Pre-colonial defence mechanisms in central Nigeria: Perspectives on the igbira, igala and nupe people

North Central Nigerian is suffering from many types of insecurity such as kidnapping, banditry, armed robbery and the encroachment of Boko Harm terrorists. This paper is an attempt to reassess the security and defensive mechanism put in place by the pre-colonial peoples of the Central Nigerian area with special reference to the Igala, Igbira and Nupe communities using secondary sources in order to investigate how wecan learn from the defensive mechanism of these pre-colonial communities, modernize and adopt it to modern challenges. The paper established that the communities, over the time, employed different defensive mechanisms peculiar to their terrains and the respective challenges they were facing as of then, and to some extent, these mechanisms helped them in checkmating and curbing the various security threats they witnessed. The paper employed descriptive and analytical methods of historical research in its analysis.