25/08/2026
Ngizim are neither Jukunoid nor members of the Kwararrafa nation, but the Ngizim leader helped rescue Fika from the suzerainty of Buba Yero
The goal of history is to try to distill the past actions of every living or dead human into something comprehensible to the average person. Unfortunately, the Bolewa propagandists, who, in recent times, have intensified the glorification of their history as a people and their traditional institution with a lot of biases that distort facts. These propagandists are trying hard to bury genuine facts that the Gazetteer of Northern Provinces of Nigeria presented on the historical account of the tribal states in the precolonial Borno area.
Nothing is more unhelpful than to look back on history with a sense of superiority and derision towards true historical facts with selfish sentiment. Anyone who’s trying to dig to the truth of understanding something should not rely only on their own mind; they ought to rely on the multitude of thoughtful people around them who have different perspectives on the same events.
It is a written fact that in 1902 A.D, when a British patrol team arrived in Potiskum from Gujba, they were received at the eastern gate of Potiskum by Mai Bundi, who represented Mai Gabau due to old age. The colonialists found a magnificent town surrounded by famous Ganuwa walls that had already existed several centuries earlier. The Ngizim people had been an organized community and authority with several ward heads known as Kachalla who were answerable to Mai. At that time, there were seven Kachallas, each of the seven wards that recognized Potiskum as their cultural centre. This was what prompted the colonialists to recommend Mai Bundi for appointment as 2nd Class chief and the 14th ruler of Potiskum, unlike the Moi of Pikka, who was recommended for 3rd Class Chief. This was confirmed by G. Merrick (1904:417), who, while passing through Bolewa district, which he described as stretching from Pali to Fika, observed that the Bolewa are among the seventy percent of tribes composing Northern Nigeria that are almost unknown, and some of the neighbours of the Bolewa, like the Ngizim people, also have state formation and centralization experiences from very early times.
The Bolewa propagandists keep asking if the Ngizim really had rulers in Potiskum; where are their graves? Even though Helma Barka enlightened the Bolewa spin doctors that the tradition of their Jukun brothers that maintain a royal cemetery at Nando in Wukari, where deceased Aku Ukas are taken for burial, was not part of the tradition of the Sayfawa (Sefawa) dynasty—who ruled the Kanem-Borno Empire for nearly a thousand years or all tribal groups whose history is genuinely linked to the Kanem-Borno Empire.
Barth’s book, Travels, vol. iii; Nachtigal’s Sahara and Sudan, vol. ii; and Palmer’s History of the first twelve years of the reign of Mai Idris Alooma, who described the Ngizim as “great people in the land of Kanem,” accounted that the Ngizim people were warriors, very numerous, strong in war and shield, for the Western Kanem-Bornu Empire, and that they had a tradition of long-distance migration. This is the primary reason the historical record of the tribal groups that formed the nation of the Sayfawa dynasty, including the Ngizim and Bedde people, lacks detailed topographical descriptions of specific permanent royal graveyards where their major rulers died, despite the available lists of names and lengths of reigns for the Mais (kings).
Insisting on the royal cemetery as culture that must form part of other tribes’ tradition clearly projects the Bolewa as derivatives of the Jukun. This not only alludes to Isa Alkali Abba’s (1985:43) claim that beyond the strong bond that exists between the Bolewa and Jukun, the two tribes are one blood that reached the confines of Nigeria in one wave of Migration from the region of Abyssinia and the eastern Sudan, which Bole’s oral tradition accounts as Yamal. This historical instance indicates the pagan past history of Bolewa people.
If not for their ignorance and lack of depth in historical records, the Bole propagandists would acknowledge that neither chiefdom was subordinate to the other in the pre-colonial era. There is an oral tradition that accounts Mai Namiyanda of Potiskum (1866-93) helped rescue Fika from suzerainty by Buba Yero, the Fulani jihad leader in Gombe. Before the intervention, oral historical accounts revealed that Buba Yero of Gombe was collecting annual tribute (jiziya) from Fika, which he captured. The historical relics of the Ngizim garrison, known as Nga Nguzum ward, are one of the ten wards of Fika town that include Bogaru, Pukumari, Nguro Dala, Mainari, Korori, Sirife, Bo Gawuno Moi, Bo Gawuno Tinja, and Sabon Gari. This historical evidence supported the historical account that Namiyanda stationed some of his warriors at the Nga Nguzum in case Buba Yero men returned to attack his Fika neighbours after their defeat at the location known as Bokki Namiyanda, ‘the Boaboa of the Namiyanda ’, in the present Gube village in Bage District in Bajoga Local Government Area in Gombe State.
The disingenuous claims of these propagandists spreading false narratives against the Ngizim polity symbolize the ingratitude of the Bole people, who are quick to forget the sacrifices that the Ngizim people made to save and protect their polity.
Malam Z***r Audu
