Plateau State’s Golden Jubilee is an anniversary that feels like a homecoming: a gathering of memories and meaning, of people who watched her grow and those she raised along the way.
Picture a hall filled with familiar faces. Children and grandchildren have done the planning, they’ve set the table with stories, decorated the walls with moments, and invited everyone who has walked a part of the journey. When the music settles and it is time to raise a glass, the room carries one shared emotion: pride. At fifty, Plateau is being celebrated not just for her age, but for what she has become.
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A State That Learned to Grow Early
Created on February 3rd, 1976, Plateau State began her journey with a quiet strength shaped by geography and people. Perched on the highlands of central Nigeria, she quickly became a meeting point of cultures, livelihoods, and ideas. The cool climate, fertile land, and open plains shaped early settlements, farming systems, and trade routes, laying the foundation for a state designed to host, to feed, and to connect.
Those early years were about learning how to stand. Long before statehood, the Benue Plateau had already been shaped by tin mining around Jos, rail-linked trade routes that fed markets like Terminus, and early mission and government schools such as St. Murumba College and the institutions that would later anchor Plateau’s reputation for education. So schools were built, markets grew, and communities took shape.
The first generation consisting of administrators, farmers, teachers, and civil servants did the careful work of building structure where there had once been possibility. They staffed the early civil service that kept a young state running, taught in classrooms that produced some of Northern Nigeria’s earliest professionals, managed agricultural systems that fed cities beyond the Plateau, and laid governance traditions shaped by figures such as Joseph Gomwalk in the Benue-Plateau years and Solomon Lar in Plateau’s early civilian era. Quietly, deliberately, they built systems that outlived them.
If this were the first toast at the Jubilee, it would be a simple one: thank you for tilling the ground.
Raising Sons and Daughters
As the years unfolded, Plateau State did what mothers do best: she nurtured. From classrooms and farmlands emerged sons and daughters who carried her name far beyond her hills. Professionals, creatives, traders, public servants, and artisans; all people shaped by Plateau’s calm resilience and sense of community.
Agriculture flourished as both livelihood and identity, with the Plateau becoming nationally known for tin-belt farming communities, Irish potatoes, vegetables, and livestock supported by institutions such as the National Veterinary Research Institute in Vom, which positioned the state as a centre for animal health and agricultural science. Education became a quiet legacy too, shaped by teacher-training colleges and secondary schools in places like Gindiri, Jos and Pankshin, producing generations who returned home to teach, build, and lead.
Cultural life thrived, too, expressed through long-standing festivals such as Nzem Berom, Puusdung among the Tarok, and traditional celebrations across Goemai, Anaguta, Mwaghavul and Afizere communities, alongside shared food cultures, music, and art that shaped everyday life. From pottery and metalwork to choral traditions and communal festivals, identity was not flattened but layered. In this way, Plateau State did not grow by erasing difference, but by learning how to live with it, and that, perhaps, remains one of her most enduring lessons.
At the Jubilee table, these are the voices standing to say: she gave us room to become.
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The Grandchildren Are Here
Today, the celebration feels lighter, louder, and more energetic because the grandchildren have arrived. Plateau’s youth are visible everywhere, standing out in classrooms at institutions like the University of Jos and Plateau State Polytechnic; in co-working and innovation spaces such as nHub Jos; on farms experimenting with modern agribusiness, and in creative studios where photography, film, music and digital storytelling are reshaping how the Plateau tells its own story. From community projects to start-ups and cultural production, a new generation is not waiting to be invited… It is already at the table.
They carry inherited values of resilience, hospitality, and enterprise, which they translate into new expressions. Innovation, creativity, and social engagement now sit comfortably beside tradition. This generation is not starting from scratch. They are building on what was handed down, proof that Plateau is not just a state with a past, but a home with a future.
Hence, at fifty, she is old enough to be wise, young enough to keep dreaming.
Seasons That Strengthened Her
No honest celebration ignores the harder seasons. Plateau State has known and thrived in moments where her unity and resolve are tested. But those seasons did not define her; they refined her.
For through these trying times, communities learned vigilance, dialogue gained value, institutions adapted, and above all, the spirit of rebuilding endured. Time and again, Plateau showed that she could bend, regroup, and continue forward. If there is grit in this Golden Jubilee, it is the kind that produces growth.
A Mother, A Leader, A Giant
At this point in the celebration, the toast is more confident, because Plateau State is spoken of as a mother who never runs out of giving. Year after year, she freely and bountifully offers land that feeds, air that heals, and a space that allows difference to coexist. She is recognised as a leader who set precedents in agriculture, education, and community life, and acknowledged as a giant; not by noise, but by impact.
Fifty years on, Plateau State stands steady; not finished; not fading; but still making room.
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The Meaning of the Golden Jubilee
As the music rises and the final words are said, one feeling lingers. It is the same one that settles in when the state anthem plays on the radio: a quiet straightening of the back, a sense of belonging, pride, joy, and respect.
Plateau at 50 is more than a milestone. It is a reminder that some homes are built not just with walls and roads, but with people, patience, and vision passed from one generation to the next.
And as the celebration draws to a close, one truth is clear: this mother still has more to give.