According to some scholars, the Oron are related to the Ibibio; the Oron insist they are not. Estimated to number over one hundred thousand, the Oron peoples live on the west bank of the Cross River in southeastern Nigeria. Village elders rule their Oron communities while the Ekpe societies (secret associations of which only the men are members and charged with maintaining social and political control) enforce the rules of the village and control the distribution of wealth. The Oron peoples create ancestor figures, many of which were destroyed or stolen in the 1970s during the Biafran War.

Excerpt from

Roslyn A. Walker, The Arts of Africa at the Dallas Museum of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), 303-304.

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