•Published evidence for the unity of East Kainji as a group and for its subclassification is non-existent. Scattered wordlists, some very short, are found in the BCCW and in the publications of Shimizu. Since the field trips conducted by Shimizu in the 1970s there have been virtually no new materials published on East Kainji languages. •John Nengel, made a number of visits to some of these communities in the 1980s to collect historical data but studies of East Kainji languages have largely languished. As a consequence, we began to undertake a survey of East Kainji communities, especially in the Jos area, and focusing on languages reported by Shimizu as severely threatened. •So far data has been collected on the Boze [=Buji], Loro, Panawa, Sheni, Tunzu, Ziriya and Zora [=Cokobo] languages. A dictionary project is underway for Boze