Urhobo People
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| Total population | |||||||||
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| c. 2 Million+ | |||||||||
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| Isoko, Bini | |||||||||
The Urhobos are people of southern Nigeria, near the northwestern Niger delta. The Urhobo is the major ethnic group in Delta State. Delta State is one of the 36 states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Urhobos speak the Urhobo language. The Urhobo culture is related to several cultures in the Niger-Delta. Isoko is closely related in language and culture, leading to the missionaries erroneously labelling the Urhobo and Isoko cultural groups as Sobo. This name was strongly rejected by both tribes. However, there are those of the opinion that Isoko is a dialect of Urhobo. The Urhobo nation is made up of twenty four sub-groups, including Okpe the largest of all Urhobo sub-groups.Isoko used to be regarded as a part of Urhobo nation until the late 1950s when they were granted autonomy.
There are about two million Urhobos. The word Urhobo refer to a group of people and not the geographical territory. The Urhobos have social and cultural affinity to the Edo speaking people of Nigeria (Northcote Thomas, 1910). The Urhobo now live in a territory bounded by latitudes 6°and 5°, 15° North and Longitudes 5°, 40° and 6°, 25° East in the Delta State and Bayelsa State of Nigeria. Their neighbours are the Isoko to the South East, the Itsekiri to the West, the Bini to the North, Ijaw to the South and Ukwuani people to the North East. The Urhobo territory consist of evergreen forest with many oil palm trees which provide the lucrative palm produce industry for which the Urhobo have some technological preserve. The territory is covered by a network of streams whose volumes of water and flow are directly concerned with the climatic season; wet season (April–October) and dry season (November–March).
The Urhobos are currently organized as political kingdoms, gerontocracy and plutocracies. Gerontocracy is the government by elders based on the age grade-system in the community while plutocracies is government by the rich and wealthy, an evolutionary state but retaining the elements of gerontocracy. Although it is not clear which kingship is older among the kingdoms, these kingship development reached their climax in the 1940s and 1950s.
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Wikipedia