Ogboli

The Ogboli are Igbo of Nri descent who settled across Anioma as the earliest people of the places they came to, and are found today as lineages and quarters rather than as one town.

Two groups in the registry are called Ogboli, and this entry is the Ogboli of Anioma, west of the Niger; the other is the Elugu group of the Nsukka country.

Ogboli is the name of a body of Nri migrants who settled in Anioma and who are found there as lineages and quarters inside other communities rather than as a town of their own. Three lineages still go by the name — Ogboli Issele-Uku and Ogboli Atuma in Aniocha and Oshimili, and Ogboli Igbuzo in Oshimili — and Ogboli Obior is among the others, with further Nri migrants in Ogwashi-Uku and Akwukwu-Igbo.

They came from Nshi, that is Nri, in present-day Anambra State, and they say so wherever they are found. In Igbuzo they are the custodians of the Ezes, a title they brought with them from Nri; in Issele-Uku they are the Onishe, the kingmakers. Where they settled they were usually the earliest people on the ground.

In Issele-Uku the Ogboli came under Enwe and were the original settlers; in Igbuzo their progenitor is Edini. In Ogwashi-Uku the Nri migrants under Adaigbo found the Ikelike already there, and Okolie Agu, who led migrants elsewhere, likewise met people on the ground.

They are republicans wherever they are found, which is a standing puzzle in a people that came from monarchical Nri. In Igbuzo they are greeted Akwue or Obakwesi; in Issele-Uku the Onishe is saluted Ogene, and the saying Onishe ka eze — the Onishe is greater than the king — is how the arrangement there is put.

Reverend S. W. Martins, who founded Pilgrim Primary School in 1922 and Pilgrim Baptist Church in 1936, was of Ogboli Issele-Uku, and Professor M. A. Onwuejeogwu, the anthropologist, was of Ogboli Ibusa.