One cannot but be fascinated by the passion that imbued Professor Adamu Baikie to undertake the study of how Sabongarin Kano came about and what in a short while made it the simmering melting pot of Kano State. Equally fascinating is the amount of recall in the narrative that details the recollection of the place including its origin, daily mundane activities, the landmarks of those years and the prominent citizens of the time.
Kano City had always welcomed strangers because it was essentially the business hub in the West African sub-region. And the strangers that came earlier were always hosted within the city walls. However, the early years of the 20th Century were unusually challenging times. Kano had just suffered a calamitous defeat in 1903 at the hands of the army of a British adventurer, Lord Lugard.
To make matters worse, the Kano sovereign, Sokoto, would be defeated soon after. Neighbouring states such as Zaria, Katsina and Bauchi had fallen to the colonial adventurers. The consequences were the loss of sovereignty to the British colonial power. There followed rapid administrative changes and the inevitable construction of highways and the rail line from the coastal ports for the evacuation of agricultural products.
This meant bringing in a host of strange elements as artisans of varying trade skills to assist the colonial officers now taking charge of running the administrative set-up. The Kano Native Authority, the largest and richest in the North also employed the services of non-indigenes particularly to work in critical departments as its Works Department. These stranger elements were not just from the southern part of the country but were also from such far-flung places as Sierra Leone, Ghana, Gambia, etc. The majority of the settlers were of different religious orientations and Emir Muhammadu Abbas, then ruling Kano, was pragmatic enough to accommodate them outside the walled city.
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Emir Abbas had to navigate how to accommodate the strangers flocking into the city. The solution was to give them plots outside the walled city to build their dwellings. Adamu Baikie wrote: “But for the vast majority of the arrivals from the South who were mostly Christians, they were allotted a huge piece of land outside the city through the benevolence of the then Emir of Kano, the insightful, compassionate and accommodating Alhaji Muhammadu Abbas in 1911.”
Thus, Sabongari was born and, in a few years, it grew in leaps and bounds. Adamu Baikie came to live in Sabongari as a toddler when his father Jacob Baikie secured an appointment with the Kano Native authority in 1932. He moved his family from Zaria where Adamu was born. Young Adamu grew up in Sabongari and had his early education there. In that period Sabongari was about 20 years in existence and was in full bloom.
It was as Adamu Baikie wrote, a ‘melting pot – – made up of nearly all the ethnic groups in Nigeria. It is also a haven for non-Nigerians who enjoy the hospitality and camaraderie of the people of Sabongari; it is the home of all religions each of them practiced in a friendly atmosphere’.
Adamu Baikie gave a vivid account of Sabongari in that period. It was a compact community where everybody knew each other. No wonder the book is replete with names of the movers and shakers of the Sabongari community, across ethnic groups including Yorubas, Igbos, Kanuris, Shuwa-Arabs, Kalabaris, Nupes, Ghanaians, Sierra Leoneans Senegales, Lebanese, Chadians, etc.
The Sabongari community was not only famous for being supportive to all levels of government as artisans and administrative support staff, but they were also great businessmen. Adamu Baikie devoted a good portion of the book to celebrating the Sabongari market which was established in 1914 and became famous due to its varied composition.
At the height of its fame in the 1940s, the Sabongari market even took the shine off the historically prominent Kasuwar Kurmi. He made mention of the prominent traders in the market such as Mal Abacha, the father of General Sani Abacha, the late Head of State. On Mal Abacha’s shop, Adamu Baikie wrote: ‘The shop was a mud building strategically located near the centre of the market, not too far from the office of Sarkin Kasuwa – the administrator of the market. Alhaji Abacha’s shop had everything, anything that could be used routinely daily could be found in the shop. It was the mini-supermarket of the time and was heavily patronized.
He had fond memories of Mal Abacha, whom he described as a ‘Kanuri merchant/trader who introduced the concept of a shopping centre in Sabongari market. He was very humble, he rode on his silver shinning bicycle with his young son seated on the connecting bar of the bicycle in front, daily to the market from where he lived on Yoruba road’.
As readers would expect, Adamu Baikie devoted a good portion of the book to the growth of schools, health, sporting and worship centres in Sabongari. The community was well-serviced in that regard.
We must salute Prof Adamu Baikie for giving us an insight into how people of different backgrounds from all ethnic groups in Nigeria and beyond lived together in peace and harmony to build a progressive community in one of the North’s most traditional cities.
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