By Olayinka Oyegbile History is for human self-knowledge … The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is – R.
Collingwood (A review of The Forgotten Era: Nigeria Before British Rule, Max Siollun, Roving Heights Ltd, Lagos, 2025) For a very long time, what is termed history of Africa or documentation of the people of the continent had been snippets of often biased and racist conjectures cobbled together by some early explorers who visited the continent and thought they knew it more than the people they met on the ground.
It was the reason why most African history of the times were dominated by explorers who ‘discovered’ rivers, streams and mountains that African have been cohabiting with and exploring before the arrival of the foreigners.
In the last couple of years with the growth of consciousness and the need to decolonize education moves are on to tell the authentic history of the continent and situate it in the right and proper perspective.
Chinua Achebe had popularized the proverb that “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Books about colonialism in Africa had been filled with the ‘civilising’ mission of the colonisers who had embarked on the dangerous and long journey to the continent to save it from perdition.
However, not too recent researches have continued to point in the other direction; the expeditions were mostly fueled by the selfish ambition of the colonisers to exploit the rich human and material resources that are abundant in the ‘new world’.
Many historians, anthropologists, archeologists and so on have continued to do researches which point to these facts.
The histories written about Africa from Cape to Cairo from Libya to Benin Republic are about wars, killings, slavery and rivalries among kings and empires.
They were blind to the plundering of resources, human and material, that took place to justify their acts.
Turning to Nigeria, the stories are about the rise and fall of empires stretching across swathes of lands and territories, inter-tribal wars and enslavement and trading in humans, exchange of humans with mirrors, beads etc.
But these were not all about Nigeria.
It is in the light of this that Max Siollun’s book is a great service to this part of the history of Nigeria.
The writer turns to those enlivening stories of the country long before the British cobbled a disparate group of peoples together into one.
This, not necessarily for the benefit of the people but for its own administrative convenience and long-term gain.
Stating why he embarked on the book project, the writer states.
“Existing histories of Africa are usually of slavery, colonialism, or of Europeans ‘discovering’ African cities, mountains, rivers, and other landmarks that the natives had somehow not noticed (in other words, a history of what Europeans did in Africa, rather than a history of Africans themselves).” (pxi).
It is on this basis that Siollun embarked on writing this important book.
Divided into thirteen chapters and a conclusion, the author treats his topics with majestic candour and a finesse that makes the reading smooth and engaging.
The first chapter takes a look at the Hausa states the ones called the Seven legitimate ones and takes the reader through the myths of the founding of the seven towns of the Hausa and dovetails in to the next chapter on the Kanem Borno empire.
This establishes the fact that Islam came to the north first through this empire and not to the Hausa states.
This has been a matter of knowledge to some and explains why that part....
