A Tiv vegetable-based soup often prepared with nune (fermented locust beans) for a rich and distinctive flavour. It features a variety of leafy greens and reflects the Tiv tradition of using local vegetables.
Mixed vegetables (leafy greens), locust beans (nune), local seasonings, optional meat or fish
Vegetables are washed and cooked with nune (locust beans), seasoning, and optional meat or fish until well combined and flavourful.
Served with pounded yam and other staple foods.
Reflects the Tiv use of vegetables and fermented seasoning (nune) in traditional cooking. The inclusion of nune adds a depth of umami flavour that is characteristic of many Tiv dishes.
Atiever is one of the vegetable soups sold in Tivland today. Daily Trust, reporting on food sellers in Benue in 2021, recorded atiever on their menus alongside vambe and ashwe, and one seller described cooking "beniseed, vambe and atiever" soups for the day. Such soups are usually served as several together with a bowl of pounded yam, one with meat and the others from vegetables in season.
The plant list in this archive gives adigbor or atiever as the Tiv name for jute mallow, Corchorus olitorius, known elsewhere in Nigeria as ewedu. According to the Useful Tropical Plants database, it is an erect annual or short-lived perennial up to 3.5 metres tall, grown in many tropical countries both for the fibre in its stem (jute) and for its leaves, which make an excellent spinach substitute in hot climates. Young leaves can be eaten raw, older ones are cooked as a pot-herb, and they quickly become mucilaginous when cooked. They are high in protein and can be dried for later use.
Akiga Sai, writing in 1935, describes the older Tiv soup garden: squashes, sorrel and okra, with peppers, beniseed, melon seeds and ginger, mostly planted by women on the yam farms in the early rains.
The Tiv food guide tivpeople.com describes atyever as a slimy draw soup made from the leaves of the atyever bush: the leaves are picked, washed and boiled, then seasoned, usually with locust beans, pepper and salt, and served with ruam. The Tiv cooking channel MDEVAAN has also published an atyever soup recipe on YouTube. A 2019 recipe on the Tiv Food Recipes blog boils the washed leaves for about three minutes with a little potash, beating them with a fork, or blending them for a slimier soup, then adds ground nune, ground gbaaye, pepper, seasoning and salt, and finally whole nune seeds.
Note on sources: this entry describes atyever as a soup of mixed leafy greens; the archive's plant list identifies atiever as jute mallow, a slimy-leaved vegetable. The name may be used for both.
Sources: Daily Trust, "An abundance of soups", 1 April 2021; tivpeople.com, "Tiv Food" (Internet Archive copy, 25 January 2025); Tiv Food Recipes (mytivfoodrecipes.blogspot.com), "How to make Atyever Tiv Soup", 14 August 2019; Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.); Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Bergsma and Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015, chapter two.
Other Foods
See the Tiv people and the Tiv language in our Nigeria Heritage Archive: the states and local government areas where Tiv communities live, neighbouring peoples, population figures and sources.