15 Untold Fascinating Facts about Plateau State, Nigeria

 

                                 

Plateau State, with the slogan, Home of Peace and Tourism is among the 12 States created in the Country. It has over 50 tribes spread across the 17 LGAs. Endowed with so many natural resources- with the predominant as tin, Plateau unarguably has the best weather in the country and this attracted the early missionaries.

However, it may interest you to know some never-known stories about the State as follows:

1.  Mighty Jets Football Club of Jos won the first ever Nigerian National League Competition (now Nigerian Professional Football League) in 1971

2.      Wase Rock: A volcanic plug located at Wase town, Wase. It is said to be one of the only five of its type in the whole world. The rock has attracted climbers/tourists, geographers, geologists the world over.

3.      Normadic Education Programme (a mass literacy campaign) was initiated by the wife of the first Civilian Governor of Plateau State, Mary Lar as her Pet Project. When the news spread across the country, the Federal Government sent a delegation to study the programme for onward implementation at the Federal level and other States

4.  Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Jos is the first in the country to produce 52.5 percent local programs and the first to go colour amongst all the Television Stations in West-Africa.

5.    Plateau Customary Court of Appeal is the first of its kind in the Country

6.      Some parts of Plateau have the rare privilege of being the first to enjoy hydroelectricity in Nigeria from National Electricity Supply Company (NESCO). This was because in 1959 to the end of  Nigeria’s civil war, Jos and its surrounding mine fields were supplied with electricity generated  from Kurra Falls.     

7.  Bokkos Farm, established by the State government in the early 80’s was the first mechanized farm to be established in Nigeria.

8. Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Jos is the first Federal Government establishment whose headquarters is sited outside the federal capital (which was then Lagos).

9. Jos international brewery (JIB) was the first brewery company to be owned by the State Government in Nigeria, and was enlisted in the stock exchange market

10. Cottons produced in Wase and Kanam and part of Langtang LGAs are widely sought-after as they are acclaimed to be the most qualitative in the country. The textile industrialists classified them as “grade A cottons”

11. Carrots, Cabbage and Tomatoes produced on the Plateau are acclaimed by nutritionists as the     best species in the country.

12. Panyam Fish Farm located in Mangu LGA is the first of its kind in the country and the biggest in West Africa.

13. Am-Pidong found in Mangu LGA is the only Crater Lake in West Africa.

14. The highest point of Nigerian railway line is in Jos, Plateau State

15.  Plateau State has groomed a lot of talents who were either born, lived, schooled or brought-up. In Nollywood, we have the like of Desmond Eliot, Segun Arinze, Obinna Nwafor (Saint Obi) and Jim Iyke. In Music, we have the lik of Peter and Paul Okoye (PSquare), Innocent Idibia (2face), Amik Adams, Panam Percy Paul, El-Sadiq Yola, M.I Abaga and Jesse Jaggs,

While In Football, we have the like of Mikel Obi, Ogenyi Onazi, Joseph Akpala, Terry Envoy, Ahmed Musa, Obinna Nsofor, Sam Garba Okoye, the Ateagbu brothers, Chinedu Efughi, Ismaila Mable