COMPETING NARRATIVES ON THE ORIGIN AND ETHNOGENESIS OF ULI: A STUDY IN IGBO ORAL SOURCES AND SOCIAL CHARTER

Abstract

This article examines three principal oral traditions concerning the origin and ethnogenesis of Uli, an Igbo community in Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria. Drawing on court testimony, community histories, song, cult practice, and field conversation, it argues that the Njurumuwa fraternal narrative, the autochthonous priestly narrative, and the Ogbu migration-and-covenant narrative are not rival claims awaiting a single historical verdict. They are complementary social charters, each answering a different question that Uli people continue to ask of the past: how kinship and honour are made; how a people belong to land, river, and deity; and how political order is contracted among unequal groups. The analysis is framed by segmentary lineage theory, ethno-symbolism, the idea of the segmentary state, and Malinowski’s charter-myth thesis, read through Jan Vansina’s insistence that oral tradition is a living historical source rather than a frozen archive. A central finding is contextual: the Ogbu covenant tradition, often muted in printed local histories, becomes the authoritative register in chieftaincy litigation because it alone maps existing offices, kingmaking rights, and claims to the soil. The article contributes to decolonial Igbo historiography by treating indigenous epistemology as theory-producing rather than merely data-providing.