Kogi State is a state in the North Central geopolitical zone of Nigeria. It happens to be the only state in the country that shares borders with ten other states. It was created from part of eastern Kwara, western Benue and Niger states on 27 August, 1991 during the regime of former president Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. The capital of the State is Lokoja. Kogi state is named from Hausa word Kogi which means “River”. It is called the Confluence State because the confluence of River Niger and River Benue is at its capital.

During the pre-colonial period, the area now seen as Kogi State was split up between States and other parts of larger empires like Nupe kingdom. The Nupe Kingdom ruling much of the western until the early 1800s when the Fulani Jihad took over the area and put it under the Sokoto Caliphate while the eastern part of it was ruled by the ancient Igala Kingdom. British expeditions occupied the area and incorporated them into the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, in the 1900s and 1910s. Modern-day Kogi State was a part of the post-independence Northern Region until 1967 when the region was split and the area became part of the North-Western State, Kwara State, and Benue-Plateau State. After Benue-Plateau and the North-Western states were split in 1976, Kogi became a part of the new Benue and Niger states along with Kwara. The name Nigeria, was coined in Lokoja by Flora Shaw in the hill of Mount Patti, the future wife of Baron Lugard, a British colonial administrator, while gazing out at the river Niger.