North Central

The North Central zone, widely known as the Middle Belt, runs across the waist of the country from Kwara in the west to Nasarawa and Benue in the east, and includes the Federal Capital Territory. It is the most ethnically plural part of Nigeria: Tiv, Idoma, Nupe, Igala, Gbagyi, Berom, Jukun, Eggon and dozens of smaller groups live alongside Hausa and Fulani communities, and no one group speaks for the region.

Geographically it is guinea savannah and highland, watered by the Niger and Benue rivers, which meet at Lokoja. The land is fertile enough that Benue is called the food basket of the nation, and Plateau's cool highlands support crops grown almost nowhere else in the country. Tin mining shaped Jos in the twentieth century; farming shapes almost everywhere else.

Politically the zone carries the federal capital and the weight of being the meeting point between north and south. That position has brought both national importance and long-running contests over land, grazing and indigene status, particularly in Plateau and Benue.