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Partitioned Royalty: the Evolution of Hausa Chiefs in Nigeria and Niger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Extract
Amongst commentators and scholars of the turn-of-the-century partition of Africa, it has become virtually axiomatic to note the ‘artificial’ nature of the boundaries drawn up by the colonial powers. Cutting, as they often did, through otherwise homogeneous ethnic, religious, linguistic, and even geographic clusters, the European remapping of the continent is criticised, at least implicitly, for its allegedly blind or indifferent disregard for indigenous social and cultural systems prevailing at the time of the conquest.
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References
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1 The author is presently working on a larger project which addresses other implications (economic, religious, educational) of the partition of Hausaland.
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1 Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule, p. 193.
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3 A leftward swing in French metropolitan politics also facilitated this switch.
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1 These are only the two other largest ethnic groups, of which Nigeria has about 250.
2 Other important ethnic groups in Niger are the Tuareg, Buzu, bush Fulani, Toubu, and Kanuri.
3 Whitaker, op. cit.
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1 Ibid. p. 159.
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1 Ibid. June 1985.
2 Ibid. May 1986. On 1 July 1987, President Babangida announced that the period of transition would be extended until 1992.
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1 The ambivalence of the current régime's relationship with the sarakuna was recently borne out by the controversy in Gongola State which pitted the Emir of Muri, Alhaji Muhammed Abba Tukur, against the Military Governor, Colonel Yohanna Madaki. In August 1986 the latter succeeded in dismissing the Emir for allegedly misappropriating money in a government land-acquisition deal, and for demonstrating ‘insubordination and disrespect to government directives’. Two months later, however, Madaki himself was not only stripped of his Governorship (having been transferred to another State), but dismissed from the army entirely. One of the main reasons for the demise of Madaki's career, it is believed, was ‘his earlier entanglement in the dethroning of [the] traditional Emir of Muri’, which prompted the other Emirs collectively to pressure the Federal Military Government. See West Africa, 25 August 1986, p. 1801, and 20 October 1986, p. 2230; and This Week, (Lagos), 9 03 1987, p. 19.Google ScholarPubMed
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1 Guillemin, loc. cit. p. 124.
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