ABSTRACT
The big rivers Niger and Kaduna form the two axes of the country, an efficient, natural system of communication. The geographical position of Nupe country makes it a typical area of transition from the southern forest belt to the arid savannahs of the north. Climate and soil combine to even more deadly effects: full of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, the river forests infested with tsetse-fly, and all watercourses polluted with bilharzia, Nupe is indeed an ill-favoured country. The description of health conditions has a more special bearing on the anthropology of the Nupe people. Translated into terms of general population movement, the strikingly low birth- and fertility-rate among the Nupe can mean only one thing: a decreasing, or at least a stationary, population. Population movement reflects the effects of a complex of heterogeneous factors of which physical environment is one of the most important. The Nigerian Census places Nupe birth- and fertility-rate at the bottom of the scale.
