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Nigeria Historical Development of Urban Centers
Nigerian urbanism, as in other parts of the world, is a
function primarily of trade and politics. In the north,
the great
urban centers of Kano, Katsina, Zaria, Sokoto, the early
Borno
capitals (Gazargamo and Kuka), and other cities served as
entrepôts to the Saharan and trans-Saharan trade, and as
central
citadels and political capitals for the expanding states
of the
northern savanna. They attracted large numbers of traders
and
migrants from their own hinterlands and generally also
included
"stranger quarters" for migrants of other regions and
nations. In
the south, the rise of the Yoruba expansionist city-states
and of
Benin and others was stimulated by trade to the coast, and
by
competition among these growing urban centers for the
control of
their hinterlands and of the trade from the interior to
the
Atlantic (including the slave trade). The activities of
European
traders also attracted people to such coastal cities as
Lagos,
Badagri, Brass, and Bonny, and later Calabar and Port
Harcourt.
Overlying the original features of the earlier cities were
those
generated by colonial and postcolonial rule, which created
new
urban centers while also drastically altering the older
ones. All
these cities and peri-urban areas generally tended to have
high
population densities.
The northern savanna cities grew within city walls, at
the
center of which were the main market, government
buildings, and
the central mosque. Around them clustered the houses of
the rich
and powerful. Smaller markets and denser housing were
found away
from this core, along with little markets at the gates and
some
cleared land within the gates that was needed especially
for
siege agriculture. Groups of specialized craft
manufacturers
(cloth dyers, weavers, potters, and the like) were
organized into
special quarters, the enterprises often being family-based
and
inherited. Roads from the gates ran into the central
market and
the administrative headquarters. Cemeteries were outside
the city
gates.
The concentration of wealth, prestige, political power,
and
religious learning in the cities attracted large numbers
of
migrants, both from the neighboring countryside and from
distant
regions. This influx occasioned the building of additional
sections of the city to accommodate these strangers. In
many of
the northern cities, these areas were separated between
sections
for the distant, often non-Muslim migrants not subject to
the
religious and other prohibitions of the emir, and for
those who
came from the local region and were subjects of the emir.
The
former area was designated the "Sabon Gari," or new town
(which
in southern cities, such as Ibadan, has often been
shortened to
"Sabo"), while the latter was often known as the "Tudun
Wada," an
area often quite wealthy and elaborately laid out. To the
precolonial sections of the town was often added a
government
area for expatriate administrators. The result was that
many of
the northern cities have grown from a single centralized
core to
being polynucleated cities, with areas whose distinctive
character reflected their origins, and the roles and
position of
their inhabitants.
Surrounding many of the large, older northern cities,
including Kano, Sokoto, and Katsina, there developed
regions of
relatively dense rural settlement where increasingly
intensive
agriculture was practiced to supply food and other
products to
the urban population. These areas have come to be known as
close
settled zones, and they were of major importance to the
agricultural economies of the north. By 1990 the inner
close
settled zone around Kano, and the largest of its kind,
extended
to a radius of about thirty kilometers, essentially the
limit of
a day trip to the city on foot or by donkey. Within this
inner
zone, there has long been a tradition of intensive
interaction
between the rural and urban populations, involving not
just food
but also wood for fuel, manure, and a range of trade
goods. There
has also been much land investment and speculation in this
zone.
The full range of Kano's outer close settled zone in 1990
was
considered to extend sixty-five to ninety-five kilometers
from
the city, and the rural-urban interactions had extended in
distance and increased in intensity because of the great
improvements in roads and in the availability of motorized
transport. Within this zone, the great majority of usable
land
was under annual rainy season or continuous irrigated
cultivation, making it one of the most intensively
cultivated
regions in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the south, there were some similarities of origin
and
design in the forest and southern savanna cities of
Yorubaland,
but culture, landscape, and history generated a very
different
character for most of these cities. As in the north, the
earlier
Yoruba towns often centered around the palace of a ruler,
or
afin, which was surrounded by a large open space
and a
market. This arrangement was still evident in older cities
such
as Ife. However, many of the most important contemporary
Yoruba
cities, including the largest, Ibadan, were founded during
the
period of the Yoruba wars in the first half of the
nineteenth
century. Reflecting their origins as war camps, they
usually
contained multiple centers of power without a single
central
palace. Instead, the main market often assumed the central
position in the original town, and there were several
separate
areas of important compounds established by the major
original
factions. Abeokuta, for example, had three main chiefly
families
from the Egba clan who had broken away from and become
important
rivals of Ibadan. Besides these divisions were the
separate areas
built for stranger migrants, such as Sabo in Ibadan, where
many
of the Hausa migrants resided; the sections added during
the
colonial era, often as government reserve areas (GRAs);
and the
numerous areas of postcolonial expansion, generally having
little
or no planning.
The high population densities typically found in Yoruba
cities--and even in rural villages in Yorubaland--were
among the
striking features of the region. This culturally based
pattern
was probably reinforced during the period of intense
intercity
warfare, but it persisted in most areas through the
colonial and
independence periods. The distinctive Yoruba pattern of
densification involved filling in compounds with
additional
rooms, then adding a second, third, or sometimes even a
fourth
story. Eventually, hundreds of people might live in a
space that
had been occupied by only one extended family two or three
generations earlier. Fueling this process of densification
were
the close connections between rural and urban dwellers,
and the
tendency for any Yoruba who could afford it to maintain
both
urban and rural residences.
The colonial government, in addition to adding sections
to
existing cities, also created important new urban centers
in
areas where there previously had been none. Among the most
important were Kaduna, the colonial capital of the
Protectorate
of Northern Nigeria, and Jos in the central highlands,
which was
the center of the tin mining industry on the plateau and a
recreational town for
expatriates and the Nigerian elite. These new cities
lacked walls
but had centrally located administrative buildings and
major road
and rail transport routes, along which the main markets
developed. These routes became one of the main forces for
the
cities' growth. The result was usually a basically linear
city,
rather than the circular pattern largely based on
defensive
needs, which characterized the earlier indigenous urban
centers.
The other ubiquitous colonial addition was the
segregated
GRA, consisting of European-style housing, a hospital or
nursing
station, and educational, recreational, and religious
facilities
for the British colonials and the more prominent European
trading
community. The whole formed an expatriate enclave, which
was
deliberately separated from the indigenous Nigerian areas,
ostensibly to control sanitation and limit the spread of
diseases
such as malaria. After independence, these areas generally
became
upper income suburbs, which sometimes spread outward into
surrounding farmlands as well as inward to fill in the
space that
formerly separated the GRA from the rest of the city. New
institutions, such as university campuses, government
office
complexes, hospitals, and hotels, were often located
outside or
on the fringes of the city in the 1980s. The space that
originally separated them from the denser areas was then
filled
in as further growth occurred.
Data as of June 1991
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