In the languages of sub-Saharan Africa, tone is a common feature of both grammatical and lexical expression. This is true of the Edoid languages of south-central Nigeria, which are severely under described. They employ tone, at times with a segmental coexponent, to express grammatical categories relevant to temporal reference. Despite the pervasiveness of this condition and its centrality to declarative clauses, no investigation of Edoid has attempted to ascertain the role of tone in the grammatical coding of temporal reference. Which temporal reference categories does Edoid employ to encode affirmative and negative declarative clauses? How does the expression of these categories relate to tonal and segmental forms? In response, we find that tone is active in before-verb and after-verb positions. Nonetheless, tone is rarely the exclusive surface-level exponent of temporal reference, since tone and segments frequently combine as coexponents.