Kebbi State

Much of present-day Kebbi State was the heartland of the Kebbi Kingdom, a Hausa-speaking state that rose to prominence in the sixteenth century under Muhammadu Kanta, who built a capital at Birnin Leka and later Surame and resisted the Songhai Empire. In the early nineteenth century the jihad led by Usman dan Fodio brought much of the area under the Gwandu Emirate, the western half of the Sokoto Caliphate administered by Abdullahi dan Fodio. The Kebbi dynasty continued to resist from its base at Argungu, and conflict between Argungu and Sokoto/Gwandu persisted until British conquest in the early twentieth century.

Under colonial rule the area was part of Sokoto Province. After independence it formed part of the Northern Region, then North-Western State (1967) and Sokoto State (1976). Kebbi State was created from the southern and western parts of Sokoto State on 27 August 1991, with Birnin Kebbi as its capital. The state borders the Niger Republic and the Republic of Benin, and is crossed by the Sokoto (Rima) River and the River Niger.

Kebbi is internationally known for the Argungu Fishing Festival, whose origins are often linked to the 1934 visit of the Sultan of Sokoto to Argungu, and which was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016.