By Ahmed Yahaya Joe
How do we define identity?
Is identity fixed? Or is it variable?
What should be considered when defining identity?
Can an individual or group have more than one identity?
While identity is held to be a subjective construct of “what people perceive themselves to be, and what others perceive and label them,” all the immediate preceding questions were some of the many asked by Archbishop Emeritus Josiah Idowu-Fearon CON in forming the kernel of an intensive 3Ds (Discuss, Debate, Deliberate) session he held with a select group of Christian and Muslim participants in a bid to further religious bridge-building and interfaith dialogue in Kaduna.
These said questions of February 2025 also coincidentally mirror those Ambassador Garba mused upon in his definitive memoirs entitled The Time Has Come: Reminiscences and Reflections of a Nigerian Pioneer Diplomat – a very engaging 423 pages published by Spectrum Books Ibadan back in 1989.
This must-read book reprinted in 1998 (but unfortunately not available in any Nigerian bookshop now) intermittingly captures the spirit and essence of Dr. Idowu-Fearon’s seminar title “Identity Issues in Divided Societies” as His Grace perilously navigated through the dire straits of the “singularity of identity” in Nigeria – that age-long bane in our nation.
This writer deeply appreciates the members of staff at Arewa House Kaduna for their continuous assistance, particularly in so graciously photocopying their library’s copy of Ambassador Garba’s book for use here.
On the mixed metaphors of being Al Barnawi and Al Kashinawi concurrently: how can a Bakatsine be a Bornoan at the same time?
Yet, such was the 17th century Katsina scholar of Kanuri extraction Abu Abdullahi Muhammad b. Masanih b. Nuh also known as Dan Masani (1595-1667) who was one of the troika of saints in that ancient kingdom alongside Dan Marina and Dan Tukum.
So was a Maisandari boy honorifically named after his grandfather, later baptized John, thereby validating the dictum; “All religions must be tolerated for every man must get to heaven in his way.” – Epictetus d. 135 AD
In the attached collage 36 years into the afterlife of the patriarch Garba are two among his surviving offspring, Abdullah and Zeinab, and the baby of the family, Musa and their other brother, Isa with their father alongside the 37th US President Richard family at the White House.
Notice Abdullah’s lip language (on Nixon’s right) and now, 53 years apart!
Significantly, right from page one in his book onwards, the veteran Ambassador offers an illuminating insight on the primaeval identity of the Garbas;
“NEVER! Never you utter those words again. Don’t you know that you and they are the same people, descended from the same ancestors?”
Those were my grandfather’s words of caution, as my youngest uncle Umaru Geidam and I came rushing home one evening being chased by some Kanuri boys of our (Maisandari then near Maiduguri) village.
They had called us names, ‘Afuno’ (Hausa), one thing or the other. We had retaliated in like manner, and they gave us a chase. But being outnumbered, we had sought refuge in the safety of our compound. This event made my grandfather surmise that it was time to tell us who we were.
My people were originally Kanuri who lived in some unspecified part of the present-day Borno State. Owing to untoward circumstance, there was a large exodus a long time ago which included members of my family. They moved westward until they reached Katsina.
When my people reached Katsina, they were not allowed to settle within the city walls, being foreigners but had to camp some distance outside it.
They eked out an existence through pursuits peculiar to rural dwellers, namely hunting and farming.
My ancestors became great hunters, and it is a well-known fact in the Hausa social arrangement of earlier days, the hunting class formed the backbone of the army whenever there was war; and there were quite a few of these.
My people, being as renowned great hunters were invited from time to time by Sarkin Katsina to help him in his various wars against his numerous enemies, which ranged along all the four cardinal points of the compass.
Having proven their prowess on the battlefield in the various campaigns over the years, Sarkin Katsina, on an occasion, in recognition of his appreciation and as a mark of gratitude, invited the elders among my people to nominate a leader who would be titled.
According to family legend the title of Kauran Katsina (Chief Warrior of Katsina) was bestowed on our chosen leader, and this title was held by us until shortly after the Jihad of Shehu Usumanu dan Fodio.
Later on, Sokoto had appointed a Pullo (Fulani) Sarkin Katsina whose appointment had been rejected by a section of the Katsina community including our own faction. Instead, we had appointed a rival Kado (Hausa).
We rose in revolt, but were worsted by the Fulani in the encounter by the Fulani and their supporters.
Our people had to flee westwards, once again and took refuge in places (in today’s Niger Republic) such as Damagaram, Tasawa and Maradi.
It is significant that the Chief (Emir) of Maradi, even today, which is a little short of two hundred years after the departure from Katsina, continues to style himself Sarkin Katsina, while the erstwhile French colonial rulers refer to Maradi as Katsina.” – pp. 1-2
The cross-fertilization of identities in Ambassador Garba’s background is no different from the historic complex mosaic in Kano incidentally the next stop in Ambassador Garba’s complicated identity formation long after his grandfather had fled from French Soudan (later Niger Republic) to Maisandari.
This is the historic urban conglomerate where the descendants of the Wangarawa (from Mali) in Sharifai, those of the Arabs at Durumin Turawa, Tuaregs at Agadasawa, the Nupe at Tudun Nupawa even the Yoruba at Ayagi, the warring Jukun at Yakasai including the Kanuri at Zangon Baribari are all Kanawa;
“Kano is a paradox. It is multi-ethnic and multicultural. Yet, it is homogenous.”
– Dr. Muhammadu Uba Adamu in Confluences and Influences: The Emergence of Kano as a City-State (2016).
If so, where does Emir Sanusi II’s The Fulani Factor in Nigerian History (including his follow-up The Fulani: Without Apology) fit into the overall dynamic?
Back then reactions to the future apex banker ranged from his being accused of “hocus pocus of sophistry,” to Malam Garba Shehu’s outright dismissal of the future monarch as propounding “racist crap.” (See the details in the Guardian newspaper edition of 29th June 2000)
Elsewhere hear Chief Abraham Adesanya (1922-2008) grandstanding; “I am first of all an Ijebu. Secondly a Yoruba. Thirdly a Nigerian.”
While that elder statesman arguably makes the notion of the “Yoruba race” a figment of demographic fiction, the highly accomplished Professor Kenneth Onwuka Dike (1917-1983) does not need any elaborate introduction here as one of the eminent scholars who shaped the teaching and research in the Nigerian university system. His landmark study conducted with Prof. Felicia Ekejiuba remains instructive.
“It is often forgotten, or merely mentioned in the footnote, that Igbo is a modern ethnic identity, which many of the constituent groups have only recently and often reluctantly accepted as their ethnic identity, often on political and administrative grounds….
Since Igbo was used at this time pejoratively to refer to the densely populated uplands, the major sources of slaves, it is not surprising that many of these groups have been reluctant to accept the Igbo identity.” – p.6 The Aro of South-Eastern Nigeria 1650-1980: A Study of Socio-Economic Formation and Transformation in Nigeria (1980)
Who says former President Goodluck Jonathan is even Ijaw?
He is actually of Ogbia ethnicity referred to as Ogbinya by their Ijaw neighbors. Neither was his immediate predecessor even Fulani but of Tuareg origin.
Perhaps not many Nigerians are aware that Suleja is a replacement name for Abuja, who are refugee Zaria people ousted by the very same chain of events that culminated in the Katsina exiles resettling in Maradi, no different from the Gobirawa doing in Ilorin, who today proudly don’t speak a scintilla of Hausa.
On the notion of being Hausa and or becoming Hausa, this writer has previously argued here with verifiable references:
That notwithstanding what is the moral here for the rest of us in present-day Nigeria?
Anything apart from being Nigerian first, last, and everything is just an illusion. Therein lies the danger in the singularity of identity unless it’s wholly Nigerian.
As elaborately described in his memoirs with ample details drawn from his personal diaries spanning a hefty 60-year period, Ambassador Garba started his western education in Kano after a 21-day trek from Maiduguri.
He then attended Middle School in Zaria before proceeding to CMS Grammar School Lagos where he picked Greek and eventually Igbobi College where he fine tuned his French and bagged the Latin prize sitting for his Senior Cambridge there in 1934.
After formal training in the British colonial agricultural value chain and a brief working career he then proceeded to London School of Economics to become the Northern Region’s second university graduate in 1949 after Russell Aliyu Barau Dikko (1912-1977) who had earlier qualified as a medical doctor in 1939.
The third was Prof. Ishaya Audu (1927-2005) in 1954. All three of the Wusasa pedigree.
Between becoming a career diplomat in 1957, Ambassador Garba became an Executive Director at the World Bank in 1963. Then Nigeria’s ambassador to Greece, Spain, Italy with accreditation to the Vatican and the United States up to 1975 when he eventually retired from public service living out the rest of his idyllic days in quiet contemplation in Kano.
Baba Garba passed on during the thick of preparations for the public presentation of his memoirs. Interestingly, he paraphrased the preface of his book already printed; “A man must be inordinately conceited…who will sit down and write his biography fully expecting that it will be published during his lifetime.”
No doubt trapped in his single skull are the minds of different generations as the saying goes, making his book as Gambo Diori puts it “an illuminating description of a peripatetic existence.”
Significantly, Ambassador Garba annotates in his book; “Dedicated to my grandfather, Muhammadu Sarkin Hako, who died in Maisandari in July 1931, and who had vowed I would never attend the White man’s school while he lived.”
Now a final word with Ambassador Garba’s parental background in his own words;
“My father spoke Hausa, Kanuri, Fulani, Shuwa-Arabic, and Sara-Kabam fluently. But this resourceful man had also taught himself English sufficiently as to bear the title of ‘Tafinta’ (Interpreter) at the Provincial Office, Nassarawa, Kano, between the years 1929-1930, and with the UAC at Gusau, from 1930 to 1934.
He had no formal education but never missed the opportunity to learn, to which I had contributed in no small measure.
In the early years in Maiduguri, his Kanuri companions called him Garba Jibdama (Garba of the Jibda, or civet cat). Later in life, when he had risen to be foreman and lining-sinker in the well sinking section of the Geological Department, they called him Garba Baramma (Garba of the Wells).
As for my father, he addressed himself as Mallam Garba Katsina throughout his life. Only after he had gone to the Hajj in 1960 did he change his name to Alhaji Garba Muhammadu, assuming his father’s name. From 1939 to 1943, he worked for the Kano L.A. (Local Authority), sinking wells mainly in the Hadejia, Gumel, and Kazaure emirates.
He retired in 1944 but continued to live in Kano City. During the years that he had been in and out of Kano, he had lived at Yakasai, Dan-Agundi, Gwangwazo, Tudun-Wazirci, and finally back to Kofar Dan-Agundi ward where he lived his last days on earth. Here, he died on 13th March 1972, at the age of about eighty-seven years.
My mother had left my father when I was about six years old. There was never a formal divorce. Before I was born, my father had married Fatu (Fatsuma), a Fulani from the same Geidam where he had married my mother.” – pp 13-14
