The Foremost Characteristic of the 18th – 20th Century History of Kalabari:
Almost every Chief, professional man, business man, pensioner, farmer, petty trader as well as the student, has had a copy of Volume I and has since been expecting Volume II with breathless silence. I thank you immensely for your patience. Here is a copy for you.
Those of you who have had the opportunity of sitting before the lecturer or the professor of Literature at College or University level must have noticed from your literary appreciation of Volume 1 the foremost characteristic of the 18th – 20th century history of Kalabari is the interminable rivalry between the Amachrees and Kalagbeas.
For example, on page 5 of Volume 1, when chief Walter Okorocha stated that “ it was King Amachree alone who owned these villages in his days but they were distributed to the various houses in the reign of Amachro as Amachree II, he was interrupted firstly by Chief Ebenezer Don Pedro, a Kalagbea, who corrected him by saying that he had “failed to state that the villages were possessed by King Amachree I and his Chiefs” and, secondly, by Chief Stanley Don Pedro, another Kalagbea, who revealed a fact of history – “Kugbo was possessed by Owuere-Daba”, an ancestor who died several centuries before the reign of King Amachree I.
Furthermore, we note from page 35 of the same Volume the argument between Chiefs Mac Jaja Amachree and Jim George Amachree on one side, and Chief Gladstone Bob Manuel on the other, as to whether it was in order to hear the Kalagbeas narrate the deeds of their ancestors as did the Amachrees in their own case.
Moreover, we observe from the last page of Volume 1 we observe that the meeting of 19th May, 1935, was boycotted by the Kalagbeas. I cannot believe that their absence from the meeting that day was due to the fact that, they did not know that a conference was scheduled for that date, because the Jacks/Briggs of Abonemma, and the Yellowes of Bakana, knew about that meeting and did attend. I am opining that the Kalagbeas did not return to Abalama for a further meeting because they were not prepared to fulfill the condition laid down by the meeting that their narrations should be approved by, all before they were passed on to the District Officer.
A further point is that I note from the “Intelligence Report Conference at Abonemma – 1935 by the Royal House of Kalabgea” which I shall publish later, that their first meeting was held on 19th May, 1935, the date they were to attend the meeting at Abalama. It appears to me that, as a result of the dissatisfaction they felt from the decision of the Abalama meeting of 16th May, 1935, they immediately fixed their own meeting for 19th May, 1935, in order that their report and that of the Abalama meeting might be in the hands of the District Officer simultaneously. Obviously, they strategically boycotted the Abalama conference of 19th May, 1935. From the foregoing, it is as plain as a pikestaff that the Amachree and the Kalagbeas, like the Montagues and the Capulets of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, are always wrangling over this right or that privilege. What is the background to this perpetual state of rivalry? It is outside the scope of this work to cast a retrospective view on this situation and so I shall confine myself to the history of the famous Intelligence Report – the report which unduly increased the numbers of our Chiefs and planted in the homes of several families’ unique confusion and animosity which are now being inherited as a patrimony.
THE AMACHREE/KALAGBEA CONTROVERSY OF THE 1930’S
The Source of the Fracas: In the Second half of 1931, the District Officer, Degema, convened a meeting of the Chiefs of the then Degema Division comprising Kalabari, Okrika and Bonny, and revealed to them that, as a re-organization scheme under the Local Government System, Government was thinking of establishing for the three clans, a Native Administration Council over which would sit a paramount ruler as president as was, and is still, organized in the West and Northern emirates of Nigeria. In a nutshell, the Chiefs did not reach a decision before they dispersed from the meeting that day. The District Officer asked them to think over the plan and bring their suggestions to him later…