Bille Tribe - History

History

Most writers from Bille place the founding of Bille in about the 9th century on the basis of tradition and linguistic research of other sister clans like Bonny. Others are more inclined to accept a date prior to the fourteenth century for which one can reliably adopt the 9th century as the authentic period when the actual movement from the Benin Empire began.

Queen Ikpakiaba founded ancient Bille many centuries ago with several colleagues who fled their original settlement because of an internal conflict amongst the inhabitants. The people of Bille were said to have emigrated from the old Benin Empire. It is difficult to ascertain the accurate date from Oral tradition even as dates cannot be easily proven because of the difficulty in arriving at accurate data due to the level of knowledge about the calendar in those days.

Nonetheless, one will not equally be wrong to assert that a thriving and long established Bille community existed with its kings by the 15th century as recorded by early writers. According to Pacheco Pereira in the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis (1505–1520), the Ijo people of Bille were already trading on slaves. Thus if by 1520 someone from Europe had written about a Bille community which was in slave trade, then one can conveniently proclaim that our Bille may have been established long ago before being strong enough to partake in such a serious and dangerous trade.

In addition, Jones (1963) refers to a raid in neighbouring Kalabari towns of slaves by Bille under King Agbaniye Jike. He equally referred to a Bonny tradition concerning the development of the slave trade under King Asimini, and the development of the Kalabari slave trade under the contemporary King Owerri Daba (Owereya Dappa). See Alagoa & Fombo 1972.

According to Smith, Robinson & K. Williamson in the ‘Ijo Elements in Berbice Dutch’, Owerri Daba is to be dated to roughly 1600. As indicated by Jones (1963), tradition assigns Agbaniye Jike of Bille to the same generation as Owerri Daba. On the basis of the above reference to Agbaniye Jike as a 17th-century warlord, we can draw inferences to the time of settlement of the first Bille people by adopting the age of Jike who is locally regarded as a 3rd generation Bille man. Jike was born to an already established kingdom with several past rulers before him. In fact, he belongs to the Opu Sira community and from the local permutations, he may have become great after several years under the tutelage of some great fighters even though he was said to have given signs of greatness at his birth.

We will therefore rely on the dates given by the early writers and put pressure on archaeologists to determine the possible period of the first settlement at Bille which will not only be acceptable to historians but will also agree with several artefacts in the community. In the meantime, we may have to rely only on the dates quoted by early local writers and the official position of Bille spokespersons at Tribunals and other public hearings.

We were told that they left the old Benin Empire and moved southwards to the Niger Delta region and first settled around the Tarakiri clan in Central Ijaw before finally settling at a place called Okolo Bille in the present Abua territory situated on the north of Degema on the bank of the Sombrero River. It was at this point that a severe dispute occurred amongst the inhabitants. Oral Tradition relates it to a dispute over the sharing of the head of a special fish called tilapia (atabila) by the rulers during a festival. This resulted into a civil war that caused most of them to emigrate to the south where they founded various towns and settlements.