Nigeria’s Cultural Heritage: A Visitor’s Guide
Plateau State — The Berom People
By Uji A. Iliyasu
Nigeria is often introduced to the world through its three largest ethnic nationalities — the Hausa, the Yoruba, and the Igbo — yet the country is home to an estimated 250 to 300 distinct ethnic groups, each with its own language, cosmology, and way of life. It is precisely because of this staggering diversity that English was adopted as Nigeria’s official language: a neutral bridge across hundreds of mother tongues that might otherwise have made national communication impossible. This series sets out to walk through that diversity state by state, introducing visitors, researchers, and Nigerians themselves to the ethnic nations that make up the federation. We begin in the North Central zone, on the cool highlands of Plateau State, with the Berom people.
Gbong Geom Jos, Majesty Da Jacob Gyang Buba, Gbong Geom Jos
Who Are the Berom?
The Berom (sometimes rendered Birom) are the largest indigenous ethnic group on the Jos Plateau and, by extension, the largest single ethnic nationality in Plateau State. Population estimates for the Berom worldwide run to about 2.5 million people, and they form roughly 47 percent of the state’s population, concentrated mainly across four local government areas — Jos North, Jos South, Barkin Ladi, and Riyom — with smaller communities extending into parts of southern Kaduna State. Today there are eleven recognised Berom-speaking districts, among them Gashish, Ropp, Fan, Heipang, Foron, Du, Gyel, Kuru, Vwang, and Riyom, the last of which is regarded as the cradle of the Berom nation.
Visitors arriving in Jos, the state capital, are often struck by the terrain itself before they encounter the people: rolling highlands, rock outcrops, and a climate cooler than almost anywhere else in Nigeria. That landscape is inseparable from Berom identity — it has shaped their farming calendar, their festivals, their architecture, and even their reputation as one of the most resilient farming communities in the Middle Belt.
Short History
The origins of the Berom are the subject of both oral tradition and academic debate, and a responsible visitor’s guide should present both rather than settle on a single tidy story. Much of what is known about Berom origins rests on oral tradition and ethnographic study rather than written records, and these traditions tend to stress a long, continuous settlement on the Jos Plateau rather than a dramatic arrival from elsewhere. Some historians read the Berom story less as a migration narrative and more as one of deep-rooted continuity: a people shaped gradually by highland ecology and by centuries of contact with neighbouring groups, rather than by conquest or a single founding journey.
A separate and widely circulated strand of oral history, however, does trace Berom ancestry further afield. According to this account, the Berom are believed to have migrated from as far as Ethiopia, moving through Sudan and Chad, then Niger, before eventually settling on the Jos Plateau, where they were among the first people to establish permanent settlement. A related version places their route of dispersal even further west, with some elders suggesting linguistic and structural affinities between Berom settlement patterns and communities as far away as present-day Burkina Faso, and noting shared dialectical traces among the Berom, Jarawa, Tiv, Anaang, Efik, and Ibibio peoples — an indication of ancient population movement across a wide swathe of West and Central Africa long before modern borders existed.
What is less contested is the depth of the Berom’s antiquity on the Plateau itself. Archaeologists and historians, including Thurstan Shaw, Bernard Fagg, and Nigerian scholars such as Sa’adu Abubakar and M.Y. Manvwat, have linked the Berom’s early presence to the Nok civilisation, widely regarded as West Africa’s oldest known civilisation, dating to roughly 200 BC. The Jos Plateau, in fact, is one of the regions where Nok terracotta figures were first unearthed, lending real weight to the claim that Berom ancestors — or peoples closely connected to them — were part of one of the continent’s earliest complex societies.
In the pre-colonial era, the Berom did not exist as a single unified kingdom. Instead, they were organised into a network of autonomous village and district groups, each governed by its own council of elders and ritual heads, with authority resting on land, lineage, and consensus rather than a centralised throne. It was only during the colonial period, when the British sought a single recognisable authority through which to administer indirect rule, that the paramount stool of the Gbong Gwom Jos was formally constituted, unifying the various Berom districts under one royal institution that persists to this day. The former Jos Province itself was carved out of Bauchi Province in 1927, formalising the administrative geography within which the Berom nation now sits.
The twentieth century brought the discovery of tin on the Plateau, and with it, waves of colonial mining activity, migration from other parts of Nigeria, and rapid urban growth in Jos. This transformed the Berom from a purely rural farming people into a community straddling both traditional homesteads and one of Nigeria’s more cosmopolitan cities — a duality that still defines Berom life today.
Language
The Berom language belongs to the Plateau branch of the Benue-Congo family within the wider Niger-Congo language phylum. Despite sharing geography with Hausa-speaking communities to the north, Berom is not related to Hausa, nor is it related to the Chadic languages spoken by some neighbouring Plateau groups; it stands as its own distinct branch within Niger-Congo. Berom functions as both the name of the ethnic group and the name of the language itself, and it remains widely spoken across the eleven Berom districts, though English and Hausa now serve as everyday languages of trade, schooling, and inter-ethnic communication in and around Jos.
Efforts to preserve Berom in written form have grown in recent decades, including translations of religious texts, a modest body of Berom-language literature, and academic documentation by linguists interested in the Plateau language cluster, one of the most linguistically dense and least-studied regions in Africa.
Foods
Berom cuisine reflects the cool highland climate and the community’s deep agrarian roots. Farming sits at the very centre of Berom life, and Berom farmers are known for cultivating potatoes, maize, millet, and a wide range of vegetables, made possible by the cool climate and fertile soil of the Plateau. Beyond these staples, acha (fonio), guinea corn, yams, and beans also feature prominently in Berom farming and diet, and the Plateau’s relatively temperate weather allows for the cultivation of temperate vegetables — cabbage, carrots, and Irish potatoes among them — that are difficult to grow in Nigeria’s hotter lowland regions.
Traditional Berom meals typically centre on a starchy base such as tuwo (a stiff porridge made from guinea corn, millet, or maize flour) served with vegetable or meat-based soups thickened with local greens. Fonio, in particular, holds ceremonial as well as nutritional importance, marked by its own dedicated harvest festival each year. Dairy and livestock — cattle, goats, and poultry — supplement crop farming in many Berom communities, and communal farming practices, in which neighbours and extended family assist one another during planting and harvest seasons, remain a strong feature of rural Berom life.
Climate and Weather
Few ethnic homelands in Nigeria enjoy a climate as distinctive as that of the Berom. Sitting at an elevation of roughly 1,200 metres above sea level, the Jos Plateau experiences a markedly cooler, temperate climate compared to the rest of the country — a welcome contrast to the heat of the lowland savannah and coastal south. Harmattan mornings on the Plateau can feel genuinely cold by Nigerian standards, sometimes dipping toward the low teens Celsius, while daytime temperatures during the dry season remain mild rather than sweltering.
This climate has shaped Berom agricultural life directly. The cooler temperatures and fertile volcanic-influenced soils permit two farming approaches uncommon elsewhere in Nigeria: highland vegetable cultivation and extended grazing cycles for livestock. The rainy season, generally running from April through October, supports staple grain farming, while the cooler dry season is associated with festivals tied to harvest, hunting, and preparation for the next planting cycle.
Marriage
Marriage among the Berom traditionally follows a structured process rooted in family consultation, bridewealth, and communal endorsement rather than individual courtship alone. A prospective groom’s family typically initiates formal visits to the bride’s family, accompanied by intermediaries or family elders who negotiate on his behalf. These visits usually involve the presentation of gifts — historically farm produce, livestock such as goats or cattle, and locally brewed beverages — as a mark of respect and a demonstration of the groom’s family’s seriousness and capacity to provide for the bride.
Bridewealth negotiations are an important part of the process, though the emphasis has traditionally been placed less on monetary transaction and more on the symbolic union of two families and lineages. Elders play a central role throughout, blessing the union and reciting genealogies to confirm that the match does not violate customary restrictions, such as prohibitions against marriage within certain closely related lineages. Once families reach agreement, a series of ceremonies follow, often including a formal introduction, a bridewealth presentation event, and a final traditional wedding celebration marked by music, dancing, and feasting drawn from the community’s harvest.
As with much of Nigeria, Christianity has significantly influenced contemporary Berom marriage practice, and most modern Berom weddings today combine a church ceremony with the retained customary rites — meaning a couple may go through both a traditional introduction and bridewealth process as well as a formal church wedding, blending old and new in a manner typical of many Middle Belt communities.
Burials
Traditional Berom burial and mourning customs reflect a strong belief in continuity between the living and the ancestors, and in the land itself as sacred. Burial has historically taken place close to the family compound or ancestral farmland, reinforcing the enduring Berom connection between identity and land tenure. Age, social standing, and cause of death traditionally influenced the scale and form of burial rites — the passing of an elder or titleholder, for instance, calling for more elaborate ceremony, communal mourning periods, and the involvement of extended kin and neighbouring districts, while less public rites might mark the death of a younger or less prominent community member.
Mourning periods in traditional Berom society often involved communal gatherings, ritual observances led by family or lineage elders, and, in earlier centuries, practices intended to honour ancestral spirits and ensure a peaceful transition for the departed. As with marriage, Christian burial rites — church services, hymns, and formal interment — have today become the dominant public form of burial for most Berom families, though customary elements such as family gatherings, communal cooking, and specific mourning periods for widows or close relatives frequently persist alongside them.
Industry and Economy
Agriculture remains the backbone of the Berom economy, as it has been for generations. Life among the Berom is closely tied to the land, with farming forming the foundation of their economic and social life, and the community has long been recognised for skilled cultivation as well as hunting traditions that predate large-scale commercial farming. Potatoes, maize, millet, fonio, vegetables, and livestock rearing continue to sustain both household consumption and trade into Jos’s urban markets.
The discovery of tin ore on the Jos Plateau in the early twentieth century added a second major economic pillar. Colonial-era tin mining drew labour and capital into Berom territory, reshaping the local economy, spurring the growth of Jos as a commercial hub, and drawing settlers from across Nigeria and beyond. Although large-scale tin mining has since declined, its legacy is still visible in the region’s economic diversity and its cosmopolitan character.
In more recent times, many Berom people have pursued formal education and now work across a wide range of professions in Nigeria’s cities, even as farming remains central to community and family life in rural districts. Trading, civil service employment, education, and small-scale enterprise have all grown alongside agriculture, particularly as Jos has developed into one of Nigeria’s more prominent tourism and administrative centres in the North Central zone.
Festivals and Cultural Life
No account of Berom heritage is complete without its festival calendar, which remains one of the richest in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. Berom festivals include Mandyɛng and Badù and Nshok, all harvest festivals held around March and April; Tyǐ, a red ochre collection festival held in August; Worong Cun, a planting festival celebrated in April or May after good rains; Búná (or Vwana), a fonio harvest festival in August; and Mado, a hunting festival held in October or November to mark prosperity, in which the neighbouring Che people also participate. The best known of these celebrations, the Nzem Berom festival, is held annually in the first week of April and draws Berom communities together from across the Plateau districts to showcase dance, music, traditional dress, and communal feasting in one of the state’s most vibrant cultural showcases.
Traditional music remains central to these celebrations. Popular Berom instruments include the Yom Nshi, a two-stringed banjo made from a calabash with skin resonators; the Yom, a straw-string instrument; the Kwag or Gwashak, a scraper fashioned from dried cactus and played by sliding a stick across its sawed body; and the Kundung, a xylophone constructed from cattle horns.
Spiritually, many Berom historically held belief in a supreme deity known as Dagwi, alongside a broader traditional cosmology connecting community wellbeing to the land and ancestral spirits. Christianity has since become the dominant religion among the Berom, and church life today runs alongside — and often incorporates — many of these older festival and communal traditions rather than replacing them outright.
Visiting Berom Country
For a visitor to Plateau State, the Berom homeland offers a rare combination within Nigeria: cool highland scenery, some of the country’s oldest archaeological heritage tied to the Nok civilisation, vibrant festival culture concentrated around Jos, Barkin Ladi, and Riyom, and a farming way of life still visibly at the centre of daily community rhythm. Respectful visitors are encouraged to time a trip around the Nzem Berom festival in early April, when cultural display, music, and hospitality are at their most accessible to outsiders, and to engage local guides or community elders when visiting rural districts, in keeping with the strong tradition of consultation and respect for elders that continues to define Berom social life.
Credits: Historical and cultural details drawn from the Official Berom Nation history archive, Joshua Project’s Berom people profile, This Is Africa, Wikipedia’s Berom people entry, View Point Nigeria, Nnewi City, and Historical Nigeria’s feature on the Berom people of the Jos Plateau.
To be continued…