"I first heard about it around 2001, when I was going through the museum and saw this very interesting correspondence between Queen Victoria and King Eyamba," said 60-year-old Donald Duke, who carried out extensive renovations on the national museum and also established a slave trade museum in the Cross River state capital city of Calabar, when he was governor there from 1999 to 2007.
"I thought it was important that we document our history, so we did a lot of research," he said.
King Eyamba V was one of two monarchs based in the coastal town of Calabar, then made up of two sovereign states.
King Eyamba V of Duke Town and King Eyo Honesty II of Creek Town presided over the affairs of the Efik ethnic group in the mid-19th Century and controlled commerce with European merchants.
Owing to their location along the coast, the Efik developed long-standing relations with the Europeans, which greatly influenced their culture.
They often bear English surnames, such as Duke and Henshaw, and the traditional clothing of the men and women is similar to British fashions of the Victorian era.
The Efik also dominated the slave trade. They acted as middlemen between the African traders from the hinterlands and the white merchants on ships mostly from English cities such as Liverpool and Bristol.
They negotiated prices for slaves, then collected royalties from both the sellers and buyers. They worked on the docks, loading and offloading ships, and supplied the foreigners with food and other provisions.
"The kings became very wealthy. The families became prominent. They controlled the largest trough of slaves coming out of Africa," Mr. Duke said.
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