Social Relations and the "Trinity" in Ibibio Kinship: The Case of Ibibio Immigrants in Akpabuyo (Efikland), Nigeria

Abstract

The paper discusses cultural continuity and change in kinship relations involving ayeyin (grandchild), ukod (in-law), and imaan (blood brother) relationships among Ibibio immigrants in Efikland. Mixed marriages involving the Efik hosts and Ibibio immigrants are also examined in relation to this "trinity." The trinity constitutes a cultural fulcrum upon which Ibibio kinship, ethnic identity, and intergroup relations revolve. Infraction of its tenets is supernaturally sanctioned. Social change seems to have affected the three kinship relations and their contents only minimally, even among Ibibio immigrants in distant Akpabuyo in Efikland, in spite of several problems experienced in the process of living together. When two or more groups from different sociocultural backgrounds interact, people are more predisposed to abandon or significantly modify aspects of their culture that are not supernaturally protected, and so do not threaten their existence or survival as individuals and as a corporate entity. To break the normative expectations of the trinity inside or outside Ibibioland is to destroy Ibibio ethnic identity.