Ozikoroclan in the archive
Arochukwu
Recorded in Abia. A place page gathers every related history, image, recording and document rather than opening only one article.
Connected writing
Histories about Arochukwu
The archive links no published history to Arochukwu yet. Its neighbours’ histories are not shown here, because a link to another community is not a history of this one.
Named in other records
Histories that mention Arochukwu
These are published records whose own words name Arochukwu. A mention is not a history of Arochukwu, which is why they are listed here rather than with the histories about it.
Read as: Arochukwu, Arochuku. Counted where the name is written with a capital, because a lower-case occurrence of a name that is also an ordinary word is the word. “Aro” is not counted on its own — in this archive it is the people, the confederacy, Arochukwu's alias, and the Igu Aro festival. Showing the 48 most recent of 62 records that name it.
The record
What the archive holds for Arochukwu
| Region | Abia |
|---|---|
| State | Abia |
| Local government | Arochukwu |
| Division | Cross River Igbo |
| Ethnic group | Igbo |
| Recorded as | clan |
Arochukwu is the head clan of the Aro, in Arochukwu local government area of Abia State. Its nineteen towns are what the Aro tribe's name grew from, and its oracle, the Long Juju of Chukwu Abiama, is what made the Aro a power across the south-east for two centuries.
Arochukwu is a clan before it is a town. Its nineteen settlements each descend from one of nine patrilineages called otusi, seated in nine parent towns, and each of those had a headman of its own lineage over it. The other ten settlements were founded later from the first nine.
The clan's power came from the oracle of Chukwu Abiama, called the Long Juju, whose priests settled disputes from across the South-eastern Provinces. Traffic in that authority made Aro traders, moneylenders and agents of the oracle's influence present in towns far from Arochukwu — which is why Aro settlements are found in some 250 places across the south-east and beyond.
The town is Igbo. Its founding is remembered in the union of Eze Agwu, who came from Abiriba, with Nnachi, who came from Edda, and with the Akpa who came from the east of the Cross River; the Aro-Ibibio wars that followed are the ground the kingdom stands on. The name is written Arochukwu, and the old form Arochuku is the earlier spelling of it.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Aro people" and "Aro Confederacy" Forde & Jones (1950), The Ibo and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of South-Eastern Nigeria, pp. 55-56, Table XII
Archive records
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