ABSTRACT

Numan Division has emerged from a congeries of independent pagan districts which were administered, with divers additions and excisions, sometimes as a Division and sometimes as a district of the old Yola Province. The Division consists of 2,214 square miles, centred upon the confluence of the Benue and Gongola rivers, and carries a population estimated at 121,438 during the 1952 decennial census. In 1903 a small force of troops was based permanently on Numan and thereby founded the modern administrative headquarters. There is a supplementary tradition that when Atingno was crossing the Benue he dropped the sacred pot of the rain-cult, and that this pot was later recovered and taken to the shrine of Nzeanzo at Farei, a village half-way between Numan and Demsa. After the break in the Bata tribe, the section of the Mbula which lived on the south bank of the Benue was in nominal subjection to Demsa, and that living on the north bank to Bachama.