ORAL TRADITION AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS: NSIT AND HER NEIGHBOURS’ EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Traditions of origin and migrations of various Ibibio groups – Nsit and her neighbours – reveal that, indeed, they originated from a common source, and that they must have stayed together for centuries, but dispersed after series of wars among them, or due to craves for spaces and food. Hence, the reason why Nsit and majority of her neighbours share a common tradition of origin from Usakedet; and a few like Ikono, Itak, Etoi, Ndiya and so on, explicitly point to Nsit as their place of dispersal. Also, every Ibibio group has at least a tradition of her origin, migration and of her relationship with other groups within (and sometimes, without) Ibibio. Although these traditions vary as a result of environmental and social influences, but their conclusions still point somewhatly to one direction as the root and route through which they penetrated their present locales. The paper relies on interdisciplinary method of research. The reason for the reliance has been that this method gives the research the impetus to foray into related disciplines such as linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and so on, for information gathering. The finding and conclusion of the paper point to the fact that the contents of various oral traditions of Nsit people and their neighbours expose them as people of the same stock who had related many millennia before the advent of colonial rule, which is why they share the same traditions.