Bille Tribe - Relationship With Other Clans

Relationship With Other Clans

Several reasons have been adduced to explain why it was not possible for the people of Bille to move out of the present location to found new lands like her sister kingdoms. The chief reason is security, as the numerous wars and attacks from aggressors prevented persons from moving to settle on isolated islands and locations where they would be prone to severe attacks. They were only content with going out on fishing expeditions and coming back safe to Bille. Being a warring era, it was safer to stay in the hinterland where Bille town is situated as it took enemies much difficulty to drive through the creeks before reaching the town. In fact, before anybody could attempt such an attack on Bille he would have been subdued on his way by the ever-ready warriors who patrolled the creeks on a regular basis.

In addition, the ancient Bille people never trusted strangers as to settle natives amongst them on such conquered settlements for fear of uprisings and further enemy attacks. Therefore, Bille remained a safe haven for the great warriors of Bille in the Niger Delta region from the reign of King Agbani ye Jike until the advent of colonialism. To this day, because of his prowess and his sustenance of the Bille Empire in that period, the title of the Amanyanabo (king) of Bille is named after him.

One can also add that the near perfect living style of the Bille people whereby the extended family system allowed members of one family to share a single building equally contributed to the inability of people to move and settle elsewhere. In Bille, it is still possible for two brothers to share one building inherited from their father and both would always live together happily without molestation. This is absent in so many other communities as elder brothers have been reported to have chased away their younger ones and other relations from their inherited homes. This ordinarily would push one to seek elsewhere to find accommodation and had, in most cases, led people to develop barren lands to settle.

However, the most appropriate reason why the other clans have a relatively superior numerical strength is the large number of slaves bought and allowed to be members of those clans. In those days, noble men in places like Bonny and Kalabari were recognised by the number of slaves they kept. The slaves were later given freedom and made to belong to the families of their masters hence the growth in population of these clans. This much was confirmed by Ebiegberi J. Alagoa and Adadonye Fombo in their book, “A Chronicle of Grand Bonny”, Ibadan University Press, published in 1972. Quoting Robin Horton’s “From Fishing Village to City-state”, the authors believed that ‘whereas Elem Kalabari insisted on the complete acculturation of slaves to be integrated into the House System, Bonny does not seem to have full acculturation. Thus, although both states took part in the slave trade and absorbed large numbers of Ibo slaves into their communities, the Kalabari have preserved their language and culture, while Bonny has become bilingual in Ibo and Ibani. Thus, although the system of integration into the lineage or House System worked faultlessly in Bonny, the same policy was not pursued in the cultural field.’

Much of this though had to do with early exposure to persons from other tribes particularly the Europeans. Therefore, it was easy for noble men and chiefs from the neighbouring places to purchase slaves and give them freedom so that they help them in their new hinterland trade with the whites after slave trade was abolished. This was not the case in Bille even as intermarriage was relatively less between the Bille people and other clans. As a result, a proper census of the true natives in all the clans under reference will reveal that Bille has more genuine natives than all the other clans where people of mixed blood abound.

The need to expand the Bille Kingdom beyond the one-city status had in the past ten years invigorated the clamour for the development and transformation of the fishing settlements to the status of villages. This had resulted in the request for and approval of many such villages by the Bille Council of Chiefs. These new villages have also been recommended to the management of the SPDC for the purpose of establishing Community Development Committees and for membership of the Bille Youth Federation.