Osomari

Osomari is an Igbo town of the lower Niger, older than the kingship that later took root in it; its Atamanya and its Omu governed it together.

Osomari stands on the lower Niger and was one of the great trading towns of the river. Its ground was held by Igbo of the riverain country — the towns of Ogbaru and the lower Niger flood plain — who made its markets, its shrines and the land-holding bodies that defined its territory.

The monarchy Osomari is known for came later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when a royal party from the Igala country upstream moved down the Niger after a quarrel over succession. It was not a conquest. The newcomers were taken into the town that was already there, they married into the local lineages, and they brought the title Atamanya, the male king. Within a generation or two the ruling line spoke Igbo, kept Igbo custom and worshipped Igbo gods.

Osomari governed through the dual system of Igbo kingship. The Atamanya met outsiders in defence and in trade and treated with the British merchants; the Omu headed the Council of Mothers and held sovereign authority over the markets, civil disputes and the spiritual oversight of the town's commerce.

By the nineteenth century Osomari was a sovereign Igbo state and river port. Its merchant princes and its war canoes carried the palm oil trade of the lower Niger, and Omu Okwei, born in 1872, rose from it to become one of the wealthiest traders on the river.

Osomari is counted with nine other villages, and the ten together are the towns of the clan.