Umu-Eri

Umu-Eri is the clan/fraternity of towns tracing descent from Eri, including Aguleri, Umueri, Nteje, Awkuzu, Ogbunike, Nando, Ogboli, Igbariam, Amanuke and Nri, not a confederation, and Nsugbe, Nadi and Umuanya are not part of that descent group.

Umu-Eri is the body of towns that trace descent from Eri, the founding figure of the northern Igbo, and it is the level at which those towns say they belong together. The tradition makes Aguleri its ancestral seat — Eri is said to have settled at Eri-aka in the Anambra valley there — and Nri its senior line. The two are named together as Umu-Eri and Umu-Nri.

The genealogical charter recorded for the fraternity gives Eri two wives. By Nneamakụ: Agulu, founder of Aguleri and head of the Ezeora dynasty; Menri, founder of Umunri and the kingdom of Nri; Onugu, founder of Igbariam; Ogbodulu, founder of Amanuke; and a daughter, Iguedo, said to have borne the founders of Nteje, Awkuzu, Ogbunike, Umueri, Nando and Ogboli in Onitsha. By Oboli: Ọnọja, held to have founded the Igala kingdom.

Forde & Jones records the same body from the administrative side, as communities that "once formed one tribe under Nri": the three it enters as Umueri — Agoleri, Igbariam and Nteje — together with Nsugbe, Nadi and Umuanya of its Edomani entry and Amanuke of its Ofemili entry. Forde & Jones and the tradition therefore agree on the membership and differ only on the name: they are filed as separate administrative groups, but the tradition names them as one descent group.

The claim is contested and is recorded as contested. Aguleri's descent from Eri is publicly disputed — a 2019 statement from within the tradition rejects it — and the same tradition has been put to political use in arguments over which town is the cradle of the Igbo. What is not in dispute is that the towns named here are the ones that carry the Umu-Eri claim.

The Umueri account of the same beginning differs from the genealogical charter. In it the first wave into the valley was led by Dabawor, a priest of the Eri clan, whose companion Nnamenyi founded the part of Umueri still called Nneyi; and Iguedo, given in the charter as a daughter of Eri, is given there as a daughter of Nnamenyi instead. The two versions agree that the towns named here are one body and disagree about how the first of them came. The charters are recorded as the traditions they are.