The Defaka (called Afakani by their neighbours, the Nkoroo) are a small ethnic group of south-eastern Nigeria, numbering fewer than a thousand people.
Defaka is being rapidly pushed to extinction as speakers are shifting to the language of the Nkoroo people.
The Defaka have always been a people small in number, and their history is a long narrative of harassment by numerically superior neighbours and subsequent migrations.
According to oral histories reported in Jenewari (1983), the original home of the Defaka was in the Iselema area (present-day Delta State).
The Nkoroo people, neighbours of the Defaka and numbering about 4500, relate a similar tradition of migration.