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Bauchi State is a state in northern Nigeria. Its capital is Bauchi. The state was formed in 1976 when the former North-Eastern State was broken up. It originally included the area now in Gombe State, which became a distinct state in 1996.

The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University is located in the capital city Bauchi.

Bauchi State is divided into 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs). They are:

What is now known as Bauchi was until 1976 a province in the then North-Eastern State of Nigeria. According to the 1991 census, the state has a population of 3,836,333 after the creation of Gombe State out of it in 1996.

Bauchi state has gone through tremendous transformation over the years. During the colonial era up to independence, it formed part of the Bauchi-Plateau of the then Northern Region, until the 1967 state creation exercise, when the Bauchi, Borno, and Adamawa provinces constituted the former North-Eastern State.

With the creation of Bauchi state in 1976, then comprising present Bauchi and Gombe states, it included 16 Local Government Areas. The number of Local Government Areas in the then Bauchi state was increased to 20 and later to 23. However, in 1997 when Gombe state was created out of Bauchi and additional local governments were created in the country, Bauchi state was left with 20 Local Government Areas. These include: Alkaleri, Bauchi, Bogoro, Dambam, Darazo, Dass, Gamawa, Ganjuwa, Giade, Itas/Gadau, Jama’are, Katagum, Kirfi, Misau, Ningi, Shira, Tafawa Balewa, Toro, Warji and Zaki.

Bauchi state occupies a total land area of 549,260 km² representing about 5.3% of Nigeria’s total land mass and is located between latitudes 9° 3' and 12° 3' north of the equator. Longitudinally, the state lies between 8° 50' and 11° east of the Greenwich meridian.

The state is bordered by seven states, Kano and Jigawa to the north, Taraba and Plateau to the south, Gombe and Yobe to the east and Kaduna to the west.

Bauchi state is one of the states in the northern part of Nigeria that span two distinctive vegetation zones, namely, the Sudan savannah and the Sahel savannah. The Sudan savannah type of vegetation covers the southern part of the state. Here, the vegetation gets richer and richer towards the south, especially along water sources or rivers, but generally the vegetation is less uniform and grasses are shorter than what grows even farther south, that is, in the forest zone of the middle belt.

The Sahel type of the savannah, which is also