Why Is Rivers State Denying Its Igbo Soul? The Truth About Igweocha, Boro, and the 13-State Question -By Jeff Okoroafor

For half a century, a carefully constructed narrative has sought to erase the Igbo from territories they have inhabited since before colonial cartographers ever set foot on the West African coast. Nowhere is this erasure more brazen—and more consequential—than in Rivers State, where the very identity of millions hangs in the balance, where the blood of Isaac Adaka Boro has been cynically weaponized against the people who once embraced him as their own, and where the original name of Nigeria’s oil capital—Igweocha—has been buried beneath the weight of political convenience and ethnic revisionism.

The City That Was Stolen

Before it was Port Harcourt, before Frederick Lugard renamed it after Lewis Vernon Harcourt, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, the land was called Igweocha—or more precisely, Iguocha, a corruption of the Igbo phrase Ụ́gwụ́ Ọ́chá, meaning “white hill” or “bright hill”. The area that became Port Harcourt in 1913 was originally the farmlands of the Diobu village group of the Ikwerre, an Igbo sub-group. Lugard himself acknowledged in his 1913 correspondence that the proposed railway terminus was to be located at “Diobu” or more correctly, “Iguocha”. Yet he found these local names inconvenient and imposed a colonial title instead—a classic act of epistemic violence that still echoes today.

The stakes of this erasure were never merely sentimental. As Obi Nwakanma recently observed, Port Harcourt’s excision from the East Central State was a deliberate federal policy “to confine the mainland Igbo, and bottle it in until it imploded”. The policy “was created to enervate the Igbo, and make it impossible for them to reorganize, converge, and make threats on Nigeria, at the end of what was a costly war. It was all about oil”. Port Harcourt was not just any city; it was the eastern gateway to the Atlantic, the economic lifeline of the Igbo hinterland. By stripping it away, successive Nigerian governments effectively landlocked the Igbo nation.

The anthropological evidence is overwhelming. All available scholarship points to Igbo settlement of Igweocha. The Indigenous Igbo Council of Rivers State has rightly noted that “Ikwerre, Etche, Omuma, Ndoki, Asa, Ogba, Ndoni, Opobo, Ekpeye” are “part and parcel of the greater Igbo nation”. They point out the glaring inconsistency: the Rivers Ijaw People’s Congress categorizes Ijaw groups that speak “entirely different unintelligible languages” as a single ethnic unit while simultaneously fragmenting Igbo-speaking groups that are “linguistically homogeneous”. This is not scholarship; it is strategy.

How They Killed Adaka Boro and Blamed It on Biafra

The case of Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro is perhaps the most tragic illustration of how historical truth is sacrificed on the altar of ethnic polarization.

Boro, an Ijaw nationalist from Oloibiri, was no enemy of the Igbo. As student union president at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1964/65, he defeated an Igbo candidate, Jude Emezie—but significantly, Igbo students, who constituted the majority, chose Boro, an Izon man, to lead them. He was their president. When he declared the Niger Delta Republic in February 1966, he was captured by federal forces, tried for treason, and imprisoned. At no point did the Igbo—through General Aguiyi-Ironsi or Colonel Ojukwu—set up any “kangaroo tribunal” to punish him.

When the civil war broke out, General Yakubu Gowon granted Boro amnesty and commissioned him as a major in the Nigerian Army. He fought on the federal side, leading troops of the 3rd Marine Commando to clear Biafran forces from the Niger Delta creeks and recapture Port Harcourt. And then, on May 9, 1968, near Ogu in Okrika, he was killed.

The official narrative—conveniently propagated by federal authorities—was that a Biafran soldier shot him. But those who were there tell a different story. It is “an open secret that a top Federal officer planned an ambush which killed Boro on May 9, 1968 in Ogu, Okrika, Rivers State”. According to multiple accounts, the type of gunfire that killed Boro was “completely different from what the Biafrans were known to use” in that sector, leading observers to conclude that “it was one of the federal troops units that carried out the ambush”. As one analysis put it, after taking Port Harcourt, Benjamin Adekunle’s 3rd Marine Commandos “ambushed and killed Adaka Boro less than six minutes after leaving Adekunle’s called consultation”.

Why would the federal government kill its own major? Because Boro was too popular, too powerful, too independent. He had “had a popular acceptance” and was seen as a potential “next strongman to confront the Hausa-Fulani led Kaduna Mafias”. So Radio Nigeria began to announce that Biafran soldiers had killed him. The lie served a dual purpose: it eliminated a potential rival and simultaneously painted the Biafran cause as the murderer of a Niger Delta hero. Even Obasanjo, no friend of Biafra, “wondered why a friend that helped Nigerian Army captured Rivers and environs should die in such circumstance”.

Yet today, the propaganda has worked so thoroughly that many Ijaws and other Niger Delta peoples genuinely believe Biafra killed Boro. This is the genius of divide-and-rule: make the oppressed blame each other while the architects of their oppression laugh.

## The Igbo Identity Crisis in Rivers State: A Manufactured Problem

What is happening in Rivers State today is not an organic identity crisis—it is a manufactured one, engineered by political elites who understand that a divided people are a manageable people.

The election of Senator John Azuta-Mbata as President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo in January 2025 should have been a moment of celebration. An Ikwerre son, from Rivers State, assuming leadership of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organization—what better testament to the unity of the Igbo nation across geopolitical boundaries? Instead, it sparked controversy.

Former Governor Nyesom Wike, who once declared he was not Igbo, publicly questioned Mbata’s identity. Ikwerre traditional rulers disassociated themselves from Ohanaeze. Some Ikwerre groups stripped Mbata of his titles. The Rivers Ijaw People’s Congress claimed that “none of the ethnic groups in Rivers is part of the Ndigbo ethnic nationality”. The message was clear: stay in your lane, do not claim kinship with the Igbo of the Southeast, do not unite.

But the facts do not support this fragmentation. “Before Biafra war, Ikwerre, Opobo never denied they’re Igbo,” an elder statesman recently reminded us. The revisionism is recent, politically motivated, and deeply cynical. As one commentator noted, “Fear did not divide the Igbo—policy did. An Ijaw man in Rivers is the same as the Ijaw man in Delta, Bayelsa, or Ondo. No one questions it. But the Igbo in Delta or Rivers is encouraged—directly or indirectly—to step back from the Igbo in Enugu”.

The Indigenous Igbo Council of Rivers State has correctly identified the agenda: “The attempts to diminish the Igbo identity within Rivers State and portray its people as fragmented serves a specific agenda”. That agenda is the balkanization of the Igbo nation, the prevention of any unified political front that could challenge the status quo.

The Igbo Nation: 13 States, One People

This brings us to the most important point: the Igbo are not confined to five states in the Southeast. They are indigenous to at least 13 states of the Nigerian federation: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Enugu, Imo, Kogi, and Rivers. As the Igbo Unification Movement has demonstrated, Igbo-speaking communities are spread from Anioma to Etche, from Igbanke to Igweocha, from Ukwuani to Waawa.

When Governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State expressed “shock that there are 13 states in the country where Igbo-speaking communities are spread,” he inadvertently revealed how successful the erasure has been. Even political leaders are unaware of the full extent of the Igbo presence in Nigeria.

This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of state policy designed to fragment, marginalize, and weaken the Igbo. The reduction of the Igbo-majority zone to only five states—while other major zones have six, or in one case more—was “a foundational anomaly that has poisoned the well of national unity for nearly five decades”.

The Path Forward: Unity or Extinction

The question before Ndigbo today is existential. Will we allow ourselves to be divided by colonial boundaries, political expediency, and ethnic revisionism? Or will we reclaim our unity across all 13 states where we are indigenous?

The election of Azuta-Mbata offers a path forward—but only if Ndigbo across Rivers, Delta, and beyond embrace it. As one leader urged, “Ikwerre is Igbo. It has always been Igbo, and will remain Igbo. We are together and we speak the same language. No more divisions within us”.

This is not about territorial expansion or political domination. It is about truth—the truth of who we are, where we came from, and who we belong to. It is about justice—for the people of Igweocha whose city was taken from them, for Adaka Boro whose murder was cynically blamed on the people who once elected him their leader, for millions of Igbo in Rivers and Delta and Kogi and Benue who are told daily that they are not who they know themselves to be.

The British drew lines on maps. Nigerian politicians have manipulated identities. But neither cartography nor propaganda can erase history. The Igbo are one people—from Igweocha to Enugu, from Asaba to Aba, from Okigwe to Opobo. The time has come to act like it.

For if we do not unite, we will continue to be divided, conquered, and exploited. The enemies of Igbo unity understand this. It is time we did too.

Jeff Okoroafor is a social accountability advocate and a political commentator focused on governance, accountability, and social justice in West Africa.