The Agbo Of The Upper Cross River Basin 1600 - 1960

This study is the story of the evolution of Agbo society between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. By the middle of the sixteenth century, various groups, for a variety of reasons, abandoned their ancestral homelands in search of greener pastures elsewhere. By the seventeenth century, four major groups of Itigidi, Adadama, Igbo Ekureku and Igbo Imeabana had decided to build a new homeland and adopt a common name of Agbo. This is the origin of Agbo in the Upper Cross River Basin of Nigeria. In the course of four centuries, the major settlements of Itigidi, Adadama, Igbo Ekureku, and Igbo Imeabana decided to experiment on building a new nation state of Agbo in which one language and culture dominated. The new Agbo nation had a definite territory in which its citizens were and are still ready to defend. They entered into commercial, diplomatic, cultural ties with their neighbours- Ediba, Afikpo, Izzi of Abakaliki. This Agbo experiment is a lesson for new African leadership which should regard new nation states as amalgams of different ethnic groups uniting for common purposes.