Jos is a city in the north central region of Nigeria. The city has a population of about 900,000 residents based on the 2006 census. Popularly called "J-Town", it is the administrative capital and largest city of Plateau State. During British colonial rule, Jos was an important centre for tin mining and is the trading hub of the state as commercial activities are steadily increasing. History The earliest known settlers of the land that would come to be known as Nigeria were the Nok people ( BCE), skilled artisans from around the Jos area who mysteriously vanished in the late first millennium. According to the historian Sen Luka Gwom Zangabadt, the area known as Jos today was inhabited by indigenous ethnic groups who were mostly farmers. According to Billy J. Dudley, the British colonialists used direct rule for the indigenous ethnic groups on the Jos Plateau since they were not under the Fulani emirates where indirect rule was used. According to the historian Samuel N Nwabara, the Fulani empire controlled most of northern Nigeria, except the Plateau province and the Berom, Mwaghavul, Ngas, Tiv, Jukun and Idoma ethnic groups. It was the discovery of tin by the British that led to the influx of other ethnic groups such as the Hausa from the north, southeastern Igbo, and Yoruba from the country's southwest. As such, Jos is often recognized as a cosmopolitan Nigerian city. According to the white paper of the commission of inquiry into the 1894 crisis, Ames, a British colonial administrator, said that the original name for Jos was Gwosh in the Izere language (spoken by the Afusari, the first settlers in the area), which was a village situated at the current site of the city; according to Ames, the Hausa, who arrived there after, wrongly pronounced Gwosh as "Jos" and it stuck. Another version was that "Jos" came from the word "Jasad" meaning body in Arabic. To distinguish it from the hill tops, it was called "Jas", which was mis-pronounced by the British as "Jos". It grew rapidly after the British discovered vast tin deposits in the vicinity. Both tin and columbite were extensively mined in the area up until the 1960s. They were transported by railway to both Port Harcourt and Lagos on the coast, then exported from those ports. Jos is still often referred to as "Tin City". It was made capital of Benue-Plateau State in