Volta-Niger

The Volta-Niger group includes the Yoruba, Edo, Igbo, Ijaw, Nupe and Igala of southern Nigeria. Ife, the Yoruba holy city, produced naturalistic bronze heads between 1200 and 1400, and the Oyo Empire later became the leading Yoruba power.

In Benin the Edo Oba Ewuare enlarged his kingdom from 1440, and the Portuguese reached it in 1485. The Igbo lived in village assemblies under the ritual authority of the priest-kings of Nri, while the Ijaw fished and traded in the Niger Delta. The Oyo Empire broke up under civil strife and Fulani pressure in the 1820s and 1830s, and its capital Oyo-Ile fell in 1835.