Nigeria The Northern Area
The best known of the northern peoples, often spoken of
as
coterminous with the north, are the Hausa. The term refers
also
to a language spoken indigenously by savanna peoples
spread
across the far north from Nigeria's western boundary
eastward to
Borno State and into much of the territory of southern
Niger. The
core area lies in the region in the north and northwest
where
about 30 percent of all Hausa could be found. It also
includes a
common set of cultural practices and, with some notable
exceptions, Islamic emirates that originally comprised a
series
of centralized governments and their surrounding subject
towns
and villages.
These precolonial emirates were still major features of
local
government in 1990. Each had a central citadel town that
housed
its ruling group of nobles and royalty served as the
administrative, judicial, and military organization of
these
states. Traditionally, the major towns were also trading
centers;
some such as Kano, Zaria, or Katsina were urban
conglomerations
with populations of 25,000 to 100,000 in the nineteenth
century.
They had central markets, special wards for foreign
traders,
complex organizations of craft specialists, and religious
leaders
and organizations. They administered a hinterland of
subject
settlements through a hierarchy of officials, and they
interacted
with other states and ethnic groups in the region by links
of
warfare, raiding, trade, tribute, and alliances.
The rural areas remained in 1990 fundamentally small to
medium-sized settlements of farmers ranging from 2,000 to
12,000
persons. Both within and spread outward from the
settlements,
one-third to one-half the population lived in hamlet-sized
farm
settlements of patrilocal extended families, or
gandu, an
economic kin-based unit under the authority and direction
of the
household head. Farm production was used for both cash and
subsistence, and as many as two-thirds of the adults also
engaged
in off-farm occupations.
Throughout the north, but especially in the Hausa
areas, over
the past several centuries Fulani cattle-raising nomads
have
migrated westward, sometimes settling into semisedentary
villages. Their relations with local agriculturalists
generally
involved the symbiotic trading of cattle for agricultural
products and access to pasturage. Conflicts arose,
however,
especially in times of drought or when population built up
and
interethnic relations created pressures on resources.
These
pressures peaked at the beginning of the nineteenth
century and
were contributing factors in a Fulani-led intra-Muslim
holy war
and the founding of the Sokoto Caliphate
(see Usman dan Fodio and the Sokoto Caliphate
, ch. 1). Fulani leaders took power
over the
Hausa states, intermarried with the ruling families and
settled
into the ruling households of Hausaland and many adjacent
societies. By the twentieth century, the ruling elements
of
Hausaland were often referred to as Hausa-Fulani.
Thoroughly
assimilated into urban Hausa culture and language but
intensely
proud of their Fulani heritage, many of the leading
"Hausa"
families in 1990 claimed such mixed origins. In terms of
local
traditions, this inheritance was expressed as a link to
the
conquering founders of Sokoto and a zealous commitment to
Islamic
law and custom.
Centralized government in the urban citadels along the
southern rim of the desert has encouraged long-distance
trade
over the centuries, both across the Sahara and into
coastal West
Africa after colonial rule moved forcefully to cut the
trans-Saharan trade, forcing the north to use Nigerian
ports.
Ultimately, this action resulted in enclaves of Hausa
traders in
all major cities of West Africa, linked socially and
economically
to their home areas.
In summary, Hausa become primarily a language, linked
culturally to Islam, a background of centralized emirate
governments, Fulani rulers since the early nineteenth
century,
extended households and agricultural villages, trade and
markets,
and strong assimilative capacities so that Hausa cultural
borders
were constantly expanding. Given modern communications,
transportation, and the accelerating need for a lingua
franca,
Hausa was rapidly becoming either the first or second
language of
the entire northern area of the country.
The other major ethnic grouping of the north is that of
the
Kanuri of Borno. They entered Nigeria from the central
Sahara as
Muslim conquerors in the fifteenth century, set up a
capital, and
subdued and assimilated the local Chadic speakers. By the
sixteenth century, they had developed a great empire that
at
times included many of the Hausa states and large areas of
the
central Sahara
(see The Savanna States, 1500-1800
, ch. 1).
Attacked in the nineteenth century by the Fulani, they
resisted
successfully, although the conflict resulted in a new
capital
closer to Lake Chad, a new ruling dynasty, and a balance
of power
between the Hausa-Fulani of the more westerly areas and
the
Kanuri speakers of the central sub-Saharan rim.
Even though Kanuri language, culture, and history are
distinctive, other elements are similar to the Hausa. They
include the general ecology of the area, Islamic law and
politics, the extended households, and rural-urban
distinctions.
There was, however, a distinctive Kanuri tradition of a
U-shaped
town plan open to the west, housing the political leader
or
founder at the head of the plaza formed by the arms of the
U. The
people remained intensely proud of their ancient
traditions of
Islamic statehood. Among many ancient traits were included
their
long chronicles of kings, wars, and hegemony in the
region, and
their specific Kanuri cultural identity seen in the
hairstyles of
the women, the complex cuisine, and the identification
with
ruling dynasties whose names and exploits were still
fresh.
Things have been changing, however. Maiduguri, the
central
city of Kanuri influence in the twentieth century, was
chosen as
the capital of an enlarged Northeast State during the
civil war.
Because this state encompassed large sections of
Hausa-Fulani
areas, many of these ethnic groups came to the capital.
This
sudden incorporation, together with mass communications,
interstate commerce, and intensification of travel and
regional
contacts brought increased contacts with Hausa culture. By
the
1970s, and increasingly during the 1980s and into the
1990s,
Kanuri speakers found it best to get along in Hausa,
certainly
outside their home region and even inside Borno State. By
1990
women were adopting Hausa dress and hairstyles, and all
schoolchildren learned to speak Hausa. Almost all Bornoans
in the
larger towns could speak Hausa, and many Hausa
administrators and
businesspeople were settling in Borno. Just as Hausa had
incorporated its Fulani conquerors 175 years earlier, in
1990 it
was spreading into Borno, assimilating as it went. Its
probable
eventual triumph as the universal northern language was
reinforced by its utility, although the ethnically proud
Kanuri
would retain much of their language and culture for many
years.
Along the border, dividing northern from southern
Nigeria
lies an east-west belt of peoples and languages, generally
known
as the middle belt. The area runs from the Cameroon
Highlands on
the east to the Niger River valley on the west and
contains 50 to
100 separate language and ethnic groups
(see
fig. 9).
These
groups varied from the Nupe and Tiv, comprising more than
half a
million each, to a few hundred speakers of a distinct
language in
small highland valleys in the Jos Plateau. On the east,
languages
were of the Chadic group, out of which Hausa
differentiated, and
the Niger-Congo family, indicating links to eastern and
central
African languages. In the west, the language groupings
indicated
historical relations to Mende-speaking peoples farther
west.
Cultural and historical evidence supports the conclusion
that
these western groups were marginal remnants of an earlier
substratum of cultures that occupied the entire north
before the
emergence of large centralized Islamic emirates.
Figure 9. Distribution of Principal Ethnic Groups, 1990
In time three distinct kinds of organized groups
emerged. The
largest and most centralized groups, such as the Nupe,
under
colonial administration became smaller versions of the
emirates.
A few of these peoples, such as the Tiv, were of the
classic
"segmentary" variety, in which strongly organized
patrilineages
link large portions of the ethnic group into named
nonlocal
segments based on real and putative concepts of descent.
Local
organization, land tenure, inheritance, religious beliefs,
law,
and allegiances are all related to this sense of
segmentary
lineage relationship. During the 1960s, some Tiv segments
allied
with the southern political parties, and others linked
with the
northern parties. Like the larger groups, they demanded,
and by
1960 had been granted, a central "chief" and local
administration
of their own.
The most common groupings in the middle belt were small
localized villages and their outlying hamlets and
households;
they were autonomous in precolonial times but were
absorbed into
wider administrative units under British rule. Most often
they
were patrilineal, with in-marrying wives, sons, unmarried
daughters, and possibly parents or parents' siblings
living
together. Crops separated this residence grouping from
similar
ones spread out over a small area. They cultivated local
fields
and prayed to local spirits and the ghosts of departed
lineage
elders. Descendants of founders were often village heads
or
priests of the village shrine, whereas leading members of
the
other lineages formed an eldership that governed the place
and a
few outlying areas, consisting of those who were moving
toward
open lands as the population increased.
The missionaries and party politics influenced, but did
not
obliterate, these older units. Missionaries arrived in the
1910s
and 1920s and were allowed into non-Muslim areas. They set
up
schools using United States or British staff to teach
English and
helped to create a sense of separateness and educational
disparity between the Christianized groups and Muslim
ones. From
the 1920s to current times both religions competed for
adherents.
Political parties representing both southern and the
northern
interests have always found supporters in this border
area,
making its participation in national life more
unpredictable.
Attempts in the 1960s and 1970s to create a separate
region, or
develop a political party representing middle belt
peoples, were
quickly cauterized by northern Muslim-based political
parties
whose dominance at the national level could have been
weakened by
losing administrative control over the middle belt.
At the same time, possibly the greatest influence on
the area
was that of Hausaization. The emergent dominance of the
Hausa
language, dress patterns, residential arrangements, and
other
cultural features was clear as one traveled from the far
north
into the middle belt area. Local councils that only a few
years
previously dressed differently and spoke in local
vernaculars
looked and acted as if they were parts of more northerly
areas in
1990. Although this diffusion was weaker in the more
remote areas
and in Jos, the largest middle belt city, it was
progressing
rapidly everywhere else, constituting a unifying factor
throughout the region.
Data as of June 1991
|