People Groups of Kaduna State, North Central Nigeria

History

The word 'Kaduna' etymologically is suggestively a corruption of a Gbagyi word/name 'Odna' for a river (Shekwo, 1979:48, Hayab, 2015). Another version claims the origin of the name, Kaduna, is linked to the Hausa word for crocodile. However, the latter narrative is disputed by the Gbagyi, the indigenous group, acknowledged to have lived in the area for centuries unknown.

Perhaps the reputation of the name, Kaduna, could be associated with Lord Frederick Lugard, the then Governor-General of the territory of what was to become Nigeria and his colonial colleagues when the capital of the former Northern Region was relocated from Zungeru to Kaduna in 1916. Historians suggest that the movement of the colonial office to Kaduna had been initiated from 1912 -1918/20 with preliminary effort having been made in 1902 from Jebba to Zungeru (Kolapo & Akurang-Parry, 2007:107-15, Lugard, 2013:122).

Colonial Impact

At the start of British colonial rule, the construct ‘Nigeria’ made the people groups who lived in the area to be viewed as 'Northern Nigerians' - a conception which endures till date. By the year 1967, these people groups were again carved into 'North Central State' (Nwabueze, 1982:222) and this was the case until 1975 when 'Kaduna State' was formerly created by the then military leader, General Murtala Mohammed, with all different identities amalgamated into one state without recourse to a referendum. The state hence is an heir to the old Northern Region of Nigeria, which had its capital at Kaduna, now the centre of a territory of about 6.3 million people (Nigerian census figure, 2006).

It should be noted that the old Northern Region in the year 1967 gave birth to six states in the north of Nigeria, leaving Kaduna as the capital of the North-Central State, a name that was changed to Kaduna State in 1976 (Nwabueze, 1982:222). Afterwards, Kaduna was further divided in 1987, a situation which produced Katsina State. Under the authority of Kaduna is the ancient city of Zaria, Kafanchan, Kachia, Kajuru, Saminaka, and Nok, the area where one of Africa's earliest civilisations is recorded to have been excavated (Fagg, 1959, Breunig, 2014b).

The Peoples of Kaduna state 

The most intriguing aspect of this area is that the colonial construction and its post-colonial successor call 'Nigeria' scarcely documented the history of the people or the manner of how Kaduna state's people groups encompassed in this construct define and identify themselves. As a result, the people groups who populate the area have remained in near oblivion or obscurity as they are often assumed to be Hausa people, a supposition which is erroneous.

Remarkably, nowadays, Kaduna State, north-central Nigeria, is politically classified as belonging to the 'North - West' zone of existing Nigeria’s six (6) Geopolitical Zones. The inclusion of Kaduna in the ‘North West’ perhaps is a political calculation which defies the logic of history. In terms of population, it is the third largest in the nation with different ethnic groups numbering between 58 to 63 (if not more) with the exact count requiring further verification through an unpretentious field work [Hayab, 2015]*

The question which begs for an answer, therefore, is what ethnic groups make up the peoples who are 'indigenous' to the state? This query, perhaps, is what this article sets out to respond to next as the so called 'dominant ethnic groups', are encircled by at least 58 others (Temple, 1922, Meek 1925 Vol I & II, 1931, Gunn, 1956). The case whether a group could be called 'Hausa/Fulani' is subject to debate but that is for another study.

That said, it is significant to note that the groups in the focused area are separate entities, not dialects, but languages and cultures on their own right in as much as it is evident that they are cognate or related groups. Accordingly, I will try to present these groups (not all though) in their indigenous names with the Hausa version in bracket:

1. Abin (called Binawa by the Hausa found in Lere LGA)
2. Adara (dubbed Kadara by the Hausa)
3. Adungyi (called Dungi or Dingi by the Hausa, Saminaka/Lere area)
4. Agbiri (called Gure by the Hausa)

5. Akurmi (labelled Kurama by the Hausa)
6. Aninka (an endangered people, with an ancestral home in Gwantu)
7. Aniragu (called Kahugu by the Hausa)
8. Animuwen (popularly called Numana)

9. Anghan (called Kamanton by the Hausa)
10. Amap (called Amo by the Hausa)

11. Arumaruma (named Ruruma by the Hausa)
12. Ashe (called Koro, Kagarko LGA)
13. Asholio (Dubbed Marwa or Moro'a)

14. Atyap (dubbed Kataf by the Hausa)

15. Bajju (called Kaje in Hausa)

16. Bekulu (Ikulu by the Hausa)

17. Bazaar (Waci, often known as the Koro, Kagarko LGA)

18. Bu (called Abu by the Hausa and their neighbours in Sanga)
19. Dangam (an endangered people and language found in Sanga)

20. Fantswam (Kafanchan)

21. Fulbe (Fulani arrived and settled in the region in the 1800s)

22. Gbagyi (Gwari)

23. Gwandara

24. Gwong (called Kagoma by the Hausa)

25. Ham (labelled Jaba in Hausa with a derogatory connotation)

26. Hausa 

27. Janji (an endangered people and language)

28. Kaibi (a people and a language found in not more than 5 settlements)

29. Kigono (information still scanty, further research required)

30. Kinugu (information still scanty, further research needed)

31. Kitimi (information still hazy, more investigation to be carried out).

32. Kiwafa (still to confirm)

33. Kiwallo  (still to confirm)

34. Kono (Kauru LGA)

35. Kuvori (called Surubu by the Hausa),

36. Lemoro (there is the need for confirmation (Lere/Kauru areas)

37. Mada: Mada must have arrived current location during British colonial rule.
38. Mayir (called Ayu or Fadan Ayu in Hausa).

39. Nandu (Sanga)

40. Nineb, Aneb or Nufi (tagged Kanufi by the Hausa)

41. Nindem (Jemma'a LGA)

42. Ningeshe (still to confirm)
43. Ningon (Sanga LGA)

44. Nikyop (called Kaninkon)

45. Ninzo
46. Numbu (Sanga LGA)

47. Nyenkpa (Yeskwa)
48. Obiro (Kuturmi)

49. Oegworok (Kagoro)

50. Pikal (still to confirm)

51. Piti (Abisi/Nisak is the native name)

52. Ribang (still to confirm)

53. Rishuwa (still to confirm)

54. Rumayya

55. Sheni (an endangered people and language)

56. Siyawa (From Bauchi state)
57. Tachirak (given the name Kachechere)

58. Takad (call Atakad in Hausa)

59. Tari (Sanga LGA)

60. Tsam (Chawai)
61. Tuku (called Atuku)

(See, Temple, 1922, Meek, 1925, Vol. I & II, 1931, Gunn, 1956 for the confirmation of some of the ethnic groups).

Besides, available records show that Christian mission activities in the area began formally from the 1900s with the establishment of Sudan Interior Mission (S.I.M.) in the Ham town of Har Kwain (Kwoi) in 1910 (Turaki, 1993, Hayab, 2016). The coming of the missionaries account for why the people groups (the Non- Hausa - Fulani) are predominantly Christians. Culturally, the people groups of the then southern Zaria who now see themselves as southern Kaduna, with some exception it must be admitted, share a lot in cultural observance of marriage, naming rite, death, mourning and burial, farming, social organisation, kinship formation, exogamy, etc, (Meyn 1982). Until a full scale research is undertaken, the diversity of Kaduna state remains blurred and problematic as some ethnic groups are so small in population, so much so, that they are often overshadowed by the larger groups who live near them.

*Hayab (2015) was part of a doctoral research on language and identity at Stellenbosch University, South Africa completed in December 2016. The contributor teaches English language and Literature at Kaduna State College of Education, Gidan Waya, an institution located in the south of Kaduna State, Nigeria, where 59 people groups out of the 61 listed ethnic groups above are found.

References

Breunig, P. 2014. Africa and the Nok culture period. Nok: African Sculpture in

Archaeological Context, 33.

Fagg, B. E. 1959. The Nok culture in prehistory. Journal of the Historical Society ofNigeria, 1(4), 
          288-293.

Gunn, H. D. 1956. Pagan Peoples of the Central Area of Northern Nigeria: The Butawa, Warjawa..., 
          Etc. International African Institute.

Hayab, P. 2016. Basic Hyam Grammar with Ethnographic Notes. Abuja, Nigeria: Beltina

             Digital Press. 

Hayab, P. J. 2015. Research on the Ethnic Groups of Kaduna State. An Unpublished Manuscript. 

Kolapo, F. J., & Akurang-Parry, K. O. 2007. African Agency and European Colonialism: Latitudes of 
           Negotiation and Containment: Essays in Honor of AS Kanya-Forstner. University Press of  
           America.

Lugard, L. F. J. 2013. The dual mandate in British tropical Africa. Routledge.

Meek, C. K. 1925. The Northern Tribes of Nigeria. An Ethnographical Account of the

          Northern Provinces of Nigeria, Together with a Report on the 1921 Decennial Census. [With 
          Plates and Maps.]. Humphrey Milford, Vol. i, p, 36, p.42

Meek, C. K. 1925. The Northern Tribes of Nigeria. An Ethnographical Account of the   

           Northern Provinces of Nigeria, Together with a Report on the 1921 Decennial Census. [With 
           Plates and Maps.]. Humphrey Milford. Vol. ii. p. 137.

Meek, C. K. 1931. Tribal Studies of Northern Nigeria, (vol 2), London, Kegan Paul,

           Trench, Trubner and Co.

Nwabueze, B. O. 1982. A constitutional history of Nigeria. Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd.
 

Meyn, W. 1982. Bestattungswesen und Bevölkerungsbewegungen in Nord-Nigeria. PhD Dissertation, 
            Universität Hamburg.    
                                                                       

Temple, O. 1922. Notes on the Tribes, Provinces, Emirates and States of the Northern

           Provinces of Nigeria. Argus Printing and Publishing Co. Cape Town.

Turaki, Y. 1993. An Introduction to the History of SIM/ECWA in Nigeria 1893 – 1993. Jos,

Nigeria. 

Shekwo, J. A. 1979. Fundamentals of the Gbagyi Language. Ahmadu Bello University,

Zaria.   

Origin of the Ham

      The ancestors of the society perhaps were unable to recall with certainty where they came from to settle in Ham land (ribi Ham), however, the account below might be of great insight to you, all sons and daughters of Ham, as well as the general reading public.

      According to Maancek:
We, the Ham, according to what we were told, came (down) from the mountains of Miango and settled in Atyap area. Later, we left the Tyap area to a certain forest named Sheky Ham (Forest of the Ham).

When we settled at this particular place all Ham were one. It was at Sheky Ham (Forest of the Ham) that we left and found a people who were called Fùró (Ham pioneers). We constituted five different groups (the clan of): Fù Dúng, Fu Wenyom, Fu Kudak, Fu Nggainy and Fu Cyoor.

After we arrived and met with Fùró we dominated the area but they remained together with us. At that time, we took over the place from them and because of that did whatever we wanted.

But the Fùró were there and are there up to now. We are with them. We are sturdier than they. This is how life in this country (ribi Ham) up to this day was managed. At that time we ceased warring with them after they (Fùró) were defeated.  

      Accordingly,  the cognates of the Ham in other groups around; the Oegworok who are known as Kagoro today – did not go to battle with the Ham; Atyap– did not fight with them; Ashiolio who are known as Marwa – we do not clash with them; Anghan (Kwong in Hyam) known as Kamanton, and the Bakulu (Yuni in Hyam)  – did go to war with the Ham; All these (mentioned) people are our brothers. We migrated from one place at the beginning. 

The above version was narrated by late Kpop Zheky, Maancek Kure. It was tape-recorded on 4th March 1969 by Ludwig Gerhardt, a German scholar whilst the translation is by Philip Hayab. 

 

 

Ginger Production in Ham area northern Nigeria

      In a recent research, I came across information which might interest a number of individuals keen about  knowledge of their immediate environment. This knowledge is available but may not have been thought of by hundreds of us due to the thinking that we, people south of Kaduna, especially the Ham, known for massive production and trade in ginger have always had it with us since time immemorial.

    Undoubtedly, Nigeria indeed is currently rated one of the largest producers and exporters of ginger world-wide, especially the split-dried ginger (cut and dry one that we engage in daily). However the history of ginger production in our ancestral homeland is not as old as we would imagine it to be. On good authority, large-scale cultivation of ginger call 'chitta' which is a Hausa name for the crop, started in 1927 in the then southern Zaria (now Southern Kaduna) especially within the then Jemm'a federated districts where we are now located and in the neighbouring parts of the Plateau.

     According to P. N. Okwuowulu in a book, Ginger, The Genus Zingiber (2005) P.N. Ravindran and K. Nirmal Babu (eds.), an acclaim Journal Publication of Agriculture, the production is recorded to have begun during the search for a cash crop to generate internal trade around the area and this coincides with time the first Nok terracotta was excavated around 1928 (Erinle, 1988).

      Meanwhile, as far as the writer who is Ham born, from Ghikyaar village call Kurmin Jatau in Hausa, the Ham used to have something of the nature of ginger call Kpaatam! What has happened to this crop is now history since the introduction of ginger by the British colonial government in the second decade of the 1900s.

     Whilst the production flourished at the beginning though with huge stress of its processing as it was peeled and washed and washed and took long to dry unlike today when it is cut and dries easily, between the years 1927 to 1982, may be till date, the production for export had always fluctuated and ultimately declined due to poor prices of export markets and following attitude of Nigeria's government towards agriculture because of the economic boom of mineral oil in the country from the 1970s onward.

    When next you talk about ginger production, do not assume our great grand parents knew about these kinds or brands in vogue today. Indeed, shocking as it may seem, ginger production in our area is not more than 100 years now!

'Whoever neglects learning in his youth loses the Past, and is dead to the Future.' - Euripides (480 - 406 BC), Greek playwright.

Hyam Language: Orthography and Codification

 

       An orthography is understood as the process of engraving a spoken language, like Hyam, into writing. Accordingly, for Hyam, a yet to be written language to survive another century (say from 2015), codification becomes obligatory if at all we are to salvage it from vanishing from the face of the earth. By ‘codification’ I mean it is indispensable to institute a systemised and deliberate ordering of Hyam grammar through word formation, identification of rules governing spellings (DWO instead of DOW), capitalization (Ham instead of ham), stress, and punctuation, etc.

    Most languages, like ours which have survived centuries but exist only in the spoken domain, are gradually disappearing. This elucidates why there is a surge in linguistic study of “threatened or endangered languages” seeing that the greatest peril of any “endangered language” such as Hyam is BASICALLY the absence of a written tradition. And true, without an intensive effort, Hyam could disappear within the next 75 years or even less in the face of our seeming complacency and failure to transfer the language to next generation of speakers especially with a lack of teaching and learning in it.

     You may wonder what language then shall our descendants speak and my response is PIDGIN Hausa or English as the ones we currently engage with in our daily lives are often not standard Hausa or English at all. What is noteworthy is that for Hyam, to be written down, a standard orthography has to be developed, in my opinion, determinedly drawn from a collection of words from all the dialects which exhibit less tonal variation - e.g. the Hyam Fu Taa Ham and Kwyeny.

    This is essential considering that the dialects contestably classed as Hyam or languages bspoken by the Ham are about ten or eleven namely: (i) Gwoor, (ii) Hyam Fu Taa Ham (Hyam of the wider Ham area), (iii) Kyoli, (iv) Kwyeny, (v) Shamang, (vi) Yaat, (vii) Zhire, (viii) Shang, (ix) Dzar, (x) Saik with linguistic evidence that (xi) Gyong be added to the list.

   However, the situation linguistically would require the Gwoor (Gora) to re – learn Hyam as a sample of words from the current language spoken in the town is shown to be a case of language shift. This also explains why Duya, an often Hyamic classified linguistic group, is excluded. The reasons for the change in language are not far-fetched. During slave raids, people could not move freely thus every location considered safe was where people went to stay. As a result, several years of loss of contact coupled with the fact that it was different groups, with variant languages, who lived together, new languages emerged sooner or later thereby blurring intelligibility (resemblance) with Hyam.

    Consequently, there may be variations in our language's orthography. An example is between American and British spelling in the case of the English language. But when we compare the case of the Ham we can’t risk trying to capture all the above dialects of Hyam all at once. What is needful, to my mind, is to achieve one standard orthography then all other dialects are utilised for communication in their immediate community.

    Another way is to have the local government education authority introduce Hyam as one of the subjects of teaching and learning for forty (40) minutes at the primary level at least three (3) times a week whilst the pupils learn Hausa through daily interaction on their own. The point is premised on the provision of the National Policy on Education (2010) which offers that “the language of the immediate environment” be used for instruction from the primary school level alongside English. Except I do not read the document well, Hyam is the language of the “immediate environment” in ribi Ham.

     Having noted that Hyam has multiple dialects more or less mutually intelligible (comprehensible by speakers of the different dialects - e.g. Nok/Kyoli, Kwyeny/Hyam Taa Ham), to have several writing systems, with distinct orthographies, as in Kurdish language of Iraq and as in Turkish language, at the moment could cost us the loss of all. Thus, I hold the viewpoint, that for Hyam orthography to be fully conventional and usable, there should be regulated institutes such as language academies – persons with training in linguistics as well as those who demonstrate commitment and zeal with teachable character.

     Although for many languages (including English I hear) there may not be such institutions, thus orthography developed through a less prescribed method, there are bodies such as the French academy which regulates and admits words into the French vocabulary with a formally prescribed acceptable spelling. The reason for this I hear is to maintain some form of consensus in addressing the challenge of a multiplicity of word meanings due to dialectal variation.

    A ready example of such in Hyam is NYI – YOU (Plural) in Hyam Taa Ham whilst in Kwyeny it refers to "us/we." Thus without a standard orthography in Hyam anyone would write what they imagine to be correct spelling and since there is no agreed spelling, we could end up in huge confusion in the manner of what happened at the tower of Babel where the work of building came to an abrupt stop due to linguistic differences.

    For that reason, standard orthography is fundamental if Hyam is to be written. It is because there is standard orthography that is why we all recognise “Kaduna” as the name of our state capital. Assuming someone writes “Kadun state” it would be taken to be INCORRECT in view of the existence of an AGREED spelling that KADUNA is the RIGHT one.

    I reiterate that it is our individual responsibility to key into the vision of saving our language, our marker of culture and identity, from going extinct. Learn Hyam today and transfer it to your children. In that way it could survive a little longer than the 75 years current studies suggest it may not survive beyond. In this respect, studies have revealed, the most globally acclaimed procedure of creating an orthography is teamwork or building on existing ones. In this regard the Ham, luckily a society with an orthography developed, though unknown to the people, several years before the coming of formal education (Castelnau 1851, Koelle 1854) need to work together to establish, codify and formalise all aspects of the language. This is an aspect, I must note, the people ought to pay more attention to nowadays.

    Let me note that Hyam Literacy & Translation Project situated in Zheky and in Jos working to translate the New Testament into Hyam has created an orthography, which I have adopted not because it is perfect but for in-depth grammatical and linguistic justifications on how words, vowels and consonants are formed in Hyam. Accordingly, the harmonisation of the plethora of orthographies in Hyam is compelling. This is because most Ham musicians producing Gospel Music on CDs have diverse ways of writing titles or labels of their songs depending on their level of education and understanding of vowels and consonants and how these work in orthography creation. If everyone is to claim to be 'right' without a central working committee or body to harmonise these spellings, I doubt if it would be possible to achieve standardisation of written Hyam language.

The Ham in the 21st Century

      It is worth stating from the outset that it is misrepresentation to refer to the Ham of Nok area of north central Nigeria and their language as Jaba. This is so because as findings have revealed this label is an offensive term, what linguists call exonym - a name of a group applied to them by outsiders. In this direction, the Ham have many exonyms. For instance, the Bajju, the Atyab, the Gworok, the Gwong and the Bhazar (Koro) Ham cognate neighbors all have names they refer to them. However these have not been appropriated to refer to the Ham nor have the Ham impressed what they call their neighbors as their identity.

     Thus, from this perspective, I contest the use of 'Jaba' as a substitute or equivalent representation to Hyam or the Ham. Jaba is not only 'unsuitable' to history of the society, but that it is appropriated with little or no consideration of its etymology and implication is cause for concern. What is indisputable is in all the Hausa Dictionaries I have come across, Jaba means the HOUSE MOUSE (Nintsong in Hyam) which is poisonous. More so, other Hausa dictionaries suggest it could also mean "to spoil or destroy something", thus my deduction is that the designation is DEROGATORY and should be discarded by all Ham people and well meaning neighbors (See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaba,_Nigeria).

       Let me at this point critique the myth that it was the casualty the Hausa (call Kpaar in Hyam) suffered during a battle at a place known as Duur Ham (located between Kyoli and Ngat Ture), recorded to have taken place in 1846, that is the origin of the term. No! As early as the 1800s, it is said, or even earlier, the Hausa referred to the people as Jaba, - several years before 1846.

       I will give an incidence which relates to this. In the year 1853, four Ham youth, rescued slaves from the ships to the Americas, were reported to have lived in Sierra Leone. In an interview carried out by one Rev S. W. Koelle (Koelle, 1854:19), the youth identified themselves as HAM, DSAHAM (I suppose Dzam Ham - youth of Ham) and FU HAM a toponym, autonym or endonym. They said "it was the Kpaar who called them Dsaba" whilst the "Fato called them "Kafir." This reference affirms that by the time they were captured from home, possibly in the year 1846, they did not know the Kpaar where called Hausa neither did they know the Fato were called Fulani. Thus with little doubt, the association of 'Kafir' with 'Dsaba', now written Jaba, reveals its etymology does not seem to be a friendly one at all.

        Further, in case you are working on an assumption that my preference for Ham and Hyam as the genuine identity of the people and language stems from lack of "love" for Hausa people, permit me to say this is in the contrary. Jaba, which I reject,  yes, is 'foreign' to Hyam, yet my choice for Ham/Hyam are purely on linguistic and historical grounds. If we are agreed that detaching the society from its ancestral identity and understanding of themselves in their own words erases formal identity, then the use of Jaba displaces collective biographic memory of the people.

       As a native speaker, I reckon, the Ham are not able to refer to themselves as Jaba when they speak in Hyam, their mother tongue. This is another suggestion that the name or signifier is as foreign as the language of Hausa and its people were 'alien' at the point of contact in the 1800s. Additionally, morphology which studies how words are formed by the morphemes - the single meaningful aspect of a word - shows 'Ham' and 'Hyam' are derivatives - i.e. come from each other.

      Secondly, I have chains of literature to back the usage of ''Ham and Hyam'' but I will give only a few for our current purpose. Koelle (1854:19) spells it as 'Ham' most probably realizing it was articulated the same way Ham, one of the sons of Noah, in the Book of Genesis 9:18 - 22 is written. Next is Meek (1931:120 & 127) who acknowledges though the people are called Jaba, they call themselves as the Ham. Gunn, H. (1956:116) writes 'Jaba and puts ''Ham'' in bracket. Fagg (1977:14) says 'Ham', while Kato (1974) spells it 'Hahm'. In a similar fashion, Ethnologue: Languages of the World (1998:268 & 278), one of the most respected authorities on the languages of the world edited by Grimes has it as 'Hyam' and 'Ham'. Another scholar, Gerhardt (1983) who has researched Hyam language from 1965 records it as ''Ham" and "Hyam."

       Equally, James (1986, 1997, & 1998), a native of Ham himself, records the 'Ham/Hyam' so also does Haruna Musa of Kwain in his book (1993:3) enters it as 'Ham'. Blench (2006, 2010, 2012) acknowledges it is the 'Ham/Hyam'. In this same vein, from 2004 till date, the Hyam Literacy & Translation Project in all its publications have 'Ham/Hyam' and the study of the current researcher so far all is the 'Ham and Hyam' - with a section of the research dedicated to this.

      But the question is how shall the Ham promote the study of their culture and identity? My simple but challenging response would be to create an orthography in the language alongside the move to reclaim genuine, historical and proper identity of the society. The feeling of inferiority of the language is linked to the impression created by Christian missionaries of an assumed superiority of the Hausa language which was developed at the expense of almost all the languages spoken in northern Nigeria.