Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 106
households, while Ashigashiya allegedly counted 4000 (see Figure 2). At the time, Lewis felt
sufficiently concerned about a possible attack to order the installation of a defensive thorn
hedge around Gwoza. For the first raid, Lewis mentions 1000 fighters who attacked at dawn,
but they were repulsed after two hours of fighting. Later that day a second attack occurred.
This time it was supported by several thousand attackers, enforced with additional
contingencies from the Ashigashiya district. The district head in charge decided to flee from
Gwoza to Hudugum (south of Gwoza, see Figure 3), and Lewis tells us that the district head
sat on a rock after his horse was killed under him. The following morning the fighters
returned from around the hills and stripped the town bare, smashing everything they did not
want (Lewis, colonial report 1924).
It was Zantama, a relative of the shehu of Dikwa, who was district head of Gwoza at the time.
Lewis (ibid) writes that he did not want to hold Zantama ultimately responsible for the raid,
and says that the district head still had strong support from the area south of Gwoza. He refers
to the Hambagda and Hiɗkala area and the Lamang. That Zantama had fled in 1924 to
Hudugum indicates that, still in the mid-1920s, the populations of the northern and eastern
parts of the Gwoza hills and neighbouring plains felt less loyal towards the newly forming
Muslim elite of Gwoza town, of which the paying of taxes was presumably only one of the
more contentious issues.
After the incident, Zantama retired and Yerima Jato became district head of Gwoza. He was a
younger brother of Hamman Yaji, but because he had been brought up by the Wandala, he
was no longer associated with Madagali. Lawan Jato was still district head in 1939 when
Gwoza and Ashigashiya became a combined district, and he only retired in 1947.
Subsequently, Galdima Boyi from Guduf became the first district head of Gwoza to have not
been of Fulbe or Kanuri origin. We note in this context, that lawan Buba had been village
head of Gwoza for many years, when he went in 1953 as representative of Boyi to Ghwa'a.
He’d had to retire in 1950, and was originally from Korana Basa which he had left by 1925 to
convert to Islam. This was around the same time Lewis wrote his above report.
The dividing line for the unrest in the hills in those early days appears to have been north of a
still small Gwoza town, and north of the Dghweɗe border with Chikiɗe (see Figure 3), who
were involved in the fighting while the Dghweɗe were not. This is also confirmed by an early
note by touring officer Featherstone, who writes in 1921, in a report to Lethem, that the
Dghweɗe were altogether very cooperative. It seems that the Chikiɗe had a particular
reputation of being rebellious, and later in 1924 had refused to give back the loot while the
others involved handed most of it back. We do not know whether the fact that they spoke
Guduf made them feel they belonged more to the rebellious northern section.
Whatever the reason, it seems that the main issue at stake was that the northern and eastern
parts of what later would become the Gwoza LGA, had united in this raid because they did
not want to be part of a new district administered from Gwoza town. According to Lewis,
'Johode' (we are not sure whether he only refers to Ghwa'a here) had already been under
Gwoza since 1922, although the ward head Baima of Ghwa'a had said to him during a visit
that he (Baima) had no contact with the district head of Gwoza. After all, Gwoza town, the
newly emerging administrative centre, might have been less of a threat to the Dghweɗe, and
any internal division in terms of loyalties might not have been affected by the raid of Gwoza
in August 1924. This would only become an issue a couple of decades later.
There is uncertainty in my records about the sequential order of Gwoza district heads. My
Dghweɗe notes link the arrest of Hamman Yaji to Zantama and not Yerima Jato. There was
also Sarking Yaki, and we are not sure where he exactly fits in either, but it says in one of my
records that he retired in 1927, and was then replaced by Yerima Jato. Whoever was district
head in 1927, we do not know whether Hamman Yaji was still raiding Dghweɗe at the time,
but most likely he was not. We do know that his diary ends in 1920, but this might have been
simply because he had been told to stop raiding. This puts the Dghweɗe narrative of having
led the British to arrest Hamman Yaji in a bit of an obscure light, but more about that later.
104
