Skip to content
KịKịrịkẹnị

History

Wa kịrịkẹ.
We are not different.

Two founders met on an island in the Bonny River, found they spoke one tongue, and gave a people its name. This is the story of the Wakịrịkẹ, from rafts in the mangroves to a kingdom, a treaty, a city next door and a dictionary.

10
towns in the kingdom
c. 1255
settlement on the island
1888
treaty with Britain

The name

A town named after a sentence.

Okrika is the anglicised form. The people call the town, themselves and their language Kịrịkẹ, and the dictionary records exactly where the word came from.

Kị̀rị̀kẹ̀

p.n. — original and native name of Okrika

Oputibeya, the founder, on meeting Opuogoloya, the founder of Ogoloma, discovered that they both spoke the same language. Thus Oputibeya averred spontaneously “Wa kịrịkẹ” — meaning, we are not different; no difference.

Read the entry

Timeline

From the mangroves to the modern state.

Dates before the seventeenth century come from oral tradition and are approximate. Later dates are from written records.

  1. c. 860 – 1515

    The first settlers reach the mainland

    Ijaw fishing families move east from the central Delta, from places such as Amassoma, and settle the creeks and mangrove margins of what is now the Okrika mainland. They come as separate groups, not one lineage, which is why the Wakịrịkẹ have never traced themselves to a single ancestor.

    Oral tradition
    òmìnèraft used by the early Okrika before canoes

  2. c. 1255

    Oputibeya and Opuogoloya meet on the island

    Oputibeya, founder of Kịrịkẹ, meets Opuogoloya, founder of Ogoloma, on Okrika Island and discovers they speak the same language. “Wa kịrịkẹ” — we are not different. The phrase becomes the name of the town, the people and the language.

    Oral tradition
    Kị̀rị̀kẹ̀original and native name of Okrika

  3. c. 1670 – 1730

    Ogbogbo and Ibaka are founded

    New settlements fill out the island. Each is organised around the war-canoe house, a corporate household of families that owns canoes, fishing grounds and, in time, trading ties. The houses are bound together by the Ọbọkụ covenant into one people.

    Oral tradition
    ọ́bọ̌kụ́covenant; agreement; oath; testament

  4. Early 1600s

    Okrika becomes a kingdom and a port

    Kịrịkẹ emerges as the seat of a kingdom under an Amanyanabo, drawn from the Ado line. Sitting on the Bonny River about 56 km from the sea, the town joins the Atlantic trade of the eastern Delta, first in enslaved people and, after the 1830s, in palm oil.

    Written record
    ámányánábọ̌king

  5. 1871

    Peace with Kalabari

    Decades of rivalry with the neighbouring Kalabari over markets and creeks end in a treaty of perpetual peace. Trade, marriage and masquerade traditions continue to flow between the two peoples; several Okrika entries in this dictionary are marked as borrowings from Kalabari.

    Written record

  6. May 1888

    Treaty of protection with Britain

    On 17 May 1888 the kings and chiefs of Okrika sign a treaty extending British protection over the kingdom, folding it into the Oil Rivers Protectorate. King Ibanichuka, Ado VI, is remembered as the last sovereign ruler before it.

    Written record

  7. 1913

    Land for Port Harcourt

    Under the Hargrove agreement Okrika and neighbouring Ijaw chiefs cede land on the mainland for the new railway port at Port Harcourt. The city grows on Okrika’s doorstep and overtakes it as the region’s commercial centre.

    Written record
    Àbùlómàtown in Okrika division near Port Harcourt

  8. 1964 – 1997

    The reign of Ado VIII

    His Majesty Sir S. P. U. Ogan, Ado VIII, holds the stool for thirty-three years, leading Okrika through the siege years of the civil war and seeing the stool raised to first-class status in 1978. He was the longest reigning government-recognised traditional ruler in Rivers State.

    Written record
    Àdôking and family in Okrika

  9. 1965 – 1967

    Oil, the refinery and Rivers State

    The Port Harcourt refinery opens at Alesa-Eleme with pipelines to a jetty on Okrika Island, returning the town to economic importance. On 27 May 1967 Okrika becomes part of the newly created Rivers State.

    Written record

  10. 1995 – 2005

    The Okrika Word Book

    Levi Sika completes his Kịrịkẹnị Ọkụẹịngbọlụ Diri, a dictionary of nearly five thousand words compiled with Okrika chiefs, clergy and the linguists Kay Williamson and E. J. Alagoa. Roger Blench edits and circulates it in 2005. It is the backbone of Kịrịkẹnị, and the reason you can search every word on this site today.

    Written record

How Okrika governed itself

A kingdom built from houses.

Okrika was never one ruler over one people. It was a federation of war-canoe houses, each a household of families with its own chief, canoes and fishing grounds, bound by covenant under the Amanyanabo. The words are still in daily use.

The towns

Ten towns, one people.

Before 1913 the kingdom counted nine towns on the island and the mainland; Koniju was later counted as the tenth. Each has its own founders, ruler and story. Choose a town to read it.

People of Okrika

Kings, scholars, composers, ministers and sprinters.

Brief profiles of Wakịrịkẹ men and women who made history and made their name.

Meet them

Sources

Where this comes from.

  • Sika, L. (1995), ed. Blench, R. (2005). Kịrịkẹnị Ọkụẹịngbọlụ Diri — Okrika Dictionary, circulation draft.

    The dictionary behind this site; the Kịrịkẹ entry carries the founding tradition.

  • Wakirike USA — History of the Wakirike People.

    Oral traditions, settlement dates and the house system.

  • Encyclopaedia Britannica — Okrika.

    Trade history, Port Harcourt and the refinery.

  • UK Treaties Online — Treaty with Kings and Chiefs of Okrika, 17 May 1888.

    Date of the protection treaty.

  • ThisDay (2020) — Celebrating the legacy of the late Amanyanabo of Okrika.

    Reign of Ado VIII.

  • Kalabari–Okrika Political Relations, 1800–1960 (ResearchGate).

    The 1871 peace and nineteenth-century rivalry.

Help us get it right

Know this history better than we do?

Family traditions, house histories, photographs and corrections are all welcome. Every submission is reviewed by an editor before it appears here.

Contribute to the history