Dẹgẹma is an Edoid language spoken in two separate communities on Degema Island in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, by about 22,000 people, according to 1991 census figures. The two communities are Usokun-Degema and Degema Town in the Degema Local Government Area in Rivers State. Each community speaks a mutually intelligible variety of Dẹgẹma, known by the names of the communities speaking them: the Usokun variety and the Degema Town variety. Both varieties are similar in their phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic properties. No standard variety has so far emerged between the two varieties of Dẹgẹma. However, there appear to be more scholarly and descriptive linguistic publications on the Usokun variety than on the Degema Town variety. The Dẹgẹma language is not also called "Atala" or "Udekaama", as stated in some publications. Atala is the alternative name for one of the Degema-speaking communities, and Udekaama is the name of a clan. Similarly, "Dekema" is not an alternative name for the Degema language as contained in the entry for Degema in the Ethnologue.
Oral tradition asserts that the Degema people migrated from Benin to Ewu in present-day Engenni, in the AhoadaLocal Government Area of Rivers State. According to Mark Roman, the people of present-day Degema settled at Ewu when they left Benin with other groups who settled at Okilogua in Engenni. Roman asserts that Ewu is also in Okilogua. At Ewu, there was a split which took some of the inhabitants to Enuedua , some to Ediro and some to Ogua, forming the Ogua group. These groups make up the Engenni community. Roman also asserts that the Degema people belonged to the Ogua group. The split at Ewu was in due to a disagreement over fish belonging to all the people living there. Some of those who contributed their own water to the cooking of fish did not get their share of the water after the cooking was done, not considering that water evaporates when heated. Those aggrieved decided to leave Ewu, and the name Udekaama became associated with the aggrieved group. The Udekaama group went to the uninhabited Degema Island around the 15th century CE and settled at Ipokuma, now known as Doctor’s Farm. The headland is the part of Degema Island adjacent to an uninhabited island on which Abonnema is one of the groups comprising the Udekaama clan. The settlement at Ipokuma was before the arrival of the Abonnema and the Kalabari tribe: At Ipokuma Ugu and Ekeze led Usokun-Degema and Degema Town, respectively, north to their present sites for fishing, hunting and farming. Neither of these two communities considers itself subordinate to the other; the two groups consider themselves independent. The name Degema is a bastardized form of Udekaama, which may have resulted from the Kalabari mispronunciation of Udekaama as Dekema. The people of Degema are linguistically and culturally distinct from their Kalabari neighbours.
