Etchi

Its towns are Itchi, Nnadu, Ibagwa Aka and Obukpa. The group lies in the northern section of the eastern uplands, an old settlement area focused at or near Nsukka whose northern part was overrun and culturally altered by the Igala.

That northern section developed an elaborate political order with a graded title system and village headship under an Eze, while the southern uplands took a simpler version of the Ọzọ title system from Nri-Awka.

Afigbo records the most serious of the late nineteenth-century Nsukka wars as the one that pitted Obukpa and Itchi against Ibagwa Ani and Ibagwa Nkwo, with Iheakpu, Ovoko and Ihohoro joining the latter. It arose over land that Itchi and Ibagwa Ani both claimed, and was prolonged when Obukpa, short of fertile ground and with no direct way to the Adada river, joined Itchi to improve its position.