Welcome to Akwa Ibom State!
Akwa Ibom State is in South South Nigeria. Akwa Ibom State is a state in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria, bordered on the east by Cross River State, on the west by Rivers State and Abia State, and on the south by the Atlantic Ocean. The state takes its name from the Kwa Ibo River which bisects the state before flowing into the Bight of Bonny. Akwa Ibom was split from Cross River State in 1987 with its capital as Uyo and with 31 local government areas.
Of the 36 states, Akwa Ibom is the 30th largest in the area and fifteenth most populous with an estimated population of nearly 5.5 million as of 2016. Geographically, the state is divided between the Central African mangroves in the coastal far south and the Cross-Niger transition forests in the rest of the state. Other important geographical features are the Imo and Cross rivers which flow along Akwa Ibom's eastern and western borders, respectively while the Kwa Ibo River bisects the state before flowing into the Bight of Bonny. In the southeast corner of the state is the Stubb's Creek Forest Reserve, a heavily threatened wildlife reserve that contains declining crocodile, putty-nosed monkey, red-capped mangabey, and Sclater's guenon populations along with potentially extirpated populations of African leopard and Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee. Offshore, the state is also biodiverse as there are large fish populations along with various cetacean species including bottlenose dolphins, pantropical spotted dolphins, humpback whales, and killer whales. Modern-day Akwa Ibom State has been inhabited by various ethnic groups for hundreds of years, primarily the closely related Ibibio, Anaang, and Oron peoples in the North-East, North-West, and Southern zones of the state, respectively. In the pre-colonial period, what is now Akwa Ibom State was divided into various city-states like the Ibom Kingdom and Akwa Akpa before the latter become a British protectorate in 1884 as a part of the Oil Rivers Protectorate. In the early 1900s, the British actually gained formal control of the area before incorporating the protectorate (now renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate) into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate which later merged into British Nigeria, after the merger, much of modern-day Akwa Ibom became a center of anti-colonial resistance during the Women's War and political activism through the Ibibio State Union. After independence in 1960, the area of now-Akwa Ibom was a part of the post-independence Eastern Region until 1967 when the region was split and the area became part of the South-Eastern State. Less than two months afterward, the Igbo-majority former Eastern Region attempted to secede as the state of Biafra, in the three-year-long Nigerian Civil War, now-Akwa Ibom was hard-fought over in the prelude to the Invasion of Port Harcourt while people from Akwa Ibom were persecuted by Biafran forces as they were mainly non-Igbo. At the war's end and the reunification of Nigeria, the South-Eastern State was reformed until 1976 when it was renamed Cross River State. Eleven years later, Cross River State was divided with western Cross River being broken off to form the new Akwa Ibom State. Economically, Akwa Ibom State is based on the production of crude oil and natural gas as the highest oil-producing state in the country. Key minor industries involve agriculture as the state has substantial cocoyam, yam, and plantain crops along with fishing and heliciculture. Despite its vast oil revenues, Akwa Ibom has the seventeenth highest Human Development Index in the country in large part due to years of systemic corruption.