The Ilaje people of the Niger Delta region

Ilaje local government area of Ondo State lies along the Atlantic coast of Nigeria and is situated 133km south of Akure, the state capital. The entire area lies between Longitude 4°28′ and 5°1′ east of the Greenwich Meridian and Latitude 5°51′ and 6°21′ north of the Equator. It is bounded in the southwest by Ogun Water-Side Local Government Area, Ogun State, and in the southeast by Warri-West local Government Area, Delta State. The northwest and the northeast are bordered by Okitipupa local Government Area and Ese-Odo Local Government Area respectively, both in Ondo State. The local government is made up of about one hundred small towns and villages with the prominent ones including Igbokoda, the local government headquarters, Mahin, Ayetoro, Ugbo-Nla, and Zion-Pepe. The 1991 population census of the Federal Republic of Nigeria puts the population of the area at about 270,000. The coastal part of the local government, which forms about 70 percent of the total land area consists mainly of mangrove swamps and rivers, and is flooded during raining season. There are three ecological zones and these include lowland rainforests, freshwater swamp forests, and mangrove forests. In the riverine areas, houses are built on stilts with networks of boardwalk connecting a village. There are virtually no roads and as such the main mode of transportation is water. Dugout canoes and modern speedboats are common features of the transport system. Ilaje local government is occupied wholly by Ilaje people, a Yoruba subgroup.

By reason of environment and other social determinants, the people are commercial fishers in the main, though a significant portion of the population engages in local gin (ogogoro) distilling and marketing, mat making, timber felling, commercial water transportation, and farming to an extent. In the mid 1970s, oil exploration activities were carried out in the hinterland and as early as 1980, Chevron Nigeria Limited, known by then as Gulf Oil commenced exploitation operation off the coastline. Since then, the issue of oil royalty and compensation usually referred to in the local parlance as “oil politics” has taken a central place in the people’s discourse. At inception, only a few elite in conjunction with a traditional ruler were the beneficiaries of oil companies’ patronages, but today several interests are represented and catered for in the sharing of oil largesse. However, like in the distribution of any scarce resource, factors of exclusion have since been introduced into the appropriation of accruing economic and political benefits.

Consistent governments had in the past neglected and abandoned Ilaje land due to its difficult terrain. Before 1980, there was virtually no government presence in the entire local government. Then, of the over one hundred villages that constitute the local government area, only Igbokoda had a medical dispensary which hardly functioned due to lack of basic supplies and drugs. Similarly, prior to 1974, there was not a single secondary school, and as at 2005, only Igbokoda and Atijere were connected to the national electricity grid. Water supply was a major source of worry to the people as they lived a paradoxical life of ‘water, water everywhere, but none to drink.’ There was not any part of the local government where pipe borne water runs. The few communities situated on land depends on wells, while in riverine areas, people traveled many kilometers in groups to search for clean water from the creeks. In recent times, the local government has benefited from development efforts of intervention agencies set up to address the hardship confronting people living in the oil producing areas of Nigeria. Between 1993 when the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) was established and 2001 pockets of physical infrastructure projects sprang up across the local government. The Ondo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (OSOPADEC), which was set up in 2001 had equally awarded a contract for the construction of a major highway to link up the riverine communities with Igbokoda. These current efforts, notwithstanding, Ilaje land remains largely underdeveloped, lacking basic infrastructural facilities and is devoid of tertiary economic activities. 

Unfortunately, in the same manner Ilaje land is lacking in development attention, so also it has been ignored in the literature. Though it stands as a strategic area in Nigeria (occupies about 80km stretch of Nigeria coastline) and despite its being the only oil producing area in the entire southwest geopolitical zone, no notable ethnographic work has been published on it. In fact, the identity of Ilaje as a Yoruba subgroup could be said to have assumed prominence after the 1998/1999 violent crisis between them and the Ijaws, another Niger Delta ethnic group.

Prior to oil exploitation activities and development intervention by specialised agencies like the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Ilaje identity had existed within the larger Yoruba identity as a level of social classification, like other Yoruba sub-identities such as Ekiti, Ijebu, Egba, Ondo, Ijesha, Oyo and others. Among Ilaje people, the local ideology organizing space is rested upon four communities – Mahin, Ugbo, Aheri, and Etikan, though only two (Mahin and Ugbo) are widely considered as the traditional settlements where other villages have spread out. Identities, even if at a lower level were, therefore, also established under the rubrics of the Mahin-Ugbo differentiation in a manner that there are Ilaje-Mahin and Ilaje-Ugbo. The two subgroups according to oral tradition migrated from Ile-Ife, the cradle of Yoruba people. The migration of the Mahin group was dotted with sojourn in places that included Benin, and in a similar trend the Ugbo party was said to have made brief stops at several locations. Ilaje, even as two major subgroups, is culturally homogeneous. The people speak the same dialect of Yoruba language and maintain similar social structure. They live together in many of their communities and inter-marry. In buttressing the level of social cohesion that exists among the people, an informant affirmed that a “true” Ilaje person is often expected to be connected with both Mahin and Ugbo. Connection here implies bearing kinship ties with the two subgroups.