Uburu

Uburu is a town of Ohaozara in Ebonyi State, and with Okposi one of the two salt towns of the eastern Igbo. Adu founded it, and the name comes from what he called the place when he saw what it held: Ebe Uru, the place of prosperity.

Adu was a hunter, and it was while hunting that he found the water that would not quench a thirst because of the salt in it. He had come with his elder brother Ezentum from Isuikwuato country, and where the two of them settled divided: Ezentum stayed at the place now called Isu in Onicha, and Adu came on to the land that became Uburu. The name he gave it was Ebe Uru, and Uburu is that name worn down.

Fourteen sons by his two wives founded the town, and each village is one of them: Umunaga, Umuchima, Ogwu, Umuobuna, Amenu, Umuodoigbo, Umuanum, Umuneketa, Amegu, Mgbom, Umuegwuoke, Uhuabaa, Urobo and Ihenu. The Esu river cuts the town in two, one side for living and the other for the farms.

Salt made Uburu. The lakes gave the town a trade that reached far past its own borders, and the market that grew on it drew traders south and north, which is how the town came to be one of the busiest places in this part of Ebonyi before the roads arrived.

The Uburu market is also part of the harder history of the south-east: when the trade at Okposi's Odenigbo market broke up, the traders who fled set up where they stopped, and the market that became famous for the trade in people grew there. It is part of the record and it is written down as such.