Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 131
LGA, and was active mainly in Ngoshe and Gwoza but not in Dghweɗe, while the Catholic
Church formed the fourth biggest church in the region.
As already mentioned in Chapter One, Christianity has not made much progress in the hills
over the last ten years, while Islam has progressed massively. It appears that the population of
the Gwoza hills, possibly with exception of Ngoshe Sama in Gvoko, have chosen in large part
for Islam to be their more suitable religion. This has been a recent development, and I myself
witnessed in 2005 (see Plate 3a) how the dress code of women had changed, and how young
couples in the hills invited radical preachers to marry them. We know that there had been
hardly any Islam in the hills in the 1970s, and that the parents of those young men to whom I
spoke were still Traditionalist.
We mentioned in our General Introduction that it was Izala Islam that was favoured by the
younger generation of seasonal workers who came back to visit their homes. We mentioned
how radical preachers also started to teach Izala Islam in the hills around that time, and we
showed photographs of their station high up in the hills of Ghwa'a (see Plate 2a). We also
mentioned that the new Dzga primary school became a radical Islamic school after Boko
Haram took over Ghwa'a with its version of Islam, only around five years ago. We also
learned that most foreign fighters of Boko Haram eventually left, presumably leaving the
remaining locals deeply traumatised. We have good information that the elderly people who
converted to radical Islam did so under the pressure of survival, because they could no longer
live as Traditionalists.
We mentioned the rumour that Taɗa Nzige, who was already a Muslim in 1953, and who
gave us a detailed oral account as an eye-witness of the 'Gwoza Affair', had joined the
religious sect of Boko Haram. We will never know the truth of such rumours, but considering
he was one of the main supporters to lead a delegation to convince the Gwoza education
authority to reopen Dzga Learning Support as the first Dzga primary state school, it is
difficult to believe he did it for any other reason than survival. No Christian or Muslim would
dare to go up to Ghwa'a now, in late 2020, for fear of being killed.
It is not the elderly Dghweɗe, who were forced to convert to a distorted version of Islam, who
are responsible for the situation. They are victims, as were the bulamas in 1953, of whom
Taɗa Nzige was a living example. The responsible ones are others, such as politicians, army
representatives, and national and regional elites, but these seem to have no interest in bringing
peace back to that once so beautiful and prospering egalitarian mountain culture, with its once
so admirable heritage of stone terraces and impressive architecture. They are, after everything
that happened in the past, still too remote and unimportant to be liberated by an initiative of
their own national and regional elites, and it almost seems as if history is repeating itself in
forgetfulness.
Two Plebiscites on the route to independence
Before we close our chapter on colonial history, we will briefly give an account of the two
Plebiscites which eventually led to the integration of the Gwoza hills, as part of the so-called
Northern Cameroons, into the newly formed independent republic of Nigeria in June 1961.
The rest of Nigeria had already reached independence on the 1st of October 1960. Between
then and June 1961, the Northern Cameroons came under direct British rule, because the first
Plebiscite in November 1959 resulted in an unexpected majority against joining an
independent Nigeria, but in favour of remaining under international rule. The second
Plebiscite in February 1961 then changed this, but the majority vote to join the newly
independent Nigeria was only implemented in June. In the following we will lay out the
circumstances of this complication, since it throws light not only on the general political
climate in Nigeria at the time, but also specifically on the Gwoza hills area.
In our analysis we rely much on Umar Hamman’s (2000) BA thesis from the University of
Maiduguri. Although I do not agree with some of the ethnographic interpretations, such as for
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