Munzali Dantata’s Kano of many firsts

Kano has always occupied a special place in the West African space – the biggest city, one of the oldest surviving and a bustling commercial nerve centre. Over the last two or so centuries, it has featured in a catalogue of writings. You find the prominence of Kano in the writings of the European adventurers such as Hugh Clapperton, Richard Lander, Fredrick Lugard, and Richmond Palmer. Of late, Ambassador Mamman Garba’s The Time Has Come, and Adamu Baikie’s Sabongari, the simmering melting pot of Kano State, are books that have told the story of parts of Kano.

A recent addition that I have read and one that has made a deep impression on me is the recently launched book Behind the City Wall, written by a Kano-born and raised Munzali Dantata. The book, written in an engaging biographical mode, tells the story of Kano, particularly from 1900, the year of the British conquest. His grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, a legendary entrepreneur who needs no introduction, had settled in the newly conquered Kano City by the British colonialists and had, even then, begun to dominate its business growth.

The book is, therefore, a fusion of what made Kano from the early 1900s to date – the British insatiable hunger for groundnuts and cotton to feed its industries, the railway link to the southern part of the country and the city’s strategic place on the ancient trade routes, including the famed trans-Saharan route. The book is also the story of a businessman, then in his mid-twenties, sojourning in Ghana from his Bebeji base, who returned to anchor in Kano in good time to take advantage of the new trade and establish himself in the city, leaving behind a dynasty that is still relevant today.

Munzali is a third-generation scion of the family born in the late 1950s. Though he was born a few years after his famous grandfather had passed away, his uncles and those associated with the pioneering days were still around to serve as sources of information for writing the book. In addition, Munzali is well-read, holds a PhD in Law from ABU, Zaria, and is well-grounded in the cultural tourism arena. He had served as Director-General of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR) from 2006 to 2014. Our paths crossed in 2010, when I also served briefly at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation headquarters. Even then, Munzali had made a name as a keen promoter of our culture to attract the attention of tourists. I am therefore not surprised that he had come with this magnificent book on Kano.

Personally, I first set my eyes on Kano sometime in 1962. I was barely seven or eight and had come to visit Kano from Maiduguri, a neat, well-laid-out town with wide streets, lined and shaded with innumerable neem trees. I regarded Kano as congested and drab. But that was the view through a child’s prism. It was only later that I realised that Maiduguri was a freshly minted town, established only in 1907, while Kano had more than a thousand years of existence.

It had also served the entire region as a colossal centre of trade. It is these attributes and many others that Munzali brought out in his groundbreaking book. In the book, Munzali takes us through what made Kano one of Nigeria’s most significant cities and why it is the city of many firsts. He posits that, at the beginning of the 20th Century, it was the Groundnuts Pyramids, signifying agricultural wealth, the railway, denoting modernity, and the city wall, embodying the tradition of go-getting entrepreneurship, that singled out Kano.

He gave an affectionate account of how the groundnut trade grew into many pyramids, with many of them contributed by his Dantata family. For many years in the first half of the 20th century, the groundnut pyramids were the most distinctive feature of Kano City.

The Kano to Lagos railway, opened in 1911, was the first transnational railway in Nigeria, built specifically to transport exports to the Lagos port. Kano was the first place a plane landed in Nigeria in 1925, and the landing grew into the country’s first airport. Kano, thus, became the first air gateway to Nigeria, while Lagos remained the first sea gateway. Kano was also the first to have a modern industry in the north: Masaka Textiles, developed by his grandfather, which, unfortunately, no longer exists.

The groundnuts trade, the railway and the airport made Kano the metropolis it was. However, Kano became famous for its unique ability to attract various nationalities who stayed and adopted Kano culture. Even before the British occupation, in the old Kano City, there were districts populated by groups who had settled in Kano. Kanuris had Zangon Barebari, Nupes had Tudun Nupawa, and Yorubas had Ayagi. Munzali also related how the Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis and other Arab migrants became an integral part of the Kano community. As it is, through intermarriage, subsequent generations have become assimilated as Kano indigenes.

Munzali was also a witness to all subsequent changes from the 1960s to date that have impacted Kano. The loss of the groundnut pyramids, the decline of the textiles and the railway were particularly galling.

Munzali’s Behind the City Wall is a challenge to aspiring writers across the north to research and publish books about their towns and cities.

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