By Ibrahim Bunu
ibrahimbunu2520@gmail.com
A critical historical response to “The Hausa, the Fulani and the Legacy of the Sokoto Jihad”
THE CENTRAL PROBLEM: WE CANNOT CORRECT ONE HISTORICAL SIMPLIFICATION BY CREATING ANOTHER
There is something admirable about Solomon Dalung’s attempt to prevent contemporary ethnic hatred from being projected backwards into history.
He is absolutely right about one thing:
A Fulani person alive today cannot be held personally responsible for what happened in 1804.
That should be beyond argument.
Likewise, contemporary Hausa people should not be made collectively responsible for the actions of nineteenth-century Hausa rulers.
But historical reconciliation cannot be built upon historical minimisation.
And this is where Dalung’s argument becomes problematic.
He presents the Sokoto Jihad primarily as an Islamic reform movement which happened to produce predominantly Fulani rulers because Fulani scholars possessed the necessary religious and military networks.
That explanation is partly true—but insufficient.
The question is not merely:
“Was the Jihad motivated by ethnicity?”
The more important question is:
What political order did the Jihad actually create, who controlled that order, who lost power, who gained power, who bore its costs, and what became of the original reformist ideals?
Those questions lead us somewhere considerably more uncomfortable.
1. LET US FIRST DESTROY THE FALSE CHOICE: IT WAS EITHER A RELIGIOUS JIHAD OR A FULANI CONQUEST
This is the first intellectual trap.
The historical reality does not require us to choose between:
“It was a purely religious movement.”
and
“It was simply a Fulani invasion.”
Both formulations are inadequate.
The Sokoto Jihad had religious, political, social, military and economic dimensions simultaneously.
The scholarly literature describes the Sokoto Caliphate as an Islamic state established through the 1804–1808 jihad, eventually becoming a decentralised confederation of emirates. Almost all the early emirs were identified as Fulbe/Fulani, while the majority of the population was Hausa-speaking.
That is the crucial distinction.
The movement’s ideology was not reducible to ethnicity.
But its political outcome was nevertheless highly ethnicised in terms of elite composition.
Those two statements can both be true.
And they are.
2. HAUSALAND DID NOT BEGIN IN 1804
This is perhaps the most important correction.
Before Usman dan Fodio, there were established Hausa political societies.
Kano had a long political history.
Katsina had a long political history.
Gobir had a long political history.
Zazzau/Zaria had a long political history.
Daura had its own historical traditions.
These were not empty territories waiting for political organisation.
Hausa political systems had developed sophisticated institutions around kingship, taxation, markets, trade, agriculture, military organisation and Islamic scholarship.
Research on pre-Jihad Hausa history specifically identifies long-established Hausa political communities and institutions, while noting the complicated relationship between rulers, clerics, traders and traditional institutions.
And Kano had already been an important commercial centre before the nineteenth century.
So when we say that the Sokoto movement “reorganised” Hausaland, we must not accidentally imply that it created civilisation where none existed.
It transformed an already existing civilisation.
That distinction matters enormously.
3. THE JIHAD DID NOT SIMPLY CHANGE GOVERNMENT. IT CHANGED WHO CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT.
This is where Dalung’s argument needs to go deeper.
Before the Jihad, political authority in the Hausa states was largely vested in established ruling houses.
After the Jihad, many of those ruling houses were defeated, displaced or subordinated.
The new emirates recognised the authority of Sokoto.
In Kano, for example, the old Hausa ruling order was defeated and a Fulani dynasty was established under the new political structure. A bureaucratic system developed in which slave officials also played significant roles.
This is not a minor administrative adjustment.
It was a transfer of political sovereignty.
And political sovereignty is one of the most important things in history.
You can call the transfer:
* Islamic reform,
* revolution,
* jihad,
* state formation,
* conquest,
* or a combination of these.
But you cannot pretend that political power did not change hands.
4. “HAUSA PARTICIPATED IN THE JIHAD” DOES NOT DISPROVE HAUSA POLITICAL DISPLACEMENT
This is another weakness in the original argument.
Yes, Hausa Muslims participated in the Jihad.
Absolutely.
Some Hausa clerics supported Dan Fodio.
Some Hausa communities opposed their rulers.
Some Hausa people benefited from the collapse of particular rulers.
Some Hausa Muslims became officials within the new political order.
But none of this disproves the fact that the political elite of the new emirates became overwhelmingly Fulani-origin.
This is precisely why simplistic ethnic explanations fail.
A revolution can have supporters from many ethnic groups while still producing a political elite dominated by one particular social network.
The French Revolution had people from different classes.
The Russian Revolution involved people from different ethnicities.
The American Revolution included enslaved people, Indigenous peoples and colonists with radically different interests.
Participation does not tell us who ultimately controlled the state.
That is the question Dalung does not pursue far enough.
5. THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: WHO BECAME THE RULING CLASS?
This is where the evidence becomes uncomfortable.
Murray Last’s Oxford history describes the Sokoto state as one in which the majority population was Hausa-speaking, while the early emirate rulers were predominantly identifiable as Fulbe/Fulani.
Philip Burnham and Murray Last further caution against treating every officeholder as simply “Fulani aristocracy.” They show that the political structure was socially complicated and that many officeholders came from conquered populations as well.
But that qualification should not obscure the larger point.
The principal ruling dynasties of the emirates were predominantly Fulani-origin.
That is historical fact.
Therefore, saying:
“The Jihad wasn’t ethnic, therefore the Hausa were not politically displaced”
does not follow.
The proper conclusion is:
The ideological justification was not simply ethnic, but the revolution nevertheless produced a new political hierarchy in which Fulani-origin dynasties became disproportionately dominant.
That is a much more defensible historical statement.
6. AND THEN CAME THE MOST IMPORTANT TRANSFORMATION: REVOLUTION BECAME DYNASTY
This is where Dalung asks an excellent question—but does not take it far enough.
He asks whether the descendants of the original revolutionaries continued to embody the principles of the revolution.
Exactly.
That is the question.
Because there is a profound historical paradox here.
The original reformist argument was that rulers could lose legitimacy when they violated religious and moral obligations.
But eventually, the political system developed powerful hereditary ruling houses.
Political authority became associated with particular dynasties.
The descendants of revolutionaries became aristocratic political elites.
And this is where the original rhetoric of merit, piety and justice collided with the realities of inherited political power.
Historical scholarship on the Caliphate describes a sophisticated bureaucracy in which different categories of political and administrative officials emerged, with offices often becoming socially reproduced across generations.
So the question should not be:
“Were Fulani people bad?”
That is intellectually useless.
The question should be:
What happens when a revolution designed to overthrow allegedly unjust rulers becomes a hereditary political order?
That question applies to every revolution in human history.
7. THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE SUBJECT: SLAVERY
Any serious discussion of the Sokoto Caliphate that spends many paragraphs discussing justice but treats slavery as a footnote is incomplete.
The Caliphate became one of the world’s major slaveholding societies.
Oxford’s research describes the large numbers of men, women and children captured during jihad and warfare and incorporated into the Caliphate’s slave system. Captives were used in households and agriculture; some were sold, and some women became concubines.
Mohammed Bashir Salau’s research goes further into the plantation economy, showing the importance of slave labour to agricultural production around places including Sokoto, Kano and Zaria.
And this creates a serious problem for simplistic romanticisation.
The Caliphate was simultaneously:
an Islamic scholarly civilisation,
a powerful state,
a centre of commerce and learning,
and a society in which large-scale slavery existed.
All four statements are historically compatible.
We should not erase any of them.
8. BUT HERE WE MUST ALSO AVOID ANOTHER LIE: “THE HAUSA WERE THE SLAVES AND THE FULANI WERE THE SLAVE OWNERS”
That formulation would also be historically irresponsible.
The social reality was more complicated.
The Caliphate enslaved people from various conquered and non-Muslim societies.
Some Hausa were free Muslims and some were part of the ruling and administrative system.
Some Fulani were ordinary pastoralists, scholars, farmers and traders rather than members of the ruling elite.
Some enslaved people eventually acquired positions of authority.
The social hierarchy cannot be reduced to a neat two-ethnic binary.
Cambridge research specifically cautions against treating Fulani society as a single homogeneous aristocracy and notes that political officeholders included people from conquered populations.
So the historically responsible argument is not:
Fulani = oppressors; Hausa = victims.
It is:
The Sokoto political economy created a hierarchy in which ethnicity, religion, class, political status and enslavement interacted in complicated ways.
That is much harder to weaponise—and much closer to history.
9. SO DID THE HAUSA BENEFIT FROM THE SOKOTO CALIPHATE?
Here is where I would directly challenge the title of the requested argument:
“The Hausa-Fulani never benefited the Hausa people.”
The word “never” is historically indefensible.
There were clearly benefits that reached Hausa-speaking populations.
Kano, for example, became an enormously important commercial and manufacturing centre during the nineteenth century.
Research on the Caliphate’s economy shows the expansion of plantations, textile production and commercial integration. The textile belt around southern Kano and northern Zaria expanded under Muhammad Bello’s policies, while Kano became one of the major economic centres of the Caliphate.
Nineteenth-century Kano was not an economic wasteland.
It was a major centre of:
* textile manufacturing,
* dyeing,
* leatherwork,
* agriculture,
* long-distance commerce,
* Islamic scholarship,
* markets,
* urban administration.
Later economic historians describe the precolonial Caliphate as the core economy of the Central Sudan and Kano as one of the major commercial and manufacturing centres of precolonial West Africa.
Therefore, saying:
“The Hausa received absolutely nothing”
would be bad history.
But—and this is the crucial BUT—
economic growth does not mean political equality.
A society can become wealthier while remaining profoundly unequal.
That is exactly what happened in many premodern states.
10. THE BETTER QUESTION IS: WHO BENEFITED MOST?
Now we arrive at the question that really matters.
Not:
“Did the Hausa benefit?”
But:
“Which Hausa benefited, how much did they benefit, and who paid the price?”
This changes everything.
The urban merchant might benefit.
The scholar might benefit.
The artisan might benefit.
The tax collector might benefit.
The emirate official might benefit.
The elite farmer might benefit.
But what about:
* the ordinary peasant?
* the enslaved person?
* the conquered community?
* the rural producer?
* the politically excluded population?
This is why we must distinguish aggregate prosperity from distribution of power and wealth.
A kingdom can be commercially successful while ordinary people remain heavily taxed.
A city can become wealthy while rural communities carry the economic burden.
A state can expand education while simultaneously maintaining coercive institutions.
History is not a morality tale.
11. THE HAUSA–FULANI LABEL ITSELF NEEDS TO BE DISSECTED
There is another major problem with the expression “Hausa-Fulani.”
It can be useful sociologically.
But it can also become historically lazy.
Hausa and Fulani are not identical ethnic identities.
However, centuries of intermarriage, migration, conversion, language adoption and political integration produced enormous cultural overlap.
Some Fulani became Hausa-speaking.
Some Fulani political elites adopted Hausa cultural practices.
Some Hausa adopted Fulani-associated identities.
Some people today have ancestry from both.
And Cambridge scholarship specifically documents the adoption of Hausa cultural identity by Fulani ruling elites in the Caliphate.
Therefore:
Hausa ≠ Fulani.
But equally:
Hausa and Fulani have been historically intertwined for centuries.
The answer is not to erase the distinction.
Nor is it to pretend that the communities evolved in complete isolation.
12. THE REAL ISSUE IS NOT ETHNICITY. IT IS THE POLITICS OF POWER
This is where I fundamentally agree with Dalung—but take the argument further.
We should stop asking:
“Which ethnic group is superior?”
That question is intellectually bankrupt.
Instead ask:
Who owns political power?
Who controls institutions?
Who controls access to traditional authority?
Who controls land?
Who collects taxes?
Who administers justice?
Who receives appointments?
Who controls knowledge?
Who controls military force?
Who controls economic resources?
Those questions expose the actual architecture of power.
Ethnicity becomes important because political elites can organise themselves around ethnic identities.
But ethnicity is often the language of power, not necessarily its original cause
13. THE MOST DAMAGING CONSEQUENCE FOR HAUSA SOCIETY WAS NOT THAT FULANI EXISTED
This needs to be said clearly.
The problem was not:
“Fulani came and Hausa stopped being Hausa.”
That is too simplistic.
The deeper problem was that political sovereignty became concentrated in a new elite structure while the overwhelming majority of the population remained subjects rather than political owners of the state.
And that distinction survived long after the original jihad.
It was reproduced through emirate institutions.
It was adapted by British colonial rule.
It was subsequently incorporated into Native Authority administration.
And elements of the traditional political structure survived into postcolonial Nigeria.
So if we want to understand why northern political development later became complicated, we should examine institutional continuity, not merely ethnicity.
14. THE BRITISH DID NOT SIMPLY DESTROY THE EMIRATE SYSTEM
Another major historical correction is required here.
There is a temptation to tell the story like this:
Sokoto created a sophisticated indigenous civilisation → Britain destroyed it → everything went downhill.
That is too neat.
British conquest absolutely transformed the political order.
The Caliphate was defeated between the late nineteenth century and 1903, and its political sovereignty was subordinated to British colonial rule.
But the British did not simply abolish traditional authority.
They reconfigured it.
Emirs and traditional institutions became part of colonial administration.
That means the colonial period is essential to understanding how the old political elite survived and adapted.
This is one reason blaming everything on either “Fulani” or “Britain” produces an incomplete history.
The political system evolved through several stages:
Hausa kingdoms → Sokoto revolutionary state → emirate aristocracies → British indirect rule → Native Authority → regional politics → postcolonial Nigeria.
That is the real historical continuum.
15. AND THIS IS WHERE THE “HAUSA–FULANI” POLITICAL IDENTITY BECAME POWERFUL
The expression “Hausa-Fulani” became particularly useful as a political shorthand because Hausa language and Fulani political elites became deeply intertwined.
But political categories can conceal internal inequalities.
A poor Hausa farmer and a wealthy Fulani emir could both be described externally as part of the “Hausa-Fulani.”
What did they actually have in common in terms of political power?
Very little.
Likewise:
A poor Fulani pastoralist and a powerful emir were both “Fulani.”
But their economic and political interests could be radically different.
Therefore, the phrase can hide class divisions behind ethnic solidarity.
This is one of the most important things we should teach our children.
16. WHY DID THE HAUSA NOT FULLY CONVERT POLITICAL DOMINATION INTO POLITICAL OWNERSHIP?
This is perhaps the hardest question.
The Hausa-speaking population was enormous.
Hausa became the principal language of commerce and administration across much of the central emirates.
Yet political authority remained concentrated within dynastic and scholarly elites.
Why?
Because population size does not automatically produce political power.
Political power comes from:
* institutions,
* organisation,
* military capacity,
* control of taxation,
* control of land,
* legitimacy,
* bureaucracy,
* elite networks,
* succession mechanisms,
* education,
* and access to decision-making.
The Fulbe/Toronkawa networks that emerged around Dan Fodio were extraordinarily effective at building precisely these structures.
That is the lesson.
17. THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON WAS NOT THE SWORD
It was institutional organisation.
The Jihad created:
a political ideology,
a scholarly network,
a military network,
an administrative network,
a taxation system,
an emirate structure,
a system of religious legitimacy,
and a hierarchy of political authority.
That is why the movement survived its founder.
Many rebellions disappear when the rebel dies.
The Sokoto movement did not.
It became a state.
And states reproduce power.
That is why its legacy remains relevant today.
18. DID THE JIHAD ADVANCE HAUSA CULTURE?
Ironically, yes.
This is another reason the simplistic anti-Fulani narrative is inadequate.
Hausa became an enormously important language of administration, commerce and Islamic intellectual life across the Caliphate.
Research on nineteenth-century Kano shows that Islamic networks and Qur’anic schools expanded, and that Islamic learning offered some avenues of social mobility.
The Caliphate also stimulated commercial integration.
Textile production expanded.
Markets grew.
Urban centres developed.
Islamic scholarship flourished.
Therefore, the political revolution that displaced Hausa ruling houses also helped create institutions through which Hausa language and culture became even more regionally influential.
That is a historical paradox worth understanding.
19. SO WHAT EXACTLY DID THE HAUSA LOSE?
They lost something very important:
SOVEREIGNTY.
That should not be minimised.
The issue is not whether Hausa people continued living.
Of course they did.
It is not whether Hausa language survived.
It did.
It is not whether Hausa merchants prospered.
Many did.
It is not whether Hausa scholars flourished.
Many did.
The fundamental loss was that many independent Hausa political states ceased to exist as sovereign political orders and were incorporated into a new Caliphate whose highest political authority lay elsewhere.
That is a political fact.
20. AND WHAT DID THE FULANI GAIN?
Again, not “the Fulani” collectively.
Rather, specific Fulbe political and scholarly networks gained:
* political authority,
* emirate offices,
* land and revenue rights,
* access to state resources,
* military command,
* religious legitimacy,
* dynastic prestige,
* and administrative power.
But ordinary Fulani pastoralists did not automatically become aristocrats.
This distinction is critical.
Never confuse an ethnic population with the political elite that emerged from it.
That mistake is responsible for much of today’s poisonous discourse.
21. THE SAME PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO THE HAUSA
Similarly, not every Hausa person was powerless.
Some Hausa families entered the new administrative order.
Some became scholars.
Some became merchants.
Some served as officials.
Some collaborated with the new rulers.
Some resisted.
Some prospered.
Some suffered.
That is why we must stop writing history as though entire ethnic groups moved as single armies.
They didn’t.
People made choices.
22. THE BAUCHI EXAMPLE DOES NOT DESTROY THE ARGUMENT
Dalung invokes Yakubu of Bauchi as evidence that ethnicity was not the determining criterion.
He has a legitimate point.
Yakubu is an important counterexample because he was not Fulani and nevertheless became a major jihad leader and first Emir of Bauchi.
But one exception does not eliminate the broader pattern.
Indeed, historical research on Bauchi indicates that Yakubu subsequently appointed numerous Fulani clan leaders to senior offices and distributed fiefs among them, producing political tensions within the emirate.
That example actually demonstrates the complexity of the system.
It shows:
non-Fulani leadership was possible,
while also showing:
Fulani networks could become structurally powerful within the new political order.
Both things can be true.
23. THE BIGGEST HISTORICAL ERROR WOULD BE TO TURN THIS INTO A CASE AGAINST TODAY’S FULANI
I reject that.
Completely.
A Fulani child born in Kano in 2026 did not conquer Kano in 1805.
A Fulani farmer in Adamawa did not design the Sokoto political system.
A Fulani pastoralist in Kaduna did not create nineteenth-century slavery.
A Hausa youth today did not overthrow a nineteenth-century emir.
Descendants are not guilty by genealogy.
But the opposite principle is equally important:
Descendants are not entitled to immunity from historical inquiry simply because the subject is uncomfortable.
You can condemn an institution without condemning an ethnicity.
You can examine an empire without hating its descendants.
You can discuss historical injustice without manufacturing contemporary enemies.
That is the mature position.
24. THE REAL FAILURE OF THE “HAUSA–FULANI” POLITICAL PROJECT
If by “Hausa–Fulani” we mean the political arrangement in which Hausa-speaking masses and Fulani-origin traditional elites were presented as one political bloc, then the critical question is:
What did ordinary people actually receive?
This is where the record becomes mixed.
There were:
commercial achievements,
Islamic scholarship,
urban development,
administrative organisation,
regional integration,
textile production,
agricultural expansion.
But there were also:
political hierarchy,
heavy taxation,
warfare,
slavery,
social stratification,
elite concentration of power,
and unequal access to political authority.
So saying “Hausa–Fulani benefited nobody” is wrong.
But saying:
“The political alliance benefited everyone equally”
is equally wrong.
25. THE REAL LESSON FOR THE NORTH IS NOT “HAUSA AGAINST FULANI”
It is:
POWER MUST BE ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PEOPLE.
That is the lesson we should extract.
If the original justification for political authority was justice, then justice must remain the test.
If scholarship justified leadership, leaders must be educated.
If Islam justified authority, leaders must be held to the moral standards they claim.
If tradition justifies an institution, that tradition must serve society.
If democracy is our present constitutional system, traditional legitimacy cannot substitute for democratic accountability.
And if an emirate institution wants the respect of modern citizens, it must continually demonstrate:
fairness,
competence,
integrity,
justice,
service,
and neutrality.
26. THIS IS WHERE DALUNG’S FINAL ARGUMENT IS RIGHT—BUT INCOMPLETE
Dalung says:
“History should give us understanding, not enemies.”
Correct.
But I would add:
History must also give us accountability.
Understanding without accountability becomes amnesia.
Reconciliation without truth becomes propaganda.
Unity without historical honesty becomes a temporary political arrangement.
And identity without historical discipline becomes ethnic mythology.
We need none of these.
27. THE HAUSA HAVE A RIGHT TO RECLAIM THEIR IDENTITY
Absolutely.
A Hausa person should be able to say:
“I am Hausa.”
without somebody responding:
“No, you are Hausa-Fulani.”
That is unnecessary.
If Hausa identity has its own history, language, culture and political traditions, there is nothing wrong with affirming it.
But reclaiming Hausa identity must not mean:
“Fulani are foreigners.”
That would be historically absurd.
Fulani communities have lived in Hausaland for centuries.
They have married into Hausa communities.
They have spoken Hausa.
They have participated in Islamic scholarship.
They have contributed to northern Nigerian society.
They are part of the historical fabric of the region.
28. AND FULANI PEOPLE HAVE THE SAME RIGHT
A Fulani person has every right to say:
“I am Fulani.”
without being told that this identity automatically makes him responsible for the Sokoto Jihad.
That would be collective punishment by ancestry.
It is intellectually and morally indefensible.
The objective should therefore not be to dismantle Fulani identity.
It should be to dismantle the assumption that ethnicity should determine political entitlement.
That is a much more revolutionary proposition.
29. THE NORTHERN PROBLEM TODAY IS BIGGER THAN HAUSA AND FULANI
This is where we need to stop fighting nineteenth-century battles while ignoring twenty-first-century realities.
Northern Nigeria today faces:
* insecurity,
* banditry,
* kidnapping,
* poverty,
* unemployment,
* educational deficits,
* weak institutions,
* environmental pressures,
* farmer-herder conflicts,
* rural displacement,
* youth unemployment,
* population pressures,
* political patronage,
* corruption,
* poor infrastructure,
* and a crisis of public trust.
None of these problems can be solved by declaring one ethnicity historically guilty.
A Hausa child being kidnapped does not ask whether the kidnapper is Hausa or Fulani.
A Fulani pastoralist whose cattle are stolen does not ask whether the thief is Hausa or another ethnic group.
A farmer whose village is attacked needs security—not an ethnic lecture.
A child who cannot attend school needs a classroom—not a historical argument.
30. WE MUST STOP CONFUSING CRIMINALITY WITH ETHNICITY
This is one point on which I strongly agree with Dalung.
A criminal should be prosecuted as a criminal.
A terrorist should be treated as a terrorist.
A kidnapper should be treated as a kidnapper.
A cattle rustler should be treated as a cattle rustler.
An innocent Hausa man should not be punished for the crimes of another Hausa man.
An innocent Fulani man should not be punished for the crimes of another Fulani man.
That is what the modern state is supposed to do.
Individual responsibility must replace collective blame.
31. BUT WE MUST ALSO STOP USING “DON’T BLAME ETHNICITY” TO AVOID DISCUSSING STRUCTURAL HISTORY
This is the other side of the argument.
If somebody asks:
“Why did Fulani-origin dynasties dominate the emirates?”
we should not respond:
“Don’t talk about ethnicity.”
Talk about it.
If somebody asks:
“What happened to the old Hausa ruling houses?”
Answer it.
If somebody asks:
“How did political power become hereditary?”
Answer it.
If somebody asks:
“How important was slavery to the Caliphate economy?”
Answer it.
If somebody asks:
“Who controlled taxation and political appointments?”
Answer it.
That is scholarship.
Silencing historical questions does not produce unity.
It produces resentment.
32. THE NORTH NEEDS A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT
Perhaps this is the biggest lesson.
The old political question was:
Who has the right to rule?
The modern question must be:
What gives a government the right to govern?
The answer cannot be:
ancestry.
It cannot be:
ethnicity.
It cannot be:
clan.
It cannot be:
religion alone.
It cannot be:
historical conquest.
It must increasingly be:
Constitutional legitimacy + competence + justice + accountability + service.
That is the political evolution the North desperately needs.
33. WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH THE LEGACY OF THE SOKOTO JIHAD?
Neither worship it nor demonise it.
Study it.
The Sokoto Caliphate was one of the most important political formations in nineteenth-century Africa.
It created a huge political network.
It promoted Islamic scholarship.
It facilitated trade and economic integration.
It created administrative institutions.
It expanded agricultural production.
It also involved warfare, conquest, political displacement and large-scale slavery.
All of these facts belong in the same history book.
Not one.
All of them.
34. THE FINAL VERDICT ON DALUNG’S ARGUMENT
Let us score the major claims.
Claim
Verdict
Hausa and Fulani are historically distinct peoples
Correct
Fulani lived in Hausaland before 1804
Correct
Hausa people participated in the Jihad
Correct
The Jihad had a serious religious/reformist dimension
Correct
It cannot simply be reduced to an ethnic invasion
Correct
Fulani-origin elites dominated many emirates
Correct
Non-Fulani people could hold important positions
Correct
The Caliphate developed substantial economic and intellectual institutions
Correct
The Caliphate involved conquest and political displacement
Correct
The Caliphate involved large-scale slavery
Correct
Contemporary Fulani should not be blamed for nineteenth-century events
Correct
Hausa identity can legitimately be asserted independently
Correct
Therefore the Hausa–Fulani political legacy was broadly neutral
Not established
Therefore ethnicity had little importance in the political outcome
Too simplistic
The Hausa–Fulani relationship produced no meaningful Hausa benefits
False if stated absolutely
The system benefited Hausa people equally with the ruling elite
False
That is the historical balance.
35. THE DEEPEST LESSON
There is an irony at the heart of this entire debate.
The Sokoto Jihad was justified partly through the idea that power must answer to moral standards.
Two centuries later, we are still asking the same question.
Who should rule?
Who should be accountable?
What makes leadership legitimate?
Does ancestry create entitlement?
Can tradition survive without reform?
Can religion coexist with accountable government?
Can ethnicity exist without becoming political exclusion?
These are not nineteenth-century questions.
They are Nigerian questions.
36. AND THIS IS WHERE THE HAUSA QUESTION MUST GO
If Hausa people today want to reclaim their identity, let them.
But let that reclamation be intellectual rather than hateful.
Study the Hausa kingdoms.
Study Kano.
Study Katsina.
Study Zazzau.
Study Gobir.
Study Daura.
Study Hausa literature.
Study Hausa commercial history.
Study Hausa political institutions.
Study the Hausa scholars who existed before and after the Jihad.
Study what was lost.
Study what survived.
Study what was gained.
And then ask the most important question:
How do we build a future in which no Nigerian’s political worth is determined by whether his ancestors conquered, submitted, migrated, ruled, resisted or were enslaved two hundred years ago?
That is the conversation worth having.
CONCLUSION: WE MUST NOT INHERIT THE POLITICS OF OUR ANCESTORS
The historical record does not support the simplistic proposition that “Fulani came and destroyed the Hausa.”
But neither does it support the comforting proposition that the political transformation of Hausaland was merely a neutral religious reform in which ethnicity had no meaningful consequences.
The Sokoto Jihad was a complex revolution.
It was religious.
It was political.
It was military.
It was social.
It was economic.
It transformed sovereignty.
It displaced established ruling houses.
It created new emirates.
It produced predominantly Fulani-origin ruling dynasties.
It incorporated enormous Hausa-speaking populations.
It expanded Islamic scholarship and regional commerce.
It also created systems of taxation, hierarchy and slavery whose burdens were not distributed equally.
That is the history.
We should not sanitise it.
We should not weaponise it.
We should not romanticise it.
And we should not turn its descendants into hereditary enemies.
The Hausa do not need to hate the Fulani to recover their history.
The Fulani do not need to deny Hausa history to preserve their own.
And neither Hausa nor Fulani needs to apologise for being born into an identity.
But every political elite—whether Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Tiv, Yoruba, Igbo, or any other Nigerian identity—must ultimately answer the same question:
What have you done with power?
That is the standard.
Not blood.
Not ancestry.
Not mythology.
Not conquest.
Not dynasty.
Performance.
Justice.
Competence.
Integrity.
Service.
The greatest mistake we can make in the twenty-first century is to inherit the political grievances of the nineteenth century without inheriting the intellectual discipline required to understand them.
The Hausa deserve historical truth.
The Fulani deserve historical truth.
Northern Nigeria deserves historical truth.
And Nigeria deserves a politics in which no child is made to carry the guilt—or entitlement—of an ancestor he never met.
The past belongs to history.
But the political lessons of that history belong to us.
And if there is one lesson the Sokoto experience should teach us, it is this:
A revolution that defeats one ruling class but eventually turns political authority into inherited privilege has changed the rulers—but has not necessarily solved the problem of power.
That is the question we should be asking in 2026.
Not:
“Who conquered whom?”
But:
“Who owns power today—and what are they doing with it?”
— Ibrahim Bunu
ibrahimbunu2520@gmail.com
Historical basis: This analysis draws particularly on Oxford scholarship on the Sokoto Caliphate and slavery, Cambridge research on the Caliphate’s economy and social structure, the scholarly work of Murray Last, Paul Lovejoy, Mohammed Bashir Salau, Philip Burnham and Nigerian historical scholarship preserved through the National Library of Nigeria.
