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Calabar

Capital city of Cross River State, Nigeria

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Hand sculpture roundabout, Calabar, Cross River state
MediaMOF · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Calabar was once described as the tourism capital of Nigeria, especially due to several initiatives implemented during the administration of Donald Duke as the Governor of Cross River State (1999–2007). The city became the cleanest and most environmentally friendly city in Nigeria.

Administratively, the city is divided into Calabar Municipal and Calabar South Local Government Areas. It has an area of 406 square kilometres (157 sq mi) and, as of the 2006 census, a population of 371,022. Both LGAs together had an estimated population of 571,500 in 2022.

History

Seaport, slave trade

When Portuguese explorers in the 15th century reached this part of the Guinea coast, they called the tribes of the area "Calabar". These historic inhabitants were Quas, Efuts, and Efiks. Efik people migrated from the area of the Niger River to the shores of Calabar. They were fleeing civil war with their kindred and the Ibibio people.

Since the 16th century, Calabar has served as an international seaport, exporting such goods as palm oil. During the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, it became a major port for shipment of African slaves to the Americas. The Spanish maintain the Calabar designation.

Tribes around that region were taken in as slaves for slave trade. Such tribes included the Igbo tribes (communities) who lived around that region at the time. Those minority tribes were subject to slave raids by more powerful tribes or ethnic groups in the region.

From 1725 until 1750, roughly 17,000 enslaved Africans were sold from Calabar to European slave traders; from 1772 to 1775, the number soared to more than 62,000. Old Calabar (Duke Town) and Creek Town, 16 kilometres (10 mi) northeast, were crucial towns in the trade of slaves in that era.

In 1807, Great Britain abolished the slave trade. In 1815 HMS Comus, as part of the British blockade of Africa, sailed into Duke Town, where she captured seven Spanish and Portuguese slave ships.

John Jea, an enslaved African American, came from the area. He later became a writer. A small mulatto community of merchants was located here that had links to missionary and other merchant colonies in Igboland, Lagos, and across the Atlantic.

In 1846, Scottish Presbyterians established a mission station in Calabar. Among the missionaries, Hope Waddell, who worked in Calabar from 1845 to 1858, and Mary Slessor, who evangelized Christianity in Calabar from 1876 to 1915, worked to improve treatment by and among the native peoples. They influenced many Efik people to convert to Christianity.

They tried to change or abolish the following traditional practices:

  • Killing newborn twins,
  • Human sacrifice at the death of village elders (to provide servants for them in the afterlife),
  • "Judgment of God", in which suspects in crime were poisoned, and convicted if they fell ill or died

They founded a school to provide secondary education to Africans. They also worked to protect water supplies and limit mosquitoes to contain yellow fever epidemics.

Waddell and Slessor are still honoured in Calabar today; streets and squares in the city were named for them.

Colonial times

On 10 September 1884, Queen Victoria signed a treaty of protection with the king and chiefs of Akwa Akpa, known to Europeans as Old Calabar—then the official title to distinguish it from New Calabar to the east. This enabled the United Kingdom to exercise control over the entire territory around Calabar, including Bakassi. Calabar was the headquarter of the European administration in the Niger Delta until 1906 when the seat of government was moved to Lagos.

Calabar developed earlier, albeit less vigorously than Lagos, with which it is sometimes compared because of some parallels. Calabar has the following achievements:

  • First Nigerian city to have a secondary school (the Hope Waddell Training Institution),
  • first Nigerian city with a hospital (St Margaret's),
  • first Nigerian female pharmacist,
  • first Nigerian female politician (Margaret Ekpo),
  • first Nigerian librarian,
  • first native professor (Eyo Ita),
  • first Nigerian city with a post office,
  • first Nigerian town with a barracks,
  • first Nigerian city with a network of paved roads,
  • first Nigerian city with a botanical garden (now derelict),
  • first Nigerian city with a monorail (now also derelict),
  • "Nigeria's cleanest city"

From 1914 until the 1960s, a mail steamer of the Liverpool Elder-Dempster Line called at Calabar every month. In addition to letters and parcels, it also delivered newspapers, and cargo and carried up to 100 passengers to Lagos, Port Harcourt and Calabar.

In 1922, British governor Clifford established the Legislative Council. The four elected members were from Lagos (3) and Calabar (1). The Legislative Council enacted laws for the colony and the protectorate of Southern Nigeria. It also approved the annual budget for the entire country. The four elected members were the first Africans to be elected to a parliamentary body in British West Africa.

The Clifford Constitution led to the formation of political parties in Nigeria. Herbert Macaulay, a newspaper owner and grandson of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, in 1923 founded the first Nigerian political party, the Nigeria National Democratic Party. It remained the strongest party in the elections until 1939.

In 1926, Governor Graeme Thomson attempted to introduce a poll tax in southeast Nigeria, including Calabar. It would reduce the number of Africans eligible to vote in elections. The people reacted with strong protests, which Nigerians call the "Women's War", for many of its leaders, and the British termed the "Aba Riots". These riots spread from the neighbouring town of Aba to Calabar. Several administrative buildings were destroyed and more than 50 women died at the hands of colonial forces.

Biafra War

After independence in 1960, tensions increased between the North and South areas of the country, which were strongly affiliated with Muslims and Christians, respectively. In addition, the South had a concentration of educated people who were politically powerful and had a history of trade and interaction with other communities.

The Southeastern area decided to become independent and declared itself as the Republic of Biafra in 1967. It included Calabar. In October 1967, an armada of the Nigerian Navy left the harbour of Bonny on a naval campaign en route to Calabar. The ships carried troops of the Nigerian 3rd Naval Division under the command of Colonel Benjamin Adekunle. At this time, Calabar was being defended by the 9th Battalion of Biafrans under the command of Major Ogbo Oji. On 17 October, the Biafran defences on the beaches of Calabar came under heavy air and naval fire. Less than 24 hours later, the Nigerian 8th Battalion under the command of Major Ochefu went ashore at Lokoja and captured the Calabar cement factory.

Later that day, the Nigerian 33rd Battalion landed on the beach at Calabar. The Biafran resistance was overwhelmed. After Nigerian troops advanced into Calabar from three different positions, bloody hand-to-hand fighting ensued. After suffering heavy losses, the remaining mercenaries retreated northward and fled Biafra. After three years, the country reunited under the Nigerian central government.

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