The Distinction of Hausaland

Yesterday as I took the Sheme - Dayi shortcut to Kano, the realisation of a landscape unique to Hausaland occurred to me. It is the only place I have seen so far where humans through manual labour maintain a continuum of farms that sustain them. Every arable hectare, except that under official conservation, is tilled.

Approach Hausaland from any direction -Ningi, Saminaka, Kaduna, Birnin Gwari, kontagora, Birnin Kebbi, Argungu, Illela, Sabon Birni, Shinkafi, Jibiya, Maiadua, Maigatari, Potiskum, Azare, Darazo and Sara, the story is the same: farmland, farmland, farmland - complete green during the rainy season and brown dry during the dry deason except for valleys under irrigation. Everywhere, the farms go as far as the eyes can see, without limit.

This has a lot of significance. It attests to the continuity of the culture of hardwork among the populations living in this area for hundreds of years. Leo Afticanus was perhaps the first to make that known to the world. Later, the testimonies of Clapperton, Barth, Morrel and many administrative staff of the British Empire came. And we are today registering same.

A population that feeds itself has solved more than half of its problems and has very little to fear for the future. It might not boast of the luxury items of the industrial world but majority of its population can be self-employed and with little investment, as we see often see in commercial irrigation and livestock, it can acquire those luxury items through sheer hardwork, not through theft, robbery or looting public treasury.

This explains why in rural Hausaland, until poll tax (haraji) and jangali (cattle tax) were stopped during the Secind Republic, unemployment was literally unknown. Now, there is an army of youth, taken off the farmland with the promise of modern education and urban life but who, after completion of school, are left illiterates as ever with no job at sight. If only they would return to this long tradition of sweating it out on the farm, especially with the growing demand for cash crops, their lives would have changed for the better and forever.

This point must be emphasised as we insist that every child gets basic education. The population of our country is increasing dramatically. In forty years there will be not less than 500 million Nigerians. Then, oil would be losing its value due to advances in alternative energy. It will also then be clear who the parasite would be.

Note that I am not saying that other areas are not farming. But the degree elsewhere can nowhere be compared to that of Hausaland.

Politically, the millions of farmland in the area corroborates the figures of INEC. The Northwest has the highest voter register. People must be cultivating these farms manually, not by spirits or even machines. Other zones are less populated becuase they either don't have sufficient landmass, like the Southwest, or the population is smaller even though there is sufficient landmass, like the Northeast, hence the huge breaks in land under cultivation there.

Gaishe ku manoma! You are the hosts. Others are the parasites.