Uzere Kingdom

Where Uzere sits

Uzere is in Isoko South, about eighteen kilometres from Oleh and nine from Asaba-Ase on the Ase creek. Neighbours: Aviara to the north-west, Igbide to the west, Asaba-Ase to the south, Erowha and Abari to the south-west. Assembly seat: Isoko South II.

History

The town was first called Uzei. The name Uzere is the later form. Two dates travel with the story. J. W. Hubbard put the arrival of the first settlers at 1593. Another strand says Okugbo took a crown at Eboh in 1453. Both cannot be tidied into one year. This page prints the route, not a forged calendar.

The road from Aka

The common tradition is that Uzei left Benin with his people. One telling says he fled after a charge that touched the Oba’s household. He travelled with Eni, a water spirit that would not stay where there was no deep water. The stops named in the story: Isele-Uku, the Niger bank at Asaba, then Eboh in Ndokwa, where a camp called Eruke was built.

Uzei’s surviving sons are named as Uheri, Ezede and Uweye. Those three names are still the ancestral quarters. A son, Okugbo, is said to have gone for kingship rights — first towards Benin, then to the Eboh king — and to have been the first Ovie. A later war with Eboh, and a misread oracle that told the people to go into the ground, ends in a massacre. Survivors moved to the present site and kept the name. Some fled as far as Odi, now in Bayelsa. Irri’s own story often begins from Uzere.

Not every scholar accepts a clean Benin line. Work on Uzere origin has also asked whether Igboid traces sit under the Edoid speech. The disagreement is part of the record. The town does not need one dogma to keep a page.

Oil

Exploration reached Uzere in 1957. Commercial production followed in 1958 under Shell D’Arcy, later SPDC. Two fields — Uzere East and Uzere West — and a commonly cited figure of forty-three wells, once put near 53,000 barrels a day. Uzere was among the earliest oil-host towns after Oloibiri. The wells did not make the roads. Spills in 2023 and the Well 14 blowout in OML 30 in 2026 are on the recent books. In August 2026 a Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt ordered a cleanup on a suit brought in the name of the Ovie, Udogri Isaac I.

Quarters and settlements

The kingdom is built on three ancestral quarters — the lines of Uzei’s three sons. Under those quarters sit streets. The modern map also names nine communities. The Edio council is described in older notes as nine men, three from each ancestral quarter.

Nine named settlements on the public list:

Eni — festival, lake, tourism

The Ovie of Uzere is also the priest of Eni. The festival and the lake are one story.

Other water in the belt — fishing ponds, floodplain and the Ase creek road to Asaba-Ase — is the working landscape, not a marked tourist park. Schools on the public list include Uzere Grammar School, St. Paul’s, Eni Primary and Ogrih Primary. A cottage hospital was built with Shell money. That is the civic map. The lake is the one site the outside world already knows by name.

Ovie of Uzere — the roll that can be printed

Early names live in oral tradition. Years of reign are not attached. The modern line is firmer and is split by a 2011–12 dispute. This site’s monarchs page names H.R.M. Udogri I (JP) as the Ovie of Uzere.

Oral tradition — early stools

1. Okugbo — first Ovie in the founding story; said to have taken a crown at Eboh.
2. Eriye
3. Ediagbo
4. Egbeta
5. Ewhiri
6. Okpoteme
7. Eje

Colonial and modern stools

8. N.G. Odede (German Odede) — mid-twentieth century, around the 1950s; appears in administrative and community notes.
9. Etuede II (also written Etwede) — later twentieth century, before the present dispute.
10. H.R.M. Isaac Odhiwhu Udogri I (JP) — sitting Ovie on this site’s monarchs list; party to the 2026 cleanup suit.

What still belongs to the town

Years on the early stools. The exact month of Eni. Street maps of the three quarters. Photographs of the lake as it stands after oil. Write info@isoko.com.ng. Subject: Uzere history.