Background
The ancestral home of the Seimbiri lies near the town of Ikibiri in the Central Delta, within the territory of Ekpetiama ibe. Traditions at Ikibiri and among the Seimbiri agree on the nature of their relationship but differ on points of detail.
The two accounts differ on the genealogy of the ancestors. According to the Ikibiri, the eponymous ancestor was Ogbo who had three sons, Oromo, Ikibiriowei, and Temezebai (Temezibe). The Seimbiri named Oromo the first ancestor, with Seimbiri, Ogbo and Ikibiriowei as his three sons and Temezebai as a grandson of Seimbiri. Accordingly, while the Ikibiri referred to themselves as Ogbo ibe, the western section used Seimbiri, rather than Oromo, who was no more than “a dim figure” in their memory.
The migration to the west occured in the time of Oabo in the Central Delta when the people were settled at Isomobou, some six miles to the west of Ikibiri town. The Isomobou community had killed and eaten a man of Oweikorogha, Tarakiri ibe. A man passed over in the division of the spoils reported the matter to the Tarakiri of Oweikorogha. The Oweikorogha called other Tarakiri towns to their aid and obtained firearms from the states of Kalabari and Nembe in the Eastern Delta. The firearms were then unknown to the Isomobou, and the number of the allies was overwhelming. They dispersed after hiding the old man, Ogbo, and his family, in a pit.
The dispersion from Isomobou, and later migrations from Ikibiri, are cited in the traditions of origin of the Ogoloma (Okrika), Onopa (Epie-Atissa), several towns in Ekpetiama ibe, Akaranbiri (Opokuma) and Akiri in Aboh. The Seimbiri, the main group of migrants moving westwards first settled at Oboro, which later sent off-shoots to Inikorogha and Okpokunu.
Traditions at Ikibiri and Oboro were ignorant of a time before the dispersal. An Ikibiri account stated, however, that an unknown ancestor before Ogbo had lived in Egypt and Benin. This constitutes the only recorded tradition before the 1950s of an Ijo tradition of origin that refers to any place beyond Benin outside the Niger Delta as a place of origin. Even then, the Seimbiri did not subscribe to the tradition, sticking to Isomobou near Ikibiri in the Central Delta as their ancestral home.
The Seimbiri have no direct tradition of blood relationship to other Ijo. But the ancestral name of Oromo is the same as that recorded for the Oyakiri or Ibeni. Furthermore, traditions collected recently state that some at least of the migrants from the Central Delta stayed among the Mein in the Igbedi Creek (apparently at Ogobiri), and may have brought from there the bronzes to be found at Inikorogha.
The Inikorogha bronzes raise the problem of centralized authority among the Seimbiri. There is no tradition of any such authority—secular or religious—developing among the Seimbiri. The 1931 report states categorically that “no clan head, spiritual or temporal, has ever been recognized”, although the oldest amaokosowei of the component settlements was regarded informally as primus inter pares, as among the Gbaramatu. The presence of the bronzes at Inikorogha rather than at the traditional centre of Oboro seems to support the suggestion that the bronzes were the personal heirloom of some ancestor taken away from Ogobiri to Oboro and thence to Inikorogha by descendants, and not the emblems of supreme office among all Seimbiri.