"The widely believed tale that Tafawa Balewa LGA is named after Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa"

✍🏾 Madalla Kadiri, Zaar Activist

The widely  believed tale that Tafawa Balewa LGA is named after Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa,  is a tales  created by  local colonialists  not based on facts.

According to Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was born Mallam Abubakar in December 1912 in the Northern Nigeria Protectorate (modern-day Bauchi State). His father, Yakubu Dan Zala, was of Gere ethnicity, and his mother Fatima Inna was of Gere and Fulani descent.His father worked in the house of the district head of Lere, a district within the Bauchi Emirate.He took his name from two corrupted Fula language words: "Tafari" (Rock) and "Baleri" (Black), which resulted in being the childhood nickname "Black Rock".

Before 1916, there was no  district head in Tafawa Balewa. Tafawa Balewa town was originally the dividing line between Dunga and Maryam. In 1916, the British Native Authority Ordinance led to the creation of the Tafawa Balewa native authority with a district head. It is unclear from sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica the name of the district head and the specific year when Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa's father served in that role.

The claim that Tafawa Balewa LGA is named in honor of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa is  a fabrication of lies by local colonialists, similar to the colonial masters' fictional story that Mungo Park discovered the River Niger. 

Our ancestors were fishing in the rivers of Niger and Benue long before the birth of Mungo Park,  Tafawa Balewa town existed before Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. 

Today, fifty eight years after his death, uncertainty still surrounds the identity and parentage of the late Golden Voice of Africa. I advise Zaar researchers to intensity more research in other  to trace the identify and parentage of the late Golden Voice of Africa.

I urged  Zaar socio-cultural organizations to create research and documentation unit, give more priority and intensify more effort on research and documentations.

Further investigation is needed to clarify the conflicting accounts surrounding the background and lineage of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.