Ranchers Bees

The name on the shirts for most of the club's history was industrial: DIC Bees, after the Defence Industry Corporation that set the side up in 1974 in Kaduna. It stayed that way until 1986, when the businessman Alhaji Muktar Mohammed Aruwa bought the club and gave it the name it plays under now.

The high point came three years later. In 1989 Ranchers Bees won the West African Club Championship, beating Côte d'Ivoire's ASEC Mimosas 4–3 on aggregate in the final. There had been a domestic final too, in 1983, lost to Enugu Rangers on penalties, and another continental final the following year, the CAF Cup Winners' Cup, lost to Tunisia's CA Bizertin.

Since then the story has mostly been about staying up rather than winning things. Runners-up in the Nigeria Premier League in 2009–10, the club spent sixteen years working through the lower divisions before promotion back to the top flight arrived in the spring of 2026. A second-tier title in 2012–13, won as Nigeria Division 1 was being renamed the Nigeria National League, was part of that long climb. Matches against Kaduna United, the Kaduna Derby, are the fixture the city turns out for.

Daniel Amokachi started out here, at the club still wearing yellow and black at the Ranchers Bees Stadium.