Kingdoms & Monarchies

Ngas indigenous kingship; the Pus-Kaat festival is the cultural high point.

Tarok produced the bulk of Nigeria's "Middle Belt" army officer corps (Domkat Bali, Joshua Dogonyaro, Joseph Garba, Theophilus Danjuma though Taroh by adoption).

Mwaghavul chiefdom on the south-eastern plateau.

Anaguta and Afizere are the Jos indigene communities at the centre of the Jos crises (2001–present).

Sub-plateau chiefdoms.

• Isichei, *Studies in the History of Plateau State, Nigeria* (1982).
• Best, *Religion and Religious Conflicts in Northern Nigeria* (2007).
• HRW, *They Do Not Own This Place: Government Discrimination Against Non-Indigenes in Nigeria* (2006).

• [Principal historic polity — TBC] → [1900 Native Authority — TBC] → [1976 LGA — TBC] → [today's Federal Constituency — TBC]
• [Secondary polity / sub-emirate / clan — TBC] → [1900 NA — TBC] → [1976 LGA — TBC] → [today's Federal Constituency — TBC]
• [Minority / highland / clan throne — TBC] → [1900 NA — TBC] → [1976 LGA — TBC] → [today's Federal Constituency — TBC]

*Each row is a unit of continuous administrative life — the same population, in the same district, under successive labels. Read across to see what the British Native Authority captured, what Murtala's 1976 LGA reform redrew, and what today's Federal Constituency makes electorally visible. TBC = to be confirmed from the state's chieftaincy gazette, NA Ordinance files (NAK / NAI), and the INEC delimitation map.*

Plateau's chiefdoms: the Gbong Gwom Jos (Berom, the paramount first-class stool, seated at Jos), the Ujah Zi Anaguta, the Ujah Afizere, the Long Gwom Vwang, the Ponzhi Tarok of Langtang, the Ponzhi Ngas (Mishkagham Ngas) of Pankshin, the Long Goemai of Shendam, the Ujah Youm of Qua'an Pan, the Mishkaham Mwaghavul of Mangu, the Ngolong Ngas, the Sum Pyem, the Chun Mwaghavul, the Ujah Amo, the Sarkin Kanam and the Sarkin Wase — the last two being Muslim emirate-tradition stools in the state's north-east, whose grading against the Christian-majority chiefdoms has been a live cause of the Jos crises since 1994. Plateau's chieftaincy structure is almost entirely a colonial construction: the Berom, Ngas and Tarok had no paramount rulers before the Native Authority ordinances forced the creation of a single chief per district.

In the Berom, Ngas, Tarok, Mwaghavul and Goemai courts the consort holds no crowned office. The paramount stools were created by Native Authority warrant in the 1930s and 1940s and carried no consort title with them. The substantive female institution across the Plateau chiefdoms is the women's age-grade council (*Nzem* in Berom practice), which controls the farming calendar and the initiation cycle and predates every throne in the state. In the Kanam and Wase emirate stools of the north-east the Sokoto pattern applies.