Nejo

Near Nejo at the hill of Guté Dili, on 14 October 1888 the joint forces of Ras Gobana Dacche and Moti Moroda Bekere defeated the invading army of Khalil al-Khuzani, an officer of the Abdallahi ibn Muhammad who had invaded Wellega. At the time, Nejo was a trading center of the Sibu Oromo.Alessandro Triulzi, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/181098 "Trade, Islam, and the Mahdia in Northwestern Wallagga, Ethiopia", Journal of African History], 16 (1975), p. 68 Dejazmach Kumsa Moroda or Dejazmach Gebre Egziabher moved his residence from Nekemte to Nejo, where around 1893 he built the church of Kidane Mihret, the second Ethiopian Orthodox church in Sibo province; priests for the church were recruited from Shewa.[https://web.archive.org/web/20200327081624/https://nai.uu.se/download/18.39fca04516faedec8b248e21/1580829013419/ORTNEJ05.pdf "Local History in Ethiopia"] The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 11 December 2007)

In 1904 Onesimos Nesib arrived at Nejo to establish a mission, together with his wife, his children, and a group of associates including Aster Ganno. He had originally gone to Nekemte, but learning that Dejazmach Gebre Egziabher had relocated to Nejo followed him there. The Dejazmach invited Onesimos to settle next to his gebbi, gave him a large piece of tax-free land, and built him a house and a school. By September of that year, Onesimus had 20 students in his school. In November 1905 Dejazmach Gebre Egziabher moved his residence back to Nekemte, and he took Onesimus along. The school had as many as 68 students, but closed when Onesimos and Aster left. About this time, Nejo had become a significant market center for gold from the nearby Abay and Dabus rivers. "The stock-in-trade is a small neatly worked basket," wrote Herbert Weld Blundell who visited the area in 1905, "containing pebbles ground to equal the weights required for weighing out the gold, a small copper balance, and finally, the gold-dust in quills The amount of gold exported from Nejjo has been put by engineers living there at about £80,000 a year, and the tribute of the king is about one-half of this."H. Weld Blundell, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1776289 "Exploration in the Abai Basin, Abyssinia", Geographical Journal], 27 (1906), p. 544

The Evangelical mission was revived in 1927, when Pastor Martin Nordfeldt and his family arrived from Nekemte in July of that year. During their stay, the Nordfeldts wrote an Oromo grammar which was printed in the Swedish journal Le monde oriental. Nejo became something of a mining center in 1929, when important occurrences of gold were found in the area.

Although the Evangelical church had survived the Italian occupation, despite being converted to a Roman Catholic church, after their expulsion Fitawrari Danye and his soldiers allegedly vandalized the building, stealing everything of value, knocking the altar to pieces, and used the church building as a stable. The other mission buildings were likewise pillaged. Despite this, by the late 1940s the mission was once again in operation.

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Nejo has an estimated total population of 19,887, of whom 9,811 are men and 10,076 women.[http://www.csa.gov.et/text_files/2005_national_statistics.htm CSA 2005 National Statistics], Table B.4 The 1994 census reported this town had a total population of 11,125 of whom 5,321 were men and 5,804 were women.

{{Weather box|width=auto

|metric first=y

|single line=y

|collapsed = Y

|location = Nejo, elevation {{convert|1800|m|ft|abbr=on}}

|Jan high C = 27.6

|Feb high C = 28.7

|Mar high C = 29.2

|Apr high C = 28.7

|May high C = 25.7

|Jun high C = 23.3

|Jul high C = 21.7

|Aug high C = 22.1

|Sep high C = 23.2

|Oct high C = 24.3

|Nov high C = 24.8

|Dec high C = 26.5

| year high C =

|Jan mean C = 19.6

|Feb mean C = 20.5

|Mar mean C = 21.3

|Apr mean C = 20.8

|May mean C = 19.7

|Jun mean C = 17.8

|Jul mean C = 16.7

|Aug mean C = 17.1

|Sep mean C = 17.5

|Oct mean C = 18.2

|Nov mean C = 18.5

|Dec mean C = 18.8

| year mean C =

|Jan low C = 11.8

|Feb low C = 13.3

|Mar low C = 14.3

|Apr low C = 14.1

|May low C = 13.8

|Jun low C = 13.1

|Jul low C = 13.0

|Aug low C = 12.8

|Sep low C = 12.3

|Oct low C = 12.8

|Nov low C = 12.6

|Dec low C = 12.1

| year low C =

|precipitation colour = green

|Jan precipitation mm = 5

|Feb precipitation mm = 13

|Mar precipitation mm = 31

|Apr precipitation mm = 70

|May precipitation mm = 184

|Jun precipitation mm = 340

|Jul precipitation mm = 322

|Aug precipitation mm = 350

|Sep precipitation mm = 319

|Oct precipitation mm = 116

|Nov precipitation mm = 33

|Dec precipitation mm = 5

|year precipitation mm =

| Jan humidity = 49

| Feb humidity = 49

| Mar humidity = 49

| Apr humidity = 52

| May humidity = 74

| Jun humidity = 84

| Jul humidity = 87

| Aug humidity = 86

| Sep humidity = 80

| Oct humidity = 75

| Nov humidity = 67

| Dec humidity = 57

| year humidity =

| source 1 = FAO{{cite web

| url = https://www.fao.org/land-water/land/land-governance/land-resources-planning-toolbox/category/details/fr/c/1028000/

| title = World-wide Agroclimatic Data of FAO (FAOCLIM)

| publisher= Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations

| access-date = 22 June 2025}}

}}

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Category:Populated places in the Oromia