After the conquest the British assumed that every community had a chief. Where none existed they appointed one by warrant. Afigbo’s The Warrant Chiefs (1972) and his chapter in Korieh (2009) show that many were “young nobodies” rather than ritual heads, and that the warrant made them executives and judges of the new Native Courts, replacing the village assembly.
The effects were far-reaching. Courts covered several clans (the Owerri court served Isu and Oratta). Court clerks and messengers gained power, and corruption became so common that one oral witness told Afigbo litigation was a “competitive bidding”. Imprisonment replaced traditional penalties. Forced labour and carrying were required (carriers got a shilling a day). Title-taking was banned in places (Obosi 1902; Nsugbe 1907), and twin killing was suppressed.
Direct taxation arrived in Eastern Nigeria in 1928, late and without study. Translations of “tax” as “head ransom” or “land rent” alarmed people, and the counting of people for a census contradicted custom. The result was the 1929 Women’s War. Afigbo concludes that it exposed the flaw of Indirect Rule applied to Igboland without study of indigenous politics; Lord Passfield admitted in 1931 how little was known of the south-eastern provinces, and Sir Donald Cameron ordered inquiries into each group’s own system.
Resistance continued
Ekechi lists later episodes: the killing of District Commissioner S. O. Crewe-Read in 1906, which led to the Ahiara expedition (1905–16), and the Ekumeku guerrilla war in western Igboland, which colonial sources treat as defeated by 1904.
A new Igbo studies
The 1929 crisis led the British to commission anthropologists. Oriji compares its effect on Igbo studies to that of the Biafran War.
Sources for this article
- Afigbo 1972, whole book
- Korieh (ed.) 2009, ch. 10 (Ekechi), ch. 11 (Afigbo), pp. 245–268