Many people have come to wonder about how the name Akwa ibom actually generated. In this piece of writing I painstakingly took my time to analyse how the name Akwa ibom was generated. Don't feel too big to drop your comments if you find anything that is not clear to you.
One of the richest states in West Africa and the homeland of my much-cherished Ibibio, Annang,
Obolo and Oron friends, Akwa Ibom is named after a river, the Qua Iboe (or Kwa Iboe) River.
About 20 miles to the entrance of this river is the popular Qua Iboe
Offshore Oil Terminal and the Qua Iboe Onshore Oil Field (Oil Mining Lease, OML, 13) (btw, Oando owns 40% of that).
Translating Qua Iboe itself was not an easy task. Some records indicate that the river emptied
itself around a settlement in Ibeno called Aqua Obio (meaning 'Big Town') but early European explorers corrupted it to become
Qua Iboe. Today, Aqua Obio includes Mkpanak and its neighbouring settlements. The river itself originates from the
Umuahia Hills in Abia State and travels for about 150 km before it
flows N-S and then empties into the Atlantic Ocean through Eket,
Ibeno LGA of Akwa Ibom State. Its maximum depth is about 10 metres.
There are fears that discharges from the effluent treatment plants
of the nearby Exxon-Mobil company are poisoning the fish
and other organisms in the river with heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium, lead and
chromium. That's according to a very detailed study carried out in 2006 by scholars from the Medical Biochemistry, Chemistry and Animal Science of the Imo State
University and the Federal
University of Technology, Owerri.
See the references if you are interested in the study. Ok, before I forget, Qua Iboe was also the
site of Qua Iboe Mission, the third Protestant Church to arrive Nigeria in 1887. The interesting
thing here is that the mission was founded by Samuel Alexander Bill,
a British missionary and a
Member of the British Empire who devoted his life to preaching to the Efik and Annang speaking
people of the area. He is buried at Ibeno on the bank of the Qua Iboe River beside his wife, Gracie and his very first convert, David Ekong.
"Aqua" is a Latin word borrowed into English. In Latin (and now English), it means "water". The same spelling (by virtue of its pronunciation) was adopted by the early European missionaries for the Efik or Ibibio word for "big" or "large". This is where the similarity ends. When Efik became a written language, the correct spelling "akwa" was eventually adopted and is still used. However, proper names with the old spelling remained, for example, Qua Iboe or Iquo. "Akwa" represents the actual phonetic rendition of the word for "big/large" in Efik or Ibibio. There is therefore no semantic connection between "aqua" (Latin/English) and "aqua" (old spelling) or "akwa" (later spelling of the word). A synonym for "akwa" in Efik or Ibibio is "akamba". The generic word for water is "mmong" (Efik) or "mmoong" (Ibibio" . An expanse of water such as the sea is called "akpa". To indicate its largeness/wideness, the word "akwa" is added, hence "akwa akpa". The ocean, by virtue of its largeness, may also be referred to as "akwa akpa". "Inyang" is also another word for a body of water larger than a stream.
This was how the name Akwa ibom was originated. I hope you now understand what Akwa ibom now means.
Akwa ibom- the land of promise.
To all Akwa ibomite that is reading this I say a big DAKADA TO YOU ALL
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