Architecture and Ikwerre Culture: Hidden Dimensions
Architecture and Ikwerre Culture: Hidden Dimensions

Summary/Abstract: The culture of a people determines their architecture. However many circumstances obliterate some vital aspects of their culture and invariably their architecture. This situation leads less critical historians to an erroneous conclusion that some people, particularly Africans, south of the Sahara, do not have a history. The reasons for these risible conclusions represent the absence of visual information about the concrete records of achievements. Visual absence is often confused with virtual presence on the premise that seeing alone confirms believing. Generally, people measure the history of world science, technology, and the arts in artefacts and architecture; hence, they regard any culture lacking documented physical and visual evidence as primitive. Happily, historians are now becoming more informed as science and information technology now reveal what was invisible. Our attention focuses on Ikwerre people generally, but particularly on those who are resident in Evo/Apara, Rebisi/Port Harcourt, and Obio/Akpor kingdoms, whom the unbridled expansion eroding the building culture of the Ikwerre people, mostly challenges. Since the Ikwerre people, according to Woke et al. (1993:20), Prof. Echeruo (1993), and Chief Ichegbo (1992:14) respectively, have several versions about their origins and times of arrival at their present abode, there are bound to be marginal variations in their customs according to communities. According to Ogwutum, S. (1996), these variations do not change the fact that "iwhuruoha bu otu" or "Ikwerre bu otu" which means that the Ikwerre people are always together as one indivisible people

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