Defaka people

The Defaka (called Afakani by their neighbours, the Nkoroo) are a small ethnic group of south-eastern Nigeria, numbering fewer than a thousand people. They live in the eastern part of the Niger Delta, Rivers State, Bonny District; part of them in the Defaka ward of Nkoroo town in close relationship with the Nkoroo people, and another part of them on the isolated island of Iwoma Nkoro, near Kono. Present neighbours of the Defaka, apart from the Nkoroo people, are: at Iwoma, the Ogoni people (speakers of Ogoni/Kana/Khana), and to the east, the Obolo. The Defaka have a less cordial relationship with these peoples than with the Nkoroo.

The Defaka language is thought to be most closely related to the Ijo languages, which is the basis for the Ijoid language family first proposed by Jenewari (1983). Defaka is being rapidly pushed to extinction as speakers are shifting to the language of the Nkoroo people. All Defaka people speak Nkoroo; most use it as their primary language, even when talking with other Defaka speakers. At most 200 speakers of Defaka are left, mostly elderly people; as such, the language may already be moribund (or nearly so).