Kola Nut

Primary source

• G. T. Basden, Among the Ibos of Nigeria (London: Seeley, Service), 1921, chapter 'Some Points of Etiquette'The Igbo kola welcome as a missionary saw it: kola brought in a bowl, divided and shared by rank, held to seal friendship, and its absence apologised for.

  Enwerom ojji (I have no kola)

• Samuel Johnson; ed. O. Johnson, The History of the Yorubas (London: Routledge), 1921, chapters on the Orun ceremony and on betrothal and marriageYoruba uses of kola: split and shared at betrothal so that all present witness it, and used by the Basorun to divine whether the Alafin's sacrifices were accepted.

  indicating thereby that they are witnesses of the betrothal

Scholarship

• Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Kola in the History of West Africa', Cahiers d'Études africaines 20 (77-78), 1980, p. 100 and p. 114Cola nitida was the variety of the long-distance trade, in demand among Muslims, while Cola acuminata was the main variety of Yorubaland and the Igbo country and stayed mostly in local trade; al-Ghassani described kola in 1586.
• Nikolas Gestrich, Louis Champion, Daouda Keïta, Nafogo Coulibaly and Dorian Q. Fuller, 'Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region', African Archaeological Review 38, 2021, abstractKola nut (Cola cf. nitida) remains from eleventh- to fourteenth-century contexts at Togu Missiri near Ségou, Mali, evidence of early trade from the forest zone to the Middle Niger.
• Macaulay A. Kanu and Anacletus Ogbunkwu, 'Appraisal of Ọjị as the Epicenter of Hospitality in Igbo Cosmology', Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.1, 2024, sections on lobes and on presentation, rituals and spiritualities of ojiThe stages of the Igbo kola rite, the adage, the belief that oji hears only Igbo, the lobe thrown to the ancestors, the reading of lobe numbers, and the preference for Cola acuminata over gworo.

  whoever brings kola nut brings life