State: Bayelsa

Bayelsa State sits deep in the Niger Delta, with Yenagoa as its capital. It was carved out of Rivers State on 1 October 1996, one of the last states created before Nigeria settled at its current 36.

The state borders Rivers to the east and Delta to the north, separated in parts by the Niger and Forcados Rivers, with the Atlantic Ocean along its entire southern edge.

Bayelsa is the ancestral home of the Ijaw people, the largest ethnic group along Nigeria’s coast, and Ijaw language and tradition run through nearly every community in the state.

Oil built the modern Bayelsa economy. At times the state has produced somewhere between a third and 40 percent of Nigeria’s crude output, and it holds one of the country’s largest natural gas reserves. That wealth sits alongside real hardship in many communities, where decades of oil spills have damaged farmland and fishing waters.

Oloibiri, a small town in the state, is where Nigeria’s oil industry began: the country’s first commercial oil well was drilled there in 1956. The Akassa Lighthouse has guided ships along the coast since 1910, and the Edumanom Forest Reserve protects one of the last patches of Niger Delta forest still home to chimpanzees.

Former president Goodluck Jonathan comes from Bayelsa, along with musicians Timaya and Timi Dakolo and Nollywood actress Dakore Egbuson-Akande.