PART ONE
BACKGROUND AND PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
Arising from recent developments wherein the public space has been inundated with calculated distortions of historical and judicial records by persons representing the Ebijakara community (formerly documented in colonial records as Aberiba or Aberiba Ebom), most notably during their street protest in Calabar on Monday, 19th October 2026, it has become imperative to set the records straight for the benefit of the Government of Cross River State, security agencies, the Bahumono Nation, and the general public.
The public demonstration staged by Ebijakara represents a transparent attempt to mislead the State Government and rewrite history. For over two decades, whenever credible, structured mediation initiatives (whether led by the Cross River State Government, the Bahumono Traditional Rulers Council, or the Bahumono Peace and Development Union) approach a viable framework for sustainable peace, Ebijakara breaks ranks, repudiates previous commitments, and stages provocative public spectacles designed to derail progress and blackmail state authorities. Their predictable strategy has been to present themselves as victims whilst concealing their long track record of armed aggression, illegal territorial encroachment, and refusal to abide by communal, administrative, and physical boundaries.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Ebom Community harbours no desire to see fellow human beings remain in perpetual displacement, nor do we oppose the legitimate rehabilitation and resettlement of the people of Ebijakara. However, historical experience, sustained communal trauma, and the recurring pattern of armed hostilities over the past century have demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt that contiguity of residence between Ebom and Ebijakara is inherently combustible, hazardous, and permanently non-viable. Ebom firmly objects to any arrangement that seeks to reinstall Ebijakara as our immediate, contiguous neighbour.
Instead, Ebom stands fully prepared to cooperate with and actively support the Cross River State Government, the Abi Local Government Council, and the Bahumono Traditional Rulers Council in executing alternative, peaceful resettlement models that guarantee a permanent geographic separation and physical safety buffer.
The Ebom Community (O’zokpo) wishes herein to establish the accurate, incontrovertible historical and legal records towards protecting the legitimate interests of our community and promoting a durable resolution founded on truth, justice, and realistic conflict prevention.
HISTORICAL IDENTITY, ANTIQUITY, AND INDEPENDENT EXTERNAL CHRONICLES
A. Aboriginal Status within the Bahumono Clan
Ebom (O’zokpo) is an ancient, aboriginal Bahumono community. In indigenous Bahumono history, Ebom co-founded and co-existed in the ancestral cradle of O’tumusa (Old Town) alongside the other indigenous Bahumono polities: Ediba (O’theba), Usumutong (O’zumuton), Afafanyi (O’bah), and Bazohure (O’zohure), the last two later differentiated into Afafanyi, Abeugo, Bazohure, and Igonigoni).
Ebom’s antiquity and uninterrupted custodial authority over its ancestral lands are anchored not merely in oral tradition, but in deep-seated sacred institutions. Each true aboriginal Bahumono community holds hereditary priesthood over an ancestral Bahumono deity:
●Ebom: Priesthood of Ekporokpa
●Usumutong: Priesthood of Etansen
●Ediba: Priesthood of Akpah’Amono
●Afafanyi: Priesthood of Efune
●Bazohure: Priesthood of Ehando
Ebijakara exercises no hereditary priesthood over any indigenous Bahumono ancestral deity whatsoever. Furthermore, the matrilineal lineage of Bano-Isaezen, which holds the priesthood of the sacred deity at the Isaezen stream, has historically and exclusively derived its high priests from Ebom. It is a natural and geographic impossibility for Ebom to have migrated after Aberiba whilst carrying an entire river, stream, and ancient priesthood along with them. Ebijakara was never part of the original Bahumono founding confederation from O’tumusa.
B. The Hugh Goldie Perspective (1888): Independent 19th-Century Corroboration
The sovereign historical antiquity of Ebom is decisively corroborated by independent external records that predate the establishment of formal British colonial rule and native courts in the Upper Cross River region.
In the seminal historical and missionary work, Calabar and its Mission (first published in 1890, expanded 1901) by the renowned Scottish Presbyterian pioneer, Reverend Hugh Goldie, the United Presbyterian Mission formally established its presence in Ebom in 1888. Rev. Goldie documented exploratory voyages along the Upper Cross River beyond Ikot Ana and Unwana, recording Ebom as a prominent, sovereign riverine town:
“…a town a little above Ungwana on the opposite side of the river, and its occupation meant a new step into the interior.”
Goldie further recorded that the missionary delegation stationed pioneering indigenous Christian teachers (including William George, Hope Waddell and Itam Okpo Itam) at Ebom to serve the community.
Crucially, throughout the comprehensive exploration records, charts, and journals compiled by Hugh Goldie, Hope Waddell, and their contemporaries in the 1880s, there is no mention whatsoever of an autonomous village, settlement, clan, or river port called “Ebijakara” or “Aberiba” in the Bahumono cluster. Whilst Goldie observed that the chiefs of Ebom invited people from a neighbouring inland settlement to meet the mission party, no separate, independent political community named Ebijakara existed along that navigable corridor.
This is fully affirmed by British colonial military records. In 1896, when the British Consul at Calabar dispatched a military expedition under Captain Runpell to subdue Ediba, the colonial expedition navigated up the Cross River and dealt directly with Ebom (where Chief Obei Akiri of Ebom assisted in guiding the officers). Ebijakara was nowhere to be found along that coast. The official British expeditionary maps clearly showed Ebom bounded to the South by Abayoongo, to the West by the Cross River, to the North by Igonigoni, and to the East by Usumutong. Aberiba had no independent external boundary, for the simple reason that they were living as an internal tenant compound within Ebom territory; they were not in existence then and at all as an independent community.
To be continued!
Ofem Irem Okpokpo
Use this name as the byline
