Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 111
in the past by other ethnic groups as far south as Tur. We also remember the role of Durghwe
in the legend about Zedima, in the context of the Dghweɗe asserting themselves against the
attempt of an early Wandala chief nearby to undermine their ritual independence. In our tale
about the arrest of Hamman Yaji, we are confronted with Hamman Yaji's soldiers breaking
into the ritual life of the Dghweɗe, and even intruding on Durghwe for the main hiding place
for their cattle. We learn later, in the context of the killing of lawan Buba, how the colonial
report failed to address the ritual insult of lawan Buba's entourage, and that this was actually,
from a Dghweɗe perspective, a reason to defend themselves.
An entirely different explanation could be that the gunshots heralding Hamman Yaji's arrival
were the gunshots the hill populations heard from afar during the war hostilities. At the same
time, Hamman Yaji might still have used the opportunity and come up to Dghweɗe, and as far
as Ghwa'a to raid them too. We will never know what exactly inspired the Dghweɗe to create
the narrative of a delegation to the residence of Borno to help them get rid of Hamman Yaji.
What the narrative does prove, however, is an oral declaration of acceptance of being under
British rule, even though the British acted late. At the time of the arrest, the issue of taxation
had already been addressed, and ward head Baima would have been in contact with his
district head in Gwoza town. We know that Lewis tells us he was not. All this happened
while Gwoza had just started to develop as a new centre to replace Ashigashiya. That Vaima's
delegation made a stop in Ashigashiya shows the pre-colonial attachment to the Wandala of
Kirawa, who had not been able to protect them.
In the next two sections we will describe how the British attempted to introduce what they
understood to be good self-governance in Dghweɗe, but failed, while the newly emerging
Gwoza elite successfully received Western education in Hambagda. The two developments
were mutually counterproductive and eventually led to the colonial power’s conclusion that
the Gwoza hill area should remain an Unsettled District. Next, a resettlement scheme in the
western plains became the best possible option, for the British. We subsequently describe the
failure of this resettlement scheme, which led to the killing of lawan Buba in 1953, and we
will retell the event as a piece of late colonial local history from below. Other than the
Hamman Yaji example, the colonial reports of the killing of lawan Buba are in much clearer
contrast to the oral narrative of our Dghweɗe eye-witness, and there is no legendary aspect to
it, except perhaps if one were to call the official colonial report 'legendary', at least in parts. It
is Taɗa Nzige, the once senior rainmaker of Dghweɗe, who was a bulama (ward head) at that
time and who told us his version of the killing of lawan Buba, and how it was linked to the
failed resettlement scheme.
Mountain versus Plain: pagan reorganisation and the issue of self-governance
I am not certain when exactly Gwoza was declared an Unsettled District, but it is mentioned
in the early 1920s as a desirable option, and we see throughout the 1930s an increasing
tendency of the British authorities to take particular care of the hill population, especially in
their ability for self-government, with the ultimate goal of paying taxes. During that period,
the British carried out several ethnographically informed studies, generally referred to as the
issue of 'Pagan Reorganisation'. MacFarlane's (1932) was the first, followed by that of
Mathews (1934), but we will draw mainly here from the one by Eustace (1939), since his,
being the last report, expresses an explicitly negative view of the montagnards’ ongoing
failure to practice self-governance in the British way. It also appears that the newly emerging
local elite at Gwoza town had a different agenda from that of the British colonial officers.
Such a hidden agenda cannot be concluded alone from the colonial reports, but Dghweɗe oral
accounts around the killing of lawan Buba tell that story, especially concerning the question
of whether there was a plan for an enforced downhill migration. This is at least what the
comparison of oral and archival records of an increasingly sharper conflict over downhill
migration suggests. The following describes how, during the 1930s and 1940s, the British
tried to cater for the 'special needs' of the hill population, but failed, and seemed at the same
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