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Cover of BEFORE BENIN

BEFORE BENIN

Who Lived in the Niger Delta First, and What the Evidence Shows

Who lived in the Niger Delta first, the Ijaw or the Bini? This question has fuelled land disputes, political exclusion, and ethnic tension in southern Nigeria for decades. Both sides claim the evidence supports them. Both sides cite the same historian. And until now, no single book has assembled the full body of evidence into one clear, evidence-graded assessment.

Genres

Africa_HistoryIndigenous Peoples

ISBN

9798905149849

Format

Print / Paperback

Contributor

Imariabe Osayande

Author

Imariabe Osayande is an independent researcher and writer with a longstanding interest in the history of the Niger Delta and the wider Edo region. Working across archaeology, linguistics, oral tradition, and the documentary record, the author is drawn to questions where the popular story and the evidence do not quite line up, and to the patient work of setting the two side by side. Before Benin grew out of that interest. Rather than argue for a side in the Ijaw-Bini origins debate, the book gathers the available evidence, weighs each kind on its own terms, and lets readers reach their own conclusions. The author holds no stake in the dispute beyond a commitment to honest scholarship and to making specialist research readable for a general audience.