Biu is a town and a
Local Government Area (LGA) in southern
Borno State
Borno is a States of Nigeria, state in the North East (Nigeria), North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. It is bordered by Yobe State, Yobe to the west, Gombe State, Gombe to the southwest, and Adamawa State, Adamawa to the south while its ea ...
of
Nigeria
Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
. The town is the administrative center of the LGA and was once the capital of the Biu kingdom, and is now capital of the
Biu Emirate. Biu lies on the
Biu Plateau at an average elevation of 626 meters.
The region is semi-arid.
History
The name of Biu was initially called Viu which in Babur and
Bura Language means high.
The Biu kingdom became established around 1670 in the reign of Mari Watila Tampta. King Mari Watirwa (r. 1793–1838), whose capital was near Biu at
Kogu, defeated Fulani invaders from the
Gombe Emirate to the west. In 1878 Mari Biya, became the first Babur king to rule from Biu. The emir's palace is now situated in the town.
With British rule, Biu division was created in 1918. Mai Ari Dogo was acknowledged as the first emir of Biu in 1920. The area became known as the Biu federation after 1957, when the districts of Shani and
Askira were added to the emirate.
Maidalla Mustafa dan Muhammad (b. 1915) became Mai Biu, also styled Kuthli, in 1959.
People
The inhabitants of the region are mainly
Babur and Bura people (also known as Pabir ),
Tera,
Bura,
Marghi,
Mina and
Fulani people.
[ Babur, Bura, Tera, Marghi and Mina are ]Biu–Mandara languages
The Biu–Mandara or Central Chadic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic family are spoken in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.
A reconstruction of Proto-Central Chadic has been proposed by Gravina (2014).
Languages Gravina (2014)
Gr ...
of the Chadic language group.
Geography and economy
The LGA is mostly located in the northern Guinea savannah (NGA) agroecological zone,[Amaza, P. S. ''et al'' (2007) ''Baseline socioeconomic survey report: agriculture in Borno State, Nigeria'' International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria]
page 7
with a small portion in the northeast, the Kimba area, lying in the dryer Sudan savannah zone.["Annex 3: Communities covered by the socioeconomic baseline survey" Amaza, P. S. ''et al'' (2007) ''Baseline socioeconomic survey report: agriculture in Borno State, Nigeria'' International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria]
page 7
The economy is mixed agricultural, based on herding cattle, goats, sheep, horses, and donkeys[ and farming ]sorghum
''Sorghum bicolor'', commonly called sorghum () and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a species in the Poaceae, grass genus ''Sorghum (genus), Sorghum'' cultivated for its grain. The grain i ...
, millet
Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most millets belong to the tribe Paniceae.
Millets are important crops in the Semi-arid climate, ...
, maize
Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...
, cowpea
The cowpea (''Vigna unguiculata'') is an annual herbaceous legume from the genus '' Vigna''. Its tolerance for sandy soil and low rainfall have made it an important crop in the semiarid regions across Africa and Asia. It requires very few inpu ...
, and cotton
Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...
.["National Distribution of Raw Materials: Borno State: Biu"](_blank)
Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Federal Government of Nigeria; archive
here
by WebCite
WebCite is an intermittently available archive site, originally designed to digitally preserve scientific and educationally important material on the web by taking snapshots of Internet contents as they existed at the time when a blogger or ...
as of 7 June 2011 Agriculture consists mostly of small farmsiron ore
Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...
, gravel, magnesite
Magnesite is a mineral with the chemical formula ( magnesium carbonate). Iron, manganese, cobalt, and nickel may occur as admixtures, but only in small amounts.
Occurrence
Magnesite occurs as veins in and an alteration product of ultramafic r ...
, uranium
Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...
, feldspar
Feldspar ( ; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagiocl ...
, topaz
Topaz is a silicate mineral made of aluminium, aluminum and fluorine with the chemical formula aluminium, Alsilicon, Sioxygen, O(fluorine, F, hydroxide, OH). It is used as a gemstone in jewelry and other adornments. Common topaz in its natural ...
, mica
Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into fragile elastic plates. This characteristic is described as ''perfect basal cleavage''. Mica is co ...
, granite
Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
, aquamarine, nephelite, and salt
In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...
being extracted.
Communities
The Biu Local Government Area has a large number of rural communities in addition to Biu, which include:
Health
Malnutrition in southern Borno State is extensive. In 2005, Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF; pronounced ), known in some English-speaking settings as Doctors Without Borders, is a charity that provides humanitarian medical care. It is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of French origin known for its projects in conflict zo ...
(MSF) set up an intensive care feeding center in Biu hospital, the main referral hospital for the region.
In October 2009 there was an outbreak of Cholera
Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...
in the area, a disease that spreads through drinking contaminated water. About 600 people were rushed to the Biu General Hospital for diagnosis and treatment. The management of the hospital, in conjunction with the State Ministry of Health, decided to evacuate the patients to an isolated treatment camp.
Climate
Biu experiences a yearly temperature
Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...
of 32.16 oC, 2.7% higher than Nigeria's national average, with 36.38 millimeters of precipitation and 61.57 wet days (16.87% of the time).
References
{{Authority control
Populated places in Borno State
Local Government Areas in Borno State