By NSIKAK IKROK

Before Akwa Ibom: Eyo Uyo’s Political Blueprint for Statehood

THE creation of Akwa Ibom State on 23 September 1987 is now an established fact of Nigeria’s political history. Yet, six years before that event, a former parliamentarian and prominent minority-rights advocate, Obong Effiong Okon Eyo, popularly known as Eyo Uyo, published a 47-page political treatise that sought to explain why the mainland communities of the former Cross River State should have a separate political entity.

Published in Uyo in 1981 under the title The Demand for the Creation of States in the Cross River: A Critical Political Analysis, the book offers a contemporary account of the competing state-creation projects that had emerged in the former Eastern and South-Eastern political space.

Its importance today lies not simply in the fact that Akwa Ibom eventually emerged as a separate state. More significantly, the book captures the political arguments, ethnic calculations, constitutional questions and competing territorial visions that shaped the struggle before statehood became reality.

This review brings the largely forgotten publication back into public discussion and provides an opportunity to examine the intellectual and political journey that preceded the creation of Akwa Ibom.

A Political Document Before Statehood

Eyo’s book was published in 1981, when Akwa Ibom State did not yet exist.

At the time, the territory that would eventually become Akwa Ibom remained part of Cross River State, which itself had been created in 1976 after the former South-Eastern State was renamed. The eventual creation of Akwa Ibom in 1987 therefore represented the culmination of a much longer political struggle. Official state records describe the 1987 creation as the outcome of decades of agitation by communities in the mainland part of the former Cross River State.

Eyo’s book belongs to the middle of that struggle.

Rather than beginning with the 1987 outcome, it goes backwards to examine the political circumstances that produced competing demands for state creation. Its seven broad sections cover the historical background from 1953 to 1976, the demand for a new Cross River State, the Calabar State movement, the proposal for an Akwa Ibom state, the positions of the Ibibio and Annang, the claims of the Oron people, and Eyo’s findings and conclusions.

That structure makes the publication both a political intervention and a historical record.

The Minority Question & the Willink Commission

The roots of the argument extend to the constitutional debates of the 1950s.

Before independence, Nigeria’s political structure was dominated by three large regions. Smaller ethnic communities increasingly expressed concern about their political security and the possibility of domination by larger groups.

Those fears eventually led to the appointment of the Sir Henry Willink Commission in 1957. The commission was mandated to investigate the fears of minorities and recommend ways of addressing them. It was also authorised, as a last resort, to make recommendations for the creation of new states where constitutional safeguards were considered insufficient.

The commission’s work is particularly relevant to the history discussed by Eyo because the Eastern Region contained several competing proposals. The 1958 report recorded demands for an Ogoja State, a Cross River State, a Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State and a Rivers State.

The report also identified four important principles for assessing state-creation proposals: self-determination, ethnic relationship, geographical contiguity and viability.

Those principles would continue to resonate in later arguments over the political future of the area.

From COR to the South-Eastern State

One of the major political ideas of the period was the demand for a Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State, commonly known as COR.

Eyo himself participated in this wider minority-rights struggle. According to the historical account surrounding his political career, he moved from the NCNC to the Action Group and became associated with the campaign for a COR state.

The political geography subsequently changed dramatically.

On 27 May 1967, the military government of General Yakubu Gowon dismantled Nigeria’s regional structure and created 12 states. The mainland communities that would eventually form Akwa Ibom became part of the South-Eastern State.

In 1976, the South-Eastern State was renamed Cross River State during another state-creation exercise. The change, however, did not end competing demands for political reorganisation.

Historical accounts indicate that the Irikefe state-creation process in 1975 examined proposals involving the division of the South-Eastern State. One historical account of the period records that the proposal eventually associated with the mainland area envisaged a separate state alongside a Cross River state covering Oron, Calabar and Ogoja areas.

The failure of the 1975-76 exercise to produce the desired arrangement intensified the political struggle.

The Akwa Ibom Argument

This is where Eyo’s book becomes particularly important.

The core of his argument was that the mainland part of the former Cross River State possessed sufficient demographic, political and geographical characteristics to constitute a separate state.

He discussed the proposal for what was at different stages described as a mainland state, Qua Iboe State or Akwa Ibom State.

Eyo attached particular importance to the name.

He rejected the idea that the proposed state should simply be identified as “Kwa Iboe” after the river and argued instead for “Akwa Ibom”. In his interpretation, the name carried a broader historical and cultural significance.

The naming question was not merely symbolic. For Eyo, it was connected to the question of identity and political ownership.

He also challenged the proposal for a new capital located between Uyo, Abak and Etinan. His argument was that Uyo already occupied a strategic position within the mainland area and should therefore serve as the capital.

History ultimately validated one part of this argument.

When Akwa Ibom State was created in 1987, Uyo became its capital. The state was carved from the former Cross River State and was formally established on 23 September 1987.

The 1978 Traditional Rulers’ Intervention

The review highlights another important stage in the campaign: the 25 February 1978 meeting of traditional rulers from the mainland communities.

Historical accounts confirm that traditional rulers from the area subsequently added their support to the demand for a separate state. One account identifies the 1978 meeting in Etinan as an important milestone in the agitation that eventually culminated in statehood.

The development was significant because it broadened the campaign beyond individual politicians.

Traditional institutions, community organisations and political actors increasingly became part of the movement.

Eyo, however, maintained that he had not been consulted adequately in the process despite his position as Obong Ikpaisong Ibibio ye Annang. In the book, he therefore did more than support state creation. He interrogated the process through which the demand was being articulated.

That distinction is important.

The history of state creation was not a single, unified campaign in which every political actor agreed on the same territory, capital, name or political structure. Rather, it involved overlapping movements whose interests sometimes converged and sometimes competed.

Ibibio & Annang: Unity & Political Tension

A major section of Eyo’s argument concerns the relationship between the Ibibio and Annang.

He presented the two groups as closely related communities with a shared history and political interests. He also invoked the history of the Ibibio Union, which became an important vehicle for education, social organisation and political mobilisation.

Historical scholarship confirms the significance of the organisation’s educational programme. In 1938, the Ibibio Union sponsored six students for overseas study. The beneficiaries included Egbert Udo Udoma, Ibanga U. Akpabio and other future professionals whose careers later contributed to the political and intellectual development of the region.

For Eyo, this history demonstrated the capacity of local organisations to build political institutions and human capital long before the creation of Akwa Ibom.

However, his interpretation of Ibibio-Annang unity also needs to be read critically.

The later history of state creation demonstrates that political interests within the proposed territory were not always identical. Different communities and political groups had their own preferences concerning representation, territory, leadership and the shape of a future state.

The Oron Question

Eyo also devoted considerable attention to the position of Oron.

His argument was that Oron should form part of the proposed mainland state rather than be incorporated into a Calabar-oriented arrangement.

The issue was politically complicated.

Historical material on the 1975 state-creation process shows that Oron communities had their own organised position and participated actively in the debate. A historical account of Oron records that the community advocated inclusion in the proposed Cross River State and presented a detailed memorandum to the Irikefe Panel.

This demonstrates why the politics of state creation cannot be reduced to a simple mainland-versus-Calabar narrative.

Different communities were pursuing their own conceptions of security, identity and political representation.

Eyo’s position was one intervention in that larger contest.

A Prediction That Became History

Perhaps the most striking feature of the book is the distance between its publication and the eventual creation of Akwa Ibom.

Eyo died in 1983, four years before the state was created. He therefore did not live to see the political outcome he had advocated for.

On 23 September 1987, General Ibrahim Babangida’s military administration created Akwa Ibom State from the former Cross River State. Official state records identify that date as the state’s creation date.

The event transformed what had been a political demand into an administrative reality.

Yet it would be misleading to treat Eyo’s book as a simple prediction that came true.

The creation of a state depends on political decisions, constitutional arrangements, military policy, administrative calculations and competing interests. Eyo’s book was one contribution to a much wider historical process.

Its value lies precisely in documenting one participant’s understanding of that process before its final outcome was known.

Beyond the Anniversary Narrative

Akwa Ibom’s anniversary celebrations often focus naturally on the achievement of statehood and the development that followed.

Eyo’s book invites a different question: what arguments, disagreements and political struggles preceded that achievement?

The answer is neither simple nor linear.

The journey involved the minority question of the colonial era, the Willink Commission, the COR movement, the creation of the South-Eastern State in 1967, the renaming of that entity as Cross River State in 1976, the Irikefe process, the 1978 traditional rulers’ intervention, the constitutional debates of the late 1970s and subsequent political campaigns.

Akwa Ibom therefore did not emerge from a single event.

It emerged from decades of political negotiation.

Why the Book Still Matters

At 47 pages, The Demand for the Creation of States in the Cross River: A Critical Political Analysis is relatively short. Its historical significance, however, cannot be measured by its size.

It provides access to a political argument made while the outcome was still uncertain.

More importantly, it reveals how state creation was understood by one of its prominent advocates: not merely as administrative restructuring, but as a question of minority protection, identity, political representation and self-determination.

The book also reminds contemporary readers that historical memory is rarely neutral.

Eyo was not writing as a detached observer. He was a political actor who had participated directly in the struggles he described. His claims about rival movements, ethnic relationships and political entitlement must therefore be weighed alongside other documentary and scholarly evidence.

That does not diminish the book.

Instead, it makes the publication more valuable as a primary political source.

Read alongside the Willink Commission report, records of the state-creation exercises, scholarly histories and later official accounts, Eyo’s 1981 publication helps reconstruct the contested road to 23 September 1987.

Forty-five years after its publication, the book remains a reminder that the state now known as Akwa Ibom was once an argument, a demand and a political project whose final outcome was far from guaranteed.