Northern Nigeria, especially the area called the holy North, had been exposed to Arab’s civilisation and Muhammeddanism from the eighth century. The North-East, that was known as Bornu empire, was the first to come under Islam’s influence. The empire was still extant until 1900. It was a fragment of its earlier larger territory called Kanem-Bornu Empire.
It comprised North-Eastern Nigeria, Northern Cameroon, the Republic of Chad, Niger Republic, Central African Republic (CAR), and the Southern part of Libya. The empire existed and flourished as it developed Islamic education and culture on which the people and their commerce thrived. It’s on record that most people who were residents of Kanem-Bornu were indigenes of Sahara Desert, who suffered a terrible shortfall of rainfall and drought that made patches out of oasis(es) areas. No wonder people migrated to Lake Chad area for adequate water supply for people and domestic animals’ use.
As far back as 700 AD, the people of Kanem were actively trading with the indigenes of Tripoli in Libya. Religion, Islam, followed trading in horses, camels, donkeys in exchange for slaves. History could not close its eyes to the emergence of Dunama Dabbalemi.
He took the empire to greater heights. He was the first Kanem-Bornu empire king who deepened the penetration of Islam in the area and widely spread its message. He didn’t stop at that. Thrice, he went on a pilgrim to Mecca and Medina. Dabbalemi, to consolidate relationships with the Maghreb in North Africa, sent a gift, a live giraffe, to the Hafsid monarch to seal their friendship. To prove his piousness, Dabbalemi went a foot ahead to establish an Arabic School, Madrasa of al-Rashid, in Cairo.
Scores of Kanem people were sponsored by their Mai to acquire deeper Arabic-Islamic knowledge. Thus, making them better Muslims. Dabbalemi consolidated his relationship with the North African people by also establishing a formal diplomatic relationship with them through exchange of diplomatic corps.
It is, therefore, not an exaggeration that the Kanuri people in the North-Eastern Nigeria, were the first ethnic groups to taste Islam and embrace its tenents as the true principles of a pious life that could open the doors of Garden of Eden to them after life. Islam, thus became a way of life to Kanuri people. The flourishing culture of Islam in the North-Eastern Nigeria from 700 AD did not need any further proof that Kanuri people were Muslims. Maybe, perhaps, the only missing thing was evangelism.
If that was true, it might be the lacuna that the Uthman Danfodio-led jihadists wanted to fill. This, was, however, debatable. There were people who asserted that the claim of reforming Islam that Danfodio’s people cited for waging war against the Kanuri was not tenable. Those who supported the claim that the decadence that had hit the practice of Islam in Bornu empire left no option for the reformed Muslims of Danfodio’s camp but to start reformation. It compelled them, so they claimed, to move against deterioration of Islam. Bastardisation of Islamic doctrine was unacceptable to a rabid fanatic. Undoubtedly, it inflammed their passion and anger to destroy, if they felt and convinced that the infidels could not be reformed.
It was this religious-inflamed fury that drove Danfodio’s army to attack Bornu empire that had been practising Islam for many centuries before Uthman Danfodio was born. Danfodio, a cleric and Islamic scholar, had sojourned into the present day Northern Nigeria in search of a place to call home. As an Islamic cleric, he was fortunate to be appointed a teacher to a prince of one of the seven Hausa kingdoms, Yunfa. Danfodio was contracted to groom Yunfa in Quranic knowledge and make a good Muslim out of the pupil.
Yunfa became a king after the death of his father and he soon clashed with his former Mallam, Danfoldio, over issues on which the new king could not compromise. It was a rivalry between piety, spirituality, and temporal powers. Yunfa was quick to assert the sovereignty of his crown over every other thing or person in his domain. The claim was unacceptable to Danfodio, who claimed the superiority of religiousity. At the time the destructive and disruptive clash of the spiritual army of Islam and the temporal troops of Yunfa, Danfodio had amassed a large number of followers that could intimidate any enemy.
Yunfa never knew that he was confronting fanatical troops who had been brainwashed to believe that it was better for them to die in the cause of fighting for Allah. Death, they were told, was an expressway ticket to Aljanat, Garden of Eden.
It was, therefore, not a surprise that they fought valiantly and defeated Yunfa’s army. Danfodio conquered Yunfa and made his kingdom a fiefdom under the Fulani jihadists. That was how the seven Hausa kingdoms fell one after the other to the Islamists’ swords. Thus, Danfodio sent his flagbearers to replace all the kings in the Hausa kingdoms. They became Emirs. Yes, they ruled and are still ruling their emirates today. That was the 1804 to 1809 Jihad.
Danfodio succeeded in planting a caliphate in the seven Hausa kingdoms with its headquarters in Sokoto. The success of Danfodio in the North-West and hunger for more areas (land) to capture instigated the drive to attempt overruning the Bornu empire that had been practising Islam centuries before Danfodio came on the sphere of the North-West. Those who asserted that the waves of Danfodio that swept paganism out of the North-West were not identical with the motive that inflamed the attack against Bornu empire were never the same. Danfodio and his followers wanted more land and towns to capture and rule. They were not out to spread Islam to Bornu empire. What drove them there was acquisition of land.
If the population(s) of the North-West and the North-East are put together, it becomes glaringly clear why there are more Muslims in the North.
– Tajudeen Adigun
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