A Facebook user, Inemesit Solomon Uwak has explained where Efik and Ibibio belongs while writing on "Akwa Ibom State and Calabar is not a language."
AKWA IBOM AND CALABAR IS NOT A LANGUAGE
A MUST READ;
It is our dire responsibility as Ibibio sons and daughters to enlighten people that there's a great disparity between language/ethnicity and statehood. Out of sheer ignorance or confusion, you often hear somebody say any of the following, "I am Akwa Ibom", "I speak Akwa Ibom", "she is a Calabar woman", "do you speak Calabar?" etc. So dastardly alarming is the fact that you now hear an advert on the radio saying something like, 'Akwa Ibom language'. Excuse me, there's a proper noun for the language of Akwa Ibom.
Nobody speaks Calabar or Akwa Ibom, rather the indigenous people of Cross River and Akwa Ibom states speak IBIBIO as their lingua franca. Yes, Efik Came out from ibibio but it doesn't mean Akwa Ibom or Calabar is one's native language or tribe. If I hailed from Lagos state could I now say I speak 'Lagos'? Or if I hailed from Ebonyi could I now say I speak 'Ebonyi'?
Ibibio itself is one language with many dialects (or tongues if you prefer to put it that way), intelligible to all groups who understand 'di dia mkpo', hence it is a unifying language serving as a flag or umbrella entity for the IBIBIO ethnicity.
Please, wherever you are, wherever you go, whatever you do, be a merchant of light and teach all nations that Akwa Ibom and Calabar are not languages but IBIBIO they meant. Don't intertwine statehood and ethnicity together!
So next time you hear someone say, "he is speaking Calabar" or "she speaks Akwa Ibom fluently", promptly correct them and say, "nobody speaks Calabar or Akwa Ibom, rather they speak IBIBIO.."
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