Many years ago, as a teenage student of West African history, I was fascinated by many stories. One of them was the story of the Old Hausa States. It is the story of Bayajidda, the ancestral father of the Hausa, who had a son, Bawa. Bawa had 14 sons with several women. Seven of the sons were sired with his legitimate wives. They were called “Hausa Bakwai” (legitimate Hausa). The other seven were sons Bayajidda had with mistresses. They were called “Hausa Banza” (or Illegitimate Hausa), Each of these 14 sons founded a city-state which took his name and maternal pedigree within a loose confederation called the Hausa States.
Although linked by ancestry, fighting and squabbling was rampant among the Hausa states. Their leaders were notorious for injustice, petty jealousy, graft, land grabbing and excessive taxation of the poor. Life for the average citizen was a nightmare. And so, the story goes, when an itinerant Fulani-Muslim teacher strolled into Gobir (one of the Bakwai states) from faraway Futa Djallon, he easily built a cult following by preaching against the decadent order of the day.
With his newfound followers, most of them Hausa, Uthman Dan Fodio overthrew and killed his generous host (King Rumfa), and subsequently overran the entire Hausa states, one after the other. In just six years (1804 – 1810), the old Hausa states were crushed, gone forever and replaced by the Sokoto Caliphate.
Back then as a starry-eyed teen, I quickly realized that the old Hausa states sowed the seed of their own destruction by having a dichotomous classification of citizenship into superior and inferior castes (Bakwai and Banza) based on the marital status of the mothers of the founder of each city-state in relation with Bawa.
In effect, half of the 14 Hausa states were considered “inferior” and their citizens as second class.
Imagine being considered “banza” (inferior or Illegitimate) in the land of your birth because your ancestral grand mother was only a side-chick (and not properly married) to your ancestral grand father! How was it your fault and what good did it serve to be so labeled?
I felt no sympathy for the old Hausa states as they crumbled, on the pages of my history books, in the face of Dan Fodio’s ragtag army of disgruntled volunteers who (though Hausa themselves) flocked to a stranger with a bright idea to change their circumstances.
The clever politician that he was, Fodio preached that under Islam all believers were equal before God and could not be discriminated against. He promised free land allocations and a zero tax regime to all Muslims. Not surprisingly, he easily won, not just in their hearts but in the battlefields.
Shortly after my O’Level history lessons ended, I began to realize that in my own time, before my very own eyes, history was repeating itself.
My country, Nigeria, had created its own unique caste systems of North vs South; East vs. West; Owners vs. Vassals; and Haves vs. Have-nots. It was the basis for dispensing favors and privileges in politics and economics.
This caste system determined exactly how far any Nigerian could go in life, simply on the strength of their regional, ethnic, religious or party affiliation.
Not surprisingly, Nigeria has been facing similar problems as those which took the life of the old Hausa states. Her leaders are absent-minded and steeped in an eternal struggle for supremacy and self-aggrandizement. Her citizens are deeply divided and disillusioned. Her component units are forever squabbling over the sharing of resources and revenues they do little to generate. Envy, jealousy, pettiness and divisiveness are official principles of state policy.
Anyone who rises against this dysfunctional system, would find ready support from an army of disgruntled residents yearning for better living conditions and a society that treats them like citizens.
The greatest security asset of any nation is its people, specifically their hearts and minds. In Nigeria, the greatest security investment of government is in arms and munitions. The people are considered disposable.
And so, instead of consolidating energies on the task of uplifting the people to build a stronger nation, the Nigerian state is constantly busy putting out fires it literally lit with its own hands; struggling to “unite” groups whose affinity towards one another or a common purpose has been sabotaged.
Today, there is a fire burning within every few square kilometers of Nigerian territory. The plot and characters only vary from one region to the other. They go by a multitude of names and descriptions – Jihadists, terrorists, insurgents, bandits, herdsmen, militants, separatists, ethnic warlords, religious extremists, kidnappers, or simply “unknown gunmen.”
It is clear that the seeds of discord were willfully sown by both colonial and post colonial authorities who exaggerated local cleavages, especially between North and South, East and West, Christian and Muslim, in order to gain or retain power. Those seeds have since germinated and are now producing a rich harvest.
Nearly 65 years after the British left, the North whose “developmental interest” was used as excuse to delay independence for the young Nigerian state, has continued to lag behind the rest of the country in almost every living standard measure.
Northern Nigeria is home to over 70% of Nigeria’s poorest and most wretched; and Nigeria was recently rated as the “Poverty Capital of the World.”
So, what is happening today in Nigeria is the cumulative effect of over 100 years of subterfuge by agents of both internal and external colonialism.
From regional and ethnic inequality, Nigeria has evolved to class inequality. Today, politicians from all the regions and ethnicities are united in exploiting and oppressing everyone else in the country.
The children of the poor whom the elites refused to educate are taking vengeance on a system that betrayed them. Evil has come upon the evil monger. The chicken has come home to roost.
The Sokoto Caliphate which rose from ashes of the old Hausa States has long imploded from its own internal contradictions – just like the old Hausa states it sacked over 200 years ago.
Leaders of Northern Nigeria appear bent on paying for their sins with resources from the South. Nigeria is unravelling alongside the Caliphate.
In a strange twist of fate, the North which once fought a war “to keep Nigeria one” is today in tatters – torn to shreds not by Niger Delta militants, Biafra agitators or Oduduwa Republic advocates, but by its own youth, fed up with the hypocrisy and internal contradictions of its parochial elite. Who now will fight to keep the North in one piece? Who now will fight to keep Nigeria as one?
The German philosopher Georg Hegel once famously wrote: “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” It was his way of pointing out a universal human affliction with collective memory.
If Hegel were alive today, he would find Nigeria as the most perfect specimen to validate his observation. Like leaders of the Old Hausa States and the Sokoto Caliphate, Nigerian politicians are spectacularly poor in learning from past mistakes.
