DIBO IS ABORIGINAL NUPE Back in the days of the Colonial Government over the Northern Protectorate of what we call Nigeria today, the British historian O. Temple wrote that, “The Ganagana and Dibo are two sections of the same race, speaking the same language with dialectical differences.” The truth of the matter is that the Dibo and the Gana people were two different peoples speaking different dialects of the same Old Nupe language of Gara in very ancient times. But today, and as observed by the Colonial historians, the Dibo and the Ganagana people were initially two different peoples but speaking merely different dialects of the same ancient Gara or Gana language. The Ganagana and the Dibo may have been different people speaking different dialects of the same language, as O. Temple observed above, but today, at this early stage of the 21st century, the Dibo and the Ganagana people have virtually become one and the same people virtually speaking a language that is today a syncretism of the two ancient dialects of the Dibos and the Ganaganas. The Dibo The observation of the Colonial historians is that the Dibo are simply an offshoot of the original Ganagana people. In other words it was a section of the Ganagana people that became differentiated or descended into the Dibo people due to geographysical, or geopolitical, differences somewhere in prehistory. The Dibo got isolated from the overall Ganagana population and acquired a slightly different dialect of the ancient Ganagana Old Nupe language. It is much like the story of how the Bassange people got separated from the main Nupe body and ended up with a slightly different dialect or lect of the same Nupe language which they speak to this very day. In any case, and whatever the truth might have been, the Dibo and the Ganagana got back together again somewhere before the advent of the White men. And, unlike the Bassange-Nupe analogy, the Dibo and the Ganagana now speak the same language with little or no dialectal differences whatever. It is more or less like the Dibo and Ganagana have become one and the same people again after being separated for a while during prehistoric times. The only problem here is that both the names Dibo and Ganagana have become two national names that these people now bear. They are known as the Dibo and as the Ganagana synonymously. In any case the particular Dibo stock evidently have an ancient national name that is today lost to history. For the national name ‘Dibo’ with which they are identified today is a descriptive appellation used by others to refer to the people we call the Dibo today. They were referred to as the ‘Dibo’ by other Nupe sub-tribes who saw them as ‘dialectical people’ speaking a rather ‘high’ dialect of the Old Nupe language. In Middle Nupe ‘Edi’ means ‘language’ or ‘dialect’ while ‘Ebo’ means ‘person’ – so ‘Edi-Ebo’ or ‘Edibo’ or, simply, ‘Dibo’ meant ‘Language Person’ or ‘Person speaking a different dialect of the same Nupe language’. The Nupe people came to refer to them as the ‘Dibo’ or ‘Foreign speaker’ simply because they were not of the original stock of the Ife or Apa people that came to be known as the Nupe today. The Dibo, and the Ganagana, people were of the Gara Nupe stock. The Ganagana The Ganagana constitute the oldest and largest stock of the Dibo-Ganagana admixture of people. O. Temple, reflecting the view of the Colonial historians, observed that, “The name Ganagana is onamotopaeic, having been conferred on them by the Nupe, owing to their inability to understand the strange language.” The Colonial historians, as usual, were very wrong in assuming that the name Ganagana is onamotopaeic. The fact is that Ganagana is simply a repetitive form of Gana which was the real and original national name of these very ancient Nupe people. In other words it was not the Nupe people who named them Ganagana, the name Ganagana has been the national name of these people since time immemorial. Ganagana is simply a repetitive form of Gana, the pristine name of these people known as the Ganagana today. But then Gana, the original form of Ganagana, was itself a derivation of the very ancient form, namely, Gara. The most ancient form of the name Gana is actually Gara. This simply means that the Ganagana people were formerly known as the Gana and were originally and initially known as the Gara. Yes, Gara was the first and true national name of the people known as the Ganagana, or even the Dibo, today. In any case these ancient Gara people, whom we call the Dibo today, were also known as the Garagara or, since ‘r’ and ‘n’ are interchangeable phonemes in linguistics, Ganagana. So, we see in effect, how the name Ganagana originated from Garagara which is a repetitive form of the original Gara. Gara and Garagara are dialectally also pronounced as Gana and Ganagana – and that was the original name of these very ancient Nupe people whom we refer to as the Dibos today. Professor Roger Blench pointed out that these Ganagana or Dibo people are still referred to as the Bajingala among the Gbagyis in the FCT. Bajingala is the same as Bazhingara or Ba-Zhigara. Now then, Zhigara simply means ‘Gara People’ in basic Kwa linguistics. So, this takes us back to the fact that these people were originally known as the Gara people. That the Ganagana are still known as the Bajingala among the Gbagyis of the FCT is a strong corroboration of the fact that the original national name of the Ganagana people was Gara. But Professor Roger Blench, writing in the 1980s, is not the first to talk of these very ancient Nupe people known as the Gara or, as they are variously known today, Ganagana or Dibo. As a matter of fact the Gara Nupe people were first mentioned by Leo Africanus, the Andalusian globetrotter and geographer who documented the interesting fact that the whole of the place k nonw as Central Nigeria today, that is the whole of today’s Northern Nigeria and the Middle Belt combined, was entirely populated by the Gara, that is the Ganagana or Dibo, Nupe people as recent as the 16th century when Leo Africanus visited West Africa. Today we see the Gara – now known as the Ganagana or Dibo – as a small subtribe of the overall Nupe population. We see them as a small population of Nupe people located to the southeast of modern KinNupe. But n former times these Ganagana or Dibo people used to be a far populaous Gara Nupe people whose population was so large they practically populated the whole of ancient Nigeria. We have just mention the fact that Leo Afrcanus documented that as recent as the 16th century the whole of today’s Northern Nigeria, and even beyond, was still completely populated by the Gara or Ganagana or Dibo Nupe people. Leo Frobenius also pointed out that the Gara Nupe language was the Lingua Franca spoken over the whole of today’s Northern Nigeria. In those days, in the 16th century, there were not the modern Hausa people in Northern Nigeria and the only language spoken as a Liingua Franca over the whole of Northern Nigeria in those days was the same Gara Nupe language that we refer to today as the Ganagana or Dibo language. That Dibo or Ganagana was the language of the whole of Northern Nigeria as recent as the 16th century ago is also confirmed by Professor J.E.G. Sutton who made it very clear that the Hausa language came into existence less than fve hundred years ago thereby corroborating Leo Africanus’ observation that some five hundred years ago, in the 16th century, the language spoken as a Lingua Franca over the whole of Northern Nigeria was Gara, that is Ganagana or Dibo, and not Hausa. So, how comes the Ganagana or Dibo Nupe people have been reduced from beng the most populous people of ancient Nigeria to being a small subtribe of the Nupe people now confined to just southeastern KinNupe? The answer to this question is a lengthy and rather complicated one and we shall only attempt some cursory look at it. We will have to start with the story of the Gara people all over again. Gara In very ancient times a primordial Nupe people known as the Gara people emerged on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. These people got their very name Gara from the name of the River Niger tself which was the river known as the Gara in very ancient times. That these Gara Nupe people got their very national name from the name of the River Niger is a formidable testament to the fact that the River Niger was their origin right here in Central KinNupe. From being a cluster of small tribal and ethnic groups on the banks of the River Niger these ancient Gara Nupe people grew and expanded into a kingdom and eventually an empire that extended territorially beyond the confines of the Niger-Benue valleys way beyond to the reaches of the rest of ancient Nigeria and the rest of the Central Sudan. Gara became an almighty superpower almost unparalleled in the prehistory and history of the Central Sudan. Gara, of course, also became known with an endless variety of synonymous and even unidentical names including as Gwara, Kwara, Koro, Gawara, Agwara, Gwari, Goro, Gulu, Kari, and so on and on. Sultan Bello referred to the Gara ancient Nupe people as the Gawara in his works. The Hausa city chronicles generally identified them as the Gwara or Gwari. Of course Professor J.E.G. Sutton made it clear that the Gwara or Gwari should be differentiated from definitive Gbagyi and Gbari people of modern times. In any case the Gara are a most autotchthonous Nupe people very indigenous to the banks of the River Niger in Central KinNupe. As we shall discuss in further details later, on the authority of P.A. Talbot, the very place we know as Central KinNupe today was originally inhabited and populated almost entire by these ancient Gara Nupe people paramount remnants of whom we still today in the form of the Ganagana and the Dibo peoples. Central KinNupe used to be populated by the Gara – or Ganagana or Dibo – people in those days when they were far more popualous than they are today. It was only in latter times that the Gara – Ganagana or Dibo – people declined and fall from geopolitical powers and were eventually driven out of Central KinNupe to their present location in southeastern KinNupe. The Gara people who used to dominate and rule over the whole of the Greater KinNupe of former times began to decline at a time. Many factors contributed to the decline and fall of Gara, but a great factor in the context of our present writeup is the rse of the Akanda people to power also on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. The Akanda People The Akanda people are also a very ancient Nupe much autochthonous to the River Niger such that nobody can really tell who, between the Gara and the Akanda, are aboriginal to Central KinNupe most. These Akanda people were also known as the Kanda or Kanta people. Remnants of these ancient Akanda people are still to be seen variously as the Kakanda, Kyadya, Batati, Nda, Edo, and other Nupe people to these very days. The Akanda people became a major and rival power to the Gara people. Such was it that there was constant clash and wars between the rising Akanda and the falling Gara. In the end sections of the rising Akanda kingdom and the falling Gara kingdom merged to form the United Kingdom of Akanda-Gara. This Akanda-Gara was also known as the Akanta-Gara or Kanta-Gara or, simply, as AtaGara. AtaGara was also known as NdaKolo since Nda and Ata and Gara and Kolo are respectively synonymous. The land of AtaGara was also known as KantaGara or, as we pronounce it today, Kontagora. As a matter of fact the entire wetsren half of KinNupe continued to be known as AtaGara or Kontagora right unto historical times until Etsu Masaba gave it away, in the late 1760s, to his Nupe cousin brother Umaru Nagwamatse who transformed it into the Kontagora Emirate of today. KantaGara was referred to, in the Kano Chronicle and in the works of Sultan Bello, as Katunga. This Katunga was, of course, the same as the Old Oyo which became the Oyo kingdom of history. That is how the Oyo people of today originated from Nupe. Please read my book, Oduduwa Was Nupe: How the Yoruba People Originated from Nupe, for details on that interesting fact. For now we are talking about the great AtaGara Empire which actually began as a United Kingdom of the ancient Akanda Nupe peoples and the ancient Gara Nupe peoples. It is more or less like the ancestors of today’s Kakanda and Kyadya people merged together with the ancestors of today’s Ganagana and Dibo people to form the United Kingdom of AtaGara. In any case AtaGara was a multi-ethnic merger of a united kingdom bringing together so many ancient Nupe people. Apart from the Akanda and the Gara, there were also the Bini, the Apa or Ife, and many other ancient Nupe people incorporated into the United Kingdom of AtaGara. But the Gara were the dominant ethnicity of the AtaGara union. Afterall Gara was the greater power that went into the formation of the AtaGara United Kingdom with the Akanda people. That was how the Gara, that is the Ganagana and Dibo, people got their other national name, Zhitako or Zhitakoro, which have survived right unto modern times. Professor Blench, too, noted that the Ganagana or Dibo people are still known as the Zhitako among the Nupes in KinNupe. Tsoede and the Dibos These Dibo or Ganagana people, known as the Gara in former times, were the same people of the AtaGara Kingdom from whom Tsoede, the famous Founder or, actually, Re-Founder, of the Nupe Nation came. As we shall discuss in greater details in latter sections of this present work, the father of Tsoede was the Attah or king of the AtaGara United Kingdom when Tsoede was born. That is why Tsoede was known as Tsudi, the original form of the Latinised Tsoede – which is a compound of ‘Etsu Edi’ which literally means ‘The King with the Foreign Dialect’ of the Nupe language. Note that both the names ‘Tsudi’ and the ‘Dibo’ have the article ‘di’, actually ‘Edi’, in common. Tsoede, properly Tsudi, was a Gara, that is Dibo or Ganagana, man from his father’s side. His father was a Gara man and as we have just noted above it is the same people who were known in ancient times as the Gara that are known today variously as the Dibo or Ganagana or Zhitako or Bajingala. So, Tsoede was a Gara man. And it is the Gara people who were known as the Zhigara, as they are known among the Gbagyi people to this very day, Bajingala. These Gara people were also, in a collective sense, referred to as the ‘Zhi-Gara’ or ‘Zhigara’ because in Old Nupe language ‘Ezhi’ was used to refer to a collecton, a multitude or a mass as we still see in the Modern Nupe words of ‘Ezhi’ to refer to a town which is a collection of people or to an egg, fish egg initially, which a mass of eggs. These ancient Gara or Gana or Garagara or Ganaga people where also known as the Zhitagara which is a compound of ‘Ezhi AtaGara’ in reference to their almighty, but now extinct, ancient kingdom of AtaGara. It was from that AtaGara Kingdom that Tsoede came and his father was the Attah or AtaGara of that Kingdom. The people of AtaGara Kingdom were known as the Gara and that is why Nupe traditions to this very day maintain that the father of Tsoede was a Gara man. It was this ancient Gara that Professor S.F. Nadel mistook for the modern Igala and consequently reached the wrong conclusion that the Nupe people originated from the modern Igala people. The truth of the matter is that the father of Tsoede was a Gara man and it is these ancient Gara people that are now known as the Dibo or Ganagana. In other words the father of Tsoede was a Dibo or Ganagana man! But that discussion is for another day, in another one of my writeups. Zhitako and Kintako For now we are discussing the fact that these ancient Gara people were also known as the Zhigara or Zhitagara. Well, Gara was also dialectally pronounced as Koro and therefore Zhitagara was also prounounced as Zhitakoro. And this Zhitakoro also used to be shortened into just ‘Zhitako’ which, tellingly enough, is the national name of the Dibo and Ganagana people to this very day. The Dibo people are still known as the Zhitako people to this very day. The Dibos or Ganaganas were initially known as the ‘Zhigara’ or the ‘Zhitako’. In the FCT and Nasarawa areas the Zhigara are still referred to as the Bajingala or Bazhingara among the Gbagyis. These national names of this people are the historical, and prehistoric, markers that we can use to trace the real and ancient identity of this people who are referred to as the Dibo or Ganagana today. First we should mark the fact that the more ancient national name of this people, that is ‘Zhitako’, is actually a shortened form of the general national name of the people of KinNupe in the more complete form of ‘Zhitakoro’. ‘Zhitakoro’ is a Middle Nupe phrase simply meaning ‘The People of AtaKoro’. For those not familiar with Nupe linguistics; ‘Ezhi’ used to refer to a people such that ‘Ezhi-AtaKoro’ or ‘Ezhitakoro’ or, simply, ‘Zhitakoro’ will directly mean ‘The People of Atakoro’. But, what is the word ‘Atakoro’ in the phrase ‘Ezhi-Atakoro’ or ‘Zhitakoro’? ‘Atakoro’ is simply a dialectal variant of the former national name of the Nupe Nation, namely, AtaGara. The Hausa city chronicles, and even Sultan Bello himself, have authoritatively mentioned and made references to a powerful AtaGara kingdom, and later empire, that, once upon a time, flourished in the cis-Niger area of KinNupe on the banks of the River Niger right here in Central KinNupe. The Kano Chronicle categorically mentioned that that AtaGara super-kingdom was located in the same general area that the city of Bida is today located in. The Kano Chronicle also intimated that Queen Amina of Zaria was really a princess or queen of this super-kingdom of AtaGara. In other words Queen Amina of Zaria was actually a Gara, that is Dibo or Ganagana, woman. Sultan Bello’s, and Hugh Clapperton’s, writings, in referring to the Oyo kingdom as Katunga (a variant of KataGara or AtaGara) also shows that Shango and the Oyo kingdom he founded were also part of that ancient Nupe super-kingdom of AtaGara that was once located in Central KinNupe. Shango, the founder of the Oyo kingdom and the Yoruba race, was therefore a Dibo man. As a matter of fact it was not just Queen Amina of Zaria and Shango of Oyo, but also the Igala kingdom of Adashu, the Kebbi kingdom of Kanta, and many other ancient Nigerian kingdoms and ethnicities that in point of fact originated from that ancient Nupe super-kingdom of AtaGara. What we are saying here is the Queen Amina of Zaria, Shango of Oyo, Kanta of Kebbi and Adashu of Igala were all Dibo people. It was that ancient Dibo kingdom of AtaGara, which was located right here in Central KinNupe, that was also variously known, dialectally, as Kontagora (KataGara), Katunga (Oyo), AtaGara (Igala), Dunguru (among the Nupes), etc, etc. In actual fact the whole of KinNupe was known in ancient times as ‘KataGara’ which is what the Hausa tongue corrupted into ‘Kontagora’ today. And as late as the time of the reign of Etsu Masaba the Great in the late 1860s, the entire western half of KinNupe was still known as ‘KataGara’ – the word that Umaru Nagwamatse’s Hausa mercenaries wrongly pronounced as ‘Kontagora’. As a matter of fact, and on the authority of Professor Roger Blench, the southern half of KinNupe is known to this very day as the Nupe Tako or Kintako. Of course, Kintako is a shortened form of ‘Kintakoro’ or ‘Kin-Atakoro’ or ‘Kin AtaGara’ which simply means ‘The Land of AtaGara’. Kintako or Kin Atakoro or Kin Atagara was populated by the Zhitako or Zhi Atakoro or Zhi Atagara who are the same people that are known today as the Dibo or Ganagana. In those days almost the entire population of KinNupe was Zhitako or, as we call them today, Dibo. We did mentioned before that the entire KinNupe general area was, once upon a time, almost entirely populated by the Gara people prominent remnants of which today are the Dibo and Ganagana people. In any case this ancient Nupe national name, AtaGara, was also dialectally pronounced as ‘AtaKoro’. Of course, ‘Gara’ and ‘Koro’ are one and the same word. So, ‘AtaKoro’ and ‘AtaGara’ are one and the same word. So, KinNupe was known in ancient times as AtaGara or AtaKoro. And the Nupe people used to be known, in those days, as the ‘Zhitagara’ or ‘Zhitakoro’ which simply means ‘The People of AtaGara’ or ‘The People of ZhitaKoro’ both of which means the same thing. Yes, Nupe people were known in former times as the ‘Zhitakoro’. And it is this national name of the Nupe people in former times, ‘Zhitakoro’, that survived into history in the form of ‘Zhitako’ that is still used as the national name of the people we’ve come to call the Dibo or Ganagana today. Dibo is Aboriginal Nupe So, if anything at all, the people we call the Dibo or Ganagana today were truly the aboriginal Nupe people – this, of course, is attested to by the fact that to this very day, and of all the various Nupe subtribes, they are the ones who are still bearing the ancient national name, Zhitako or Zhitakoro, of the Nupe Nation. The Dibo or Ganagana people are still bearing the original name of the Nupe Nation today because they were originally located in Central KinNupe when the ancient Nupe super-kingdom of AtaGara was located right here in Central KinNupe. Yes, the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people were among the aboriginal inhabitants of the Central KinNupe where the city of Bida is located today. Professor A.H.M. Kirk-Greene actually wrote that this Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people were originally spread over a wider section of KinNupe than they are today. KinNupe was originally the land of the Gara, that is Dibo or Ganagana, people. That was the observation of independent observers from the outside world in prehistoric times. Both Ibn Batuta and Leo Africanus referred to KnNupe as Guangara or the ‘Land of the Gara’ while Mungo Park categorically noted that KinNupe was solely known as Guangara in ancient, prehistoric times. KinNupe was known as ‘Garaland’ and not as ‘Nupeland’ in as recent times as the time of the first White people to arrive the Guniea Coast or West Africa in general. The fact is that Central KinNupe and the Northern half of KinNupe were originally and overwhelmingly populated by the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people who were far more populous in those days than they are today. Interestingly enough this same Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people are no more to be found in Northern or Central KinNupe as they have now been reduced to a far smaller population now confined to the south-eastern reaches of modern KinNupe. Professor Michael Mason explained that the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people were originally located, first in Northern KinNupe, later in Central KinNupe, and now in South-eastern KinNupe. Professor Michael Mason essentially pointed out that the history, and indeed prehistory, of KinNupe flowed down the River Niger from North-eastern through Central to South-eastern KinNupe. In the beginning this Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people were as a matter of fact known as the Gara people when history first located them on the banks of the Kaduna River where they established Professor Michael Mason’s ‘Kingdom of the Kaduna’. As the Gara people they were known as the ‘ZhiGara’ which is the name with which the Gbagyi people still refer to the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people as the ‘Bajingala’ or ‘Bajingara’ in the FCT and Nasarawa general areas. In reality the Gbagyi people were originally a Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako Nupe people. It was in the form of the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako that today’s Gbagyi people descended or originated out of the general Nupe nationality. The Gbagyi and the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people were practically indistinguishable one from the other until very recent times. In fact Professor Roger Blench pointed out the fact that a major population of the Gbagyi peoples of the FCT and Nasarawa areas today originated from the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people who ceased to speak their language and adopted the Gbagyi dialect. The truth of the matter, and as of H.A. Johnston, Thomas Hodgkin, O. Temple, Professor S.F. Nadel, Barrister Shipi M. Gowok, Muhammed S., and many other scholars observed, the Gbagyi and the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako peoples have remained practically indistinguishable one from the other in the FCT and Nasarawa general areas due to the fact that both of these people are bilingual in Gbagyi and Dibo and both are continuously merging into and out of one another as they live in the same village compounds. The Kingdom of the Kaduna was a Dibo-Gbagyi-Gara kingdom because, to this very day, these people are one and the same people. It was out of the Dibo that that Gbagyi people originated and the Dibo people are still referred to as the ZhinGara or Bajingara or Bajingala in the FCT. At a later time, and from the Kingdom of the Kaduna, the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people spread over virtually the whole of ancient KinNupe and that is when they became known as the Zhitakoro or Zhitako which, as we have pointed out before, was the national name of the Nupe people in former times. It was the rise of Tsoede, who was himself half Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitakoro (his father was the Attah or Nda king of the AtaGara kingdom) and the emergence of his Nupeko or Kororofa empire that led to the fall and collapse of the AtaGara super-kingdom of the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people. Nupeko or Kororofa subsequently chased AtaGara out of Central KinNupe. That was how the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people gradually left Central KinNupe and eventually became settled in the South-eastern confines of KinNupe wherein they are still located to this very day. In conclusion we should note here the fact that most of the so-called Nupe sub-tribes are actually the pristine, original or aboriginal Nupe people. This story above about the Dibo, Ganagana or Zhitako people as the aboriginal inhabitants of KinNupe and original speakers of the Nupe language is the same that is repeated in the case of the Gupa, Kame, Kakanda, Gbagyi, Kusopa, Batati and so many other so-called Nupe subtribes. All these peoples have today migrated out of Central KinNupe. But these are the real and aboriginal Nupe peoples. And if we have to trace the true roots of Nupe sociology we will have to take a closer and more meticulous look at the sociology of these original Nupe peoples.
Posted on: Wed, 07 May 2014 20:09:16 +0000
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