SOURCE:

Faculty: Arts
Department: History & International Studies

CONTRIBUTORS:

Odeke, F. C
Igwe, A.U

ABSTRACT:

This study is based on the relations that existed between the Ezza Clan in the Abakaliki region and their neighbouring communities between 1850 and 1960. The Ezza Clan adopted war approaches in their relations with other communities to meet with their challenges in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until British forces intervened in 1905 to halt their expansionist drive. From then up to the present times, the Ezza have realized wars as no better means in inter-group affairs, and have since returned to negotiating peaceful co-exitence with their neighbours as a better option. The study uses the social identity theory to explain the Ezza relations with their neighbours as a drive for their common economic interest. The theory qualifies the Ezza belief that Ezza is supreme, and so their determination to dominate all other Clans in the North-east Igboland. The study is analytic and narrative. It uses both the primary and secondary sources to gather its data from direct oral interviews, archives, textbooks, learned journals, and other published and unpublished works. The study argues that the Ezza’s return to peaceful negotiation with their neighbours shows that there is always a better and peaceful option to pursuing economic interests and maintaining relationships instead of engaging in wars that do no good to anybody. War, whether by a Western imperial power or any other power, is a negative approach in group relations because it alters the natural order of human existence, leaving wounds that never heal, and which keep memories of the wars recurring.