Calabar (also referred to as Callabar, Calabari, Calbari and Kalabar) is the capital city of Cross River State, Nigeria. It was originally named Akwa Akpa, in the Efik language. The city is adjacent to the Calabar and Great Kwa rivers and creeks of the Cross River (from its inland delta). Calabar is often described as the tourism capital of Nigeria, especially due to several initiatives implemented during the administration of Donald Duke as governor of Cross River State (1999–2007), which made the city the cleanest and most environmentally friendly city in Nigeria. Administratively, the city is divided into Calabar Municipal and Calabar South Local Government Areas. It has an area of and a population of 371,022 as at 2006 census. History Calabar was the name given by the Portuguese discoverers from the 15th century to the tribes on this part of the Guinea coast at the time of their arrival, when the present inhabitants in the district were the Quas. It was not till the early part of the 18th century that the Efik people, owing to civil war with their kindred and the Ibibio, migrated from the neighborhood of the Niger River to the shores of the Calabar. On the 10th of September 1884, Queen Victoria signed a treaty of protection with the king and chiefs of Akwa Akpa, known to Europeans as Old Calabar—then the official title to distinguish it from New Calabar to the east. This enabled the United Kingdom to exercise control over the entire territory around Calabar, including Bakassi. Calabar was the headquarter of the European administration in the Niger Delta until 1906 when the seat of government was moved to Lagos. Seaport city Since the 16th century, Calabar has served as an international seaport, shipping out goods such as palm oil. During the period of the Atlantic slave trade, it became a major port in the transportation of African slaves and was named Calabar by the Spanish. Igbo people formed the majority of enslaved Africans who were sold as slaves from Calabar, despite forming a minority among the ethnic groups in the region. From 1725 until 1750, roughly 17,000 enslaved Africans were sold from Calabar to European slave traders; from 1772 to 1775, the number soared to over 62,000. Old Calabar (Duke Town) and Creek Town, northeast, were crucial towns in the trade of slaves in that era. , as part of the British