Oba Ewedo curbs the Uzama kingmakers

Tradition holds that Ewedo, the fourth Oba, after a battle deprived the hereditary Uzama chiefs of their quasi-regalian rights, moved to a more spacious palace on the present site, and created non-hereditary titles for his own leading men, winning a position of primus inter pares. For the next two centuries this balance of power was undisturbed.