Gembu, Nigeria
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Gembu
Bommi | |
|---|---|
City | |
 Gembu aerial view | |
  Gembu | |
| Coordinates: 6°43′N 11°15′E / 6.717°N 11.250°E | |
| Country |  Nigeria |
| State | Taraba State |
| LGA | Sardauna |
| Elevation | 1,348 m (4,423 ft) |
| Time zone | UTC+1 (WAT) |
Gembu is a town on the Mambilla Plateau in Taraba State of Nigeria. It is the headquarters of Sardauna Local Government Area (formerly "Mambilla" LGA) in Taraba State.
Sitting at an average elevation of about 1,348 meters (4,423 ft) above sea level,[1] it is among the highest elevated towns in Nigeria.
It is believed that the first inhabitants of the entire Mambilla Region were the descendants of the ancestors who spoke early Bantu languages, who are known to have inhabited the wider region by c. 3000 BC (Schwartz, 1972; Lee & Roy, 1998; Zeitlyn & Connell, 2003). They constitute the Bantu people who stayed home in the Mambilla and neighbouring regions after the Bantu expansion across Africa between 2000 BC and 1500 AD. These are represented in this town by the Mambilla people who founded it. The name "Gembu" is a corruption of "Gelmvu", the name of a German-time Monarch of this town.
Location
Gembu, the administrative headquarters of the Mambilla Plateau, derives its name from a monarch of the ancient Mambilla Town of Bommi. "Gelmvu" was a monarch of the town known as Bommi by the time of the German advent in 1906. The town is found on the Mambilla Plateau, in the south-eastern part of Taraba State, close to the Nigeria-Cameroon border. Bantuists believe that the people inhabiting the Mambilla Region and their neighbours are descendants of the Proto-Bantu ancestors who inhabited the region generally before the Bantu expansion.[2][3] They constitute the Wide Bantu or Bantoid people who remained after the great split and Bantu expansion across Africa beginning after 2000 BC (thus described as "the Bantu who stayed home").[4]
The following is an excerpt from the book, The Mambilla Region in African History.
By far the most significant event in African pre-history is the ethnogenesis and spread of the Bantu-speaking peoples associated with the Mambilla and adjoining regions of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderlands (the Mambillobantu Region, the Tiv and, subsequently, Cameroon Grassfields) in west-central Africa. The Bantu expansion, which many authorities believe to have begun from this region after 2000 B.C. until about 1500 AD, led to the ramification of over one-third of Africa by the same category of Africans, the Bantu, covering some thirty African countries today. It represents the second of the world's greatest migrations of peoples in history (after the Indo-European expansion). Most of the people existing in the central and southern Nigeria-Cameroon border region, southern Cameroon, central, eastern and southern Africa today are a result of the Bantu expansion from this region or the result of a fusion between the Bantu migrants and Nilo-Saharans and Cushites (as in a few communities in East Africa). One in every three Africans today is Bantoid. The Mambilla Region itself was not totally evacuated and the area is still occupied by the Macro-Bantu-speaking Mambilloid peoples who represent the remnants of that great African expansion.[5]
Bommi Town (Gembu) is about 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) from the Kyiumdua or Donga River valley.[6][7]
