✍🏾 *Madalla Kadiri, Zaar Activist*
When we talk about history, let’s talk about it with truth, not the version that flatters the powerful.
Usman Fodiye, known to many as Usman Dan Fodio, was born in December 1754 in Maratta, then under the Gobir Dynasty. His father, Muhammad Fodiye, was a scholar of the Toronkawa clan, a family that migrated from Futa-Toro in Senegal in the 15th century and settled in Maratta.
Let it be known: Maratta is not in Nigeria. It is in today’s Republic of Niger. Yet, our schoolbooks continue to repeat the same colonial falsehood that the man was “born in Nigeria.”
As I argued in 2024, before the coming of Europeans, people were identified by their clans, culture, and language not by artificial borders. It was the colonial Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 that carelessly divided African lands with rulers and ink, not with truth or justice.
Before this division, Maratta was under Gobir influence simply because one Gobir clan lived there and paid homage to the Emir. When colonial borders came, Maratta fell under Niger Republic. That is historical fact, not emotion.
So I challenge you, Professor Salisu Shehu, to prove me wrong: show us that Maratta the birthplace of Dan Fodio is in Nigeria. You cannot. Because it is not.
*A Man Born Outside Nigeria, Who Fought to Rule Hausaland*
Usman Fodiye grew up studying under several Hausa scholars, moving from one Qur’anic school to another, as was common in those days. He learned much, and by the 1770s, he began teaching and gathering followers.
By the 1790s, he had formed a community of believers who not only prayed with him but obeyed him. Soon, that movement grew into something else, a parallel government within Gobir.
When Sultan Nafata of Gobir finally banned his preaching, Usman didn’t stop. He raised an army. In 1804, he launched what he called a jihad, but let’s be honest: it was a war of conquest, not a holy war.
*The So-Called Jihad Was a War for Power*
As Professor Ado Mahamman of Niamey’s Abdulmuni Diof University explained in a DW Hausa interview, that war was not a jihad. Islamically, jihad cannot be declared against Muslims and the Hausa states had been Muslim for centuries before Dan Fodio’s birth.
Islam came to Hausaland over 400 years earlier. The Gobarau Minaret in Katsina and the Kano Mosque by the Emir’s Palace already stood tall as centers of Islamic scholarship. The great Yantodo Islamic University in Katsina once among Africa’s best, after Al-Azhar in Egypt and Timbuktu in Mali existed long before the Fulanis came.
But it was destroyed. Its scholars were killed by Dan Fodio and his son, Muhammad Bello, because they opposed his campaign, calling it un-Islamic.
So let’s stop pretending. What Dan Fodio launched in 1804 was not about faith, it was about power, control, and territory.
*The Caliphate Never Conquered Zaarland*
By 1812, the Sokoto Caliphate had spread across much of northern Nigeria, but not everywhere. In Bauchi, Mallam Yakubu received his authority from Dan Fodio and began expanding southwards. He conquered some Jarawa sub-groups like Bijinawa, Barawa, Jakawa, and Bankalawa. But when Yakubu reached Zaarland land he met a wall of resistance.
The Zaar did not submit. Our terrain, our unity, and our courage made conquest impossible. Eventually, at Inkil, a peace treaty was sealed and marked by the breaking of bows and arrows. That was not surrender; it was diplomacy.
As Prof. Moses Ochonu writes in Colonialism by Proxy, similar Fulani campaigns across the Middle Belt failed for the same reason, the people resisted. Fiercely.
*How the British Forced Zaar Under the Emirate*
It was not the Sokoto Caliphate that conquered Zaarland land. It was the British colonial government that forcibly merged it under the Bauchi Emirate in 1916 through the Native Authority Ordinance.
The British, ignorant of the cultural diversity of the Middle Belt, lumped us under emirate systems for easy taxation. They disrupted our political traditions, erased our voices, and forced foreign rulers over indigenous communities.
That is how Tafawa Balewa the heart of Zaar land was administratively attached to Bauchi Emirate. Not by war. Not by religion. By British pen.
*Proof of Our Ancient Presence*
Long before any emir or colonial officer set foot here, the Zaar lived and thrived in Tafawa Balewa. The proof is not in books, it’s in the land itself.
Go to the heart of the town, and you’ll still find the Vhun Tonga grinding stones carved deep into solid rock by Zaar women in the Stone Age. They are not just relics; they are living evidence of civilization, continuity, and ownership.
Our history did not begin with the Fulani conquest or British colonialism. It began with us the Zaar shaping this land with our hands, our stones, and our souls.
*We Know Who We Are*
The problem with Nigerian history is that it was written to serve power, not truth.
For over a century, our story has been told by outsiders such as colonial officers, court historians, and scholars who never asked the people whose history they were writing. They called conquest “civilization,” and domination “jihad.”
But we know who we are. Tafawa Balewa is the ancestral headquarters of the Zaar Kingdom. That is not a claim, it is fact, written in the rocks, the rivers, and the memories of our people.
So let it be clear: Usman Dan Fodio was not a Nigerian, and his Caliphate never extended to Zaar ancestral land.
🔥 *Madalla Kadiri*
*Zaar Activist | Defender of Indigenous History*
This is facts about zaar land and its people, we know ourselves more than what people know about us
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