9 The Land Resources of North East Nigeria A/blume1 The ...

PART 2. THE ENVIRONMENT
LOCATION
by
M G Bawden
The area covered by this land resource project is shown in Text Map 1. It is bounded in the
south by the Benue river and in the east and north by the frontier with the Cameroon and
Niger Republics. The western boundary is generalised on the small scale location map as a
straight line following 10° longitude; in detail it is more complex: from Matsena in the
north through Hadejia to Azare it follows the 10° line of longitude; from Azare it runs east
to Misau and then southwards separating the Bauchi Plains from the Kerri Kerri Plateau (see
Text Map 2). Prom the south of the Kerri Kerri Plateau the boundary follows an irregular
line southeast to the Benue, downstream from the confluence with the river Pai.
The reason for the irregular boundary is that, at the time of the fieldwork, a further land
resource reconnaissance was known to be planned to cover the area immediately to the west of
this project. To the north of Misau a similar landscape extends westwards from Gashua to
Kano and 10° longitude was used as a convenient dividing line. South of Misau the landscape
changes markedly between the Kerri Kerri Plateau and the Bauchi Plains to the west and the
boundary follows this natural division. South of the Kerri Kerri Plateau the character of
the Benue Valley west of the Pai river is more akin to the landscape further west and it will
be covered by the new project.
In the south the North East project joins the area covered by the reconnaissance of the land
resources of Southern Sardauna and Southern Adamawa (Bawden and Tuley, 1966) the northern
limit of which was the Benue river extending eastwards from the 10° line of longitude to the
Cameroon frontier.
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