Fuentes de financiación 2012-2015

The Urhobo live on the north-western fringe of the Niger River delta,418 an area covering 5,000 square kilometres. The exact figure of the Urhobo population is

417_{Francis Odemerho, ‘A Map of Delta State, Nigeria, Showing Urhoboland and Other Ethnic}

Nationalities,’available from http://www.waado.org/NigerDelta/Maps/delta_state/delta_state_ethnic.html, Internet, accessed 8 December 2012.

418 _{Albert O. Aweto, ‘Outline Geography of Urhobo Land,’ in Studies In Urhobo Culture, ed. Peter}

P. Ekeh, 683–698: 684. The Urhobo Land is bounded by latitudes 50 _{15’ and 6}0 _{North and longitudes 5}0

40’ and 60 _{25’ East (See O. A. Aweto and J. L. Igben, ‘Geography of Urhobo Land,’ in The Urhobo}

People, 2nd ed., ed. Onigu Otite (Ibadan: Shaneson C. I. Limited, 2003), 11; Erivwo, Traditional Religion and Christianity in Nigeria: The Urhobo People, 2). The Urhobo land is about eighty-two kilometres in its longest dimension and about forty-eight in its widest. It is traversed by six main rivers and their tributaries, namely Jamieson, Ethiope, Benin, Warri, Forcados, and Escravos rivers. (See Asagba, The Untold Story of a Nigerian Royal Family: The Urhobo Ruling Clan of Okpe Kingdom, 1; ‘Urhobo Progressive Union, Programme for launching of Urhobo Development Fund for the proposed UPU cultural center main auditorium’ (n. p: n. p, 27 April, 2002), 7; Foss, ‘An Introduction to the Urhobo,’ 21).

111

unknown because ethnicity and religion are excluded from Nigerian census. The 2006 census figure however put the population in Urhobo Land at 1,879,155.419 The Urhobo constitute a minority within Nigeria, but in the Delta State, they occupy nine420 of the twenty-five Local Government Council Areas, thus constituting the majority ethnic group within the State. Commenting on their minority status in Nigeria, Felix Ibru, the President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU), stated that the Urhobo did not receive adequate attention from the British colonial administrators and the Nigerian national leaders at the early stage of the Nigerian independence.421 Ibru understood this neglect as the basis of challenge for the early Urhobo leaders like Mukoro Mowe (1890– 1948) who initiated the struggle for equality and competition by the Urhobo with other Nigerian ‘Ethnic Nationalities’422 in the fields of education, the arts, and business.423 Ibru’s assertion finds support in a statement made by Ibrahim Babangida (Major General, retired, 1941–), former military president of Nigeria (1985–1993) that ‘ethnic nationalism is rooted in the colonial social formation of the country’ and that ‘civilian and military regimes in the post independence period had themselves increased the

These rivers are the tributaries in the delta of River Niger entering the Atlantic Ocean. Onigu Otite explains that the UPU was formed in 1930s to promote the unity of all the Urhobo sub-cultural units (See Onigu Otite, ‘The Urhobo Progress Union,’ in The Urhobo People, ed. Onigu Otite, 262).

419 _{The total population from the nine Local Government Areas that make up Urhobo land in the} most recent census in 2006 is 1,879,155. See Nigerian Population Census 2006, available from http://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/nbsapps/Connections/Pop2006.pdf, Internet, accessed on 26 January 2011.

420

The nine Local Government areas are: Ethiope East, Ethiope West, Okpe, Sapẹlẹ, Udu, Ughelli, North, Ughelli South, Uvwie, and Warri South (See ‘Urhobo Progressive Union, Programme for launching of Urhobo Development Fund,’ 7; See also, Adjara and Omokri, eds. Urhobo Kingdoms: Political and Social Systems, xiv, 6).

421 _{Felix Ibru, ‘Urhobo Bridge to the Neighbourhood of the Niger Delta and Nigeria,’A welcome}

address presented as president general of Urhobo Progress Union on the occasion of Urhobo Unity Summit (Effurun: n. p, 30 July 2009), 2.

422 _{See Ibrahim Babangida, ‘Ethnic Nationalities and Nigerian State,’ Excerpts from a Lecture}

delivered at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, December 2002, available from http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/earticles/ethnic_nationalities_and_the_nig.htm, Internet, accessed 11 February 2012.

423 _{Obaro Ikime, ‘Chief Mukoro Mowoe: Leader of the Urhobo,’ in History of the Urhobo People of}

112

variety and complexity of the phenomenon.’424 As cultural identity is one of the elements of ethnic nationality,425 then, the Urhobo are prone to maintain their funeral culture as one of the key markers of their cultural identity.

The factor of minority and majority ethnic groups exacerbates the struggles for political control within the Nigerian political structure. Usually, the minority groups feel marginalised and this background could bear on what happens among the Urhobo Baptists, among whom the imposition of ritual could be regarded as use of ecclesiastical power by a majority group within the denominational administration. The DSBC burial policy has however not displaced the Urhobo traditional funeral among the Baptists, but only reduces it to a procedure within the family. This development relates to the use of power and to the subversion of power, but not in the socio-economic and political sense which Barry Hindes, Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault explored. Hindess and Gramsci underscored the importance of consent by the people over whom power is exercised for legitimacy.426 Foucault however was not satisfied with the idea of consent as automatic stamp of sovereignty and legitimacy but emphasised liberty to engage or disengage.427 However, in the context of the DSBC funeral policy, when one considers that the Conference discussed and adopted the policy in 1997,428 and yet that the situation of non-compliance remains; it begs the question of whether the people truly gave their consent or were constrained to? Nevertheless, consent in this case may justify

424 _{See Ibrahim Babangida, ‘Ethnic Nationalities and Nigerian State,’ Excerpts from a Lecture}

delivered at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos, December 2002, available from http://www.nigerdeltacongress.com/earticles/ethnic_nationalities_and_the_nig.htm, Internet, accessed 11 February 2012.

425 _Ibid.

426 _{Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power from Hobbes to Foulcault (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,}

1996), 2; Joseph V. Fernia, Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 24.

427 _{Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, 1, trans. Robert Hurley}

(London: Penguin Books, 1978), 220.

113

legitimacy but has not procured effectiveness because the consent did not meet with convinction. It then points to the application of traditional hierarchical theory of ideological power in the ecclesiastical setting, in which the subjects do not querry the leaders even when not fully satisfied.