Obεri Ɔkaimε: A New African Language and Script

Extract

In November 1927 bands of professing Christians were found going about the Itu Division of Calabar Province, in the extreme south-east of Nigeria. Members of these bands declared that they were spirits. It was clear that although they professed Christianity, what had become uppermost in their super-excited minds were pagan ideas: of Ekpo, a disembodied spirit which takes many forms according to the belief of the Ibibio, and has many characters most of which are injurious, so much so that in the past in Calabar town a ceremony used to take place every second year to drive all the Ekpo out of the town and into the river; and of Mmeo, who are the spirits of good or evil to whom sacrifice in the form of chickens, yams, eggs, &c. is offered by the Igbo at the appropriate shrine when trouble threatens a person or place. After considerable disorder, lasting about a fortnight, order was restored by the aid of a detachment of police. Those who were arrested were put on to making a road, and this manual labour caused an almost immediate return to sanity.