Custom and Politics in Urban Africa

A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns

Abner Cohen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136528002
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

A discussion of the process by which some ethnic groups manipulate values, myths, symbols and ceremonials from their traditional culture in order to develop an informal political organisation. This organisation is then used as a weapon in the struggle for power and privilege within contemporary society.

CHAPTER ONE

The Migratory Process: Settlers and Strangers

The Quarter and the People—Processes of Settlement—Rights in Housing—Occupational Stability—Residence of Wife and Children—Primary Relations within the Quarter—Relations with the Chief—Old Timers and Transients—Social Security in Institutionalized Begging—On Becoming a Diaspora-Hausa

Hausa control of long-distance trade in kola and cattle in Nigeria has required the formation of a network of highly stable Hausa communities in the towns and villages of Yoruba-land. In the face of fierce and continuous competition by Yoruba traders, much of the success of the Hausa depended on the rapidity with which they could establish and develop these communities. This has involved various kinds of mobility of population through which continual demographic adjustments in the age, sex, and occupational structures of the communities have been made. Different Hausa traditional customs and institutions were closely interconnected with these demographic processes.

When a Hausa man from the North comes to live in Sabo he does not automatically become a citizen of the Quarter. Settlement in the Quarter is a complex process which involves passage through a series of roles, ranging from that of the stranger to that of the permanent settler. As the migrant becomes more settled, by being drawn into active participation in the social life of the Quarter—economically, politically, morally, and ritually—he becomes increasingly more ‘retribalized’. His Hausa identity becomes the expression of his involvement in a web of live social relationships which arise from current, mutual interests within a new social setting.

The Quarter and the People

When the present Quarter was established in 1916, about 400 Hausa were settled in it.¹ But this number steadily increased and by the early 1930’s the Quarter had become highly congested and some new migrants had to settle in a peripheral area on land which they acquired from Yoruba owners. In subsequent years a few hundred Hausa eventually also sought accommodation in the centre of the town in houses owned by Yoruba.

Today there are 3,400 Hausa living within the original settlement and 762 living in the adjoining peripheral areas.² For all social purposes, and for adequate sociological analysis, this second group of settlers constitute an integral part of the Quarter and will be treated as such throughout the monograph.

The Hausa living in the nearby Mokola area,³ together with Nupe and some other migrants, and the Hausa living in the centre of Ibadan, among Yoruba settlers, fall into a different category. They do not own houses but live as tenants in houses belonging to Yoruba landlords. They do not form part of the Sabo community, nor do the people of Sabo regard them as forming a part. They are mostly temporary settlers, who usually stay in Ibadan for a few months and then leave. They will therefore be treated as a separate category in this discussion.

Within the original Quarter, there is, in addition to the Hausa, a group of 382 settlers who fall into a special ethnic category. They are bilingual, speaking both Hausa and Yoruba, though they speak Yoruba among themselves. In interaction with the Yoruba they claim to be Yoruba, but within the Quarter they claim to be Hausa in origin. They claim to have been settled in Yorubaland for so long that they cannot remember their homes of origin. But according to the Hausa of the Quarter a true Hausa must be able to name his place of origin in Hausaland,⁴ even though he was born in Ibadan. Thus, when in conversations these settlers say they are originally Hausa, the Hausa often retort: ‘But what about your home settlement?’ which, in Hausa is ‘kaka gida!’. The group is, accordingly, known within the Quarter as ‘Kaka Gida’. It is believed that at least some of the families within this group are descendants of former slaves from the North who had been owned by Yoruba masters. When they were eventually emancipated they could not find a place within the Yoruba compounds which belonged to freeborn Yoruba lineages, and so when a Hausa settlement was established they joined it. During the first two or three decades after the establishment of the Quarter they played an important part socially in the Quarter. They had their own chief who was turbaned by the Hausa Chief of the Quarter to whom he paid allegiance. But, as Ibadan grew bigger, as Yoruba from everywhere in Yorubaland came to settle in the city, and as the significance of lineage affiliation began to dwindle, most of the Kaka Gida began to work with Yoruba. With the intensification of party politics after the Second World War, the Kaka Gida began to identify themselves more with the Yoruba than with the Hausa. Today, the Quarter is for most of them mainly a place of residence. They and the Hausa have intermarried little.

Processes of Settlement

Of the 2,614 Hausa who were born in the North, 2,334 (89.3%) came to Ibadan between 1943 and 1963, while only 280 (10.7%) had migrated before 1943.⁵ These figures reflect only the incoming migrants who were still living in the Quarter at the time when the census was taken. They do not show how many of the migrants who had lived in Sabo during the past 47 years had eventually died or returned to their homeland in the North or moved to join other Hausa communities in southern Nigeria or in other countries in West Africa. It was difficult to overcome these limitations in the general census by carrying out an extensive genealogical census, as many of these former settlers did not leave relatives behind. In 1963 I attempted to trace the fate and whereabouts of the 394 Hausa men and women who had founded the Quarter in 1916 and whose names and occupations had been listed at the time by a British official. I found that of these Hausa, 20 were still living in Sabo, 239 had died in Sabo, and 43 had left Sabo. No information could be obtained about the remaining 92.⁶

However, although it is not possible to obtain accurate and exhaustive figures in these respects, much can be learnt about the processes involved from the intensive study of events from records and biographies. In any case, it is established beyond any doubt that the total number of Hausa settling in Ibadan has been steadily increasing almost all the time, except during the Second World War period when the rate of increase became very small.⁷ All this means that the number of migrants who have settled in the city is greater than those who have left it. The total number of those Hausa in Sabo who were born in Ibadan or who have been living in Ibadan for 9 years or more is 2,909, which is nearly 70% of the total Hausa population.⁸

The settlers themselves are not only aware of this fact but are even inclined to deny that there is any reverse migration. When informants are reminded of some specific well-known cases of men who have left the Quarter, they try to argue that those men had not been settlers but only ‘strangers’ living in the Quarter for a short period of time.

The Hausa of Sabo clearly distinguish between a Hausa settler⁹ and a Hausa stranger.¹⁰ Length of residence in the Quarter is by no means the most important criterion for this categorization. For example, men who have been sent by northern dealers to act as their permanent agents in Sabo are regarded as strangers even though some of them have lived in the Quarter for many years and have had their families with them. On the other hand, others who have been in the Quarter for a shorter period, but who act and regard themselves as permanent settlers, are not categorized as strangers.

To put it briefly, there are within Sabo social organization, distinct sets of roles for Hausa settlers and for Hausa strangers. Between the two there are graded in-between sets of roles, which mark the different degrees of commitment to settlement in the Quarter. This means that the process of social assimilation, or settlement, within the Quarter can be viewed as a movement on a continuum between the status of the stranger and that of the settler. This continuum of sets of roles consists of highly overlapping scales of roles, with each scale presenting a different criterion for settlement within the society in the Quarter. Men become more settled, not as a result of a slow process of ‘acculturation’ or ‘socialization’, but of a dramatic movement from one role to another on the same scale and from one set of roles to another.

Important among these scales, or criteria, of settlement are (1) rights in housing and space accommodation within the Quarter; (2) type of occupation; (3) the residence of wife, or wives, and children; (4) primary relationships within the Quarter and (5) relationships with the Chief of the Quarter.

Rights in Housing

Housing is crucial to settlement in the Quarter in many respects. Without some kind of permanent housing arrangement a man cannot become a citizen of the Quarter and cannot actively participate in the economic, political, and other social life of the community. He will need increasingly more housing space to accommodate his expanding family and often housing is also essential for the conduct of his business.

Since the early 1930’s the Quarter has become increasingly congested. More people have settled in it without proportional expansion of the allotted area. Housing has become the scarcest, and hence the most expensive, commodity in Sabo.

When the Quarter was first founded the land was distributed in plots of equal size among the original settlers, but since then many changes in the distribution and ownership of the houses and of the plots have taken place. The land on which the houses have been built is public land but individuals have rights in the use of the plots of land which they hold. This right is inherited and it can be sold. A man can remain the ‘owner’ of land even though another man can own the building on which it stands. A tenant in such a house may spend money on substantial repairs, or on adding rooms to the house, and will thus have the right to a part of the value of the building. When a man dies, his rights are inherited by his kin, some of whom may not be resident in the Quarter. Sometimes a man dies leaving no heir in Sabo and after a time—in some cases after many years—someone may come from the North and claim to be an heir. In the meantime, according to custom, when a house owner dies without leaving an heir the house will be inherited by the Chief of the Quarter, presumably for use in the interest of the whole community. Therefore, because of the mobility of people, of a high rate of mortality, and of frequent bankruptcies which nearly always result in selling rights in housing, a most complicated situation has evolved, with continual claims and counter claims being made.

This situation is further complicated by the fact that a client who is accommodated in a house owned by his patron acquires in the course of time, a ‘moral’ right in the house. This moral right will in due course be considered by the public to be ‘legal’ so that even if the man loses his job, for one reason or another, in the business house of the landlord, he may still continue to have the right to the house. I have come across a number of cases of this kind, with the Chief of the Quarter, and his advisors, supporting this right, when he arbitrated in disputes.

Thus, to become a citizen of Sabo, a man has to acquire rights in housing and, other things being equal, the more such rights he acquires the more settled he becomes in the Quarter.

A man can certainly acquire housing rights outside the Quarter, by becoming a tenant in a house owned by a Yoruba landlord, and indeed he can do this at lesser expense than within the Quarter. But because by doing this he puts himself out of the control of the Chief, and hence of the community, he will not be regarded as a citizen of the Quarter and he will have no creditworthiness within it.

Occupational Stability

As in most migrant communities, the degree of settlement in the Quarter is closely inter-related with the kind of occupational role a man occupies. There is a great deal of occupational differentiation and specialization in Sabo. Within most occupational categories there is a hierarchy of roles, from that of the business landlord at the top to that of his lowest client at the bottom.

Occupational roles in Sabo can be arranged on a graded scale representing progressively higher degrees of commitment to permanent settlement in the Quarter. This scale is based on a number of criteria which overlap considerably.

The first criterion is the amount of investment in housing in the Quarter which the role calls for. A tailor needs a shop, as well as a residence. A small-scale landlord needs at least one house for the accommodation of stranger dealers who conduct their business through him. A large-scale landlord needs houses for his wives, his stranger dealers, his employees and their families, and so on. The more housing the occupational role necessitates, the more committed is the man in the role, to living within the Quarter.

Secondly, of great importance is the amount of money invested in giving credit or loans to assistants, agents, and customers, as well as the amount of money ‘invested’ in the form of presents to various categories of men, and of alms given to malams and to beggars. Here again, the greater the amount invested in the course of fulfilling the requirements of an occupational role, the more is the occupant of the role committed to settlement in the Quarter.

The third criterion is the stability and regularity of the role over time. Some roles are seasonal while others are constant, and some roles are temporary or intermittent while others are more continuous. Some roles, like those involved in the cattle trade, have existed and remained continuous since the beginning of Hausa migration into Ibadan, while others, like those involved in lorry transport, are of fairly recent origin.

Fourth, there is the amount of income which the role yields. The level of income is generally speaking higher in southern than in northern Nigeria and the higher the remuneration from an occupational role in the Quarter the more committed the man is to settlement in Sabo.

The fifth criterion is the amount of experience and training in local conditions which the role necessitates. Some roles require a great deal of connections with people in Sabo, in Ibadan, in the North, and in the other Hausa communities in the South. This experience is an investment and is often not transferable, so that a man acquiring valuable experience of working in the South will not be able to make great use of that experience in the North.

Residence of Wife and Children

A man shows a high degree of commitment to living in the Quarter if his wife, or wives, and his children live with him in the Quarter.

This criterion, however, is not by itself as significant as it is in many other migratory situations in Africa. Hausa marriage, both in the North and in Sabo is highly unstable.¹¹ In Sabo it is easy for a man to find a wife and it is also easy for a woman to find a husband. I recorded numerous cases of men who left their wives in the North and married a second wife in the South. In both the North and in Sabo, housewives conduct a trade in their own right and nearly always have some capital, as well as an income, of their own. Children are no handicap to mobility of either parent. There is on the one hand avoidance between children and parents, and, on the other, a widespread practice of fostering of children. In accordance with Islamic law, when a couple are divorced children must remain with the father. But cases studied in Sabo show that nearly half the divorced men left their children with the divorced mother.

It is nevertheless the case that a married man who has his wife, or wives, and children with him in the Quarter is more committed to settlement than if he had his family staying in the North...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Map of Sabo Area, Ibadan
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Migratory Process: Settlers and Strangers
• 2 The Migratory Process: Prostitutes and Housewives
• 3 Landlords of the Trade
• 4 The Politics of Long-Distance Trade (1906–1950)
• 5 From a Tribal Polity to a Religious Brotherhood (1951–63)
• 6 The Ritualization of Political Authority
• Conclusions
• Numerical Abstracts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index