Adamawa State
Adamawa is a state in northeastern Nigeria, whose capital and largest city is Yola. In 1991, when Taraba State was carved out from Gongola State, the geographical entity Gongola State was renamed Adamawa State, with four administrative divisions: Adamawa, Michika, Ganye, Mubi and Numan.[1] It is one of the thirty-six states that constitute the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
On May 14, 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Adamawa State, along with neighboring Borno and Yobe States, due to jihadist group Boko Haram’s insurgency.
Adamawa is one of the largest states of Nigeria and occupies about 36,917 square kilometres. It is bordered by the states of Borno to the northwest, Gombe to the west and Taraba to the southwest. Its eastern border forms the national eastern border with Cameroon.[4]
Topographically, it is a mountainous land crossed by the large river valleys – Benue, Gongola and Yedsarem. The valleys of the Mount Cameroon, Mandara Mountains[5] and Adamawa Plateau form part of the landscape.
The major occupation of the people is farming as reflected in their two notable vegetational zones, the Sub-Sudan and Northern Guinea Savannah zones. Their cash crops are cotton and groundnuts while food crops include maize, yam, cassava, guinea corn, millet and rice.
The village communities living on the banks of the rivers engage in fishing while the Fulanis are cattle rearers. The state has a network of roads linking all parts of the country.
The development of many communities in the state can be traced to the colonial era when the Germans ruled a swath of territory known as the Northern and Southern Kameruns from Dikwa in the North to Victoria (Limbe) on the Atlantic coast in the 19th century. These were, however, handed over as United Nations Trust Territories to the British at the end of the World War I with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. After a series of referendums, the Northern Kameruns joined Nigeria to form the then Sardauna Province, and the Southern Kameruns formed a Confederation with French speaking Cameroon.
