Idoma

The Idoma live mainly in southern Benue State, around Otukpo, Oturkpo and Ugboju, and speak Idoma, an Idomoid language of the Benue-Congo family. They are traditionally organised into a number of clans historically headed by their own chiefs, with the paramount stool of the Och'Idoma, based in Otukpo, created in the twentieth century to give the Idoma a single recognised traditional head, similar in origin to the Tiv's Tor Tiv stool. Farming, particularly of yam and other staple crops, has traditionally sustained Idoma communities.

Oral tradition among Idoma clans generally holds that ancestral groups migrated into their present territory from the Apa/Igala area to the north or, in some accounts, from further afield, over some centuries; different clans preserve distinct migration narratives rather than a single unified account, and some historians argue these traditions reflect a gradual coalescence of related groups rather than one continuous movement. The office of Och'Idoma was created in 1947, during the colonial period, as a paramount stool through which the various Idoma clans could be represented collectively, and has no precolonial precedent.

Traditional Idoma political authority rested with clan heads (Ochor) and councils of elders, supported by age-grade associations known as Ekwu, which organised labour, defence and social discipline. The Och'Idoma, based at Otukpo since the stool's creation in 1947, now serves as the paramount traditional ruler over the Idoma as a whole, sitting above the individual clan chiefs.

Idoma traditional religion recognises Owo as a supreme being, alongside ancestral spirits and deities linked to land and lineage, addressed through shrines, masquerade and divination. These beliefs continue to be practised by some Idoma alongside a Christian majority.

The Alekwu masquerade, associated with ancestral spirits, plays a central role in Idoma funerary and festival practice, addressing the community on behalf of the dead. Age-grade associations continue to organise communal projects and social events in many Idoma towns.