Africa Today Publisher Kayode Soyinka making a presentation of the magazine to Taraba State Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku at the Government House in Jalingo.

This edition of Africa Today is a special edition, which takes our readers on a journey through Taraba State in Northeast Nigeria. The state shares an international border with Cameroon.

So it is strategically placed - with one leg in Nigeria and its accessibility to the ECOWAS market and another in Cameroon and the central African market. Traveling through this state, one of 36 in federal Nigeria is a journey in discovery. Here in Taraba State, there is absolutely nothing a state, or indeed a country, can be looking for to develop that it hasn't got, and in abundance. It is blessed with a scenic view that would blow the mind of visitors instantly on arrival - a range of enormous flat land, enthralling interlocking mountains and a vibrant vegetation that could easily turn into money with practically anything one dips into its fertile soil. There is absolutely no need spending money buying fertiliser for farmers on the Taraba State land.

With its fertile land and natural vegetation the state is an agricultural state. It is one state, though situated in the north of Nigeria that has the vegetation of the southern part of the country. It has in abundance plantations of cocoa and palm trees, usually associated with the savannah and rainforest south.

A former head of state, President Olusegun Obasanjo, is an early investor in the state since his days as a military head of state. He not only has invested in several agribusinesses across the state, he has encouraged others, including his foreign friends to come and invest in agribusiness in Taraba. Some have responded positively to the call. For instance, he and some of his colleagues that have farms and a huge number of cattle in the state are setting up a single management system and factory for milking cows, and maybe slaughtering them there at just one point. The idea is that it will reduce the investment they would have made individually and, with this approach, they can derive greater income from their investment. "It is like a co-joint, a symbiotic sort of association, and it is good for us. That is what I like. If we can have more of such, it will help us greatly," an enthused Governor Darius Ishaku told me in Jalingo.

Besides, Taraba is a trove of amazing treasures. It has an abundance of precious minerals, including blue sapphire. I understand from traders in London that the blue sapphire that comes out of Taraba State in Nigeria is so pure, it's the Real McCoy, which doesn't need any processing to make it pure as it is done with others from other parts of the world. It's ready for sale, or turning into whatever one likes as soon as they are extracted from the ground.

The most amazing experience I found on the trip is the journey to the world-renowned Mambilla Plateau. The Mambilla stretches from Taraba, through the Benue trough, and down to Obudu in nearby Cross River State, all the way through into Cameroon, close to the volcanic Mount Cameroon and not far from Lake Nyos. It was fascinating driving from the bottom flat land to the peak of the plateau at a height rising 1,600 metres above sea level. The highest point on the plateau is 2,000 metres and it is frighteningly called the Point of Death. It is the second-highest peak in sub-Saharan west and central Africa - second only to nearby Mount Cameroon.

As if to test me, one of the local emirs on the Mambilla that my guide accompanied me to pay customary homage to asked if I had been taken to the Point of Death. I threw protocol out of the window when I suddenly quipped that I was told about the Point of Death but deliberately decided not to venture to go on top of it because I didn't come prepared to die! Everyone laughed. An Africa Today reader, reading about my experience on the Mambilla has written in that I should ask Taraba State Governor to rename the Point of Death the Point of Life!

The Mambilla is an enchanting plateau to climb, as you would find out reading the E K'ABO section of this edition. It has always been. Its curves, sharp corners and intriguing bridges linking one end of the numerous mountains around the plateau to another are not for the fainthearted. Drivers that are not extremely careful, I understand, have met their waterloo either when climbing or descending the Mambilla. Even a state governor who went on tour of the plateau had stunned his official entourage when he reached what he considered the point or corner of no return. He became suddenly frightened and decided he had climbed and seen enough, he aborted the trip and ordered his entourage to do a detour to return back to base. Appropriately, the exact point where he turned back was named "Corner Governor" - and it is still called that today.

Spending a night on the Mambilla was good and the experience will remain with me for a long time. It as an unforgettable one, especially for three reasons: First, looking at its lush green vegetation, the trees that must have been deliberately planted because of their symmetry, and the vast flat manicured plantations and intriguing picturesque valleys; secondly, the tea plantations the vast land on the plateau is carpeted with - the Mambilla Highland Tea, which is produced on the plateau is the only tea factory in west Africa and has the potential if well branded of being a global ambassador for Taraba state and Nigeria as a whole, just as Kenyan, Indian or Chinese teas; and thirdly, the weather on the plateau with temperature that can go as low as zero degrees during wet season, is evidence that people from other climes were once resident on the plateau and they had brought with them some of their lifestyles including the trees, which are still there to see decades, if not a century, after their departure. Getting lost inside the Mambilla woods, one could be forgiven for thinking one is in Devon or Dorset in rural southwest England. The Mambilla is a piece of the English countryside tucked inside Taraba State, Nigeria.

I challenged the state governor, a fine gentleman Darius Dickson Ishaku, who is not a typical professional politician but a trained consultant architect and urban planner who dabbled into politics to open up the Mambilla for tourism. The plateau is so readily set, there is not much more to do, it is open for what can be a thriving tourism business. Its settings should naturally draw tourists from far and near to it. It needs an airport of its own, so that tourists and other visitors can fly to it either directly or through Lagos and Abuja; there is need for several world class hotels and golf courses to be built there. It is an ideal place to come to and invest for any smart tourism investor. Nigeria has over the years neglected this money-spinning tourism sector because of the easy huge sums of money it has been making from oil. There is room and appetite now for diversification because the country is in recession brought about largely by low price of oil. Maybe, that can draw investors to take advantage, come, look and invest in tourism in this fascinating Mambilla Plateau destination. 

Governor Ishaku's views and plans for making the Mambilla Plateau a place for investors to come put their money is in my interview with him, which is published inside this edition. In Nigeria, there is the usual monthly ritual of states trooping into the federal capital city of Abuja to collect monthly dues, or allocation, as they call it locally from the federation account - this is the amount running into billions of Naira due to each state during the monthly sharing of national monthly revenue. Each state depends on this shared income for the running of its affairs. By the time the money-spinning sectors of agriculture, solid minerals, and tourism in Taraba are fully developed and several new income streams open up, the state will have no business going to Abuja to collect monthly handouts. The wealth and income it can generate on its own within the state will pleasantly embarrass it.

The day Nigeria takes the bull by the horn and runs true fiscal federalism, Taraba State is one of those states that will surely not just survive but thrive. It has the potential of feeding to whole of Nigeria and even export foods.

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