ABSTRACT
Tiv are known throughout Northern and Eastern Nigeria as good workmen. They form highly satisfactory road gangs; although most are employed within Tiv Division, individual Tiv wander far afield to do road work. Some Tiv are employed in mines on the Bauchi Plateau. In Jos itself one finds Tiv employed as casual labourers, in the Museum, and as mechanics. Some Tiv each year go down to the Cross River area to take jobs as agricultural labourers, though the number is not sufficient to create a labour migration problem. Tiv today travel widely in search of and in the course of work: within one minimal segment in southern Tivland we know one man whose daughter married a Tiv in Victoria (Cameroons), another whose daughter married a Tiv working in Lagos as an electrician, another whose son is a printer in Zaria, and many who have been soldiers, labourers outside Tivland, or long-distance traders, and one man who has “ sent four sons to college.” Tiv also find employment (in and out of Tivland) as clerks, dispensers, and teachers. Very few, however, find or are trained for highly specialized work. Of the rest, a very large percentage return to their natal lineages on reaching middle age; though these men make some changes in the material way of life (introducing windows and doors into huts, using lanterns in the evening, etc.), there have as yet been only very minor changes in Tiv social values or organization as the result of people who have worked outside Tivland. The majority of Tiv remain subsistence farmers.
