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Warri

City in Delta State, Nigeria

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Warri shares boundaries with Uvwie to the east, Udu to the south east, Ogbe-ijoh to the south, and other communities in Warri South LGA to the west.

Warri sits on the bank of Warri River which joins Forcados River and Escravos River through Jones Creek in the lower Niger Delta Region. The city has a modern seaport, which serves as the cargo transit point between the Niger River and the Atlantic Ocean for import and export.

Warri served as the capital of the colonial Warri Province during the early 1900s when this part of Delta State was under the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria.

History

Etymology

The name 'WARRI' was first associated with the Itsekiri ancestral capital town of Ode Itsekiri which the locals also refer to as 'Iwere'. A mispronunciation of Iwere by several European explorers probably resulted in various names like HUELA, AWERRI, OWHERE, OERE, OUWERE, WARRE, WARREE, etc. The British eventually anglancised it as WARRI.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries French influence was greater than Portuguese, and the place was known as Owhere or Oywere. Since then its name has been anglicised to Warri.

— Rev. John Waddington Hubbard, The Sobo of the Niger Delta (Zaria: Gaskiya Corporation, 1948)

The area encompassing present-day Warri South, Warri South West, and Warri North, which constitutes the independent territory of the historic Kingdom of Warri, derives its name from the kingdom's capital, Ode-Itsekiri. This is corroborated by French navigator and trader Jean Barbot, who visited Warri in the late 17th century. In his account, Barbot described the capital as follows:

The capital town Ouwere, which gives its name to the whole country, lies on the river Forcado, about thirty six or seven leagues up from its mouth, and is near two miles about, being encompass'd on the land-side with groves and thickets, the ordinary residence of the king of Ouwere.

— Jean Barbot,

British Advent pre-Warri

British colonialism effectively took off in the Western Niger Delta with the proclamation of the Oil Coast Protectorate by Great Britain in June 1885. British colonial administration was carried out through local chiefs like Nana Olomu of Ebrohimi in Benin River. This administration was effectively restricted to Benin River and its environs as the British were content with conducting trade with the people of the hinterlands through the Itsekiri as middlemen.

Creation of Warri

The British decided to move the seat of the administration of the Niger Coast Protectorate from the capital Ode-Itsekiri (Warri or Iwerre) to the uplands to have effective control of the hinterlands. In order to achieve this, the British in 1906 took a lease of a new trading station opened in 1898 on virgin lands for Alexander Miller Brothers Limited of Liverpool at the mouth of the Okere Creeks. This new trading station was also named WARRI after the capital Ode-Itsekiri so the Itsekiris dubbed Ode-Itsekiri BIG WARRI in order to differentiate Ode-Itsekiri from the new trading station.

All the Warri City leases granted to the British crown and government, which are the lease of 360 acres under B2 lease of 1906, approximately 36 hectares (90 acres) under B5 lease of 1908, and 140 hectares (350 acres) under lease B7 of 1911, were all granted and signed by the representatives of the Olu of Warri, Chiefs Dore (Dogho) and Ogbe Yonwuren.

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