Middle Belt

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The Middle Belt is a human geographical term designating the region of central Nigeria populated largely by minority ethnic groups and stretching across the country longitudinally. The Middle Belt is indeterminate in that it lacks designated "borders" and is charactized by a heterogeneity and diversity of peoples and cultures. The eminence of manifold minority groups to some degree constitutes an ethno-linguistic barrier in the country, drawing a separation between the principally Islamic North and the more secular, Christian/animist south. The region is a convergence of these cultural domains and maintains a tremendous degree of ethno-linguistic diversity, with languages of the Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo families, three of the primary African language groups, all being spoken.

Minorities in Nigeria tend to be dominated by the three largest ethnic groups, the Hausa of North and the Igbo and Yoruba of the South; the result in the Middle Belt is occasional political unity and solidarity amongst these highly differentiated peoples, an example being the United Middle Belt Congress that emerged following Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960.