State: Taraba

Taraba State sits in Nigeria’s northeast, with Jalingo as its capital. It was created on 27 August 1991, carved from the old Gongola State.

The state borders Nasarawa, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Gombe, and Adamawa, more Nigerian neighbors than almost any other state, with an international border against Cameroon running along its east.

Around eighty distinct ethnic groups live in Taraba, among them the Jukun, Fulani, Mumuye, Mambilla, Kuteb, Tiv, Yandang, Ndola, and Ichen peoples, each concentrated in different parts of the state.

Coffee and tea grow on the cool Mambilla Plateau, Nigeria’s largest source of both crops, while groundnuts and cotton are grown as cash crops elsewhere. Maize, rice, sorghum, millet, cassava, and yam round out the state’s food crops, and cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry are raised widely, especially up on the plateau.

Gashaka Gumti National Park, Nigeria’s largest, spreads across the state’s southeast and shelters chimpanzees and forest elephants among dense rainforest. Chappal Waddi, within the park, is Nigeria’s highest peak, and the Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve protects one of the last stretches of Mambilla’s montane forest.

Retired general Theophilus Danjuma, a former Defense Minister, comes from Taraba, along with former Chief Justice Mahmud Mohammed and current governor Agbu Kefas.