Efik

The traders of Old Calabar — a Cross River people whose Ekpe leopard society governed the port, whose nsibidi ideographs crossed the Atlantic into Cuba, and whose kings' letters are among West Africa's earliest surviving African-written records.

Identity

Population: Around a million in south-eastern Nigeria

Location: Calabar and the Cross River estuary in Cross River State, extending into south-western Cameroon

Language: Efik, closely related to Ibibio; historically the region's trade and mission language

Language family: Niger-Congo → Benue-Congo → Cross River

Traditional governance: The Obong of Calabar with the Ekpe society as the governing institution; Ekpe historically enforced debts, treaties and law across the whole trading region.

Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)

Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.

Creek Town and Duke Town houses

The trading lineages that governed Old Calabar's commerce.

Ekpe grades

Ranked levels of the leopard society, each with its own rights and knowledge.

Cameroonian Efik

Communities across the border with shared Ekpe and language.

Culture

Clothing: Onyonyo gowns and elaborate wrappers; Ekpe masquerade costume of coloured raffia netting covering the body entirely; coral and gold ornament.

Food: Efik cuisine is among Nigeria's most celebrated — edikang ikong, afang and the pepper soups; periwinkles and fish from the estuary.

Ceremonies: Ekpe masquerade appearances; the Obong's coronation; the fattening room, in which a bride was secluded, fed and instructed before marriage; the Calabar Carnival, now Nigeria's largest street festival.

Marriage customs: Bridewealth negotiated between houses; the fattening room tradition, historically a period of seclusion and instruction for brides, now largely symbolic.

Initiation rites: Entry into Ekpe by payment and sponsorship, with graded knowledge including the nsibidi signs; the fattening room for women.

Food & Recipes

Every dish the Atlas publishes for Nigeria and Cameroon, at national rather than community level — 22 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.

Nigeria

10 dishes

StapleNigeria

Pounded Yam and Egusi Soup

White yam pounded to a smooth elastic mound with a soup of ground melon seeds, greens and meat. The centrepiece of Yoruba and Igbo tables alike.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes

StapleNigeria

Tuwo Shinkafa

also Rice swallow

Soft short-grain rice cooked and beaten into a smooth mound, the northern Nigerian staple eaten with miyan kuka or miyan taushe.

Serves 6 · 45 minutes

National dishNigeria

Nigerian Jollof

Long-grain rice cooked in a reduced pepper and tomato base until the bottom of the pot lightly scorches, which is where the smoky flavour comes from and is not a mistake.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 20 minutes

National dishNigeria

Miyan Kuka

also Baobab leaf soup, Luru

Dried baobab leaf powder cooked into a dark, faintly slippery soup with dried fish and locust bean. The Hausa soup of northern Nigeria, eaten with tuwo.

Serves 6 · 50 minutes

Street foodNigeria

Suya

Thin beef skewers rubbed in yaji, a groundnut and chilli spice mix, grilled over open charcoal by Hausa mallams and served on newspaper with raw onion and tomato.

Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating

Festival & feastNigeria

Ofe Nsala

also White soup

A pale peppery soup of catfish thickened with pounded yam and scented with uziza and ehuru. Made in Anambra for a woman who has just given birth, and served at important occasions.

Serves 6 · 1 hour

Regional specialityNigeria

Moi Moi

Steamed bean pudding of peeled black-eyed peas, peppers and onion, wrapped in leaves and studded with egg and fish. Eaten alone or beside jollof at every party.

Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 4 hours soaking

Regional specialityNigeria

Efo Riro

also Yoruba spinach stew

Shredded greens cooked into a base of blended pepper, onion and palm oil with assorted meat and stockfish. The Yoruba vegetable soup, and the one Lagosians argue about most.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Regional specialityNigeria

Banga Soup

also Ofe akwu, Palm nut soup

Palm nut pulp cooked with catfish and the Delta's particular spices — beletientien, oburunbebe stick, ataiko — into a thick orange soup. The Urhobo and Isoko signature.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Drink & sweetNigeria

Zobo

Hibiscus infused with pineapple, ginger and clove, bottled and sold cold at every Nigerian gathering. The non-alcoholic drink of choice at weddings.

Serves 8 · 40 minutes, plus chilling

Cameroon

12 dishes

StapleCameroon

Fufu Corn

Maize flour beaten into a smooth stiff paste, eaten with njama njama or huckleberry greens in the north-west. The standard plate of the Anglophone highlands.

Serves 6 · 30 minutes

StapleCameroon

Koki Beans

also Koki corn, Ekoki

Black-eyed beans ground to a paste with palm oil and spinach, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed into a savoury pudding. A Cameroonian street and household staple.

Serves 8 · 2 hours, plus overnight soaking

National dishCameroon

Ndolé

Bitterleaf boiled repeatedly to draw out the bitterness, then cooked with ground groundnuts, shrimp and meat. Cameroon's national dish, from the Douala coast.

Serves 8 · 2 hours

National dishCameroon

Mbongo Tchobi

also Black stew, Sauce noire

Fish or meat in a jet-black sauce made from burnt spices — mbongo seed, country onion and njangsa — from the Bassa country around Edéa. Smoky, bitter and unlike anything else in Africa.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Street foodCameroon

Soya

Beef skewers rubbed in a groundnut and chilli spice mix and grilled over charcoal, sold from evening braziers across the north and in every Yaoundé quarter.

Serves Makes 12 · 40 minutes, plus 2 hours marinating

Festival & feastCameroon

Eru

Wild forest vine leaves shredded fine and cooked with waterleaf, palm oil and smoked fish, from the south-west. Made for celebrations and eaten with water fufu.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Festival & feastCameroon

Achu Soup

also Yellow soup, Taro fufu and yellow soup

Pounded taro served with a bright yellow palm-oil soup coloured with limestone, the ceremonial dish of Cameroon's North West grassfields, eaten with the fingers from a shared bowl.

Serves 8 · 2 hours 30 minutes

Regional specialityCameroon

Poulet DG

Chicken with fried ripe plantain and vegetables, whose name stands for Directeur Général because it was originally what you served a man of importance.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Regional specialityCameroon

Kondre

also Plantain and goat stew

Goat and unripe plantain stewed with country onion and njangsa until the plantain thickens the pot. A grassfields dish cooked for visitors and for the head of the household.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes

Regional specialityCameroon

Sanga

also Maize and cassava leaf

Fresh maize kernels cooked with cassava leaf and palm oil into a thick green-and-gold porridge. A Beti and southern Cameroonian dish of the maize harvest.

Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes

Drink & sweetCameroon

Foléré

Hibiscus juice with pineapple, ginger and mint, sold from freezers in the north and served cold at every celebration. Cameroon's name for what is bissap elsewhere.

Serves 8 · 30 minutes, plus chilling

Drink & sweetCameroon

Bil-Bil

also Millet beer, Bilibili

Sorghum beer of northern Cameroon, brewed by women in great clay pots and sold from the compound door. Sour, cloudy and drunk from a shared calabash.

Serves Makes about 8 litres · 1 hour active, plus 4 days germinating and 3 days fermenting

Stories & Oral Literature

NsibidiLanguage history

Nsibidi is a system of ideographs used across the Cross River region, some public and some restricted to Ekpe initiates, written on cloth, walls, skin and calabashes. Enslaved Cross River people carried it to Cuba, where it survives in the Abakuá society's anaforuana signs. A writing system crossed the Atlantic in the memory of people who owned nothing else.

The Letters of Antera DukeArchive

Antera Duke, an Efik trader, kept a diary in pidgin English between 1785 and 1788 recording trade, ritual, Ekpe business and the slave ships. It is among the very few surviving contemporary accounts of the Atlantic trade written by an African participant, and it is uncomfortable reading precisely because it is not a victim's account but a merchant's.

Proverbs

“Ekpe speaks and the market obeys.”
The society as the enforcement mechanism of commerce.

“The sign on the cloth is not for every eye.”
Nsibidi's graded secrecy.

“The river brought ships and took people.”
The estuary's double history.

Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs

Creation: Abasi as the supreme god; the water spirits of the Cross River; Ekpe as the leopard spirit of the forest, embodied in the masquerade.

Beliefs: Ekpe leopard society with graded initiation; Abasi as high god; water spirits; Christianity established very early through the Scottish mission from 1846, with Efik among the first Nigerian languages to receive a Bible.

Ancestors: Trading house genealogies determine standing; the Obong's stool descends within recognised lineages, and disputes over it are pursued in Nigerian courts.

Gods, Goddesses & Spirits

Abasi

The supreme god of Efik and Ibibio cosmology

Ekpe

The leopard spirit, whose voice is heard from the masquerade and whose word is law

Ndem

Water deities of the Cross River estuary

Architecture

Traditional settlements: Calabar's terraced colonial and mission buildings on the hill above the river; Ekpe lodges in each quarter; the estuary waterfront.

Building techniques: Timber and iron in the colonial-era buildings; Ekpe lodge construction with nsibidi decoration; canoe building for the estuary and creeks.

Village layout: Town on the ridge above the river with each ward's Ekpe lodge, the Obong's palace and the waterfront trading beach below.

Artifacts

Nsibidi ideographs

Language heritage

Cross River writing system, carried to Cuba by enslaved people and surviving there as anaforuana.

Ekpe masquerade costume

Performance

Full-body raffia netting in which the leopard spirit appears.

Antera Duke's diary

Historical Timeline

Pre-1600
Efik communities settle the Cross River estuary; Ekpe develops as the governing institution.
1700s–1807
Old Calabar becomes a major Atlantic slave-trading port under the trading houses.
1785–1788
Antera Duke keeps his diary in pidgin English.
1846
The Scottish mission arrives; Efik becomes an early written and printed Nigerian language.
1884–present
Calabar becomes the first capital of the Niger Coast Protectorate; the Obong and Ekpe persist within the Nigerian state.

Sources & Further Reading

Open sources

Britannica: EfikEncyclopaedia Britannica

Premium & scholarly sources

The Diary of Antera Duke — Oxford University PressOxford University Press
Nsibidi and Abakuá — research literatureJSTOR