By Okoi Obono-Obla
The Ngbeke Confederacy was a brilliant constitutional experiment by the progenitors of the Yakurr people. Following the conflict in their ancestral homeland of Akpa – known in Yakurr oral tradition as Lekanakpakpa – which triggered the great migration between the 17th and 18th centuries, our ancestors established five compact settlements: Umor, Ekori, Mkpani, Idomi and Nko.
To manage their new territorial reality and exploit their strategic position, they forged a confederacy. As documented by historian Otu Abam Ubi, the institution of Ngbeke became the symbol of this new system, designed to enhance unity, security and trade, taking full advantage of the lucrative Cross River trade routes. This commerce precipitated the rise of a wealthy merchant class known as the Yasu.
However, that experiment was violently terminated. The British punitive expedition of 1898, which was in fact an imperial conquest of Yakurr, did not allow the confederacy to succeed. That was 128 years ago.
The 19th century ended in 1900 and the 20th century ended in 2000. We are now 26 years into the 21st century, and the political configuration of Yakurr has fundamentally changed.
The five-town structure of the 18th century has exploded. Ugep alone today comprises 12 clans and over 145 villages. When you add Ekori, Mkpani, Idomi, Nko, Agoi Ibami, Agoi Ekpo, Assiga, Inyima, Ekpeti, Ekom Agoi and others, all packed into 13 council wards, it becomes clear that the old model is obsolete.
The very factors – political, security and commercial – that motivated those illustrious ancestors to surrender aspects of their autonomy to a centre known as Ngbeke are now anachronistic. The dynamics have changed.
Therefore, the demand by some to return to a system that collapsed in 1898, when the combined population of those five settlements was less than twenty thousand, and to impose it on a modern Yakurr whose population has grown from 196,271 in the 2006 census to an estimated well over 300,000 today, all within the constitutional framework of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – a country that did not exist in 1898 and only came into being on 1st January 1914 – smacks of uncreative thinking.
What Yakurr urgently needs is not nostalgia, but development. Lumping a population of this size – where a single town has 12 clans and 145 villages – into one local government area in one of the most densely populated zones in the country, experiencing acute land shortage, is a recipe for incessant tension that easily manifests in violent land disputes. A local government created 35 years ago, when the population was far smaller, must be recalibrated to reflect current demographic realities.
The creation of additional Local Government Areas will bring government closer to the people, create more opportunities for social and economic development, and at the state and national levels, enhance opportunities for our young people, particularly as recruitment into the civil service, police, security services and the military is based on local government quotas.
We cannot build a 21st-century future on an 18th-century confederacy that ended in the 19th century.
