The Nwagu Aneke Project

The Nwagu Aneke script is a syllabic system of writing, among the riverian Igbo people of Umuleri in the Omambala (Anambra) basin of present day Anambra State of Nigeria. A system which occupies a well-established niche in the history of writing, syllabic writing has traditionally been categorised as an intermediate stage between phoneticized pictographic and alphabetic systems. However, as this research project intends to demonstrate, the more we can understand the provenance, nature and other aspects of the script, the more we can understand certain aspects of the evolution of writing systems on which there is doubt, debate or paucity of reliable evidence. But beyond these, the Nwagu Aneke script promises to contribute excellent data for the study of the rudiments of visual communication and for the investigation of certain aspects of the interface between literacy and orality