Oral sources and some written materials have it that the town was founded and inhabited by the Orring people prior to the coming of the present settlers.
[4] Patrick Aleke also mentioned that the Orring people are the first settlers of Abakaliki, and had settled in Ntezi-Aba before their relocation to their present settlements.
[6] Linda Chinelo Nkamigbo in her lexical study of the similarities and extent of linguistic borrowings between Korring and Igbo languages of Abakaliki wrote that: "Talbot (1969) claimed that the Oring were the first to settle in the area where they now cohabit with the Igbo in southeastern Nigeria.
"Quoting Eze (2007), she concluded that"it is not in doubt that Koring borrowed extensively from Igbo Some lexical items examined for this present study have been observed to exist in Igbo neighbouring languages such as Yoruba but not in Koring neighbouring languages.
To this extent, the Orring people both those in Benue and Cross River states have in most versions of their histories, traced their origins to Abakaliki, holding that they were all settling in Ntezi-Aba after the decline of the Kwararafa empire[7] and the Korring (Okpoto; Akpato) empire, and prior to the various historical factors that is concerned with their presence settlements.