Posted by on Facebook by Moses Agba
The Tiv tribe is one of the oldest tribes in present-day Nigeria and Cameroon.
Confirmed evidence shows that the Tiv people lived for thousands of years on the land adjoining Nigeria and Cameroon, where they built what Europeans later described as a “Bantu settlement.”
The Tiv people built their first capital at Garoua in present-day Northern Cameroon after they discovered and surveyed IFI I KARAGBE, now known as the River Benue and River Niger.
After the capital was built, the Tiv people marked their territory in what would become the Middle Belt in present-day Nigeria, extending into Northern and Western Cameroon, as well as parts of present-day Cross River State in Nigeria.
The capital of the Tiv people was later moved from Garoua in present-day Northern Cameroon to a temporary site in Jimeta, present-day Adamawa State in Nigeria, before it was returned to the Akwaya District in Western Cameroon.
There, the Tiv people built a capital at Swem Mountain for a population that had grown to at least 800,000 people.
After the Tiv people had comfortably secured their territory with a powerful army, many of them returned with large forces to reclaim lands they had fought for and lost during the ages of migration.
The return of the Tiv armies to recapture territories they had fought for and lost in Central and Southern Africa is what Europeans later described as the Bantu Migration/Expansion.
Yes, all Bantu tribes originated from the land adjoining Nigeria and Cameroon, as rightly captured in books—but the original name was “Tiv people,” not “True People,” as Bleek misspelled.
To disarm other tribes without the ability to fight back, the Tiv people either annihilated or absorbed them. As a result, many smaller tribes emerged and spread across Central and Southern Africa.
When Europeans began kidnapping people along the coast as early as the 1400s, the Tiv people opened their borders to many minority tribes in West Africa who were threatened by larger tribes.
This resulted in over 300 tribes living together with the Tiv people in what would later become THE MIDDLE BELT or CENTRAL NIGERIA. Before the United Middle Belt Frontier was formed, the land was referred to as “Karagbe.”
As of 2026, there are at least 20 tribes in Nigeria and Cameroon that have adopted the Tiv language as their official language and Tiv culture as their own, including Iyion, Etulo, Abakwa, Injoo, and others.
Fake historians sponsored by Europeans—who lost on many occasions against Tiv warriors and the United Middle Belt Front—attempted to erase Tiv history. However, the Tiv people kept their history intact.
Recent expeditions in the Akwaya District of Western Cameroon show that the Tiv people lived and built a capital at Swem Hill/Mountain, less than 50 miles from the Nigeria–Cameroon border.
Further investigation also proves that hundreds of thousands of Tiv people are currently living in Western Cameroon.
The history of Tiv migration—often misunderstood—occurred more than 10,000 years before the story of Jesus Christ.
THE BATTLE OF KARAGBE: The Forbidden History reveals all the details.
The true history of the Tiv people was buried for a reason. Luckily, Ortamen Ayem Fela ensured that a copy was preserved in the best way possible.
