Are the Ukwuanis Benin or Igbo? a study of origin and migration

Abstract

The identity of Ukwuani people has for some time now generated debate among their leaders, ethnic historians, and other scholars of Ukwuani extraction. Such debates have produced a dominant perspective that the Ukwuanis are Benin people in diaspora without going to the field to confirm such a claim. This paper, therefore, participated in the on-going debate. The historical method of descriptive analysis was deployed. This method is most appropriate for this work because it offered the opportunity to interrogate the traditions of origins of the different Ukwuani clans. The findings indicate that Ukwuani people are Igbo in origin, and the claim of origin from Benin which textbook generalizations tended to portray is a recent contraption made possible by feedback in oral tradition.