Itsekiri people
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| Total population | |||||
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| c. 800,000 - 1M | |||||
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| Related ethnic groups | |||||
| Yoruba people, Ijaw people, Apoi people, Edo people, Urhobo people | |||||
The Itsekiri (also called the Isekiri, iJekri, Itsekri, Ishekiri, or Itsekhiri) are an ethnic group of Nigeria's Niger Delta area, Delta State. The Itsekiri presently number just under 1 million people and live mainly in the Warri South, Warri North and Warri South West local government districts of Delta State on the Atlantic coast of Nigeria. Significant communities of Itsekiris can be found in parts of Edo and Ondo states and in various other Nigerian cities including Lagos, Sapele, Benin City, Port Harcourt and Abuja. Many people of Itsekiri descent also reside in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.The Itsekiris are closely related to the Yoruba and Ijaw people and more widely to the Urhobo and Edo peoples.
The Itsekiris traditionally refer to their land as the Kingdom of Warri or 'Iwerre' as its proper name – which is geographically contiguous to the area covered by the three Warri local government districts. The area is a key centre of Nigeria's crude oil and natural gas production and petroleum refining and the main town Warri (a multi-ethnic metropolis) forms the industrial and commercial nucleus of the Delta State region.
The Itsekiri are a people of very mixed ethnic origins who speak a language very closely related to the Yoruba and the Ijaw languages of South Western Nigeria but which has also borrowed some vocabulary, particularly loan words from the Edo (Benin) language in some court terminologies, given the hegemony that the Benin Empire once exercised over the area, Portuguese in trade terminologies, as the Itsekiri were the first people in Nigeria to establish contact with the Portuguese who were exploring the West African coast, and also more recently, English. Although linguistically related to the Yoruba and Ijaw ethnic groups, however, through centuries of intermingling modern day Itsekiris are of mixed ethnic origins. They are most closely related to the South-Eastern Yorubaland sub-groups - (Ijaw, Ijebu, Akure, Ikale, Ondo and Owo), but also Edo, Urhobo, some Anglo-Scottish and Portuguese descent) and are today mainly Christian (Protestant and Roman Catholic) by religion.
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Wikipedia