimately, the raging arguments should be welcomed as a healthy exercise in democratic engagement. When the question of state creation is eventually subjected to a referendum, it is hoped that reason, wisdom, evidence and intellectual honesty, rather than fear or sentiment, will prevail.
Political historian and development practitioner Boney Akaeze writes from Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria.
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