Ahmed Yahaya Joe
“Boast not of what thou art for one greater than thee is to be found in Kano.” – Hausa saying
(Kano, komi kazo da shi uban wani ya fi ka)
On April 26, 1949, barely three years after the gadfly and pioneer nationalist Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946) had seriously taken ill during a sensitization tour for self-government in Kano – home to the largest caravanserai in sub-Saharan Africa.
A motley of tycoons led by the maverick Agalawa-descended Alhassan Dantata (1877-1955) and the intrepid Tripolitania-Arab from Ghadames in present-day Libya, Ibrahim Musa Gashash (later Northern Regional Minister for Land & Survey 1960-1966) co-founded Kano Citizens Trading Company (KCTC) whose administrative machinery was run by Abdallah Hamda (later Jacob Baikie) of Shuwa extraction from Lake Chad basin area and veteran of Kano’s Native Authority who had risen to the position of its Chief Scribe after 20 years of meritorious service.
KCTC was an audacious bid of proactively first seeking the kingdom of economic emancipation by giving the behemoth UAC established in 1931 that had prior merged with GB Ollivant conglomerate in 1933 a good run for their money in the vast commodity laden British colonial economy before attaining the kind of self-government promoted by the Lagosian better known as “the political wizard of Kirsten Hall” who was evacuated back home where he subsequently died.
Agreed, Lagos has been a longstanding commercial capital. This was however only at detriment of the “Manchester of Nigeria” due to the decline and eventual collapse of the hundreds of caravans in the Trans-Sahara trade to the Mediterranean Sea linking metropolitan Europe where Moroccan leather also known as saffian is still originally Kano hide and skin;
“In 1903, the British consul at Tripoli states that one caravan from Kano carried merchandise valued at 41,000 pounds.
The construction of the rail line in 1911 was also seemingly part of an effort to redirect the Kano-Tripoli trade.” – Chatterton
The emergence KCTC against the backdrop of Macaulay’s struggle to date still beggars the question for Nigeria: What was the use of political independence without economic freedom?
Kano is a demographic culmination of various “confluences and influences” that have historically evolved through a continuous process of “becoming Hausa” – Salamome.
A near all-encompassing phenomenon of Hausanization responsible for transformation of the popular Kano family names of Abeche (from the Quaddai border region of Chad with Sudan) to Abacha and Ghadames to Badamasi.
Significantly, Alhaji Hassan Sanusi Dantata makes bold to claim in his 2016 book entitled “Littafin Tarihin Alhasawa” (The History Book of the Alhassan Clan) that the Agalawa of which the Dantatas are an offshoot of, trace their descent from present-day Tunisia;
“Originally known as the Agalfatia according to Kano Chronicle (an Arabic manuscript written in the 1880s by Malam Barka, Dan Rimin Kano under Sarki Muhammed Bello on the throne 1882-1893) the Agalawa first arrived Kano in the 15th century speaking Tamashek (language of the Tuaregs) under the 1438-1452 reign of Abdullahi Barja also known as Abdullahi Dan Kaneji.” – Lovejoy
Fast forward to the present day.
While the outstanding life and interesting times of the recently deceased business mogul, Alhaji Aminu Dantata (1931-2025) fondly referred to as “Aminu Dogo” is already well too known elsewhere to warrant any further belaboring mention here, only the passing of a colossus of his caliber would made parallel Emirs of Kano put aside their aristocratic differences to attend his funeral in Medina – a development not repeated at the recent burial of former President Buhari at Daura.
The long and winding history of Kano is so much fraught with many complexities and intricacies that it has to be classified into 3 categories by historians: the Habe era from 999 CE to the 1807 Fulani jihad, the Caliphate near century to the Maxim Gun conquest of 1903 and from the British colonial epoch to date.
The Bagauda pedigree featuring the offshoots of Gaudawa, Rumfawa and Kutumbawa dynasties whose last king, Muhammad Dan Yaji (Alwali II) was expelled by the combined Fulani forces drawn dominant clans of Dambazawa, Yolawa, Jobawa and overbearing Sullubawa that have tenaciously held feudal sway for more than 200 years from 1819 to date, yet during Kano’s hour of greatest defensive need their leading lights cowardly abandoned their capital’s defence ahead of Lugard’s firepower to Sarkin Shanu, a royal slave of Gera ethnicity from present-day Bauchi State.
Who are the Sullubawa?
The question is pertinent against the background of their lack of tenacity in making Sarkin Shanu locum tenens. The official Kano Emirate website speaks volumes;
“The Sullubawa belong to the Wangara stock. They have Mandingo element in their ancestry, and they are also related to the Mandika. They spoke Wakore before they became absorbed into the Fulani group.
Thus, they lost their original language and adopted Fulfulde.
Today, most of the descendants of Ibrahim Dabo dan Mahmud, the first Sullube sarki of Kano, can not speak Fulfulde.” https://www.kanoemirate.org/new/pdfs/Origin_of_Sullubawa.pdf
For centuries like ancient Rome all roads still lead to Kano’s entrepôt its “birni” (ancient city) surrounded by remnants 11-mile perimeter mud wall variously 30 to 50 ft high and 40ft thick at the base with a double-ditch. During its apogee accessed only through well-secured 13 gates the 14th forcibly created on 3rd February, 1903 by a British expeditionary force of 24 officers, 12 NCOs, 2 medical officers and 722 rank and file of “Glover’s Hausas” made up of 550 foot, 71 artillery men and 101 mounted infantry, with 4 75mm guns and significantly 4 Maxim guns.
Kano, central sub-Sahara’s Rome equivalent for centuries has been home to the Nupe at Tudun Nupawa, the Wangarawa at Sharifai, the Tuaregs (from present-day Niger Republic) at Agadasawa, Arabs in Durumin Turawa, the itinerant warring Jukun at Yakasai among others ranging from the Kanuri at Zangon Barebari and Yoruba at Ayagi including the present-day Ghana’s branch of the Agalawa of Koki at the Sarari home base of the Dantata business dynasty whose peripatetic vicissitudes is now increasingly reinventing itself under a new pedigree as the title of Hassan Dantata’s 2016 publication implies.
How has Kano been able to manage its diversity?
And what lessons are there for the rest of Nigeria?
Hausanization refers to the process of adoption, spread and influence of the Hausa language and culture on other ethnicities.
For instance, “All it takes to be an indigene in Kano since the early 15th century up to the recent times is your loyalty to the throne of the emirate and your desire to reside in the ancient city.” – Karofi
While Kano identity is a subjective construct, it has no descriptive singularity. The fundamental issue Karofi is raising is a “birni/waje” dichotomy that steadily increased when the Lagos-Kano rail line was completed in 1911 and its associated culture-shock which stratified Kano between the permissibly assimilated, those that shall remain unassimilated and those completely unassimilable each consigned to specific urban enclaves by British colonial fiat.
This is irrespective of the fact that the General Sani Abacha (1943-1998) and Gashash of KCTC fame belonged to Kano’s “waje” yet were both able to muster enough political clout to be instrumental in not only dethroning a sitting Sultan in 1996 but even dispatching a Kano emir to exile 33 years prior.
https://dailynigerian.com/a-word-for-emir-sanusi-by-jaafar-jaafar/
In April 2019, Mike Chang was turbaned as “Wakilin Yan Sin” (Representative of China to the Emirate) that unprecedented ceremony, notwithstanding, he shall remain unassimilated based on Karofi’s template. Perhaps unless willing to reside within the ancient city confines, including embark on religious conversion.
A conundrum that directly affects the ever increasing numbers of indigenous non-Muslims in Kano.
No less onetime Sarkin Sabongari, Jacob Haruna Dandaura originally from Gizo, Gumel Emirate in present-day Jigawa State. As his surname implies his hometown is an adjunct of the historic Daura of “Bayajidda” fame.
Another is Mallam Idi Kano, an erstwhile Islamic cleric turned fiery preacher of Church Missionary Society (CMS) Kano mission;
“One major problem which the Hausa Christian has to face is how he can fit into his own environment; how professing a faith which he shares with very few or none, he could survive in a society which is principally of another faith.
Since religion relates to the totality of man, it has a permanent and pervasive effect on society, permeating, influencing, and directing every aspect of life from birth through marriage to death. Hence, not to belong to the religion of the majority in a society is, ipso facto, to declare oneself a social outcast at the least.
The test for the Hausa Christian is how he can detach himself from the norms and traditions as symbolized in the various customs and ceremonies and at the same time belong to that society, and even to be able some meaningful role in national affairs?
The pressure for social conformity is an all-powerful imperative. In nature, anything that does not adapt is destroyed – survival of the fittest. In society, anyone who does not conform is eliminated, or at best, ostracized. The Hausa man would say (Ba namu ba ne) – he does not belong to us or he is not one of us.” – pp. 385-386 Garba
Kano Jalla Babbar Hausa or Kano Jallabar Hausa?
A breakdown of census figures conducted under British colonial supervision 76 years ago is an interesting case study;
“The Tribal Statistics, Kano Province, for the year 1949:
Hausawa – 1,672,511
Fulani – 770,577
Barebari – 181,655
Maguzawa – 63,875
Buzaye – 2,337
Yarbawa – 5,167
Ibos – 7,232
Agalawa – 7,474
(National Archives Kaduna 5908 p.10)
While the Kano Province in the early years of British colonialism had also encompassed what is the whole of today’s Katsina and parts of Bauchi States, however, by 1949 when the immediate foregoing figures were enumerated it significantly shrunk to the territories of just present-day’s Kano and Jigawa States.
It is against that background that the figure for Barebari (Kanuri) enumerated would not have included those that had fully Hausanized at Zango Barebari within the Kano “birni” (ancient city walls) and those assimilated into the Fulani aristocracy at Tofa, a district assigned to the Kanuri family of Bashir Othman Tofa (1947-2022) alongside the martial Zanna title – the main rival to Chief MKO Abiola fully Hausanized by ethnicity but still had Kanuri tribal marks.
Tofa is one of 44 LGAs of Kano and historical home of a cavalry division of mixed Chad basin horsemen in Kano’s immediate pre-colonial army of Emir of Kano 1894-1903, Aliyu Babba dan Maje Karofi.
Similarly, the figures assigned to Buzaye (Tuaregs) would not have included those at Agadasawa in the “birni” nor the “Bugaje” – another more dark-skinned fully Hausanized offshoot of Tuaregs mainly in neighboring Katsina State.
The same could be said about the exclusion of the Yarbawa (Yoruba) and Nupawa (Nupe) descendants in Ayagi and Tudun Nupawa, respectively.
But more interestingly, is how the Agalawa were classified neither as Hausa nor Fulani many wrongfully presume them to be.
Notice also in the 1949 figures provided the “Maguzawa” (animist Hausa that venerate spirit worship known as p. iskoki, s. iska) were given a special classification separate from their Muslim kinsmen “Hausawa” (Hausa people) thereby validating the existence of “Ba namu bane” in determining selective citizenship through tyranny of the majority in Kano;
“Kano Emirate did not distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims when it came to tax collection because the non-Muslims paid the same amount of taxes the Muslim Hausa had to pay.
However, reality showed that non-Muslims were expected to pay more taxes. Although non-Muslims were not part of the political elites, they were an essential part of the economy and contributed to economic activities and development in terms of paying taxes and buying and selling.
The non-Muslim communities were also the primary source of enslaved persons of the Muslim Hausa, who raided their communities because Islam supported the enslavement of non-Muslims.” – p.65 Jemirade
Perhaps why Usman & Abba maintain that;
“The evidence available shows that there was no Hausa ethnic nationality before the 19th and 20th centuries.
Their substantial dialectical, cultural, territorial entities (vary) and such groupings are made of people of diverse origin including Nupe, Jukun, Gbagyi and Yoruba. Until recently in Sokoto, “Hausa” meant the Sokoto area, to the exclusion of Kano, Katsina and all the other areas usually called Hausaland, nowadays.” – pp. 52-53
Little wonder, Prof. Adamu Baikie titled his 2021 book “simmering melting pot” – adopted home to the Plymothian Malam bo-Moi, John Ellis Lavers (1936-1993) and the Tripolitania-Jew, Shaul Raccah (1895-1970) reputed to be the largest independent exporter of groundnuts before British subterfuge wrestled him to the ground in the 1930s. Both their remains rest at the historic Dandolo cemetery, below the Gorondutse, where Muslim scholars have been buried since the 17th century and at Kabarin Raccah, now a sprawling neighborhood respectively.
Continued in Part II
