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system, and an end to deliberate oppression, amongst other things (Suberu, 1996). They also exploited all avenues available to them including missionary education and the formation and joining of associations such as the Northern Nigerian Non-Muslim League founded in 1949. The persistent resistance of Southern Kaduna people to emirate rule led to the questioning of this rule by one of the colonial governors, Cameron, who also made attempts at reforms. However, other British officers rejected his attempts on the basis that it would undermine the Emir’s authority, and the Emir argued that the people were too primitive to be left without Hausa-Fulani supervision. Nonetheless, the Governor asked that Southern Kaduna people be incorporated in positions such as district heads (Okpanachi, 2010:). Commenting on the fact that much of anticolonial revolt in Southern Kaduna was targeted at Hausa-Fulani Muslim and the construction of Hausa-Fulani as the enemy, Suleiman puts forward the following argument:
It should be pointed out that the Hausa-Fulani aristocracy (emirs, chiefs and district heads) in Northern Nigeria which the British colonial government met, put in place and/
or worked with were as much victims of colonialism as their colonial subjects – both Muslims and non-Muslims across the protectorate. Several emirs and chiefs were deposed and exiled by the British colonial power while scores of district heads were relieved of their positions across the northern region of Nigeria during colonial rule (2011: 7).
While this is true, the subordinate position of and experience of aggression by the non-Hausa groups, coupled with the absence of the British in the colonized space of minorities makes it challenging to accept any narrative of equal victimhood. Relative to the experience of minorities, the Hausa-Fulani was powerful – arbitrarily. This view and the encounters that informed it continued to play out beyond the colonial era as the section that follows illustrate. It is also a dominant narrative among members of the Online Forum analyzed for this study. Thus, the foregoing discussion helps to situate online narratives in the broader northern Nigerian context and story.
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(Weimann, 2010). During the period commonly known as the First Republic (1960-1966) these three regions were caught up in intense competition and struggle for political control and relevance. The Northern Region under the leadership of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, who was the leader of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), exploited different strategies to boost northern influence in the country. Though the end of British rule left the North with greater political influence, indirect rule marred the region’s competition with under- development and a lack of western education compared to the other two regions ( Simon, 2011).
The Sardauna and the NPC also wanted to recover and preserve the religious and cultural heritage and identity of the Northern Region inherited from the Caliphate period which was disrupted by colonization. He further wanted to use this as a unifying strategy that would enhance the influence of the region on the affairs of the new republic (Ochonu, 2008). Apart from the threat posed by the more educated and more developed Southern Nigeria, with its large Christian population, the Northern Region’s leadership had an “uncomfortable awareness” of the penetration of Christianity into the minority ethnic groups of the Middle Belt areas, such as Southern Kaduna, where Christianity was getting stronger from the 1950s (Peel, 1996).
The Sardauna, thus, introduced a principle of “One North, One Destiny” and a “Northernization”
policy (Falola and Heaton, 2008). On the one hand, the policy favoured Northerners of all ethnicities and religions in employment. For the first time, according to Simon, many non-Hausa and non-Muslims felt a sense of belonging, making the period one of “exceptional unity” in northern Nigeria (2011:16-17). On the other hand, the Sardauna embarked on a massive Islamic proselytization in the Northern Region in order to achieve his goal of religious unity as well as recovery and preservation of his image of the region’s religious and cultural identity. Northern elites also began to apply and interpret Islam in ways that helped them achieve different ideological ends (Bienen, 1986; Miles, 2003; International Crisis Group, 2010). The Sardauna also did not reform colonial administrative structures to address the concerns that, more than national independence, had dominated northern minorities such as those of Southern Kaduna.
Rather, he and the NPC brutally suppressed opposition such as the Middle Zone League (MZL), to which many of the non-Hausa and non-Muslim minorities belonged and which served as their voice (Ojo, 2012; Simon, 2011; Peel, 1996). Some scholars suggest that the use of religion in the Northern Region for building political alliances during this period marked the beginning of the
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politicization of religion and its relevance to conflicts in northern Nigeria (Ibrahim, 1989;
Lenshie and Inalegwu, 2014; Ibrahim, 1991).
There have been several changes since the first republic ended in 1966, which have influenced socio-political and religious life in Kaduna. The abolition of the regional system and creation of states in Nigeria began to introduce new changes to inter-ethnic and interreligious relations especially in the area of majority-minority status as ethnic minorities in northern Nigeria became more visible in the public sphere (Weimann, 2010). While many states in the region still have an almost exclusively Hausa-Fulani Muslim population, the majority-minority status has been redefined in others. The present-day Kaduna state was created in 1975 from the former North Central state created in 1967. This, and the carving of Katsina state out of Kaduna in 1987, reduced the state-wide majority status of Hausa-Fulani Muslims7 and opened up opportunities for more political participation by Southern Kaduna people. Local Government Areas in Southern Kaduna have increased from two in 1987 to eight by 1992. Although the influence of traditional rulers is waning in democratic Nigeria, numerous chiefdoms and districts were created along ethnic lines in Southern Kaduna as well as a few more emirates in other parts of the state (Angerbrandt, 2011; Blench, Longtau, Hassan and Wals, 2006).
At the level of state leadership, Hausa-Fulani Muslims have successively governed Kaduna state since independence. From 1999, Christians of Southern Kaduna origin have occupied the position of Deputy Governor (Suleiman 2011). The appointment of the then state governor, Namadi Sambo, as the vice president of Nigeria in 2010, created the opportunity for his deputy, Patrick Yakowa, a Southern Kaduna Christian to assume governorship, and retain the position in the 2011 elections – making him the first Christian and Southern Kaduna person to hold the position. While this was both highly celebrated and opposed, it was short-lived following his tragic death in 2012 (Omonobi, Mamah and Yenogoa, 2012). Complaints about marginalization, deprivation of rights, and underdevelopment have remained among Southern Kaduna groups.
Many Southern Kaduna people also believe that splitting Kaduna would bring their alleged marginalization to an end and promote lasting peace. Thus, there has been pressure for the creation of Gurara State for Southern Kaduna (Angerbrandt, 2011; Suberu, 1996). The foregoing
7 Kaduna State of Nigeria, http://www.nigeriagalleria.com/Nigeria/States_Nigeria/Kaduna_State.html
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shows that rather than reduce tensions, postcolonial state-making processes aggravated them and gave them new forms.