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Emerging Associational Life Matters for Counter-Insurgency in Zamfara State, Nigeria

Taofiki Aminu, PhD, Masud Bello, PhD

Abstract

Autochthonous solidarity among complex and variegated Nigeria plural ethnics societies is of antiquity, and has been essentially morphed for proliferation of people’s unity for associational life. This is abounded in the historical annal of northern Nigeria people, specifically of the erstwhile intergroup relations that permeated in the three epochal trajectories- pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. According to Mike Lee,1 associational life is a short-hand for the web of social relationships through which people can pursue joint endeavours in families, communities, workplace, and religious congregations. Undoubtedly, the achievement of chequered associational life benefits emanates from varied precedence of voluntary associations and organisations in northern Nigeria, which Zamfara State is a component part. In historical retrospection, between 18th and 19th centuries, the phenomenon gained enormous ascendancy in pre-existing sociocultural, economic and political system which emanated from indigenous guild system.2 It is worthy of note that prior to the British Colonial subjugation of northern Nigeria in 1903,3 the distinct independent groups, notably; communities, kingdoms and empires were administered by their autochthonous rulers.4 These were monarchical rulers, administratively powerful in nature and also executed complex phenomena through orthodox mean of the association life. This effulgence was also bequeathed of Zamfara kingdom and its subsequent creation of as a State in 1996. Indubitably, the autochthonous rulers overran and wielded considerable influence in northern Nigeria,5 and typically manifested in their administrative radiance bolstered by subaltern chiefs through associational life in Zamfara State. As underscored by Whitetaker,6 from 1920s to 1945, the spate of Nigeria nationalist’s struggles towards decolonisation were stimulated by

References

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