To assist in this research, it is pertinent to point out certain landmarks which should act as guides. For a start, it would be expected that an institution like the Ekpe Aro, with similitude in several other cultures and civilizations must have developed from contacts with varieties of religions and “mystery” schools and cults. Some of these visible contact points will be indicated in this paper, others will be developed by subsequent research.
There is an acceptance that Ekpe originated or migrated into Aro from the northern riverine areas. Other assign it to tribes beyond the Oban hills on the eastern slopes to the Cameroon. If these were to be taken literally, then one would expect the linguistic analysis of the Ekpe Aro passwords, greeting and exaltations to be good traces to its origin in those regions. Incidentally, look-alike cults that exist in these areas share identical wordings which as with the Aro’s do not have any meaning in their language or common usage. When questioned as to the meaning of the wordings, the people simply answer by attributing it to the ‘lost origin of the cult.

Is it therefore not possible that there was a cross migration of practices in the institution of the cult? Are some of those practices not a mixture of concepts absorbed somehow, some time from the Europeans or their agents at the contacts and merged into native cultures to metamorphose into this highly enriched cult? It is know that some early Europeans that camped on the slaves shores of West Africa, belonged to one form of mystery school or the other. Their advance party, settlements at the coastal bases and raids inland, usually included Negroes some of whom practiced with them the same or similar fraternity rites. Fortunately, it is easy to identify the nature of rites they engaged in. From authenticated history we know that several Negroes were initiated in an Irish regimental freemasonry lodge of Boston as early as 1775. several of these Negroes later formed their own lodges. When Liberia was established in 1821 the members of these lodges who came along must have influenced the formation of the first Grand Lodge in Liberia in 1867. The Gambia also had its Charter with one Richard Hull as Provincial Grand Master in 1726 even though its first lodge was not erected until 1792. The certain presence of Freemasons for instance in the hinterland of the Calabar estuary during the slave trade was specifically recorded in the ship log of an English vessel. It crew were attached by native raiding for slaves for some Spaniards. Captured and about being executed, the English captain recognized the Masonic emblem o the neck-kerchief of one of Spaniards and thereupon made a recognizable sign to the Spaniard in consequence of which the English team were promptly freed. It therefore the feasibility of the concepts of these fraternities being introduced or revealed to or uncovered by the natives. It is known that some slavers/traders were cast of the ship or coastal communities after a mutiny or other strife. It was also common for some slavers/traders to have been stranded and settled inland on account of ill health which during the very peak of the rains rendered passage to the coast to catch a boat impossible. Ekpe Aro songs were originally entirely in Efik. This is not strange as the point of contact with the European fraternities was at the Calabar estuary. It is therefore to be expected that the contact of the ‘native’ with the ‘foreign’ cult was at this estuary’s port. Having prepared the mind of the reader and person interested in the necessary extended research in this field. Let us examine briefly some other relevant landmarks of the Ekpe Aro which are obvious to all casual observers. Those exclusive to members are for obvious reasons explicitly excluded.