Agbadu

Agbadu is the Tiv name for a large pumpkin, and the usual way of eating it is cooked with roasted, ground beniseed. Akiga Sai, writing in 1935, describes the dish and notes that a smaller relative, furum, is prepared in the same way. The leaves of the plant are also used in soups.

Agbadu (pumpkin); beniseed (ishwa), roasted and ground into a paste.

The beniseed is first roasted and ground into a paste, which is then used as the main ingredient in cooking the agbadu.

The leaves are cooked into soups eaten with pounded yam. Dried furum is used for a gravy eaten with pounded yam.

Pairs two crops central to Tiv cooking, pumpkin and beniseed, in a dish eaten in the dry season.

Akiga Sai, writing in 1935, describes agbadu and furum as fruits that grow on the ground and spread over a large area, often on heaps of rubbish. Agbadu bears a large fruit the size of a calabash. However big it grows, it is not ready to eat during the rainy season: it is harvested in the dry season, once it has absorbed its excess liquid, and only then is it tasty. He gives the common way of eating it: the beniseed is first roasted and ground into a paste, which is then the main ingredient in cooking the agbadu. The leaves are also good to eat, especially in soups for pounded yam.

Furum is eaten and prepared the same way, but it must be harvested in the rainy season; left until the dry season, it becomes overgrown and too hard to eat. To keep it, people cut it into slices or chips and dry them in the sun, then use them for a gravy eaten with pounded yam. Akiga says it is good for soup whether dried or fresh. Furum is still cooked today: Daily Trust found "furum with egusi" on the menus of Benue soup sellers in 2021.

Beniseed, the other half of the dish, is one of the most valued Tiv crops; see the Kyegh Sha Shwa entry. This archive's dictionary gives agbadu as pumpkin.

Note on sources: Akiga's translators identify agbadu and furum only as species of pumpkin, without naming the botanical species.

Sources: Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Harold M. Bergsma and Martin L. Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015, chapter two; Daily Trust, "An abundance of soups", 1 April 2021.

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.