I grew up hearing Ndị Igbo bụ ohu ndị Igala (Igbo people are igala slaves). I heard it in school. I saw it on Facebook. I saw it during arguments on Twitter. So I finally got tired and did what nobody does during arguments: I went to look for receipts. And w…

When I first heard about Lejja town in Nsukka area of Enugu state, I thought it was just another village. But after visiting and interacting with the natives and elders, I discovered something that changed how I see Igbo history forever.  Lejja is not just …

When coal was discovered at Enugu in 1909, nobody could have imagined how profoundly it would change the Eastern Region of Nigeria. Coal became one of the foundations of the region’s early industrialisation. It provided energy, generated commercial activity, …

Is Opobo Igbo?   I can’t just declare “Opobo is Igbo” as though it were an uncontested fact. Opobo’s history sits at the intersection of Igbo, Ibani/Ijaw, Ndoki, and the wider Niger Delta world. Migration, slavery, commerce, intermarriage, politics and coloni…

The Igbo civilisation of southeastern Nigeria presents one of the most intellectually disorienting puzzles in African history. Archaeologists digging at Igbo-Ukwu in Anambra State in 1959 and 1964 uncovered ninth-century bronze and copper alloy objects of suc…

The observation that the Igbo and the Fulani share striking cultural, temperamental, and even physical similarities is not new. It surfaces in Nigerian conversations regularly, usually in whispers, occasionally in academic corridors, and almost never in print…

The Great Ogbidi Okojie is a classic definition of bequeath, whose larger-than-life essence was bequeathed from the bravery ontology of his ancestor, King Agba N'Ojie the Great (1483–1507), who defeated the Benin forces and beheaded the Oba of Benin, Oba …

The Okun people are a cluster of Yoruba-speaking subgroups occupying the western and central zones of present-day Kogi State in north-central Nigeria, comprising primarily the Yagba, Gbedde, Ijumu, Kabba, Bunu, and Oworo peoples spread across local government…