Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/202

Human Ecosystems: Botam-Tai District The natural ecosystem of the Ogoni Forest will have been unique for a number of reasons: it received higher rainfall than the forests in the otherwise similar conditions to the North between the Bonny and Imo Rivers. It was isolated from the lowland tropical rainforests further west, and by the swamp forests of the Niger Delta; and although the Imo River is not a significant boundary, there is only a narrow band of country with conditions similar to the Ogoni Plain, between the Imo and Cross Rivers.

Thus the Ogoni Forest would have presented a uniform pattern across the flat Ogoni Plain, seasonally waterlogged but draining rapidly between November and March. Alongside the slow moving rivers the forest would have been more swampy with a less dense tree canopy, having trees with stilt roots and pneumorrhizae (roots that grow upwards where downward movement is impeded by, amongst other things, water), with palms (raffia, oil and maybe rattan) and tall shrubs and bamboo in more open places. Sedges will have dominated the wider depressions where they were not entirely flooded. Except on its Northern and Eastern Imo River boundary, the Ogoni Forest would have graded through ecotones into mangrove forests to the South and West, and to drier lowland tropical rainforest to the Northwest. In especially favoured conditions where the soils were very fertile the giant Silk Cotton Tree, Ceiba pentandra, would have towered above the forest canopy.

The animal population will have included many of the animals still found in refuges in Southern Nigeria, and some that are said to be extinct like the giant pangolin.

17.5 NATURAL AND VIABLE SOCIETY

In the Penguin Atlas of African History, Collin McEvedy says that the Negroes' original homeland was the forest and bush country of West Africa, so it is likely that mankind had been part of the Ogoni Forest ecosystem for hundreds of thousands of years.

However is was the advent of viable mankind into the area about 10,000 to 5000 years ago that the natural ecosystem would have begun to feel the their impact. Hunter gathering communities would have made tracks though the forest, provoking seed distribution of useful plants, and, where they were accessible, taking out trees for canoes. Moreover, the populations of some of the slower moving animals such as the elephant and the giant pangolin will have been subject to his hunting, while his dogs would have worried smaller faster ground moving animal such as duikers. Later, isolated forest exploiting settlements will have made small clearings and encouraged the local predominance of plants such as the raffia and oil palms, and bush mango.

However the overall impact of viable mankind would have been small and easily absorbed by the ecosystem: the area was generally inaccessible and unattractive to human settlement that preferred estuaries and riversides, and the open savannah country North of the rainforests.

Some tradition has it that the area was settled by people from Ghana: a conceivable theory because the Atlantic coast and the numerous protected and interlinked creeks and lagoons inland that stretch from the Volta Delta to the Bonny Estuary make a very good corridor for human movement. In any event it is likely that there was some movement of people up into the area from the South and the Bonny Estuary. However the Ogoni language is similar to the Ibibio and Efik languages and the most likely settlement theory is that the Ogoni people moved into the area from the lower Imo river which would have been a transport route of the family of people who now make up Ibibios, Efiks and Ogonis.

Like much of the interior of the Niger Delta, in more modern times, the more accessible parts of the Ogoni Forest may have been a place of refuge from more 200