The Twin-Sign: Reclaiming an Indigenous Theology of Liberation in West Africa

The Twin-Sign: Reclaiming an Indigenous Theology of Liberation in West Africa

Author: Da Effiong Daniel

African Holy Land Research Initiative

Great-Grandson of Ukpong Ibanga

Abstract

For over a century, the abolition of twin killings among the Efik, Ibibio, and Annang peoples of southeastern Nigeria has been memorialized as a colonial humanitarian parable, with Scottish missionary Mary Slessor cast as its singular European savior. Drawing from recovered oral history and family testimony, this article dismantles that monologue through what I term "testimonial historiography"—the centering of indigenous narrative as an authoritative counter-archive. I argue that twins were understood within indigenous cosmology not as mere abominations but as powerful ontological "signs" (Luke 2:34) whose inherent nature threatened the ritual efficacy of deities like the Ikpaisong. The article reveals a decisive act of sacred defiance in 1795—generations before Slessor's arrival—when a woman named Anwada Umoette saved her twins by seeking sanctuary in the ancestral boundary forest between Abanannang and Owokndeden, believed to be the spiritually volatile zone where grandchildren's souls intersect with ancestral powers. By enacting a living theological counter-argument, she initiated the deity's spiritual unmasking. Tracing an unbroken line of indigenous agency from 1795 to the 1964 ritual confrontation led by my grandfather, this work reframes the historical actors: missionaries become crucial late-stage allies in a war already declared, entering a field long prepared for harvest. The liberation of twins emerges not as a gift of colonial modernity but as a theological revolution seeded from within the culture's own deepest symbolic resources.

Introduction: Positionality as Methodology

I write not as a detached academic observer, but as a great-grandson of the Ukpong Ibanga lineage—the direct descendants of the twins whose survival anchors this history. My positionality is not a bias to be bracketed but the epistemological foundation of what I propose as testimonial historiography: an approach that treats family oral tradition as a legitimate, even privileged, archive for reconstructing histories marginalized by colonial record-keeping. The dominant narrative of twin liberation in Calabar—repeated in school textbooks, missionary hagiographies, and popular media—presents Mary Slessor's arrival in 1876 as Year Zero. While her documented courage is undeniable, this framing perpetuates what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie termed "the danger of a single story," rendering African communities passive recipients awaiting European enlightenment.

Our family's oral history, corroborated by community elders, reveals a more complex, theologically rich narrative: a spiritual war in which twins themselves—perceived as "destroyers of juju"—were unwitting agents of a deity's undoing. This is not a story of European reason replacing African "superstition," but of an internal spiritual insurgency that external allies later helped consolidate. It is the story of a "sign spoken against" (Luke 2:34) and the long, defiant answer to that condemnation—an answer that began not in a Scottish mission house, but in the sacred groves of Annang cosmology.

Part I: The Indigenous Theology of Twins as Divine "Sign"

The Ontological Threat

The key to understanding this history lies in the indigenous perception of twins' ontological status. They were not seen merely as biological anomalies or carriers of misfortune, but as entities whose very presence disrupted the spiritual economy. As preserved in elder testimonies and proverbial wisdom: "No matter how powerful the juju may be, when twins come near or touch it, the power will be lost." This belief positions twins as bearers of what might be termed a neutralizing grace—a higher sovereignty that destabilized the controlled ritual marketplace of the Ikpaisong priesthood. Their bodies became sites of spiritual interference, automatically desacralizing the very artifacts of divine authority. This perception explains the extreme societal response: the threat was not merely social but cosmological.

The Ikpaisong's Fatal Logic

In ordering the destruction of twins "for the preservation of its powers," the Ikpaisong priesthood enacted a self-defeating logic remarkably parallel to that of King Herod in the Gospel narrative (Matthew 2:16). Both sought to destroy a perceived threat to their authority, only to initiate the very process of their own unmasking. The persecution was thus a political-theological act—an attempt to maintain monopolistic control over spiritual power by eliminating what was perceived as a competing, superior force. In this light, the killing of twins was not primitive barbarism but a calculated (if ultimately flawed) strategy of theological conservation.

Part II: The Seed of Defiance: Anwada Umoette's Sacramental Revolt (1795)

The Forbidden Sanctuary

The pivotal rupture occurs not in the 19th-century missionary era, but in 1795—a date preserved not in colonial ledgers but in the meticulous chronology of family oral tradition. Anwada Umoette's flight upon bearing twins was an act of theological audacity that redefined the possible. She did not merely hide; she sought refuge in the most ritually potent and violently restricted zone of Ikpaisong authority—the boundary area between Abanannang and Owokndeden, a space considered the most spiritually dangerous in the region.

This was no ordinary forest; it was understood as territory whose spiritual powers actively demanded the blood of any woman who entered, enforcing a lethal taboo that transcended menstrual impurity. As a daughter of Ikot Nsekong—the very village where the Ikpaisong dwelt—her violation was not just of general law but of her own community's most sacred prohibitions.

Yet Anwada Umoette did not just enter. She dwelt there. She ate from that land. She and her children survived. Her immunity constituted a public, visible suspension of cosmic law as her community understood it. The powers that demanded blood from women were rendered null before her. This was more than evasion; it was sacramental transfiguration—the zone of ritual death becoming, through her divinely-protected presence, a zone of provision.

The Proverbial Transgression

To comprehend the full weight of her act, one must understand it through Annang proverbial wisdom:

"Owo itiehe ke adunekom ita ekom."

("You do not sit at the root of the ekom tree and eat the ekom fruit.")

This proverb encapsulates a fundamental natural-spiritual law: one cannot consume the essence of a thing from its sacred source without catastrophic consequence. For a twin-mother (the ultimate defilement in the deity's eyes) to not only sit at this spiritual root but to draw sustenance from it and thrive was to violate the most foundational taboo. She performed the cosmologically impossible: consuming life from the very place ordained for her death.

The Theological Declaration and the Naming as Testimony

Her physical survival was matched by verbal revolution. As eyewitness accounts transmitted through generations attest, she was the first woman in living memory to publicly declare:

"I have not given birth to ghosts, but to children."

With this statement, she rejected the core ontological lie underpinning the killings. Her reported readiness to die with her children (not abominations)—her "watchword" being a conviction akin to faith in Christ—suggests an intuitive theology of innocence and divine protection that prefigured Christian missionary messages by nearly a century.

This rejection is further encoded in the twins' names. According to Annang belief, "idiok ayen ekot eno eka"—a child born under difficult or rejected circumstances is named after the mother. True to this, the twins were not named after their father, Idung Obong, who, like many, wanted them not. They were named after their mother: Akpan Anwada and Ukpong Anwada. The name Ukpong itself is profoundly significant, meaning "soul" or "spirit." Thus, the child literally named "Soul" was taken to dwell in the most spiritually contested territory.

The Ancestral Verdict and Continuous Legacy

Her sanctuary in this dangerous inter-forest zone provided the final, decisive context. This area was specifically believed to be spiritually volatile, where the souls of grandchildren and ancestral powers intersected. Anwada Umoette, a daughter of Ikot Nsekong where the Ikpaisong dwelt, brought her children—who were therefore grandchildren of Ikot Nsekong—into this spiritually charged space. Therefore, the twins were not merely hidden; they were placed directly within the cosmological geography that their very existence was believed to defile and neutralize.

Her survival there presented the community with an irresolvable spiritual paradox: either the Ikpaisong's most severe edicts were powerless, or a higher authority had granted unprecedented dispensation. By dwelling in the forbidden zone, she didn't just defy the juju—she enacted its defilement through her sustained, protected presence. The very act of her survival with twins in that space performed the spiritual unmasking of the Ikpaisong's claimed power.

This unmaking established a direct lineage of witness and survival. Ukpong Anwada's family—my family—has lived continuously from that moment to this day. I stand as a great-grandson of that defiance, a living testament to the truth that the twins were not ghosts but children, and that their preservation marked not a cultural violation but a theological correction written into the land itself.

Part III: The Divine Strategy: Hidden Growth in the Enemy's House

The "Moses" Precedent

The survival of Anwada Umoette's twins, Akpan and Ukpong Ibanga, initiated what I term the divine strategy of interior subversion. Crucially, the family that secretly protected her controlled the very forest where twins were traditionally taken to die. This detail transforms the narrative from coincidence to providential design, mirroring the biblical story of Moses being hidden in Pharaoh's own household (Exodus 2:1–10). The ultimate contaminant was nurtured within the contaminant-fearing system's own infrastructure.

The Slow Unmaking

The twins' hidden growth within the Ikpaisong's spiritual domain enacted a gradual, inexorable draining of the deity's perceived power. Their mere existence in that sacred space—year after year, generation after generation—constituted a continuous, living fulfillment of the belief that "twins weaken juju." The liberation was not proclaimed from outside, but sown internally, its roots slowly undermining the foundation of the oppressive system decades before any missionary arrived to witness the visible cracks.

Part IV: The Harvest: Missionaries as Allies in a Prepared Field

Mary Slessor: The Strategic Harvester (c. 1876–1915)

When external actors entered this spiritual landscape, they encountered not a blank slate of "barbarism" but a field ripe for harvest—a theological conflict already in advanced stages. Arriving in 1876, Mary Slessor did not introduce the idea that twins were fully human; she encountered communities where that truth was already living clandestinely in family memories and in the physical presence of survivors like the grown Ibanga twins. Her monumental achievement was not conceptual but political and logistical: leveraging colonial authority, creating physical sanctuaries, and providing public advocacy that gave social and legal force to a spiritual reality already present. In the biblical metaphor she would have recognized, she was the laborer who entered to reap where she had not sown (John 4:37), gathering into safety a harvest whose seeds were planted in 1795.

Dr. Henry Farrar & Udoekong Ukpong: Executing the Decree (1964)

The dramatic climax came in 1964, but its actors were direct products of the 1795 event. Udoekong Ukpong, my grandfather and great-grandson of the preserved twins, having encountered the evangelical message, recognized its resonance with his family's hidden history. He brought Nigerian evangelist Dr. Henry Farrar to confront the Ikpaisong deity directly.

Farrar's declaration—"Ikpaisong, you are dead!"—was not a battle cry but a funeral oration. It was the public, ritual certification of a spiritual death that had occurred functionally in 1795, when the deity's power was first successfully defied in its own sanctuary. The "explosion" reportedly following the declaration symbolized not the moment of death, but the moment the long-decayed structure finally collapsed into visibility.

Conclusion: A Model for Decolonizing Historiography

The story of twin liberation in Annang land offers more than historical correction; it provides a model for re-reading encounters between indigenous cultures and external forces across the colonial world.

Three Principles of Testimonial Historiography

1. Liberation is Theologically Inaugurated from Within

      Sustainable transformation begins when individuals leverage their own culture's deepest symbols to stage counter-arguments. Anwada Umoette did not reject Annang spirituality; she appealed from its lower courts (Ikpaisong) to its supreme court (ancestral powers in Abanannang).

2. External Actors are Amplifiers, Not Originators

      Slessor and Farrar played essential but distinct roles as protector and confronter. Their effectiveness was predicated on the prior, internal erosion of the taboo's legitimacy—an erosion begun by indigenous actors.

3. Agency Forms an Unbroken Chain

      The continuum from Anwada (the protector, 1795) to Ukpong Ibanga (the preserved twin, whose name means "Soul") to Udoekong Ukpong (the grandson who brought the judge, 1964) demonstrates an uninterrupted lineage of indigenous agency driving the narrative across centuries.

The Restored Narrative

Therefore, the narrative must shift from "Mary Slessor saved the twins" to:

"The twins, as divine signs, were instruments of their own liberation. Their inherent power unmasked the Ikpaisong, in a process championed first by courageous indigenous families and later secured by strategic external allies."

As a descendant, I bear witness that the true genesis of this liberation lies not in the mission compound in Itu, but in the sacred boundary forest between Abanannang and Owokndeden, where a woman dared to sit at the forbidden root and eat its fruit—and live. She brought a child named "Soul" to the dwelling place of souls, defying a death decree and, in doing so, authored a new chapter in our people's theology of life. This story restores theological and historical complexity to the African past, reminding a global audience that the seeds of freedom are most often sown, against all odds, by the very people they are meant to liberate.

Sources & Methodology

Primary Sources (Oral History)

· Testimony of Elder Peter Essien Amakpa Umoette (recorded 2008)

· Narrative of Daniel Ukpong Ibanga (recorded 2000)

· Account of Udofia Uyot/Emmansion Akpan (recorded 2003)

· Testimony of Ime Eyara (recorded 2009)

· Analysis of Sunday Jumbo (recorded 2019)

· Continuous lineage testimony of the Ukpong Ibanga family

Archival & Published Sources

· Daniel, Da Effiong. Ikpaisong the Dead God (2025). African Holy Land Publications.

· Daniel, Da Effiong. African Holy Land: Theological and Historical Reclamation (2023).

· Missionary records and biographies concerning Mary Slessor

· Documentation of Dr. Henry (Hendry) Farrar's evangelistic campaigns

· Anthropological studies on Annang/Ibibio cosmology

· Historical analyses of pre-colonial ritual practices in the Cross River region

· Additional resources: virgingeneration.blogspot.com

Theoretical Frames

· Testimonial historiography as counter-archival practice

· Postcolonial theory

· Subaltern studies and agency recovery

· Indigenous hermeneutics and ontological pluralism

· African Holy Land theological framework

Note on Translation: All Annang proverbs and terms have been translated in consultation with native speakers, with original phrasing preserved where semantically crucial.

Dedication

This article is dedicated to the memory of Anwada Umoette and all unnamed women who defied death to protect their children, and to my grandfather, Udoekong Ukpong, who helped speak the final word. Their courage continues to inspire the work of African Holy Land in reclaiming our theological and historical sovereignty.

Da Effiong Daniel

Founder, African Holy Land Research Initiative

Contact: African Holy Land Research Initiative | Email: [Contact Information] | Website: [Website Information]

Citation: Daniel, Da Effiong. "The Twin-Sign: Reclaiming an Indigenous Theology of Liberation in West Africa." African Holy Land Publications (2024).