The Oyo kingdom is popular among historians as one of the greatest kingdoms, and in fact empire, of ancient Nigeria. The Oyo kingdom at the zenith of its sovereignty ruled over not only the whole of today’s south-west Nigeria but also over parts of today’s Benin Republic and even Togo. But then what most people are not ware of is that the Oyo kingdom was a Nupe kingdom. The Oyo kingdom started as a Nupe kingdom and remained as such a very long time into its history. In fact there are enough evidence to even substantiate the claim that the Oyo kingdom remained a Nupe kingdom from the beginning to the end of its history. For a start we should note the fact that the very name Oyo is a Latinization of the original and ancient Nupe name for the River Niger, namely, Eya. As late as the second half of the nineteenth century people like the Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther were still referring to Oyo as Eyeo or Eyao both of which are merely slight corruptions of the original Nupe Eya. To this very day the Nupe people refer to the River Niger as Eya and its from that the modern Nupe name for a canoe, for instance, is derived as Eya to tis very day. Oyo was originally located on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe and in those days the Nupe people of the Oyo kingdom, who were to later on become known as the Yoruba, were referred to as the Biniya or Bini Eya or the Bini of the River Niger. In those days the Nupe people were known as the Bini and those of them that formed their kingdom on the banks of the River Niger were known as the Biniya or the Nupe people who have their kingdom on the banks of the River Niger. The Biniya were also known as the Eyagi or the ‘River Niger Ones’ because they lived on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. Some people are wrongly saying today that the Nupe national name for the Yoruba people, namely ‘Eyagi’, means ‘Small friend’. Eyagi is not a Modern Nupe word, so it cannot carry the Modern Nupe meanings of ‘Eya’ = ‘Friend’ and ‘Egi’ = ‘Small’. Eyagi is a Middle Nupe word which is a compound of Eya and Egi. But the Middle Nupe meanings of Eya and Egi are different from their meanings in Modern Nupe. In Middle Nupe ‘Eya’ was the name of the River Niger and ‘Egi’ is more or less an article referring to ‘One’ such that ‘Eya-Egi’ or ‘Eyagi’ will directly translate as ‘The River Niger One’ or ‘The River Niger Person’. The Yoruba were known as the Eyagi because they were the Nupe people of the River Niger. Don’t forget that in those days – and to this very day – the River Niger is located right here in Central KinNupe. As a matter of fact the Yoruba were referred to as the ‘Biniya’ as recent as the times of the Lander brothers and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Biniya means the Bini of Eya or the Bini people of the River Niger. Remember that Captain Hugh Clapperton said that the Nupe people were known as the Bini as late as the 1830s. The Oyo Kingdom was originally known as the Biniya and it was originally a Nupe kingdom through and through. It got the name Biniya because it was originally located right here on the banks of the River Niger in KinNupe. At a time the name Biniya was simply shortened into Eya and it is this Eya that the Yoruba tongue pronounced as ‘Oyo’. In fact, and as recent as the days of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther the Oyo kingdom was still known as ‘Eya’ or ‘Eyao’ which Bishop Samuel Ajayi transcribed as ‘Eyeo’ and which the Colonial scribes eventually wrote as ‘Oyo’. But why were the Oyo people referred to as the people of the River Niger when today see them not living on the banks of the River Niger or even associated with the River Niger whatever ? The answer is that the Oyo kingdom was originally located on the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. The Oyo kingdom we see today in the Osun State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not the Original Oyo kingdom referred to in the early history and mythology of the Yoruba people. The Yoruba Oriki panegyric categorically narrated that the present Oyo kingdom in Osun State is the sixteenth Oyo kingdom from the Original Oyo kingdom which was located in Central KinNupe. The Oyo kingdom have actually ‘migrated’ gradually from Central KinNupe to the banks of the River Niger and then across the River Niger unto today’s Yorubaland which was, after all and in those days, actually Nupeland. The Oyo people were originally a Nupe people and they spoke an ancient or Old Nupe form of the Nupe language which is essentially what we refer to today as the Yoruba language. In any case Yoruba language was originally a Nupe dialect – so we should expect a lot of similarities between Yoruba and Nupe in all linguistic aspects and cultural facets. As recent as the first half of the twentieth century Professor S.F. Nadel met speakers of the now extinct Gbidigi dialect which was the form from which Yoruba descended from Nupe. Gbidigi was the last linguistically documentary link between Yoruba and Nupe. At the middle of the eighteenth century the Yoruba people, the people of the Oyo Kingdom, in particular, were still more or less a Nupe people. And at the height of its imperial power under the Alafins Oyo was, by and large, a Nupe kingdom. Even the latter Alafins Onigbogi, Abipa, Obalokun, Ajagbo, and Abiodun were all said to have been, in one way or the other, actually Nupencizhi. For instance the mother of Onigbogi is, to this very day, categorically related to be a Nupe woman even by Yoruba traditions themselves. And it was due to the slackening on the practise of the Nupe religion of Ifa, of which Onigbogi’s mother was the high priestess over Oyo, that led to the sack of Old Oyo by its Nupe overlords. Alafin Abipa was called ‘Abipa’ in reference to his Nupe lineage. Abipa simply means the ‘Son of Nupe’ in former Yoruba. His real name might have been lost to history but his Nupe blood is still attested to by his royal title ‘Abipa’. Also the Oyo Kingdom under Obalokun was a completely a Nupe administrative set-up. It was in those days, for instance, that the Nupe system of Ajele was effectively imposed by the Nupe imperialist overlords over the whole of Yorubaland through the government of the Oyo kingdom. Reverend Samuel Johnson recollected that the Ajeles were Nupencizhi. Oyo was a Nupe kingdom through and through. And it was from Oyo that the Yoruba culture spread over the rest of today’s South-western Nigeria. Before the advent of Frederick Lugard the Anti-Nupe and his mercenaries of colonialist re- constructionist historians the only people who were Yoruba and who were referred to as Yoruba in ancient Nigeria were justthe people of ancient Oyo Kingdom and they were, after all, a Nupe people in those days. The Old Oyos – both Oyo Ile and Oyo Ajaka – were located in KinNupe in the areas that we have Lafiagi and Jebba today. All the other people of today’s south-western Nigeria who are claiming to be Yoruba today were different tribes and ethnicities and not Yoruba. Yes the Ilesha, Ijebu, Egba, Ketu, Ekiti, Ondo, and all other people claiming to be Yoruba today were initially not Yoruba people. They were different Nupe tribes and ethnicities who have earlier on migrated out of KinNupe into south- western Nigeria before the rise of the Oyo Kingdom. It was the White man that came and blanketed them with the general name Yoruba – a national name that originally referred to the Nupe people. In any case it was through the Oyo Kingdom that Nupe spread in latter times to envelope the whole of the south-western Nigeria. And Oyo basically remained a Nupe kingdom from the beginning to the end. Even Kakamfo Afonja, who brought a catastrophic end to the Oyo Kingdom in very historical times, was a Nupe war general through and through. And, in fact, Yoruba might as well be a purer form of the Nupe language today but for the fact that Yoruba was heavily inundated by foreign elements from the languages and dialects it went and settled among in ancient Southern Nigeria. As for the Nupe language itself the Arabic, Kanuri, Hausa and Fulani flood of foreign and loan words on the wake of the advent of Islam and the reign of the Sokoto Caliphate in pre-colonial times heavily differentiated Modern Nupe from Former, that is Old and Middle, Nupe such that it will really require serious and prolonged research to reconstruct the ancient Nupe language that was spoken before the beginning of the Islamic revolution in KinNupe. I have been engaged, in the past couple of years, in a project to bring back the Middle Nupe Language which was spoken some two to five hundred years ago. I evidently can’t do that alone or conclusively , others now and in the future, will have to continue with the project. But so far my efforts in that direction have yielded one of my books on Nupe; this book is titled ‘A Dictionary of Old Nupe Language’. It is an etymological compilation of Nupe words and their original meanings some two to five or more hundred years ago.