Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/224

Human Ecosystems: Okoroba-Nembe 20 THE HUMAN ECOSYSTEMS: OKOROBA-NEMBE
 * Location
 * Topography
 * Soils
 * The Natural Ecosystem
 * Natural and Viable Society
 * Modern Society
 * The Economy
 * The Environment as Seen by Local People
 * Social and Political Status
 * Addendum: Local People and the Oil Industry

20.1 LOCATION

Okoroba is a village and Nembe a district centre, both about 150 kms Southwest of Port Harcourt. The Okoroba-Nembe district is a microcosm of most of the Niger Delta, covering the Fresh and Brackish-water ecozones, and the ecotone in between them, (see Maps 4 and 11).

Originally Okoroba was selected for participatory research by ERA because it seemed to represent a community in the Brackish-water (mangrove) ecozone. As it turned out, Okoroba is on an extensive levee in the ecotone between the Brackish and Fresh-water ecozones. For what became obvious reasons, there are very few communities within the brackish-water ecozone. The community lies beside the Okoroba Creek which feeds into the Adumama River which finally lets out into the Santa Barbara Estuary on the Atlantic coast.

Nembe is made up of two towns, Bassambiri and Ogbolumabiri, on adjacent islands in the Nembe Creek system of rivers that leads into the Brass River. (Biri means place - kiri in the Akassa dialect). The town is the headquarters of the Brass Local Government Area.

Whereas the Okoroba people appear to relate themselves to the forest (the Freshwater ecozone) around them, the Nembe people seem to relate more to the rivers and to other urban centres far away such as Brass, Ogbia and Port Harcourt.

Other communities included in the Okoroba-Nembe survey included Elemuama, Otatubu, Agrisaba, Enyumuama and Obiata. Also data was been drawn from work done around Ukparatubu village near Ogboinbiri, just Southwest of Nembe.

20.2 TOPOGRAPHY

The district is in classic alluvial fan-delta country. The land is very flat. This is suggested by the width of its rivers; by the penetration inland of salt water; and by the slow flow of water, where tidal flows can be more important than the river currents, so that flushing, in the dry-season, is negligible. All the same, the landscape is not uniform: it has its 222