Sources and methodology

This page explains where the material on NigeriaBase comes from, how it is handled, and what it will not do. It is the page to read first if you are deciding whether to trust anything else here.

Where information comes from

Entries are compiled from published reference works, academic writing on Nigerian history and ethnography, government and institutional publications, and established encyclopaedic sources. That is the whole of it. There is no original field research behind these pages, no unpublished interview material and no privileged access to anything. Where an entry describes a custom, it is describing what the literature and the public record set out, not what a researcher observed last week.

Stating that plainly matters more than sounding authoritative. A compilation can be careful, well-organised and honest about its limits. It cannot be a primary source, and this one does not pose as one.

What we do with contested facts

Where sources disagree — on an origin, a date, a population, the boundary of a people — the entry gives the range or the competing accounts and says that they compete. It does not adjudicate.

A worked example: the Yoruba entry sets the Ile-Ife origin tradition, in which Oduduwa is the founding ancestor, beside migration accounts that trace movement into the region from further north-east. These are not reconcilable into one tidy paragraph, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise. The entry describes the tradition as a tradition, the migration account as an account, and leaves the reader holding both.

Population figures

Nigeria's most recent official census was held in 2006. Every national, state or city figure more recent than that is a projection or an estimate, however confidently it is quoted elsewhere. Where this site gives a population, it says which it is.

Ethnic group populations deserve a stronger warning. They are estimates, they are not counted directly by any recent census, and they vary widely — sometimes by a factor of two — between sources, partly because who counts as a member of a group is itself contested. Treat every such figure here as an order of magnitude, not a measurement.

Dates and festivals

Many traditional festivals follow lunar, agricultural or traditional calendars, and are set by priests, councils or ruling houses rather than by a printed diary. They do not fall on fixed dates. Festival entries give the usual period — a month, a season, the point in the farming year — and say when the date shifts and who announces it. Where a specific year's date matters to you, confirm it locally; this site will not invent one.

Cultural and religious content

Cultural and religious material is written to describe, not to evaluate. Practices are not ranked as advanced or primitive, authentic or diluted, and beliefs are reported as held rather than assessed as true or false. Living practice is written in the present tense.

Nothing commonly held to be restricted or initiate-only knowledge is published here. Where a masquerade, a divination system or a rite has an inner body of knowledge reserved to its members, the entry describes the public face of it and stops. If you believe a page crosses that line, tell us and it will be changed.

What we do not do

• No ranking of peoples, states or languages against one another.
• No characterisation of a people by temperament — no group is described as industrious, warlike, hospitable or shrewd.
• No presentation of oral tradition as settled history. Tradition is labelled as tradition.
• No invented detail to fill a gap. Where information is missing, the section is left out rather than padded with plausible filler.

How pages are maintained

Every page carries a last-verified date and a freshness marker. Facts that do not change are marked evergreen; anything that drifts — figures, institutions, practice — is flagged for review and revisited rather than left to quietly rot. Pages flagged for review are still published, because an imperfect entry that says it needs checking is more useful than no entry at all.

How to correct us

Corrections are the main way this site gets better, and they are welcome from anyone — specialists, residents, members of the community described, or a reader who noticed a contradiction between two pages. The most useful ones name the entry, quote the passage and say what it should say instead.

Send a correction.