By Achadu Gabriel
THE age long questions about who really are the middle Belt of Nigeria and or Nigerians or middle Belt of the northern Nigeria or middle belters of Nigerians has finally been answered in fullest. The physiologist or psychologist behind the true and historically definition was put together by Belt’s intellectuals especially Dr. Mailafia Obadiah led teams of researchers, as presented below:
In various platforms people have been asking us, What is the Middle Belt? What are its geographical boundaries and who and who make up this community? Let me set the records straight today.
As a territory, the Middle Belt is everything outside the core Sharia North, from Southern Borno to Southern Adamawa, Southern Kebbi, Southern Gombe, Southern Bauchi, Southern Kaduna and Southern Niger, to Plateau, Nasarawa, FCT, Kogi, Benue, Taraba, and Kwara. We make up a motley of clans that are ethnographically of Niger-Congo, Bantu, Chadic and Nilo-Ethiopic extraction. We are the descendants of the great Nok civilisation that descended from ancient Egypt and the Nilotic cultures of Meroe and Kush. We invented iron smelting before the ancient Greeks and Romans. We are the descendants of the acephalus and Republican Tiv people, various kingdoms such as the Apa, Goemai Igala and the warrior Kwararafa peoples who conquered Kano for the better part of two centuries.