If there’s one thing that defined the Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ man, it was his refusal to sit still where money moved. North, South, East, West, home or abroad, wherever trade called, he answered.
So when word reached Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ about the opportunities up North, the earliest settlers who made their way to Jos weren’t just looking for a new home, they were reading a map. Jos sat perfectly as a gateway, a launching point into Mubi, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, and everywhere else worth trading in up North.
Back then, Jos was nothing like the sprawling city it is today. It was small, close, almost intimate, hugging what would eventually become Terminus, now the city’s commercial heartbeat, and spilling only slightly into Cole Street, Church Street, and Rwang Pam Street. Beyond that handful of streets, it was all rock and hill, which is exactly why old-timers still call it Rock City.
Then the mines came alive. Villages around Jos filled with labourers and miners who worked all week underground and only surfaced, quite literally, on weekends, coming into town to see their families and spend their pay. That weekend rush was an opening, and the Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ man, never one to take up a wage job himself, moved right into it. He didn’t dig for tin. He sold what the diggers needed: kolanut first, then cloth, then whatever else the moment called for.
By the time the big merchant houses eventually showed up, UAC, UTC, PZ, Chellarams, Kingsway Stores, they were walking into a market that had already been shaped by hand, one Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ trader at a time. Colonial rule brought modernity, and modernity brought competition, but for a long stretch before that, this trade belonged almost entirely to sons of Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́.
Some names from that era still carry weight today: Prince Jimoh Oyèwùmí, Chief David Ọlágbémiró, Pa Moses Onígbìńdé, Alhaji Y.A. Ìṣọ̀lá, men who didn’t just trade in Jos, they helped build it.
Two years ago, my good friend Àyánkọ́lá Àyánwuyì and I began working on a documentary titled “A Road From Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ to Jos.” It tells the beautiful story of how Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ people found a second home in Jos. We will hold private screenings of the documentary in Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ and Jos in the first week of September.
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