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Despite the impressive array and quality of work that has been done on Calabar, our understanding of some of the episodes in the area has been distorted by the continuous recycling of faulty interpretations and conclusions in foundational texts as well as the inadequate attention to, or uncritical reading of primary records. A case in point, which this study addresses, is the abolition of the killing of twins. One commonly hears in Cross River State and beyond, both in the academic and public domains of knowledge, that it was the legendary Mary Slessor of Scotland who stopped the killing of twins in Calabar. This is the conclusion in all secondary publications on the subject; and this is taught to students at all levels of education in Nigeria. Influenced largely by these commonplace assumptions, which are not supported by concrete evidence, the Cross River State Government in Nigeria has strategically exhibited an effigy of Slessor carrying twins in one of its state capital's busiest streets, Mary Slessor Avenue, named after this towering figure. This effigy, which was constructed several decades ago, has continued to give undue impetus to the unfounded claim that Mary Slessor was the most important dramatis personae in the campaign for the abolition of the killing of twins in Calabar.
The present state of knowledge has not only swept under the carpet a great company of European men and women who devoted themselves to the fight against "barbaric" customs in Calabar long before the arrival of Miss Slessor in the area, but also excluded the astute and commendable involvement of some Efik people, which was crucial and decisive in many regards. Exclusion of the role of a man like King Eyo Honesty II, whom Europeans of the mid-nineteenth century in Calabar appropriately recognized as the hero of their accomplishments, including the abolition of twin-killing, distorts a substantial portion of history in which Calabar monarchs were critical agents of change. Historian Emmanuel Ayandele avers that "no contemporary chief in Nigeria could destroy important religious and social basis of indigenous society in order to patronize missionary enterprise as Eyo II did, and so made the missionaries revolutionary programme succeed in a short time."1 Support for Ayandele's assertion shows up in the words of Consul T....