Rainmaking in Plateau State, Nigeria: Traditional and Culturalpractices and Their Implications for Wealth in Ancient Times and Modern Prosperity
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Existing scholarship on Plateau State has documented the diversity of indigenous ritual life among its constituent ethnic nationalities, but it has not systematically analysed mountain-based rainmaking as a political-economic institution, nor situated it within a comparative framework alongside the weather-prayer traditions of Pentecostal Christianity and Islam that have largely succeeded it. This is the problem the present study addresses. Three objectives guide the research: first, to document the cosmological and ritual structure of mountain-based rainmaking among the indigenous peoples of Plateau State, north-central Nigeria; second, to analyse the socioeconomic implications of controlled rainfall and its cessation for wealth accumulation, land tenure, and community power in pre-colonial and colonial-era Plateau communities; and third, to compare traditional rainmaking with Pentecostal and Islamic weather-prayer practices in order to identify continuities and discontinuities in ritual structure, religious authority, and theology. The study adopts a qualitative, historical-descriptive design, synthesising ethnographic accounts, oral history, and anthropological and theological literature on Plateau communities. The analysis finds that rainmaking functioned simultaneously as a spiritual and an economic institution: the rain priest's authority was bound to land tenure, harvest tribute, and inter-community trade, so that rainfall, wealth, and political power were mutually reinforcing. Colonial land reform and Christian missionary opposition undermined the institutional basis of rainmaking, yet the anxieties it addressed persisted, and now find expression in Pentecostal prayer meetings and Islamic Salat al-Istisqa, both of which reproduce many of rainmaking's structural features while abandoning its territorial, covenantal theology. The paper's contribution is a documented account of Plateau rainmaking as a political-economic institution and a comparative framework for understanding how its social functions persist within contemporary religious practice.
DOI: 10.68653/8kd6ds54
Author: DR. ILIYA AJANG
Institution: Plateau State University
Language: English
Subfield: General Social Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7225410002