Headdress with female figure,

before 1968

Both private and institutional collections tend to designate objects like this one as Eket but little information about them, or about the arts and cultures of the Cross River region of Nigeria in general, is known. While this headdress may have been made by an Eket artist, the performance of the mask in an Ogbom dance to venerate the deity Ala, as many museums suggest, is not consistent with conventional Eket practices .

These objects were mostly obtained from southeastern Nigeria during and immediately after the Nigerian-Biafran War, also known as the Nigerian Civil War (July 6, 1967–January 15, 1970 ), by European dealers who were interested in them for their commercial value. These dealers often employed local traders to bring objects across the border from southeastern Nigeria into neighboring Cameroon. These traders would then sell the objects to European and American museums and private collectors accompanied by confusing and unsubstantiated information, which is often repeated in institutional contexts as fact.

In an effort to set the record straight, I embarked on research through family members in Eket. There I met Mr. Alfonso John Bassey, one of the original artists who created objects similar to the Princeton headdress for ritual use in his community. He informed me that from about 1970 to 1987, he was regularly commissioned to create copies of ritual objects by a French dealer, who convinced Mr. Bassey to sell him disused and discarded ritual objects for the booming trade in art from southeastern Nigeria that followed the Civil War . Mr. Bassey showed me a book published by the French dealer that included Eket and Ibibio objects obtained from him.

According to Mr. Bassey, the name of the object in Princeton’s collection is Obubom. It is used to perform in an annual festival venerating the water deity Ntuk Una Idi, celebrated every June in Esit Eket among the Afagha clan—a family lineage to which I also belong.

As to why this Eket object was associated in literature and in museums with the Ogbom festival celebrated by Igbo communities, my guess lies in a slippage of understanding between languages. The name Obubom sounds phonetically similar to Ogbom to a non-native speaker of the Eket dialect and Igbo language. I believe that without verifying this distinction, the error has been repeated.

Victor Ekpuk, Artist, Washington, DC