The Women’s War of 1929

The Igbo call it Ogu Ndem, “women’s war”; British officials called it the “Aba Riots”. It began in the Bende District of Owerri Province in November 1929 and spread over parts of Owerri and Calabar Provinces. Afigbo’s chapter in Korieh (2009) describes it as the most violent expression of a many-sided revolution that British rule had set in motion.

The immediate trigger was a head count. In 1928 a tax had been imposed on men, and rumour said that women would be next. According to Afigbo, counting people was in any case believed to bring death. Around 18 November, in the village of Oloko, a Warrant Chief named Okugo sent a mission-school teacher, Mark Emeruwa, to list the people and property of the household of an older woman, Nwanyeruwa, a widow preparing palm oil. She rebuffed him angrily (“Was your mother ever counted?”) and went to a women’s meeting. Women sent palm fronds (eyei or omu), a signal of warning or call to arms, to neighbouring villages.

Thousands of women gathered, sang war songs, danced and “sat on” the chiefs, using a traditional form of collective shaming and pressure that Judith Van Allen described as “sitting on a man”. Their targets were warrant chiefs, Native Courts, court clerks and messengers, and European trading factories. They demanded the end of the courts and chiefs, and some said white rule should end. A woman told the commission that women were “like trees which bear fruit”.

Both authors warn that the sources are limited. Oriji points out that the Aba Commission of Inquiry (1930) took sworn testimony through weak interpreters, with lawyers coaching witnesses, and that the District Officer who dealt with the revolt, Captain John Cook, admitted he did not understand the Igbo of Bende. For that reason, casualty figures vary and Oriji prefers the term “revolt” to “riots”.