Who Told You the Efik Are From Ghana?

“Efik is from Ghana.”

Someone said that. With full confidence. Chest out. No doubt in their voice.

And honestly? You can’t even be mad, because this isn’t just one person’s mistake. It’s the consequence of a larger, ongoing issue:

Nigeria has failed to package and preserve its full history.

Ask the average Nigerian to name ethnic groups in the country. You’ll likely hear the usual suspects: Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, and Fulani. Over and over again. Rinse. Repeat.

But that’s only scratching the surface. Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups, and each one has its own language, traditions, beliefs, and history. That’s 250+ distinct cultures, yet we only ever seem to tell four stories.

So, what happens when we erase the rest?

People start relocating entire ethnic groups across borders. Like claiming the Efik are Ghanaian.

So, Who Are the Efik?

The Efik people are an ethnic group native to southeastern Nigeria, predominantly in Cross River State. They are not from Ghana, not even close.

Historically, the Efik were influential middlemen in precolonial trade, particularly along the coastal regions of the Bight of Biafra. They were renowned for their diplomatic skill, cultural sophistication, and their leadership of the sacred Ekpe society, a powerful institution that governed both spiritual and political life.

And here’s something remarkable:

The Efik are closely tied to Nsibidi, one of Africa’s oldest indigenous writing systems. Nsibidi was used for communication long before Western alphabets arrived on our shores. It’s a visual, symbolic script that reflects the complexity and depth of early African knowledge systems.

These were not just “tribes” lost in the forest, they were nations with structured societies, belief systems, economic power, and global relevance.

So, Why Don’t We Know All This?

Because somewhere along the way, we outsourced our memory.

We stopped telling our own stories. We chased external validation. We prioritized Western textbooks over our grandmothers’ tales. And slowly, the histories of many communities were swept aside like expired biscuits.

We’ve allowed our past to be edited by people who don’t know us, and worse, who don’t care to.

That’s how entire civilizations like the Efik get written out of the narrative, or worse, relocated across countries in someone’s misinformed WhatsApp group.

The Mission to Remember

That’s why initiatives like CYSTADS matter, an archive dedicated to African history, culture, and languages. Not just the Instagram-friendly parts. Not just the "Big Four" ethnic groups. But everything, the forgotten, the misrepresented, the nearly erased.

CYSTADS is building a space where Africa can remember herself.

Because if we don’t tell our stories, someone else will remix them, badly. And we’ll keep hearing nonsense like "Efik is from Ghana" in broad daylight.

Final Thought

Nigeria is a cultural powerhouse. But what use is power if it’s hidden? If we want to truly understand who we are, then we need to go beyond the headlines, beyond the big names, beyond the textbook paragraphs.

We need to remember the Efik, the Jukun, the Urhobo, the Gwari, the Nupe, the Tiv, the Itsekiri, the Ebira, the Ibibio, the Ijaw, and the countless others who make up the soul of Nigeria.

This is more than history, it’s identity. And it’s time to take it back.