“Village” Democracy and Development in Dutse, Nigeria

December 19, 2009. The District Head (DH) of Dutse, Alhaji Jamilu Basiru Sanusi, who also holds the traditional title of Turaki in the emirate of Dutse in Northwestern Nigeria, is visiting one of the villages under his traditional authority, Sabuwar Takur(Kuho).

Most Northern Nigerian emirates are the political outcomes of a Jihad (Muslim holy war) launched successfully by Uthman bin Fodio and his largely Fulani ethnic supporters in 1804. They overthrew the Habe dynasties of Hausaland, whom they accused of maladministration, oppression, and lax adherence to Islamic principles.

The Fulani conquerors then married Hausa women, adopted the Hausa language, and took on Hausa culture. In Northern Nigerian parlance, they became Hausaized. Thus, although Fulani in ethnic origin, today’s emirs and their appointees like the Turaki are practically Hausa like the overwhelming majority of their subjects.

The Fulani Jihad, as it has come to be known, created new Fulani dynasties across Northern Nigeria. It also created a central Islamic authority, the caliphate, to oversee the vast empire. The caliphate was headquartered in Sokoto and was responsible for supervising and coordinating the activities of the emirates and for ratifying the appointment of emirs. Today, it stands as a reservoir of immense Islamic legitimacy and symbolic authority. At its head is the Sultan or the Shehu.

Since Nigeria’s political independence from Britain in 1960, several new emirates have been created by government fiat partly to reflect the creation of new states and partly to further decentralize and multiply the prestige of emirate rule. The emirate of Dutse is one of such new ones. It was created in 1991 shortly after Jigawa State, of which Dutse town is the capital, was created out of Kano State.

The administrative hierarchy of emirates is fairly straightforward. Below the emirate, which is headed by an emir or Sarki, are districts, which are headed by district heads (Hakimai). Each district has several villages under it. Each village is headed by a village head (Digachi), who oversees his villages through appointed ward heads (Mai ungwa, sing.).

In precolonial times, the emirates functioned in this hierarchical division of administrative and juridical authority to ensure the collection of revenue, the enforcement of law and order, the dispensation of justice, and the effective supervision of religious rituals and institutions. Each emirate was semi-autonomous but was required to send tribute (gaisuwa) to the Sultan in Sokoto.

Under colonialism, the emirates formed an indigenous layer of the colonial bureaucracy. At the colonial grassroots, they collected revenue, administered justice, and maintained the peace on behalf of British colonizers. Their activities and decisions were supervised and subject to review by colonial officials, but they did the quotidian heavy lifting of colonialism.

Nowadays, emirs wield mostly symbolic authority and owe their loyalty—and appointment—to the governors of their respective states. Under Nigeria’s constitution, emirs and chiefs are recognized as royal fathers with only nominal and ceremonial authority, their previous functions having been transferred to state and local governments. Although constitutionally stripped of their pre-colonial administrative functions, emirs still command the loyalty of subjects and are the supreme spiritual authorities in their domains.

And there are several grassroots administrative functions that are—and can only be—performed by emirs and their subordinate appointees—district heads, who in turn recommend candidates to the Emir for appointment and turbaning as village heads. District Heads also appoint and turban ward heads to work directly under supervision of village heads.

The government of the state of Jigawa, like its counterparts across Nigeria, relies on traditional rulers, as they are called in Nigeria’s official parlance, to perform a variety of functions ranging from administrative to mediatory. Like settling the perennial dispute between farmers and nomadic Fulani pastoralists, to which I shall return shortly.

Traditional rulers are go-betweens in the complex administrative relationship and interactions between the government and the governed. They are expected to maintain peace and order in their domains; help popularize government programs; mobilize their subjects to support or participate in government schemes; and help pacify citizens who are aggrieved or are impatient with perceived governmental inattention. They are the conduit for official communication between the government and citizens, especially in rural areas, where the implementation of development initiatives have a significant communicative and mediatory component to them.

The District head of Dutse was in Sabuwar Takur on this day to perform a combination of these functions: calm and reassure the impatient people of the village and bring them some of good news from the government.

It was an impromptu meeting with the representatives of Sabuwar Takur, a new resettlement village established and built by the state government for people displaced by the new G.R.A (Government Reservation Area) and the building of a new Staff Development Center. Sabuwar Takur is a community of varied architectural styles ranging from mud huts to standard concrete, metal-roofed homes.

I offered to accompany the District Head on this visit and he agreed. We arrived at the center of the village to a frantic scramble by elders who, because the visit was not prearranged were taken unawares by the presence of the District Head.

After an anxious search, the Chief Imam (Muslim prayer leader) of the village was located, as was the village head. Other elders and the youth leader were quickly located and summoned to the meeting. A bench was supplied and wiped clean for the District Head to sit on. A mat quickly appeared and was spread on the ground. It was for the participants in the meeting. By tradition, everyone must be seated on a lower platform than the District Head. The bench and the mat accomplished that tradition.

The meeting was deliberative. The DH asked for comments, complaints, and requests. There were many, several of them reminders about earlier promises made to the village about electricity, clean water, an access road, and schools.

Consultations concluded, the DH addressed his subjects and appointees. He reassured them of the government’s readiness to fulfill its promises to the village. “Government is slow,” he said, “You have to be patient.”

He then broke a bit of good news to them: the government has told him that provision has been made in the 2010 state budget for the building of an access road and the provision of electricity in the village. “Let us be patient, instead of complaining too loudly and undermining our chances,” he repeated.

A second issue on the meeting’s agenda was that of the building of Islamic schools and mosques. The DH recalled that the resettlement plan called for the building of three mosques and an Islamic school in the village. There is apparently not enough money in the treasury to fund all three projects.

The DH offered a suggestion, one which also opened up the issue for discussion:

The Chief Imam was the first to offer advice. “Let us start building the school with the N250, 000. Perhaps we can also pay a household levy to finance the rest of it.” Everyone seconded the advice. The DH then declared that building materials would be brought and that work on the school would start right away.

The deliberative underpinning of this developmental juggling act was impressive precisely because its setting was not the procedural liberal democratic environment of the Nigerian elite milieu but the traditional sector where a pragmatic form of deliberative democracy mixes productively with chiefly legitimacy and its authoritarian sway.

Two days later, I followed the DH to another meeting at Malamawa, a village on the outskirts of Dutse town. The meeting had the Village Head and about 300 villagers in attendance. Here, the DH counseled the people on the need to educate their wards in both Islamic and secular schools. When the villagers complained that their village was being neglected by the Local Government, the DH retorted with an emphatic reiteration of his treatise on education: “you complain of marginalization but if you had a councilor representing you in the Local Government he would fight for you and get the government to attend to your needs. But it takes education to become a councilor. We are late to the race but we can prepare for the future.”

The next day, I braved the late afternoon heat to visit the DH in his office and stumbled on what seemed like an important meeting. Unlike the other meetings in which the DH was attired in what one might call his “touring” gown, he was in full royal regalia (replete with a turban), as were his village heads. Even his subjects came dressed for the meeting. Apart from the air of officiousness, there also appeared to be palpable tension.

The tension bespoke the occasion: this was a conflict resolution meeting with representatives of Fulani herdsmen and farmers. Across predominantly Muslim Northwestern Nigeria, dispute between nomadic and sedentary Fulani herders and farmers over farm encroachment and grazing rights is a perennial source of communal conflict.

In attendance at the meeting were leaders of all farmers and herders associations in Dutse District and all village heads. Several people took turns to speak. Farmers’ representatives blamed Fulani pastoralists for encroaching on their farms and destroying their harvests. Put on the defensive by the accusations, some Fulani speakers pledged to promote friendship and peace co-existence with farmers in their areas.

One speaker railed against the practice of entrusting herds of cattle to Fulani children for grazing. This, he contended, leads to farm encroachment and the eating up of harvests as the boys lack the discipline to keep the cattle off farms and are too lazy to graze them in far-flung grazing fields.

Another speaker faulted nighttime grazing. One visibly enraged farmer described in vivid details the destruction of tomato crops by Fulani herders in his village. This time, the sheer detail and certitude of the accusation drew a sharp defensive response from a Fulani leader who countered that the accuser could not prove that the damage was done by Fulani herdsmen since no one witnessed the act. He cautioned against accusations without evidentiary support.

Other speakers avoided accusations and counter-accusations and simply reported that in their villages the relationship between farmers and Fulani herdsmen was peaceful.

After everyone had spoken, the DH addressed the meeting. He agreed that nighttime grazing and herding by children were two major sources of trouble. To the representatives of the Fulani herdsmen he counseled against the two practices.

The DH also pointed to another problem: the reluctance of Fulani herdsmen to report their erring kinsmen and, at times, their active protection of guilty herdsmen. He noted that blanket ethnic accusations result from this practice. “You know a guilty party but you defend and protect him, making it easy for farmers to blame the entire Fulani community for the destruction of their crops.” He encouraged farmers and herders who witness farm encroachment to confront and report the culprits to the authorities.

The DH concluded his remarks with a stern directive to farmers: they can no longer leave their harvested crops lying on the farm for more than two weeks. If they do, they shall have no grounds for complaints or recourse if they are destroyed or eaten by cattle.

The meeting ended with an Islamic prayer that asked for God’s graces for peaceful co-existence.

Concluding Remarks

The District Head of Dutse Turakin Dutse typifies today’s grassroots traditional ruler in Nigeria. He holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Resource Management from one of Nigeria’s state-funded universities. Unlike the emirs and district heads of old, today’s traditional rulers are educated in both the Islamic and secular traditions and are thus perfectly suited to their dual roles as spiritual and cultural custodians and as participants in Nigeria’s Western-style bureaucratic governance. Many of today’s traditional rulers even have informal advisory roles in the governments of their states.

Several state governments realize how important chiefs are in reaching the governed and have in the last two decades integrated emirs, chiefs, and their district heads into the formal bureaucracies of government, albeit in advisory and supervisory roles. The DH, for instance, is a member of several committees set up by several state-funded agencies in the areas of child immunization, healthcare delivery, education, and job training.

This is the latest incarnation and reinvention of the traditional chieftaincy institution in Nigeria. The kind of village democracy that I witnessed the DH superintend in his district is now ubiquitous across Nigeria. Bureaucratic and political leaders have grown comfortable with and appreciative of the potentially productive roles of traditional authorities in governance.

The cost of this development is the erasure of some of the lines between traditional/religious authority and political and bureaucratic institutions, particularly in the predominantly Northwestern region of Nigeria.

But it is perhaps a small, even welcome, price to pay for a pragmatic meshing of Nigeria’s two sources of authority—traditional political institutions and a colonial legacy of Western style neo-democratic bureaucratic order. Due to this productive intersection of the traditional sphere and the modern technologies of statecraft, grassroots traditional rulers have become the last line of defense and initiative in the developmental chain, conveying and communicating state policies to constituents that are more wedded and loyal to the legitimacy of proximate cultural and religious authorities than to the limited agency of a distant government.

Professor Moses Ochonu teaches African history at Vanderbilt University.

Plate 1

The District Head of Dutse, Alhaji Jamilu Basiru Sanusi addressing the leaders of Sabuwar Takur

Plate 2

The District Head addressing representatives of farmers and herders outside his office in Dutse

Plate 3

The District Head addressing a conflict resolution meeting representatives of farmers and herders

Plate 4

The District Head and his officials after the conflict resolution meeting with representatives of farmers and herders

Plate 5

The District Head, his officials, and representatives of farming and herding communities in Dutse District

Plate 6

The District Head in a semi-formal regalia

Plate 7

Professor Ochonu and the District Head

Plate 8

The District Head with leaders of Sabuwar Takur community

Plate 9

The District Head in his full ceremonial regalia during the celebration of eid-el Kabir in Dutse