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Ibo Land Tenure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

G. I. Jones
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Extract

The Ibo-speaking people of Eastern Nigeria can be regarded as a single culture area which may provisionally be subdivided into five main divisions: Northern or Onitsha, Southern or Owerri, Western or Ika, Eastern or Cross River, and North-eastern or Abakaliki. The first two divisions, whose boundaries correspond very roughly to those of the Administrative Provinces of Onitsha and Owerri, contain the bulk of the population; the Western occupies the Niger riverain region and the forest country beyond, and their culture has been influenced by that of the Edospeaking tribes farther west, and by Benin; the Cross River Ibo are another marginal group whose affinities with the ‘Semi-Bantu’-speaking tribes on the eastern bank of that river have yet to be studied; while the North-eastern Ibo are a specialized group that has developed, in comparative isolation, a culture and a social structure better adapted to the savannah country in which they live. The remarks which follow refer mainly to the Northern, Southern, and Cross River Ibo; the North-eastern Ibo system differs in many important respects; the Western has not been studied. The terms used in defining Ibo social groupings have been explained in Africa, vol. xix, No. 2, p. 151, and in places where this may cause confusion the ‘official’ or alternative term is given in brackets.

Résumé

SYSTÈME FONCIER DES IBO

L'unité de tenure de la terre, dans la société iboenne, est constituée par plusieurs villages groupés dans une seule communauté autonome locale. Trois étapes peuvent être distinguées dans l'histoire du développement de ces groupes: (a) la colonisation; (b) la consolidation; (c) la désintégration et la réorganisation. Les terres appartenant au groupe de villages sont classées comme terrains pour habitations et terrains agricoles; l'allocation des parcelles et l'emploi et le transfert des terrains sont contrôlés par la communauté. Autrefois, très peu de restrictions étaient imposées sur le transfert des terrains, soit entre les membres de la communauté, soit aux étrangers, mais l'augmentation de la population et la pénurie de terrains, surtout de terrains agricoles, qui en a résultée, ont abouti, dans beaucoup de régions, à une interdiction de transferts. Diverses méthodes de céder, affermer et nantir des terrains sont décrites. Le système fonder parmi les Ibo est fondé sur certains principes qui sont tenus fermement, et même passionnément; (a) la terre appartient à la communauté; (b) aucun membre de la communauté ne devrait être sans terre; (c) chaque personne devrait avoir une tenure assurée. Le système qui convenait bien aux conditions andennes, est mal approprié aux circonstances actuelles; une répartition inégale de la population s'ensuit, l'amélioration des méthodes de cultivation et la colonisation de nouvelles régions sont empêchées, et, dans certaines régions, les groupes de villages ont été transformés de communautés agricoles à de simples réserves de main-d'œuvre.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , October 1949 , pp. 309 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1949

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References

page 309 note 1 It is based on sixteen years' study mainly among the Southern, Cross River, and North-eastern Ibo.

page 309 note 2 These settlement groups are, however, dispersed, that is, the houses which comprise the village are not built close together but are grouped in compounds and spread over a comparatively extensive area of land; a compound being defined as a cluster of houses belonging to a single household consisting of a man, his wives, unmarried children and other dependants. Cross River and some riverain Ibo villages differ from the rest in being compact villages with all the compounds crowded together around a village meeting-place.

page 311 note 1 That is, every third, fourth, fifth, or sixth year, according to the type of soil and the amount of land available. In some areas land was left fallow up to fifteen years or more.

The system of farming is that referred to locally as block farming, that is, every year the members of a land-holding group farm together (each on his own particular holding) on one or sometimes two portions of the group's farmland so that there is one area devoted wholly to farms while the rest of the farmland is entirely fallow.

page 311 note 2 Uzuakoli's five villages are compact and not dispersed, leaving a considerable amount of high forest around the villages; part of this has to-day been leased to the Nigerian Railway and is now occupied by a railway station, a number of ‘factories’, and a small ‘third-class township’ (situated between Lohun and Eluama).

page 311 note 3 Uzuakoli was itself founded from Akolinta, a village group four miles to the north which itself came from Ahaba, a group of five miles farther north. Ahaba is recognized as the senior, the ‘mother’ village group of the IsuIkwuAto, the Isu of the three (ato) lineages (ikwu), a tribe transitional between the Southern and Cross River Ibo.

page 312 note 1 Of the Isu tribe, West Isuama division of Southern Ibo.

page 313 note 1 For a detailed study of land tenure in a similar overpopulated E. Isuama village see Green, M. M., Land Tenure in an Ibo Village, Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 6, Lund Humphries, 1941Google Scholar .

page 313 note 2 Thus in the Southern Ibo village group of Ogbuebule (Oboro sub-tribe, Ohuhu-Ngwa subdivision) cassava, which takes eighteen months to mature as against yams, the staple crop, which take five to seven months, cannot be planted on the main farmland without payment of a fine of £2 to the members of the land-owning lineage.

page 313 note 3 To defend it against seizure by other groups and to regulate the farming there.

page 314 note 1 For example, Ala Ekpo, well-drained, waterless land; Ala Miri, swampy land or land near water; Ala Ocha, light-soiled, sandy land; Ala Ike, hard, or lateritic soil; Ala hum, light sandy, acid soil; Ala Ororo (Ala Onto), heavy clay soil; Ala Akparata lateritic gravel; Ohozara, high grass-land; Ohia, low forest and fallow land; Okohia, high forest.

page 315 note 1 In those Cross River tribes with a matrilineal system of inheritance, land is possessed and used by the males but transmitted through the females. Thus on a man's death most of his property and land is inherited by his uterine brothers, and on their decease it passes to the sons of his uterine sisters and then to the sons of his uterine sisters' daughters and so on. In default of sisters it passes to his mother's uterine sisters' sons, or in default to these uterine sisters' daughters' sons, and so on.

page 315 note 2 Except certain types of female ornaments and domestic utensils which can only belong to women and these she passes to her daughters.

page 316 note 1 For example in the Cross River area the village group (‘clan’) of Nkporo migrating north from owhat is now the Aro-Chuku district passed through the territory of the Ohaffia tribe and occupied the present site of the Abiriba village group (‘clan’). They invited the Abiriba, originally a non-Ibo group from Enna on the Cross River, to join them and the two communities lived together as a single village group for a time. Later the Nkporo moved farther north to their present home. The Nkporo were followed from Arochuku by the Ngusu Ada village group. This group lived for a time on land ‘shown’ to them by Ohaffia before moving farther north and settling in their present home on land ‘shown’ to them by Nkporo.

page 317 note 1 Though not in all, for example, farmland is still (1940) sold in the southern part of the Ohuhu-Ngwa group (Asa and Ndokki tribes) of the Southern Ibo.

page 317 note 2 This change was accelerated here by the efforts of the Government to stimulate the planting up by farmers of small areas of land with improved types of oil-palms. One enterprising farmer of Onhia village group (Ohuhu-Tribe) began to buy up any portions of houseland he could obtain for this purpose, until the community intervened and prohibited any further sale of houseland.

page 317 note 3 The first expression is a symbolic way of saying they were the first people to settle there. The second attempts to base their claim on law. For under Ibo law the man or group who first clears virgin forest has the title to the land. This point is of considerable importance in some Cross River Ibo land cases, for example, in Ohaffia where farmland cleared from virgin forest is inherited patrilineally and other farmland matrilineally.

page 318 note 1 Sublimated in these days as an action in the Native Court.

page 318 note 2 For example, a village of Amokwe village group of the Item tribe (Cross River Ibo) makes a seasonal transfer of a tract of land about ½ square mile in extent to a village of the Igbere tribe for a conventional gift of palm wine and kola and a nominal cash rent of £2. Originally the transfer was a gift accomparried only by the conventional present of wine and kola but more prudent minds in Amokwe later added the rent lest the transfer should come to be regarded as an outright conditional transfer. This seasonal transfer is made every eighth year when the land is ready for re-farming.

page 318 note 3 Another elaborate development of this form of transfer is found among some of the matrilineal tribes of the Cross River Ibo. Here, as residence is patrilocal, inheritance of land, normally matrilineal and exogamy is observed in both matrilineal and patrilineal lines, it follows that a considerable nunv ber of the farmers in any particular village will be without rights in any farmland except in their mothers' villages a considerable distance away, When the time comes for farming, the elders of the village decide which of the tracts of land in their village territory will be farmed that year; the members of the ikwu (matrilineal lineage) that owns that tract, both those resident in the village and those living elsewhere, come together and share out the land. Those members living in the village take up their usual holdings and other villagers related patrilineally to the ikwu take up the portions of the land to which they are entitled through courtesy and custom. The rest of the tract is rented to the remaining villagers whose own lands are elsewhere. When the whole tract has thus been parcelled out, the rents are collected and shared among the members of the ikwu; those not farming on the land get the largest portion and use this money to rent land in the same manner in the villages where they are residing.

page 319 note 1 It corresponds to the Ibo system of pawning, where a man borrows money and transfers himself or one of his family to the lender's household in lieu of interest on the debt. The pawning is terminated by repayment of the debt. Should the service be broken before this the lender claims the debt and 100 per cent, interest on it.

page 320 note 1 Being absorbed into its structure as a major or maximal lineage according to the size of the group.

page 320 note 2 For example, the gift of land by Uzuakoli to the Lohum Abatn, p. 311 above.

page 320 note 3 The most notable and extensive transfers of this type were the sale of lands to settlers from the AroChuku tribe (Cross River Ibo) who now form the Ndizorgu sub-tribe of the Southern Ibo (15,000 people) and the Ndi Enyi tribe of the Northern Ibo (7,000-8,000 people).

page 320 note 4 That is, between villages (maximal lineages) whether these came from the same or from different village groups.

page 320 note 5 For example, in the case of the Amokwe Item and Igbere transfer referred to above, p. 318, n. 2. Here the Igbere village was unquestionably the weaker, the land was poorer than that normally farmed by Amokwe and it was to their advantage to have it cleared and farmed periodically.

page 321 note 1 For example, if reference is made to the Uzuakoli diagram, it will be seen that Amamba, the largest village, farms two tracts of land shown in the diagram as i and ia. The latter probably belonged originally to Agbozu (2) but this small village being too weak to retain it found it better to let a related village occupy it rather than one from the rival village group of Ozu Item.

page 321 note 2 The size of an Ibo land dispute depends on the size of the land-holding unit. In most Southern and Cross River Ibo areas these units correspond to maximal or major lineages, that is, to villages or village sections. In parts of the Northern Ibo they were often village groups, while North-eastern Ibo land disputes have involved entire sub-tribes.

page 321 note 3 Even here the reluctance to abandon all claim to the title is shown in the insertion of a clause in most of the deeds of transfer stipulating that the seller shall have the option of buying back the land on payment of reasonable compensation for any ‘improvements’.

page 321 note 4 For example, the gist of an Odidi Anyanyu (Umuahia, S. Ibo) Native Court judgement of 1944 was as follows: ‘This land was originally pledged by Plaintiff to Defendant; Plaintiff now wishes to redeem it because he has a dispute with the Defendant. But the Defendant has been allowed by the Plaintiff to build his house and compound on it and he cannot therefore be evicted. Let him pay a further £2 to Plaintiff which will entitle him to retain the possession of the land indefinitely.’

page 322 note 1 In the case of Missions, land transferred for churches or for village schools is considered as transferred to the local church committee and no rent or compensation is normally demanded; land transferred more specifically for Mission as opposed to local purposes, e.g. for residences of supervisory staff, for central mission stations and secondary schools, is transferred to the mission under the Native Lands Acquisition Ordinance for a term of years and often for a nominal or very small rent; in some cases a higher rent is required.

page 322 note 2 In fact it is questionable whether the average Ibo peasant can as yet distinguish between a sale and a long-term lease. Among the Northern Ngwa, where outright transfer is now forbidden, public opinion in one village group was so roused by an innovation introduced by some of its elders who tried to get round this prohibition by transferring some of their farmland to Aro strangers on a ninety-nine-year lease, that it banished them from its council and its court.