Igbo people

The Igbo (Ndi Igbo), among Africa's largest peoples, root in southeastern Nigeria across Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo, with kin in the Delta, the Cross River, Cameroon and Gabon. Their Niger-Congo language clusters in mutually intelligible dialects. Before British rule the Igbo lived largely under the centralised chiefdoms of Nri, the Aro Confederacy, Nnewi, Agbor, Aboh and Onitsha, farming yam in a yam-titled society where wealth was counted in barns and wives, carving mbari houses and casting the famous ninth-century Igbo-Ukwu bronzes. Evangelism made them overwhelmingly Christian in the colonial era, and mission schools made them Nigeria's most schooled people. The Biafran war of 1967 to 1970 starved a generation; recovery built Onitsha market, Nnewi industry and a global diaspora. New Yam festivals, masquerades and the Igbo apprenticeship system keep the republic of villages renewing itself. Aro oracle agents and Onitsha river traders networked the whole lower Niger. Onitsha market crowds the Niger bank every morning.