Ezechima

Ezechima is the Anioma clan of towns that trace to Eze Chima: Obior, Onicha-Ugbo, Issele-Uku and the other Issele and Onicha towns of the west bank, and Onitsha on the east bank of the Niger. Eze Chima was Igbo, and the towns he founded are Igbo towns.

Ezechima is a clan of towns, not a territory: the settlements founded by the children and followers of Eze Chima across the west bank of the Niger, together with Onitsha on the east bank, which his eldest son Oreze crossed the river to found.

Obior is where Eze Chima is remembered to have spent his last years — the homestead the clan treats as its beginning. Onicha-Ugbo is held by some traditions to be the spiritual head of the group. With them stand Issele-Uku, Issele-Mkpitime and Issele-Azagba, Onicha-Olona, Onicha-Ukwu, Ezi and Obomkpa.

Eze Chima was an Igbo man of the west Niger country, and the towns he founded are Igbo towns that keep Igbo customs, Igbo speech and Igbo law. The old colonial writing about this group reached for Benin to explain it, and the traditions themselves do not: Chima and his people were of Anioma, and they returned to Aniomaland.

Onitsha is the largest of the towns the clan produced and the one whose name travelled furthest. The Obi of Onitsha traces to Oreze, Eze Chima's eldest son, and the kinship that the Onitsha and the west-bank towns keep with each other is the living form of this clan.