(6) The Establishment of the Nigerian Sokoto Caliphate: An inquest into the Background History of the 1804 Jihad in Hausa Land, 210 years After

Abstract

January first 2014, Nigeria became one hundred years after the popular 1914 amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates by Sir Fredrick Lord Lugard. The centenary commemoration of the Nigerian State generated very serious scholarly attention than any other issues in the annals of Nigerian history. While scholars channels energy in writing on the 1914 episode or epoch, very little attention have been given to the 1804 Jihad of Sheikh Shehu Usman Danfodiyo which brought the Sokoto Caliphate in to existence, and which was at the same time the headquarters of the Northern Nigerian region whose historical union with the southern protectorate occurred in 1914. Though some scholars uses the Jihad as a background to the discussion on amalgamation, the phenomenon is not given sufficient attention pointing its historical relevance to the emergence of Nigerian State in the centenary commemoration programme. The attempt to bridge this emerging lacuna in contemporary Nigerian historiography serves as the basis and the foremost objective of this paper. The paper discovers that the Jihad of Shehu Usman Danfodiyo in 1804, in Hausa land created the caliphate system that the British came to formalized, and the system, which still condition the state of affairs in modern Nigeria. Arising from this background, the essay upholds that the background history of the caliphate demands serious attention and critical reflection in 2014 given the historical relevance of the caliphate in the foundation of modern Nigerian state.