By Okoi Obono-Obla
Someone reacting to my post, in which I stated that the original home of the Yakurr people of Cross River State of Nigeria was in Manyu Division of the present Republic of Cameroon, asked whether there are remnants of the Yakurr people in Cameroon today.
My response is as follows:
Eyong Tarkang Enoh (born 23 March 1986) is a Cameroonian former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He belongs to the Ekoi or Bayangi/Manyu ethnic group of the Southwest Region of Cameroon.
Karl Etta Eyong is a Cameroonian professional footballer who plays as a forward for La Liga club Levante UD and the Cameroon national team. He is from the Manyu (Bayangi-related) area of the Southwest Region.
Beatrice Eyong belongs to the Ekoi group from the Southwest Region of Cameroon. She is currently the UN Women Country Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS.
Surnames such as Eyong, Etta, Ayuk and Bisong are archetypal names from the Manyu area.
The Ekoi people span the border of southwestern Cameroon (especially Manyu Division) and southeastern Nigeria (Cross River State). Because of these deep pre-colonial ties, names like Eyong are heavily shared between communities in Cameroon and Nigeria. Etta/Ettah is also common in Abi, Boki , Yakurr, Ikom and Etung Local Government Areas of Cross River State.
The area from which the Yakurr people migrated in the 16th century is possibly in the region around present-day Manyu Division of southwestern Cameroon, where Eyong Tarkang Enoh, Beatrice Eyong and Karl Etta Eyong all originate from.
The spread of the name Okoi goes beyond Nigeria. Major General Guy Blanchard Okoï, born 20 March 1961 in Djambala, Plateaux, is a Congolese major general who has been Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) since October 2012.
Raissa Okoi is a senior journalist and bilingual broadcaster at the BBC (working with BBC Afrique) who is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Full name: Raissa Okoi (also spelled Raissa Okoy). Background: Born in Brazzaville and raised in Kinshasa, DR Congo. Education: Studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris, followed by political science and a degree in political and social communication. Career: Spent 12 years with the pan-African channel Vox Africa before joining the BBC as a senior journalist based in Dakar, Senegal.
Okoi is my first name and is a common name among the Biase, Abi, Yakurr and Obubra peoples. Obono is another surname borne by people from Equatorial Guinea and the Fang people of Gabon. One such person is Danièle Obono, a member of the French National Assembly who was born in Gabon.
African names are deeply ethnic and carry strong connotations. While kinship, family ties or friendship can cause people from different places to bear the same names, the phenomenon is inextricably more complex than such simple analysis, assumption or rationalization.
