Ute Okpu

Ute-Okpu is a major Ika-Igbo clan whose own tradition runs back to Nri: Ute came from there, and his sons Okpu and Odogu are the roots of Ute-Okpu and of Owa.

Ute-Okpu is one of the major clans of Ika land, in Ika North East local government area of Delta State. Ika is an Igbo subgroup of western Igboland, and Ute-Okpu holds a strong tradition of Igbo migration across the Niger from the east.

Its main tradition runs to Nri, which Ika speakers call Nhi or Ihi. Marshall recorded in 1936 that the founders claimed to have left Nri, near present-day Onitsha, after a quarrel with the ruler there; the founder was Ute, who settled in the country of the present Ute-Okpu and had two sons, Okpu and Odogu. Okpu is linked to Ute-Okpu, and Odogu went on to found Owa-Oyibu. A later account names the ancestor as Epum and puts the first settlement in the wider Ute area before Ute-Ogbeje and Ute-Okpu took shape separately. The versions are not forced into one genealogy; what they agree on is Nri, and the place of Ute and Okpu in the making of the clan.

One version says the founder's descendants, out hunting, left their yam behind and came back to find it sprouting strongly, and stayed for the richness of the soil. Others joined them in time, some from nearby and some from further west, so the clan is a settlement of several ancestral lineages rather than the offspring of one migration.

Its eight villages are Ibi-Agware, Owele, Ogbe, Idumu-Eze-Aje, Odah, Alihe, Alumu and Enugu, with their idumu within them. Marshall described the clan as one whose parts traced themselves to a common origin, arranged as clans into villages (ogbe), villages into quarters (idumu) and quarters into extended families.

Ute-Okpu was a source of other settlements. Odogu, a son of its ruling line, founded Owa-Oyibu, and Esan sources record a large group of migrants from Ute-Okpu reaching Amahor about 1508 under Ewero and carrying the protective deity Oza with them, which shows people moving both ways across the Ika and Esan country.

Its language is Ika, a dialect of Igbo spoken in Ika South and Ika North East and in the Igbanke area of Edo State; the Ute-Okpu variety differs noticeably from its neighbours and borrows from Ukwuani, another western Igbo dialect, which does not make it any less Igbo. Its personal and lineage names, its institutions and its vocabulary are Igbo. So is its religion, with Aja, Olokun, Mkpitime and Ohaunte among the powers named and Ohaunte shared with Ute-Ogbeje. The clan and Ute-Ogbeje also hold the monkey sacred, on the account that monkeys helped or shielded the ancestors in war, so they are not hunted or eaten.