Afikpo

Afikpo is the Ehugbo clan of Ebonyi State: the town and the country around it in Afikpo North, on the west bank of the Cross River. Its people speak Ehugbo, a form of Igbo of their own, and their new year falls at the end of August with the new yam.

Afikpo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in Igboland. Its people kept the ancient hamlet culture of the Egu — the fortified household clusters that were already old when Nri was rising — and the masks that go with it survive in the state's collection. An Afikpo man's adulthood is marked by initiation into the Ogo, which women are never shown.

The clan is a set of towns that each run their own affairs: Ehugbo itself, which is the head, and with it Itim Ukwu, Ohaisu, Nkpoghoro, Ugwuegu and Ozizza. Unwana, Amasiri, Ibii and Akpoha stand with them, and Okpoha is a village of the group rather than a clan in its own right.

Unwana is the largest of the towns after Ehugbo. It sits on a hill above the Cross River with Edda to its west, and it is where Akanu Ibiam, the first governor of Eastern Nigeria, was born — the federal polytechnic there carries his name.

Farming is the base of it: yam, cassava and rice, sold at the Eke and Nkwo markets. The trade is old enough that Afikpo's pots and its raffia work travelled before the roads did.