This may look like a screen shot from the popular movie 'The gods must
be crazy' but hey!! this is real and yeah, they literally still live in
the stone age. Poverty and diseases ravage their land, like locusts. A
good number of them still dress in the manner of, the Biblical Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden -- stark Unclad -- with fresh leaves for a
little covering. You are welcome to the top of the Gerinjina mountain in
Gashaka Local Government area of Taraba State.
It was like a story from Mars when a casual talk to the hearing of this
reporter indicated that there was a community up the mountain that lived
worse than those of the Koma people who were discovered in the
mid-1980s by a group of National youth corps members in the then Gongola
State, now split into Adamawa and Taraba states. While the Koma
community resides in Adamawa State, the new Stone Age people are in
Taraba State.
They are called, the Jibu people and they are
descendants of the Kwarafa Kingdom who lived for centuries in nine
communities scattered around on the mountains in Gashaka.
Historical
accounts have it that the people lived together with their fellow
brothers in the kingdom until about 1807 when Fulani Jihadists invaded
the kingdom.
They were said to have run to the mountain top where
they now live and are completely cut off from other tribes, and by
extension the whole world. Not even the activities of the colonial
masters reached them, largely because of the difficult terrain of their
new abode. The mountain top is characterised by rivers, deep gullies and
huge rocks.
Just like any other group of human beings, the Jibu
people have their ways of life. These include collective circumcision of
boys born within the same age group, a ceremony performed with the use
sharp objects.
It is considered a test of strength and character for
their boys not to cry during the ceremony. The circumcised are kept on
bamboo beds and covered with fresh leaves that are gathered and burnt
after the wound has healed.
For a young Jibu man to get a wife, he
must serve the family of his bride for five years. Nonetheless, the
marriage is determined by the capacity of the woman to conceive. This is
measured by a dried long firewood that is set on fire for at least
three months, within which if the woman does not become pregnant, the
simple communication is the gods do not want the marriage.
Pregnant women work on the farms to the day of their delivery.
They have a communal life and are ruled by the Waziri Garinjina, Tann
Shidin Zunbi, who confirmed in an interview with the Nigerian Compass on
Saturday that maternal and child mortality rates are high among them.
The Jibu people are neither Christians nor Muslims. Rather, they believe in their own gods and the ancestors.
In an event of violation of their natural laws by any individual,
animals are slaughtered to appease the land. It is also a similar story
during every cropping season. The harvests are brought before the Waziri
for sacrifice to the gods, after which their brand of liquor is
prepared for everybody to drink in merriment. Incidentally too, the Jibu
people believe that some gods are not friendly with women. Thus,
throughout the period of ritual preparations, women remain indoors to
avoid being exposed to the gods who could be harmful to them.
When
our correspondent visited Gerinjina, their condition of living was worse
than that of the much-talked about Koma people. There is no access
road. They drink water with animals from the same rivers. In their
scattered settlement system, there is no school around except for some
missionaries who have a thatched space for that purpose but is yet to
have any student. After a day's job on the farm, their women still have
the task of grinding raw corn with heavy stones before food is ready for
their male counterparts.
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