Ozikorotown in the archive
Uburu
Recorded in Ebonyi. A place page gathers every related history, image, recording and document rather than opening only one article.
Connected writing
Histories about Uburu
The archive links no published history to Uburu 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 Uburu
These are published records whose own words name Uburu. A mention is not a history of Uburu, which is why they are listed here rather than with the histories about it.
Read as: Uburu. 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.
The record
What the archive holds for Uburu
| Region | Ebonyi |
|---|---|
| State | Ebonyi |
| Local government | Ohaozara |
| Division | Northeast Igbo |
| Ethnic group | Igbo |
| Recorded as | town |
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.
Sources
Forde & Jones (1950), The Ibo and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of South-Eastern Nigeria, Table XIII and notes
Archive records
Photographs, oral testimony and documents connected to this community would appear here with provenance.
The archive holds no photographs, recordings or documents filed to Uburu yet, so this section is empty rather than filled with something else.
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