The Ijaw people are a mixture of people, majorly a tribe in Bayelsa, in the south region of the Niger Delta in Nigeria.
Ijaw people are predominantly found in Bayelsa state, Delta state, and River state. They are also found in Nigerian states like Ondo states, Akwa Ibom Stata.
Many are found as migrant Fishermen in camps as far west as Sierra Leon and far east as Gabon.
The population figure of Ijaws people is placed at just over 10 million, accounting for 7% of the Nigerian population.
The Ijaw people live by fishing and farming. They are people that mostly cultivate paddy rice, plantains, cassava, cocoyam, yam, and bananas. they are also good at trading smoke-dried fish, timber, palm oil, and palm kernel.
While some clans like Akassa, Nenbe, Bille, Kalabri, Okrika, Andoni, and Bonny had powerful kings and stratified societies, other clans are believed not to have any centralized confederacies until the arrival of the British.
However, owing to the influence of the neighboring Kingdom of Benin individual communities even in the western Niger Delta also had chiefs and government at the village levels.
The Ijaws Marriages are completed by the payment of a bridal dowry, which increases in size if the bride is from another village (so as to make up for the village’s loss of her children).
According to the research, funeral ceremonies, particularly for those who have accumulated wealth and respect, are often very dramatic. Traditional religious practices center around “Water spirits” in the Niger river, and around a tribute to ancestors.
We gathered that Ijaws are now primarily Christians ( 65% profess to be), with Roman Catholicism, Zion church, Anglicanism, and Pentecostal.
They also have elaborate traditional religious practices of their own. Veneration of ancestors plays a central role in Ijaw traditional religion, while water spirit, known as Owuamapu figure prominently in the Ijaw pantheon.
In addition, the Ijaw practice a form of divination called Igbadai, in which recently deceased individuals are interrogated on the cause of their death. Ijaw religious beliefs hold that water spirits are like humans in having personal strengths and shortcomings, and humans dwell among the water spirit before being born. The role of prayer in the traditional Ijaws system of beliefs is to maintain the living in the good graces of the water spirit among those who dwelt before being born into the world.
We also gathered that each year the Ijaws hold celebrations honoring the spirits for several days. Central to the festival is the role of Masquerades, in which men wearing elaborate outfits and carved masks dance to the beats of drums and manifest the influence of the water spirits through the quality and intensity of their dancing.
They are also a small number of converts to Islam, the most notable being the founder of the Delta People Volunteer Force, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, Jeremiah Omoto Fufeyin, and Edwin K. Clarke come from the Ijaw ethnic group. Other notable leaders from the Ijaw ethnic group are the former president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, and Heineken Lokpobiri.
The Ijaws were one of the first of Nigeria’s people to have contact with Westerners and were active as a go-between in trade and visiting Europeans and people of the interior.
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