| Also Known As: Afakani
Description:
The Defaka (called Afakani by their neighbours, the Nkoroo) are a small ethnic group of south-western Nigeria, numbering fewer than a thousand people. They live in the eastern part of the Niger Delta, Rivers State, Bonny District; part of them in the Defaka ward of Nkoroo town in close relationship with the Nkoroo people, and another part of them on the isolated island of Iwoma Nkoro, near Kono. Present neighbours of the Defaka, apart from the Nkoroo people, are: at Iwoma, the Ogoni people (speakers of Ogoni/Kana/Khana), and to the east, the Obolo. The Defaka have a less cordial relationship with these peoples than with the Nkoroo.
The Defaka language is being gradually pushed to extinction as they are shifting to the language of the Nkoroo people. At most 200 speakers of Defaka, most elderly people, are left. All Defaka people speak Nkoroo; most use it as their primary language, even when talking with other Defaka speakers.
The Defaka have always been a people small in number, and their history is a long narrative of harassment by numerically superior neighbours and subsequent migrations. According to oral histories reported in Jenewari (1983), the original home of the Defaka was..... full article at Wikipedia |
