ABSTRACT
However, as observed by Kukah (1994), the Jihad of Usman dan Fodio in the 19th century has come to dominate historical analysis o f northern Nigeria, very much to the chagrin of other Muslims and scholars, who cite the earlier practice of Islam among the people of the Bomu empire and how pagans and
Muslims coexisted symbiotically in the Middle Belt area long before the Jihad. However, one of the most significant legacies of the Sokoto Jihad was the
merging of large sections of northern Nigeria into what has come to be referred to as the Sokoto Caliphate and which some careless and uninformed analysts allege extended over all of northern Nigeria. It may, however, be the nature of British colonial intrusion into the north, its confrontation with, as well as its defeat and resuscitation of the political-secular authority of the Sokoto Caliphate and the application of the indirect rule model of colonial administration to consolidate what Kukah (1994) refers to as Anglo-Fulani hegemony, that properly establishes our analytical parameters. Essentially, what this means is that the question of ethnic minorities in Nigeria is rooted in a global problematic of pluralism and class factor, but with a particularity traceable beyond but inclusive of the Sokoto Jihad, British colonialism, and political struggles in the colonial and post-colonial periods.
