The kingdom of Sukur

Someone called this place Nigeria’s Garden of Eden and I have no choice but to agree. This exceptional landscape illustrates a form of land-use that marks a critical stage in human settlement. Sukur is located in Adamawa State, North-East, Nigeria, in the Northern Mandara Mountains. It is 215km Northeast of Yola, the state capital, and 125 km SSE of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. Sukur is within easy walking distance of the Nigeria-Cameroon border and only 25km west of Mokolo, the largest town in the Mandara Mountains. It is as remote as any place in Nigeria, a beautiful settlement of perhaps 2,000 people high in the mountains with no direct vehicular access. Local granite has been used to build terraced fields and defensive dry stone walls around homesteads. The rare beauty of Sukur is a necessary site to behold; a once-in-a-lifetime experience that can only be matched by the seemingly impossible images on travel magazines and
nature channels.