Ikot-Abasi: History
Because of its location at the break in the mangrove swamp and rain forest of the eastern Niger River delta, it was a collecting point for slaves in the 19th century.
Ikot Abasi, a community in then Calabar Province, for good reasons.
Although Ikot Abasi was already on the world map before 1929, the women's uprising against Nigeria's colonial rulers in 1929 was to provide a further push into prominence for this town, then already popular as the site of a boat yard, seat of a British consulate.
Three-quarters of a century ago, Ikot Abasi was the town whose women bravely took exception to what they considered exploitative excesses of the British rulers of the then non-independent Nigeria.
In 1995, the year of that Beijing conference, the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos (NGA) put out book about the women's revolt of 1929. The book, which features contributions from academics like Prof. Monday E. Noah, Prof. Obaro Ikime and Chief N.U. Akpan, documents how one of the women killed by the colonial forces during the 1929 protest was the mother of a boy, Egbert. That boy would later grow into a jurist and administrator, justice Egbert Udo Udoma. Such was the impact of the reforms that trailed the women's protest that the March 8, 1933 issue of the Daily Times described the changes as "the great charter of liberty for the people" but the prize did not come easy. Prof. M. E. Ekpo, another of the book's contributors, revealed that in the Calabar Province alone, more than 53 people were killed beside over 50 others injured.
Launched in 1989, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the uprising, the women's revolt of 1929 is an anthology of select papers from a national symposium on the subject, which took place in Port-Harcourt in 1982. According to Dr Paul Chike Dike, editor of the anthology, "An attempt by the (protesting) women to move nearer the colonial troops led to the order to shoot, in which over 24 women were killed".