IGWE OCHA: The Forgotten Trade City That Bound Igbo & Ibibio Before Colonial Lines

By NINI NDUONOFIT-AKOH

PORT Harcourt did not begin as a British invention. Long before it was stamped into maps in 1913, the land was already mapped in the imagination of Eastern traders. They called it Igwe Ocha — “the White High Place.” It was a name inspired not by myth, but by observation: dazzling white sandbars, gleaming riverbanks, and a terrain that stood out like a pale beacon to the earliest Igbo trading expeditions arriving through the Bonny and Andoni creeks.

Igwe Ocha was not a city. It was a corridor — a commercial gateway feeding a complex Indigenous trade system.

And at the heart of that system were two peoples whose relationship is often understated in modern narratives: the Igbo and the Ibibio.

A Forgotten Economic Alliance

Centuries before the arrival of British surveyors, Igbo traders from hinterland communities — including those who later formed Port Harcourt’s distinct Igbo settlements — exchanged goods with expansive Ibibio markets across the Cross River basin.

Their partnership was strategic and mutually dependent.

What the Ibibio Supplied

• Palm oil and kernels that fed regional wealth

• Raffia products and handicrafts from Ikot Ekpene

• Fish, salt, and coastal commodities

• A wide array of farm produce

What the Igbo Brought in Return

• Iron tools and metalwork

• Cloth, beads, and decorative items

• Goats, poultry, and livestock

• Imported goods arriving through Igwe Ocha’s evolving wharf

This was not coerced trade. It was a carefully maintained commercial community built on trust, repeated interactions, and shared economic interest.

The Arteries of a Pre-Colonial Marketplace

This relationship thrived because waterways acted as highways. Traders followed the tides of:

• Imo River

• Cross River

• Kwa Iboe River

• Bonny River

• Andoni River

From Igwe Ocha, Igbo traders fanned out in canoes to Ibibio markets using routes that passed through Eleme, Opobo, Andoni, Ikot Abasi, Oron, Itu, and Ikot Ekpene—a network more interconnected than most modern state boundaries.

Across these routes, major regional markets formed a triangular commercial hub:

• Itu Market: a crossroads for riverine commerce

• Ikot Ekpene Raffia Market: famed for its crafts

• Aba Market: a bustling Igbo manufacturing and redistribution center

Together, they sustained one of southern Nigeria’s strongest indigenous trade systems.

Where Trade Became Culture

Commerce did more than move goods; it moved people. Generations of interaction created:

• Shared vocabulary between Igbo and Ibibio

• Inter-ethnic business partnerships

• Cross-regional marriages

• Extended family networks

• Cultural borrowing in dress, craft, and food

By the 1800s, the boundaries between Igbo and Ibibio trading families were not rigid lines but woven threads.

A History Overshadowed by Politics

The colonial renaming of Igwe Ocha to “Port Harcourt” erased more than a title — it obscured the region’s Indigenous story of unity, movement, and enterprise.

Before states, before political contestation, and before modern ethnic polarization, Igwe Ocha existed as a shared economic lifeline, pulling peoples from the East and the South-South into partnership.

The land we now call Port Harcourt was once a marketplace of cooperation, not division. Its earliest history reminds us that commerce, not conflict, built the foundations of the region.

Igwe Ocha was born from trade.

Its legacy is one of connection.

And its true story remains a testament to how deeply the Igbo and Ibibio once depended on — and shaped — each other.