Ibibio Tee · Plate I · The Heartland · Pre-Order (Ships ASAP)

Ibibio is the largest people of Akwa Ibom, of the Kwa Iboe heartland around Uyo. The plate renders the Ekpo mask as a cartographic seal over the survey contours of the heartland. Navy shirt carries cream ink; white shirt carries deep survey navy.

Hero cut of Plate I from the Three Waters Collection. NINE PEOPLES · THREE WATERS.

History

The Ibibio are counted among the oldest peoples of southeastern Nigeria still living on their ancestral ground, farming and trading the Kwa Iboe heartland for many centuries before any coastal contact. They built no kingdom and needed none: government ran through village councils, lineage heads and the masked authority of Ekpo, whose ancestral masks enforced law with a force no throne could match. In 1928 they founded the Ibibio Union — one of colonial Nigeria's first great ethnic self-help movements, famous for taxing itself to send its sons and daughters abroad on scholarship — turning an ancient people into pioneers of modern education.