Keffi, town, Nassarawa state, central Nigeria. It was founded about 1800 by Abdu Zanga (Abdullahi), a Fulani warrior from the north who made it the seat of a vassal emirate subject to the emir of Zaria (a town 153 miles [246 km] north). Although Keffi paid tribute to Zaria throughout the 19th century, it was constantly raided for slaves; its war in the reign of Sidi Umaru (1877–94) with the nearby town of Nasarawa resulted in a further payment of slaves to Zaria.
In 1902 the British transferred the headquarters of Nasarawa province to Keffi to protect the trade caravans going north from the Benue River. The killing of a British administrator in Keffi by the Zaria magaji (“representative”), who subsequently fled to Kano (220 miles [350 km] north-northeast), the most powerful of the Fulani emirates, led to the British attack on and defeat of Kano in 1903.
Most of the inhabitants of the traditional emirate are Gwandara people, engaged in tin and columbite mining and in farming; the chief crops are millet, sorghum, yams, and cotton. Keffi town has a teacher-training college, and it is served by a mosque and a hospital. The emir’s palace stands next to the main square. Keffi is located just west of a junction of local roads that give it access to Abuja, Nasarawa, the trunk highway at Akwanga, and the main railway at Lafia. Pop. (2006) local government area, 92,664.