Stanhope White’s Ɗan Bana: The Memoirs of a Nigerian Official (Cassel and Company, 1966) is a fascinating recollection of a British colonial officer during the colonial occupation of Kano which stretched from 1903 to 1960. As he stated himself, “in it, I have described the more interesting and amusing incidents in my career as Assistant District Officer and District Officer in Bornu, Benue, Kano and Sokoto provinces.”
“Ɗan Bana”, if the author used it in the Hausa urban usage, may mean “modern youth”, “sophisticated”, “urban dude”, etc. In the old Bargerian Hausa usage, it means a disrespectful young man (“the disrespectful young people of today”). It is probably derived from “ɗan bana bakwai” which often refer to a seven-year old cow that is ready to produce calves, and whose meat is delicious. The expression is used to refer to a young, energetic footloose and fancy free, usually male, person.
The term, “Ɗan Bana”, was a nickname given to the author by F.W. Parsons and contextualized to mean the author was ‘updated’ or current. F.W. Parsons was a prominent British colonial administrator and scholar known for his extensive work in Hausa studies. His contributions to Hausa studies include works on Hausa grammar, language textbooks, and cultural studies that remain influential in the field.
White probably adopted the term, “Ɗan Bana” to refer to himself as the youngest person in the circle he moved, despite being an Assistant District Office (ADO). It is also instructive that he saw himself as a “Nigerian”. I wonder how many British colonial officers empathize with their natives enough to consider themselves nationals of the country. This, despite the fact the White left Nigeria before the country gained independence from the British in 1960.
Stanhope White joined the British Colonial Administrative Service and, after his probationary year, was posted to Northern Nigeria in 1936 where he served in various capacities. During the latter part of his career he was Director for Commerce and Industry in the Northern Region. He returned to England in 1954 and worked for Fisons and later ICI. During this time he published three books related to his experiences in Africa: Descent from the Hills (1963); Ɗan Bana: the Memoirs of a Nigerian Officer (1966); and Lost Empire of the Nile (1969).
My focus in this posting is on an incidence reported in Ɗan Bana. It is one of the few rare books that gives a glimpse of northern Nigeria in the beginning of the colonial occupation. Full of anecdotes and historical insights, the book is surely an addition to the “newly digitizing” literature of northern Nigeria, thanks to the Internet Archives digitization efforts, on African histories. As he stated, “Amongst the old files that I found in Kano was one of some interest […] —which my Resident and I destroyed—recorded the trial for sodomy of one of the first European traders to arrive in Kano in the early days of this century. The evidence, recorded in sickening detail, was conclusive; there was no defence but the accused tried to excuse his actions by alleging that such activities were common amongst Government Officers, and were condoned as he well knew from his many years spent in the Oil Rivers before coming to Kano.
“The Court was unimpressed and he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment; he then asked for the facts of the case to be placed before the acting Governor, Temple, and he elaborated on his allegations. Temple was unmoved by the plea and was indeed highly indignant at the accusations against the members of the Government Service in the neighbouring Territory.
“Pending his removal to some prison in the south where a European could serve his sentence, the prisoner was confined in the small European hospital—consisting of a couple of rooms only—and the morning after he had been told that Temple refused to intervene, he was found dead alongside a broken poison cupboard. It appears incredible that this possibility had not been foreseen; someone, perhaps the Medical Orderly, had had compassion on his shame.”
Thus despite the puritanism of colonial officers, some deviant behaviors were manifest in their dealings, presumably, with the “natives”. This sheds light on this social problem, as it was commonly believed in Kano that such sexual inclination was either introduced, or popularized by the Lebanese. If that was the case, then they had cohorts in British settlers.
I find it curious that White willfully reported having destroyed evidence – a historical criminal behaviour. But that was done to maintain the pristine image of the British colonialists as being morally upright. The silent suggestion to the culprit to kill himself to solve everyone’s problems also shows another, unpleasant, dimension of irregular dispensation of justice to protect British image.
White was also one of the colonial writers who debunked the idea of Hausa identity, and in the process, contradicts himself. As he stated:
“Hausa is a language, not a tribe, and there are many Hausa-speaking tribes of whom the Kebbawa in the far west of Nigeria are the most important. Why tribe became subordinated to language is not known, but in about A.D. 1000 several great city states of the Hausa-speaking peoples came into existence of which the greatest was, and still is, Kano. Its fame became known in Europe in the Middle Ages but its resemblance to Ghano or Ghana, a state of the Middle Niger area, led to confusion as to its true position. We do not know as yet who were the founders of this great city.” (p. 160).
Obviously White wrote this while the colonial administration was still speculating about the origins of the people they conquered, as indicated by his puzzlement about how a “tribe became subordinated to language”. One could point out European “tribes” — German, French, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, etc. who were also subordinate to their languages as distinct markers of ethnic identities.
Nevertheless, Ɗan Bana is a fascinating synthesis of life in Bornu, Sokoto and Kano in the early years of the colonial occupation. I have included it in the Acibilisian Hoard in my OneDrive folder. In case you could not be bothered to fish it out, here is the link to the same book on ResearchGate:
* Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, a former Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria NOUN), is a Senior Lecturer at Bayero University, Kano
