THE SURVIVAL OF INDIGENOUS TAILORING AMONG 
THE HAUSA OF KANO CITY, NIGERIA 
by 
Robert Jerzy Pokrant 
King's College 
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of 
the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy, Social and 
Political Sciences within the 
Faculty of Economics and Politics, 
University of Cambridge 
1982 
3 
THE SUR VIV AL OF INDIGENOUS TAILORING AMONG THE HAUSA 
OF KANO CITY t NIGERIA 
--.. by Robert Jerzy Pokrant 
This study examines the changing characteristics and present-day 
organisation of Hausa tailoring, one of the many crafts which have been 
practised by the Hausa-speaking peoples of northern Nigeria for centuries • 
. The first part of the study provides a brief account 'of the origins 
and development of Hausaland up to the end of the 19th century. It con-
centrates on showing the central role played by craft production, including 
tailoring, in ~he economic life of the Hausa. Particular attention is paid 
to Kano City and Kano Emirate which together formed the industrial and 
commercial centres of Hausaland under the Sokoto Caliphate during the 19th 
century when the region reached the peak of its pre-colonial economic and 
political development. 
This is followed by an assessment of the impact upon selected Hausa 
crafts in Kano Emirate, namely, weaving, dyeing, blacksmithing and tailoring~'- __ .
of the incorporation of Hausaland into the Nigerian State. It is argued, 
together with supporting evidence, that of these crafts, tailoring has been 
relativ~ly successful in adapting to new economic and political influences 
brought about by incorporation. 
The final part of the study examines tailoring in modern Kano City, 
particularly in three wards, each of which has a different historical and 
contemporary association with tailoring. Topics covered include the highly 
fragmented and small-scale nature of tailoring, the types and sources of raw 
materials and instruments of production used, methods of labour recruitment 
and training, forms of production within tailoring workshops, markets served, 
characteristics of the tailoring labour force, traditions of tailoring, and the 
spatial distribution of tailoring activities. Case studies of workshops and 
workshop heads are provided in order to highlight the ways in which tailors 
organise their productive activities and the problems they face in main-
taining and expanding their operations. The study concludes with a discussion 
of worker consciousness, and the obstacles to its development, among tailoring 
employees in one of the three wards intensively studied. 
rl 
T ABLE OF CONTENTS 
LIST OF MAPS 
LIST OF TABLES 
LIST OF APPENDICES 
NOTES 
PREFACE 
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 
CHAPTER lI. HAUSALAND AND THE HAUSA 
PEOPLE 
CHAPTER m. KANO EMIRATE AND KANO CITY IN 
THE 19TH CENTURY WITH PARTICULAR 
REFERENCE TO CRAFT PRODUCTION 
CHAPTER IV. CRAFT RECRUITMENT , GUILDS AND 
THE STATE 
CHAPTER V. THE TRANSFORMATION OF CRAFT 
PRODUCTION IN KANO EMIRATE 
DURING THE 20TH CENTURY WITH 
PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO 
TAILORING 
CHAPTER VI. MODERN KANO CITY AND ITS 
ENVIRONS 
CHAPTER VII. TAILORS AND TAILORING IN THE 
OLD CITY OF KANO 
CHAPTER VIII. TAILORS AND TAILORING IN THE 
THREE WARDS OF SORON D'INKI , 
0) 
Page 
(ii) 
(iii) 
(vi) 
(vii) 
(viii) 
1 
12 
37 
85 
109 
182 
200 
HAUSAWA AND YALWA 236 
CHAPTER IX. ORGANISATION OF PRODUCTION AND 
MARKETS: ARTISANAL PRODUCTION 279 
CHAPTER X. ORGANISATION OF PRODUCTION AND 
MARKETS: MARKET -ORIENTED 
PRODUCTION 311 
CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION 393 
APPENDICES 407 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 411 
(ii) 
LIST OF MAPS 
2.l. Approximate geographical spread of the 
Hausa Heartlands 13 
2.2. The Sokoto Caliphate in the 19th Century 24-
6.!. Kano City - Waje : 1975 183 
7.1. Main Ta iloring Wards in Kano City: c. 1975 228 
(Hi) 
LIST OF TABLES 
Pase 
2.1. Population of Nigeria by State: 1977. 14 
3.1. Male craft workers in Kano Emirate in the early 
20th century: Selected districts only. 46 
3.2. Peoples of non-Hausa origin in selected wards of Kano 
City during the 19th century. 59-60 
3.3. Goods traded in Kasuwar Kurmi: c. 1850. 61 
3.4. Craft specialisations in selected wards of Kano City 
during the 19th century. 64-65 
3.5. Ratio of tailors to weavers: Kano Emirate, selected 
districts: 1909- 1931. 68 
3.6. Occupations of Kano City and Fagge adult male 
taxpayers: 1926. 71 -72 
3.7. Estimated population of. Kano City at various times 
during the 19th century. 83 
5.1. Dyers and weavers in selected Kano districts: Early 
20th century and 1946. 121 
5.2. Dyers and weavers in the three home districts of 
Kumbotso , Ungogo and Gezawa: 1946 and 1974. 122 
5.3. Yearly imports of yarn and cotton threads: 1914- 1970. 145-146 
5.4. Yard and thread imports: 1965, 1970 and 1975. 147 
5.5. Tailoring establishments in selected cities , towns 
and villages in Nigeria: Various years. 150 
5.6. Clothing imports: 1965, 1970 and 1975. 155 
5.7. Sew ing machine imports to Nigeria: 1925-1974. 163 
6.1. Manufacturing/processing establishments in urban 
Kano , 1978: (Ten or more employees). 192 
6.2. Types of _small-scale industry in the Kano urban 
area: 1972. 195 
6.3. Tailoring establishments and numbers employed in 
Kano urban area: 1972. 197 
& 
7.1. Tailoring specialisations within selected Kano City 
wards: 1976. 227 
7.2. Three study wards by number of hand and machine 
tailors. 234 
7.3. Three study wards by type of sewing machine used. 234 
8.1. Population growth in the three wards: 1945-1973. 237 
8.2. Occupational/sectoral distribution of adult male tax 
payers in Soron D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa: 
Selected years. 238 
8.3. Adult male tax paying tailors in Soron D'inki , Hausawa : 
and Yalwa: 1945-1976. 239 
8.4. Ethnicity by ward. 251 
8.5. Respondent's birth place by ward (A). 252 
8.6. Respondent's birth place by ward (B). 252 
8.7. Proportion of life in Kano City by ward. 254 
8.8. Proportion of work life in Kany City by ward. 254 
8.9. Generational association with Kano City by ward. 254 
8.10. Father's place of birth by ward. 255 
8.11. Paternal grandfather's place of birth by ward. 255 
8.12. Home ownership by ward. 255 
8.13. Paternal grandfather's primary occupa tion by ward. 258 
8.14. Respondent's age by ward. 258 
8.15. Paternal grandfather's secondary occupation by ward. 259 
8.16. Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by 
secondary occupation: Three wards. 259 
8.17. Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by 
secondary occupation: Soron D'inki 260 
8.18. Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by 
secondary occupation: Hausawa 260 
8.19. Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by 
secondary occupation: Yalwa. 260 
(iv) 
8.20. Paternal grandfather's occupation by ward : (combined 
primary and secondary occupations). 
8.21. Father's primary occupation by ward. 
8.22. Father's secondary occupation by ward. 
8.23. Father's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Three wards. 
8.24. Father's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Soron D'inki. 
8.25. Father's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Hausawa. 
8.26. Father's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Yalwa. 
8.27. Formal/informal sector work experience by ward. 
8.28. Respondent's work life employment status by ward. 
8.29. Type of formal sector work experience by ward. 
8.30. Proportion of respondent's work life as tailor 
by ward. 
8.31. Respondent's tailoring work life employment sta tus 
by ward. 
8.32. Respondent's age by tailoring work life employment 
status. 
8.33. Respondent's ~ tailoring work life employment status 
by current e mployment sta tus: Three wards. 
8.34. Respondent's age by current employment status: 
Three wards. 
8.35. Respondent's primary occupation by ward. 
8.36. Respondent's non- tailoring occupations by ward. 
8.37. Respondent's farming by ward. 
9.1. Tailors and tailoring workshops: Soron D'inki, Hausawa 
and Yalwa: 1975/76. 
9.2. Selected artisan commission rates: Soron D'inki, 
Hausawa and Yalwa. 
(v) 
261 
261 
262 
263 
263 
264 
264 
270. 
270 
272 
272 
272 
273 
273 
274 
274 
275 
277 
282 
289 
10.1. 
10.2. 
10.3. 
10.4. 
10.5. 
10.6. 
10.7. 
10.8. 
10.9. 
Primary occupation of the fathers of Central City 
Market gown and cap sellers. 
Wards of residence of Central City Market clothes 
sellers and horse caparison dealers. 
Types of markets for which tailoring workshops 
produce by ward. 
Artisanal and market-oriented workshops by size: 
Hausawa ward. 
Sources of starting capital for Hausawa market 
producers. 
Rates of pay among Hausawa employees. 
Hausawa tailoring employees' job aspirations 
and expectations. 
Tailors' aspirations by kin and/or self-involvement 
in types of jobs aspired to: Hausawa employees. 
Hausawa tailoring employees' views on the main 
function of a tailors' association. 
LIST OF APPENDICES 
1. Tailors in Kano urban area: 1926, 1946 and 1972. 
2. Examples of Hausa embroidery designs with a 
non-human or inanimate referent. 
3. Note on sampling. 
(vi) 
314 
316 
320 
321 
322 
334 
380 
381 
386 
408 
409 
410 
NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY 
Most of the consonants in Hausa are similar to those in English. 
However, a number are glottalised. They are b, d, K and Iy• 
For convenience, b, er and K are represented in the text as bl, 
dl, and kl. Iy is unchanged. I have omitted any tonal markings. 
NOTE ON CURRENCY 
Nigerian monetary units have been expressed in both the 
Nigerian pound , which until 1967 was at par with sterling, 
and the naira (#). The latter was introduced in J anuary , 1973 
and replaced the Nigerian pound at a rate of two for one. The 
naira is made up of 100 kobo. 
At the time of the field work, the official exchange values of 
the naira were approximately U.S. $1.60 and E. i.. 0.71. 
(vii) 
PREFACE 
This dissertation on the survival of indigenous tailoring among the 
Hausa of northern Nigeria is based largely upon field work undertaken by 
the author while resident in the ancient city of Kano from October 1974 
(viii) 
to September 1976. The data collected were obtained by a variety of means 
of which the most important were structured and unstructured interviewing 
and participant observation. 
In order to enhance the value of these techniques as instruments of 
data collection, as well as to facilitate my entry into Hausa society, I studied 
the Hausa language at Cambridge prior to the field trip. My language ability 
was greatly improved during the first few months of residence in Kano through 
daily interaction in my neighbourhood and across the city with innumerable 
Hausa people who were unfailingly helpful in assisting me to achieve a level 
of speaking competence sufficient for me to work largely without the aid 
of an interpreter. 
I have also drawn upon a range of published and unpublished scholarly 
sources, government and official publications, and the works of various travelers 
and others with a specialised interest in Hausa society. These proved parti-
cularly valuable in building up a picture of the historical development of 
Hausaland and its place in the affairs of the Central Sudan. All such sources 
are acknowledged in the chapter notes and bibliogra phy. 
The information contained in this dissertation was collected by myself 
and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration. 
However, in working on the study. I have sought the advice and assistance 
of many persons and ha ve drawn on the resources of numerous institutions. 
Of those who helped bring the study to fruition ~ I would particularly like 
to thank my supervisor , Professor Jack Goody, for his constant intellectual 
- - -- - - - - - --- - ------------- ------ -
(ix) 
and moral support and his considerable patience. Others to whom I owe 
a debt of gratitude for giving me the benefit of their knowledge and 
experience include Moses Anafu , David Dorward, Judith Ennew, Alan Frishman, 
Esther Goody, Polly Hill, Phil Jaggar, Paul Lovejoy, Joe McIntyre, Paul Lubeck, 
John Paden and Ibrahim Tahir. I would also like to thank David Brittain 
for his help in the preparation of the maps and June Williams and Margaret 
Blaber for their efficient typing • 
. The study would have been impossible without the active and enthus-
iastic cooperation of the countless number of tailors in Kano City and its 
environs who answered my every question. To them I offer my deepest 
thanks. While in Kano, I spent most of my time in the three wards of Soron 
D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa, an experience that was made exceedingly enjoyable 
by the courtesy and friendliness shown to me by the people resident there. 
I would especially like to mention the following whose knowledge of tailoring 
and other aspects of Hausa life were invaluable. They are Alhaji Garba 
Ibrahim, to whom I dedica te this work , his family and extended kin , Alhaji 
Musa Ma'aji, and Alha ji Dalhatu "Buskum" of Soron D'inki, Alhaji Malam Alfa 
and Malam Mohammed Kwie of Hausawa and D'andago wards, and Malam Sule 
Jari and Alhaji Rabi'u of Yalwa. I would also like to acknowledge t he help 
given to me by the late Alhaji Sani Mai Zane of Yalwa. 
Thanks are also due to my assistants who helped me with the census 
and who carried out interviews during the final months of the field work. 
They are Kabir Haruna, Nuraddeen Mohammed and Alfazazi Namairage, all 
Kano City residents who at the time were first year sociology students at 
Bayero University, Salisu Fallalu of Hausawa ward , and Habib Ahmed, an 
economics student at Ahmadu Bello University and resident of Soron D'inki. 
(x) 
I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of a number of 
governmental and other institutions. Funding for the bulk of the research 
came from a Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship. . In addition, King's College, 
Cambridge provided me with a small travel allowance to visit the Public 
Record Office in London. I am also grateful to Bayero University, Kano, 
Cambridge University Library, the Kashim Ibrahim Library at Ahmadu Bello 
University , the Nigerian National Archives at Kaduna, the Kano State 
Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Public Record Office in London who 
provided me with access to their various resources. 
Entry into, and subsequent work within, Nigeria was greatly 
facilitated by the Department of Sociology at Ahmadu Bello University who 
extended to me the privilege of a research associateship. Finally, I would 
like to thank the Kano City Local Government Authority for allowing me 
to reside with my family within the old city. 
R. J. P. 
Adelaide, 
November, 1982. 
1. 
CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 
The economic historian, A.G. Hopkins, writing in the early 1970's, 
made the following observation about the state of knowledge of traditional 
crafts in the economic history and development of West Africa: 
From the number of assertions made about the elimination 
of traditional crafts, it might be supposed that the subject 
had been thoroughly investigated. This is not the case. 
(Hopkins, 1973 : 250). 
The aim of this study is to show that , far from being eliminated, 
one particular craft practised by the Hausa-speaking peoples of northern 
Nigeria and southern Niger Republic has managed to survive the many changes 
which Hausa society has experienced over the past 75 years or so brought 
about by the incorporation of Hausa1and, through the Nigerian State, into 
the world capitalist system. The particular craft in question is that of 
tailoring. 
The objectives of the present work are twofold. First, to examine 
the reasons why tailoring, relative to many other Hausa crafts, continues to 
play an important role in the life of the Hausa both in terms of supplying 
large numbers of people with basic clothing needs and in providing many 
Hausa with a source of employment. Second, to provide a detailed analysis 
of the present-day (circa: 1975/76) organisation of tailoring in three wards 
of the old city of Kano which is one of the oldest urban settlements in 
Hausaland and West Africa and today forms part of a larger urban centre 
which is the most important commercial and industrial city in northern 
Nigeria 1. 
2. 
The need for such a study becomes apparent when it is realised that, 
although Hausaland is heir to a rich and varied craft tradition commented 
upon by travellers, scholars, government officials and the like 2, few anthro-
pological . or sociological studies have been devoted exclusively to an 
examination of any of the many craft industries which make up this tradition. 
The two most · important studies of Hausa crafts which have been 
carried out in recent years are those of Jaggar (1973a; 1973b; 1978) on 
Kano City blacksmiths and Shea (1975) on cloth beating and dyeing in Kano 
Emirate 3. Apart from the work of the art historian, Heathcote \ on 
traditional Hausa embroidery, which concentrates largely upon the artistic 
and aesthetic aspects of the activities of Hausa hand embroiderers, little 
is known about the social and economic organisation of tailoring • 
. Students of Hausa society have concentrated their efforts on the 
political and administrative histories of Hausa emirates, the role of trade, 
particularly long-distance trade, in the pre-colonial development of Hausaland, 
the impact of colonial rule on the political structure of traditional 
authorities, the development of the Hausa language, and the role of Islam 
as an intellectual and political force in the ideological and organisational 
integration of the Hausa people 5 • 
Much anthropological work has centred on rural Hausa society and 
although many of these researches contain some description of crafts they 
form part of a more general ethnographic account of village and rural life 
as a whole. Among the studies in this tradition are those of Hill in Kano 
and Katsina (1972, 1977), Barkow in the old North. Central State (I970 , 
1973), Smith on the Zazzau Hausa (1955), and the works of Faulkingham 
(1970) and of Nicolas and his associates on rural Hausa in Niger Republic 6 • 
3. 
Studies of court musicians and drummers have been carried out by 
Ames (1968; 1971; 1973) and the ethnomusicologist , Besmer (1971), but 
neither of these deal with craft manufacturing such as weaving, dyeing, 
smithing, leather working or tailoring. 
Many historians, particularly economic historians, make reference to 
Hausa crafts but in the context of a wider examination of the expansion of 
trade, the growth of a Hallsa diaspora and the political and economic 
integration of Hausa people into the overall structure of Hausa society. 
Among the works in this genre are those of Lovejoy (1973; 1980) on kola 
traders, Hogendorn (1978) on groundnut exporting, Usman's work on pre-
colonial Katsina Emirate (Usman, 1974), and Adamu (1978) on the expansion 
of the Hausa diaspora in West Africa. 
More detailed information on specific Hausa crafts has come to light 
in recent years largely through the works of Jaggar and Shea mentioned 
earlier. However, of the two only Jaggar concentrates upon present-day 
organisation while Shea devotes most of his attention to the situation 
prevailing in the 19th century. Similarly, Tahir (1975) devotes a section 
of his Ph.D. thesis to certain Hausa crafts but this forms a small part of 
a much wider study of the rise of what Tahir refers to as a Hausa bourgeoisie 
in Kano. Furthermore, all his references to Hausa craft production relate 
to the 19th century. 
The relatively limited number of detailed historical and contemporary 
studies of specific Hausa crafts, especially craft manufacturing, which are 
available in the literature of Hausaland can be accounted for in a number 
of ways. 
First, historically Hausa society was (and remains so to this day) 
largely agricultural and there was a general absence of a stratum or segment 
4. 
of autonomous craft producers. Most craftsmen and craftswomen were 
primarily farmers who pursued craft work as an extension of, or supplement 
to, the production of food crops. Accordingly , many studies have concen-
trated upon farming , making incidental reference to craft production. Only 
under certain conditions, such as in the main Hausa cities and in various 
regional centres where craft work was linked to the pre-colonial export 
trade, did craft workers become sufficiently visible and differentiated from 
the general population so they became open to examination in their own 
right. 
Second, much historical work has been pre-occupied with the activities 
of the Hausa ruling classes. As the vast majority of craft producers were 
talakawa, that is, of commoner or subject status, and played little role in 
government, they have figured hardly at all in studies of political 
organisation. Those given some consideration have been almost exclusively 
low-ranked craft officials who constituted a tiny minority of all craft 
workers. With the reform of emirate government in the 20th century, the 
minor powers of craft functionaries have been whittled away and, 
consequently, students of political organisation during the colonial and post-
colonial periods have had even less reason to pay them any attention. 
Third, the concentration of ethnographers and anthropologists upon 
Hausa village life in the post -second world war period has contributed to 
a neglect of craft work. The large-scale importation of foreign manu-
factured goods , the promotion of an export-oriented cash crop economy, 
the undermining of rural subsistence, and the increasingly important role 
played by the cities of Hausaland as centres of commerce and non-agricultural 
production have led to a decline of the rural areas as loci of craft production. 
These developments have been exacerbated by a failure of successive Nigerian 
5. 
governments to encourage rural industrialisation programmes based on either 
traditional crafts or other small-scale industries. Most academic observers 
have simply commented upon this decline rather than provide any micro-
analyses of craft production at the village level 7 • Yet , the decline has 
been uneven, affecting some crafts more than others , and today practically 
the whole range of Hausa crafts continue to be practised in rural Hausaland 
as well as in the cities and towns. 
Fourth, apart from farming , where Hausa economic life has been 
examined attention has focused on trade and exchange, particularly inter-
ethnic and inter-regional exchange and long-distance trading. In contem-
porary Kano, with the notable exception of Jaggar and, to a much lesser 
extent, Shea, only Lubeck has analysed the organisation of non-farming 
production and his work deals mainly with class consciousness and class 
conflict among industrial workers 8 • 
A final, and more general, faCtor accounting for the lack of interest 
in craft production relates to government attitudes towards the main motors 
of economic development and the intellectual assumptions which underlie 
these attitudes. Modernisation theories of the 1950's and 1960's assumed 
that so-called traditional or pre-capitalist forms of social and economic 
organisation were of little relevance to the development process 9. Those 
third world governments pursuing capitalist paths to development mirrored 
this viewpoint in their belief that development equalled westernisation and 
that indigenous social and economic structures were anachronistic or 
feudalistic impediments to the realisation of "modernity". 
At a more concrete level, ma ny governments , including Nigeria from 
the mid- 1950's on, pursued policies oriented towards investment in western 
capitalist productive enterprises based on large-scale units of production 
and capital- intensive technology. When small-scale industries were 
considered, they were usually those thought to exhibit least connection with 
the presumed culturally inhibiting fea tures of the indigenous society. Thus, 
traditional crafts would wither away and be replaced by imported copies of 
western industrial structures. 
These few comments indicate why Hausa crafts have attracted little 
scholarly interest and few government initiatives. However, the 1970's saw 
a resurgence of interest in indigenous economic activity , including crafts , 
as development theorists began to re- think their traditional approaches. 
This new concern was partly stimulated by the failure of industrialisation 
strategies to absorb the growing populations of urban areas brought about 
6. 
by a neglect of agriculture and the over-emphasis upon capital- intensive 
industry 1 o. In addition, politicians began to fear the political consequences 
of what was perceived to bea growth in the level and rate of open unemploy-
ment in the cities. Some scholars began to ask how, in view of the scarcity 
of modern-sector urban jobs and the absence of adequate state systems of 
social security, the bulk of the urban labour force was able to survive. 
Upon investigation it was discovered that most engaged in various kinds of 
income-generating activities outside the public sector and the larger private 
manufacturing and commercial enterprises. Those so engaged, and the 
activities by which they earned a living, were designated as constituting an 
informal sector, a catch-all phrase which , initially , referred to a segment of 
t he economy which escaped official recognition and enumeration 11 • 
The informal sector concept has led to a vigorous and critical debate 
over such questions as the degree of autonomy such activities have from 
the wider economic system, the forces which lead to their conservation 
and dissolution, the politica l and economic functions they perform for national 
7. 
and international capital, and their future growth prospects 12. It has also 
stimulated a considerable · number of studies of the diverse ways in which 
third world city residents generate incomes for themselves and their 
families 1 3 • 
The present study falls largely into the second category in that it 
concerns itself primarily with providing new empirical materials on the 
organisation of one occupational activity , tailoring, in the old city of Kano. 
It will be shown that tailoring retains its character as a predominantly small-
scale activity, provides an important service to local peoples, and gives 
work to many who might otherwise be unemployed. It also examines the 
reasons why tailoring , relative to many other traditional crafts , has managed 
to survive, albeit in a changed form , the transformation of the Nigerian 
economy during the present centLiry. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated 
that tailoring is not a homogeneous activity or occupation but can be divided 
up into many types of producers who are differentiated by the forms of 
production in which they operate, the kinds of products they make, 
traditions of tailoring within which they are taught, and the level and types 
of skills they acquire. Finally, it will be shown that over the past seventy 
years or so some branches of tailoring have declined in importance while 
others have managed to adapt more successfully to changes in the structure 
of the general economy. 
The study is divided into the following chapters. Chapter 11 provides 
a general introduction to Hausaland and the Hausa people. It examines 
the origins of Hausa society and the historical development of Hausaland 
up to, and including ; the 19th century when the majority of the Hausa states 
were integrated into a loosely organised Islamic theocracy known as the 
Sokoto Caliphate. 
8. 
Chapter III examines the central economic role played by Kano 
Emirate in the Caliphate. It concentrates on the importance of rurally-
based craft production in Kano's prosperity and the diverse range of crafts 
practised there. The economic functions performed by Kano City within 
the emirate are described and assessed. 
In Chapter IV attention is paid to methods of craft recruitment and 
training during the 19th century and the question of the extent to which 
any, or all, crafts were guild-organised is critically evaluated. 
Chapter V examines the transformation of selected Hausa crafts 
during the 20th century when large areas of Hausaland were incorporated, 
through the Nigerian state, into the world capitalist system. The bulk of 
the material presented here is drawn from Kano Emirate and particular 
attention is paid to why tailoring, relative to many other Hausa crafts, has 
managed to survive as a predominantly small-scale indigenous activity. 
Chapter VI looks at the present-day commercial and industrial 
structure of Kano City and the wider Kano Metropolitan Area of which 
the city forms one part. It is shown that, although Kano is the main 
commercial and industrial centre of northern Nigeria, most of the labour 
force continue to be employed, or are otherwise engaged, in small to medium-
sized enterprises or production units. 
In Chapter VII the general features of tailoring in the old city are 
examined, concentrating upon the spatial distribution of tailoring activities, 
the many kinds of garments made, the main instruments and raw materials 
used in the tailoring process, and the traditions of tailoring within which 
most Hausa tailors are taught. 
Chapter VIII turns to an examination of tailors and tailoring in three 
city wards: Soron D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa. Each of these wards 
9. 
is shown to have differing historical and contemporary associations with 
tailoring. The ethnic, residential, educational and occupational backgrounds 
and characteristics of tailors in the wards are outlined. 
The remaining two substantive chapters · deal with the organisation 
of tailoring production and the markets served by tailors in the three wards. 
Chapter IX concentrates upon artisanal production and various forms of 
out-working. In Chapter X an analysis of market-oriented production is 
provided and a number of case studies of market producers are presented. 
The chapter concludes with a discussion of "worker consciousness" among 
those employed in market-oriented workshops. 
The final chapter summarises the main points of the study. 
10. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER 
1. The field work upon which this study is based was carried out in Kano City 
from October, 1974 to September, 1976. During that time the author resided 
with his family in Indabawa ward located in FuskarKudu. 
2. The best descriptions of Hausa crafts before the present century come from 
the 19th century and can be found in Barth (1890), Bovill (1966), Ferguson 
(1973) and Robinson (1897). Early 20th century sources include Lugard 
(1905), Meek (1925, Vol. I), Tremearne (1910a , 1910b)r Morel (1912) and 
many of the colonial government assessment reports housed in the National 
Archives , Kaduna. Other descriptive accounts of more recent origin and 
which deal with specific crafts include Beaton (1933), Balfour (1934), Jeffries 
(1938) and Kangiwa and Mattaden (1962) on tanning and leather work, Taylor 
and Webb (1932), Jeffries (1938), Elliot (1940), Crowder (1956), Kirk - Greene 
(1961), Moughton (1964), Moody (1969) and Schwerdtfeger (1971) on building 
and architecture, Nicholson (1929) on pottery, Daniel (1932) on Hausa regalia, 
and Saulawa (1946) on thread - making and weaving . 
3. Bob Shenton of the University of Toronto is at the time of writing preparing 
a Ph.D. thesis on Hausa leather workers. 
4. Heathcote has written a number of articles on Hausa embroidery some of which 
are listed in the Bibliography. He recently (1980) submitted a Ph.D. thesis 
to the University of London on this subject. On the related craft of weaving, 
again written from the point of view of an artist/craftsperson , see Lamb and 
Holmes (1980). More general works on clothing and cloth weaving in West 
Africa include Boser- Sarivaxevanis(1972a , 1972b), Menzel (1973 - 74), Lamb 
(1975) and Picton and Mack (1979). 
5. On the political development of the Hausa emirates and other emirates which 
made up the Sokoto Caliphate in the 19th century see Adamu (1968), Alkali 
(1969), Hogben and Kirk - Greene (1966), Smith (1960, 1978), Aliyu (1974), 
Usman (1974 , 1979), Abubakar (1978), and Fika (1973, 1978). Long - distance 
trade is dealt with in Lovejoy (1973a, 1973b, 1980) and Tahir (1975). Useful 
accounts of the impact of colonial rule on traditional political authority can 
be found in Smith (1960, 1978), Whitaker (1966), Hull (1968) and Fika (1973, 
1978) • . On Hausa language and literature , see Skinner (1968, 1977a), 
Kirk - Greene and Aliyu (1967), Ahmed and D'aura (1970), Yahaya (1971a,b,c) 
and Galadanci (1976). Islam in Hausa society is dealt with in a large number 
of works such as those of Greenberg (1946) , Dry (1953), Last (1967, 1979), 
Paden (1973), Hiskett (1973) and Usman (1979). A general summary of the 
origin and development of Islam in Hausaland from 1000 A.D. to the present 
can be found in Clarke (1982). 
6. A bibliography of Nicolas' work and his associates can be found in Nicolas 
(1975). 
7. Reference to this decline can be found in Chapter V. The decline in crafts 
is linked with what some observers (Hill , 1972, 1977) see as a relative 
impoverishment of the rural areas. For a more general discussion of the 
relative decline of agriculture in the Nigerian economy, see I.L.O. (1981) and 
Bienen and Diejomaoh (1981). 
11. 
8. Lubeck has written extensively on the situation of factory workers in urban 
Kano. However, the bulk of his work deals with a small proportion of the 
Kano labour force who are employed predominantly in the Bompai industrial 
estate located outside Kano City. A high proportion of his sample, which 
includes many non- Hausa, reside in and around that area. The Bibliography 
lists Lubeck's main published works. 
9. The literature based on the modernization paradigm is extensive. However, 
see Hoselitz and Moore (1963), Moore and Feldman (1960) , Braibanti and 
Spengler (1961), Black (1966) and Eisenstadt (1966). Critical reviews of 
modernization theory can be found in Frank (1971) , Tipps (1973) and Hoogveit 
(1978). 
10. A general examination of this issue can be found in Todaro (1981). Roberts 
(1978) provides a good critical analysis of the phenomenon of "over- urbanization" 
in the context of Latin American societies. 
11. The two seminal papers on this subject are those of Hart (1973) and Weeks 
(1971) which were delivered at an IDS conference on urban unemployment 
in Africa during September, 1971 . However, as Bromley (1978) pOints out 
in his overview of the history of the informal sector concept , it has been around 
since the 1960's. 
12. The literature pertaining to this debate is considerable. The best starting point 
for those interested isthe work of Hart and Weeks mentioned above. Other 
valuable sources include the 1977 conference of British Geographers and the 
journal World Development which in 1978 (Vol. 6, Nos. 9/10) devoted a whole 
issue to the subject. · In this issue, see especially the article by Moser where 
she examines the potential of small - scale enterprises as generators of employment 
and as autonomous centres of economic growth. The debate is continued in 
Long and Richardson (1978), Bromley and Gerry (19-79) , Middleton (1981), 
Kennedy (1981), Forbes (1981) , Gerry and Birkbeck (1981) , and Rogerson 
and Beavon (1982). 
13. Apart from the studies mentioned in footnote 12, the World Employment 
Programme of the International Labour Office has sponsored many empirical 
investigations which for the most part use the concept of the informal sector 
as the main organizing principle of analysis. See, for example, I.L.O. (1974 , 
1975a, 1975b, 1976). There are also the I.L.O. country studies of which the 
1972 Kenya study (I.L.O. , 1972) is the best known. Sethuraman (1981) has 
recently edited a volume which brings together a representative sample of 
the sort of work carried out under I.L.O. auspices. A review and bibliography 
of the researches of the World Employment Programme can be found in I.L.O. 
(1979). 
12. 
CHAPTER 11 
HAUSALAND AND THE HAUSA PEOPLE 
~ 
The Hausa people (Hausawa) occupy a large area of north-west and 
north-central Nigeria and the southern parts of the Niger Republic. Within 
Nigeria, the bulk of the Hausa population reside in the states of Sokoto, 
Kano and Kaduna with significant concentrations in Bauchi, Plateau and 
Niger states and the western parts of Borno state. The Niger Republic 
Hausa are found mainly along the southern borders of that country and are 
culturally and historically linked with the broad mass of Hausa peoples of 
Nigeria. The border which divides the Nigerian from the Nigerien Hausa 
is a product of British and French imperial policies and, prior to the 20th 
century, no such division existed. 
The areas described above form Hausaland proper, referred to as 
the K'asar Hausa {land of the Hausa people/language} by the Hausa themselves. 
Besides those who live in the Hausa heartlands , there is a large Hausa 
diaspora spread throughout Nigeria and other states of West Africa, the 
Sudan, Chad and Cameroons. Hausa peoples are also found in Gabon, Congo 
Brazaville, and Zaire. 
The total population of those who identify themselves as Hausa is 
not known, but of the 79 million people who, according to World Bank 
est imates for 1977, live in Nigeria, over 20 million are Hausa 1 . Indeed, 
the core Hausa settlement areas - the states of Kano, Kaduna and Sokoto 
- contained a population of at least 20 million in 1977 (see Table 2.1). 
Probably some four fifths or more of the population in these states are 
Hausa (see Map 2.1 for approximate geographical spread of the Hausa 
heartlands). 
Niger 
Benin 
o 
I 
Oye 
• 
. • Ibadan 
lIerln 
• 
N I G E RIA 
Shendam 
• 
1" 
Cameroon 
MAP 2·1 Modern Nigeria showing approximate geographical spread of Hausaland 
13. 
MaldUQUrl. 
I:Z'E 
TABLE 2.1 Population of Nigeria by state: 1977. 
STATE POPULATION 
(OOO'OOO's) 
Anambra 4.382 
Bauchi 3.421 
Bendel 3.568 
Benue 3.415 
Borno 4.154 
Cross-River 5.098 
Gongola 3.730 
lmo 5.788 
Kaduna 5.767 
Kano 8.126 
Kwara 2.412 
Lagos 2.244 
Niger 1.681 
Ogun 2.182 
Ondo 3.838 
Oyo 7.330 
Plateau 2.852 
Rivers 2.173 
Sokoto 6.387 
TOTAL 78.548 
The core Hausa states are underlined 
Source: New Africa, July 1977. 
% 
5.5 
4 . 5 
4.5 
4.5 
5.5 
6.5 
4.5 
7.5 
7.5 
10.5 
3.0 
3.0 
2.0 
3.0 
5.0 
9.5 
3.5 
3.0 
8.0 
The Hausa people are the product of an historical inter-mixture, 
extending over a thousand years, of an indigeneous Hausa-speaking stock 
1 If. 
with a variety of non- Hausa peoples such as the Kanuri, Nupe, Fulb'e, DyuJa, 
Arabs, Tuareg, Yoruba and many other groups. It is one of the key features 
of the Hausa people that during the course of their history they have been 
able, through both voluntary and involuntary means, to assimilate populations 
of diverse background into a relatively coherent Hausa identity. Through a 
14. 
TABLE 2.1 Population of Nigeria by stat e: 1977 . 
STATE POPULATION % 
(000'000'5) 
Anambra 4.382 5.5 
Bauchi 3.421 4 . 5 
Bende1 3.568 4.5 
Benue 3.415 4.5 
Borno 4.154 5 . 5 
Cr oss-River 5.098 6.5 
Gongo1a 3.730 4.5 
Imo 5.788 7.5 
Kaduna 5.767 7.5 
Kano 8.126 10.5 
Kwara 2.412 3.0 
Lagos 2.244 3.0 
Niger 1.681 2.0 
Ogun 2.182 3.0 
Ondo 3.838 5.0 
Oyo 7.330 9.5 
Plateau 2.852 3.5 
Rivers 2.173 3 . 0 
sokoto 6.387 8.0 
TOTAL 78.548 
The core Hausa states are underlined 
Source: New Africa, July 1977. 
The Hausa people are the product of an historical inter-mixture, 
extending over a thousand years, of an indigeneous Hausa-speaking stock 
with a variety of non-Hausa peoples such as the Kanuri, Nupe, Fulb'e , Dyula, 
Arabs, Tuareg, Yoruba and many other groups. It is one of the key features 
of the Hausa people that during the course of their history they have been 
able , through both voluntary and involuntary means, to assimilate populations 
of diverse background into a relatively coherent Hausa identity. Through a 
15. 
process of both internal and external colonization based upon a combination 
of military, political, religious and commercial means, the Hausa have 
extended outwards from their original base becoming by the end of the 19th 
century the most important nationality within the whole of the Central 
Sudan. 
This process of Hausa-ization continues to the present and , according 
to Adamu (Adamu, 1978 : 3), poses a threat to the survival of many minor 
languages within Hausaland and along its borders. Today, the Hausa form 
one of the three main subnational groupings within the Federal Republic 
of Nigeria, the other two being the Y oruba and the Igbo. Besides these 
three, there are many other cultural and language groups in the country 
among which the most important are the Kanuri, Nupe, Tiv, Idoma, Igbira 
and Ijaw. 
Although the Hausa have attained what Hill refers to as " •.•. a high 
degree of cultural, linguistic and religious uniformity .• • • " (Hill, 1972 : 1), 
the diversity of peoples, languages and ways of life which have been 
assimilated by the Hausa makes it difficult 2 to provide an authoritative 
definition of what it means to be a Hausa. However , Adamu (Adamu, 1978, 
lj.) provides a useful working definition: He regards as Hausa: 
.•.•• those who historically issue from Hausaland or 
their descendants through the male line, or those who 
became closely associated with Hausa culture by 
adopting its language, its customs and religion. 
Among the most important criteria used by Adamu in determining 
the Hausa identity are the following. 
First, and of paramount importance, is the ability to speak the Hausa 
language (harshen Hausa) fluently and to use it as a first language. Without 
16. 
the Hausa language there would be no Hausa people 3. 
A second and perhaps equally important, criterion of "Hausa-ness" 
is religion, specifically, adherence to the Muslim religion. Although the 
Hausa language pre-dates Islam in the historical development of the Hausa 
people, the Muslim religion has been a major force in Hausa society since 
the 14th century A.D. when it was introduced by Wangara (the name given 
by the Hausa to people of Dyula origin) traders and clerics who migrated 
to Hausaland from their homelands in Mali. 
The religion became a particularly potent force during the 19th 
century in the wake of the founding of the Islamic Sokoto Caliphate by 
reforming Fulani clerics and their supporters. As a result of their, and 
their successors', efforts, the majority of the Hausa population became 
Muslim (Musulmi). In earlier times, most Hausa were spirit worshippers of 
animist persuasion but today such worshippers, called Maguzawa by Muslim 
Hausa, are a minority of the total Hausa population. Nevertheless, the 
Maguzawa speak Hausa as a first language and most Muslim Hausa regard 
them as Hausa peope even though they neither practise the Muslim religion 
nor organise their cultural, social and economic life along exactly the same 
lines as that of the dominant culture. 
Other · means by which a person might assert a claim to being Hausa 
include use of a Muslim name or a name which is distinctly Hausa and the 
ability to trace descent, through the male line, to a Hausa origin. Thus, 
a person who may not speak Hausa very well or who was born and lives 
in areas remote from the Hausa heartlands, can be regarded as Hausa if 
he has an ancestral link with Hausa peoples. Peoples falling under this 
category include the Abakwariga of central Nigeria and certain groups of 
Hausa in present-day Ivory Coast, Upper Volta and Mali (see Adamu, 1978, 
: 3 and passim). 
Finaily, of particular importance to this study is another partial 
indicator of Hausa-ness, namely , the adoption of Hausa-style clothing. 
17. 
As will be shown, besides its purely utilitarian value, clothing plays a central 
symbolic role in most societies acting not only as a means whereby members 
of society differentiate themselves from each other but also distinguish 
themseives from members of other societies. I consider clothing a partial 
or imperfect sign of being Hausa because many items of Hausa dress are 
now worn by non-Hausa peoples who claim no affinity with Hausa culture 
and society. Yet, the importance of distinctive kinds of clothing to the 
Hausa is so great that it is warranted to include it in this general discussion. 
Origins and Development of Hausal~tnd up to the, 19th cel1tury 
Although the archaeoiogical and historical material necessary for a 
full account of the early development of Hausaland is incomplete, certain 
broad features of this development can be established. 
The Hausa have known a variety of forms of political and economic 
organization ranging from small and scattered kin or clan-based agricultural 
communities with limited political development above the level of the clan 
to large sta:tes incorporating millions of people pursuing a range of agri-
cultural and non-agricultural activities and subject to the authority of non-
producing ruling classes made up of chiefs (sarakuna), free and servile office-
holders (masu sarauta), and their families, clients and slaves. Indeed, the 
history of Hausaland can be studied in terms of the shift from a kin-based 
to a territorial principle of political organization and the increasing political 
and economic stratification of the mass of the population which culminated 
in the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate in the early 19th century. 
18. 
Following the suggestion made by Smith (1971, 1972), the history 
of Hausaland before the 19th century can be divided into a period prior 
to the emergence of urban settlements which became the capital cities 
(birane; sing: birni) of the Hausa states, a period which ended sometime 
between the 11th and 14th centuries; and the era of the formation of the 
early Hausa states and their subsequent consolidation which lasted up to, 
and including, the 19th century. 
The earliest Hausa communites are thought to have emerged after 
the stabilisation of the Saharan dessication some 4,000 years ago 4. 
Relatively isolated in their region, these Hausa-speaking peoples lived in 
scattered village communities and practised some form of settled agriculture 
combined with hunting. Political authority was vested in heads of house-
holds who were the senior patrilineal members of groups of kin and affines. 
There exi~ted little in the way of political organisation above the level of 
the household (gida), although it is possible that at times of peak agricultural 
activity a chief of farming (sarkin noma ), chosen from among senior heads 
of households, had the responsibility of organising various economic tasks 
and religious rituals connected with planting and harvesting. Hunting 
expeditions were organised by a chief of the bow (sarkin baka) or father 
of the hunt (uban farauta) whose authority ; like that of the sarkin noma, 
was limited to such occasions. 
Some communities of farmers may have been able to improve their 
agricultural productivity sufficiently to engage in trade with other communities, 
especially where they had developed the techniques of iron-working; a skill 
which is regarded as of major importance in the early religious, political 
and economic development of some of the major Hausa cities of today. Many 
oral traditions in Hausaland attest to the importance of migration to areas 
18. 
Following the suggestion made by Smith (1971, 1972), the history 
of Hausaland before the 19th century can be divided into a period prior 
to the emergence of urban settlements which became the capital cities 
(birane; sing: birni) of the Hausa states, a period which ended sometime 
between the 11 th and 14th centuries; and the era of the formation of the 
early Hausa states and their subsequent consolidation which lasted up to, 
and including, the 19th century. 
The earliest Hausa communites are thought to have emerged after 
the stabilisation of the Saharan dessication some 4,000 years ago Lt. 
Relatively isolated in their region, these Hausa-speaking peoples lived in 
scattered viilage communities and practised some form of settled agriculture 
combined with hunting. Political authority was vested in heads of house-
holds who were the senior patrilineal members of groups of kin and affines. 
There existed little in the way of political organisation above the level of 
the household (gida), although it is possible that at times of peak agricultural 
activity a chief of farming (sarkin noma ), chosen from among senior heads 
of households, had the responsibility of organising various economic tasks 
and religious rituals connected with planting and harvesting. Hunting 
expeditions were organised by a chief of the bow (sarkin baka) or father 
of the hunt (u~an faraut~) whose authority; like that of the sarkin noma, 
was limited to such occasions. 
Some communities of farmers may have been able to improve their 
agricultural productivity sufficiently to engage in trade with other communities, 
especially where they had developed the techniques of iron-working, a skill 
which is regarded as of major importance in the early religious, political 
and economic development of some of the major Hausa cities of today. Many 
oral traditions in Hausaland attest to the importance of migration to areas 
19. 
where iron ore deposits were to be found (Palmer, 1967; Na- Dama, 1976). 
The control of iron working techniques, combined with the availability of 
fertile land and the development of farming practices which increased agri-
cultural productivity, were probably important factors in the creation of 
small towns (garuru~; sing: gari) which traded with each other. A more 
permanent political authority, known as the chief of the town (sarkin gari), 
emerged at this time, although political allegiance remained kin-based and 
tied to a specific locality. 
It is argued that the gari pre-dates the formation of more typically 
urban settlements of the birni type. The birni is thought to have emerged 
when certain settlements, favoured by good farming land and control of 
a superior technology, grew in size such that the population no longer 
consisted of groups of kin- related peoples who were containable within 
traditional forms of political organisation. Communities of strangers grew 
up who became subject to authority systems of a supra- kinship character. 
One local group may have emerged as the most powerful or another immigrant 
group may have imposed its will upon the others. Whatever the case may be, 
a more complex system of political and economic stratifieation developed , 
headed by a chief of the land (sarkin k'asa) who ruled through a set of 
officials (masu sa rauta) over an area of land defined increasingly by terri-
torial criteria. 
These ruling groups gradually withdrew from direct production and 
began to extract a surplus from the surrounding population in the form of 
agricultural and non-agricultural produce. With the migration of peoples 
into the area , there was a need to establish fi rmer control over the 
immigrants. Conflicts between contiguous groups probably increased at this 
time as each group sought to control the disposition of the products of the 
rural populations. The cities became centres not only of political power 
but of political security as the subject populations (talakawa) sought 
protection against disruption of their lives, including the disruption caused 
by slave- raiding. 
Although walled settlements probably existed in earlier times, the new 
birane were always contained within mud-built walled enclosures. Within 
the walls there existed large areas of land available for cultivation by 
20. 
an increasingly cosmopolitan population made up of city residents and those 
who fled to the city for protection. In this way they could ensure for 
themselves a supply of food. 
There is some controversy over just how much control these cities 
exerted over the countryside and it is clear that the ruling dynasties were 
often plagued by internal revolts and external threats. In fact , it would 
appear that for some time the sarkin K'asa was primus inter_pares and ruled 
an uneasy coalition of quasi- vassals and local rulers. Some cities may 
have been destroyed or conquered and absorbed by others. On the other 
hand, by the 14th and 15th centuries a number of city-states had either 
emerged or were in the process of consolidating their positions. Of these, 
the most important were Kano , Katsina, Zazzau and , perhaps, Gobir. 
By this time the beginnings of a regional Hausa economy were already 
evident based on a productive agriculture , specialised craft production 
and growing commercial relations within Hausaland and between Hausa land 
and other areas such as the K'asashen Bauchi (lands of Bauchi) to the south 
and south-east of the Hausa heartlands. At the same time, Hausaland 
began to attract various non-Hausa immigrant groups of which the Wangarawa 
were, perhaps, the most important. These Wangarawa, as the Hausa called 
them, were " •..• Song hay- based merchants and their agents to the east and 
21. 
south [of the Songhay Empire] • . • " (Lovejoy, 1978 : 176) who are credited 
with bringing Islam to the Hausa (Palmer, 1967; AI-Hajj, 1968),. establishing 
a Muslim commercial diaspora, providing religious and legal services to 
local rulers, and introducing new craft techniques and products for both 
military and non-military purposes. However, other immigrants of the 
time included nomadic Fulani herdsmen important in the development of a 
livestock industry as well as playing increasingly significant religious roles 
in government, Tuareg peoples who established their own Sultanate on the 
northern fringes of Hausaland and traded in livestock, salt and dates , and 
North African merchants and clerics who provided important commercial 
and religious links with the eastern Maghreb and the Middle East. 
Through these groups, particularly the Wangarawa, Hausaland became 
part of a wider economic, monetary and spiritual system involving extensive 
long-distance trading routes to the north, west and east which were under-
pinned by membership within a moral community legitimated by Islam. 
The new religion also provided a spiritual justification for increased military 
expeditions to expand territory and enslave unbelievers , both Hausa and 
non-Hausa alike. 
The three kings most closely associated with the growth of Islam at 
this time were Muhammed Korau of Katsina, himself a Bawangari, Muhammed 
Rabbo in Zazzau, and Muhammed Rumfa in Kano. Both Korau and Rumfa 
are regarded as Islamic reformers who, in alliance with the new urban and 
cosmopolitan trading and clerical communities, attempted to turn their 
kingdoms into Islamic states. (About Rabbo little is known except that 
he is thought to be the first Muslim king of Zazzau). 
However, the mass of the Hausa population retained belief in their 
traditional religion and there was considerable opposition to reform on the 
22. 
part of the traditional priestly class (bokaye) which forced successive kings 
into compromising the earlier embracement of Islam. Thus, as Fuglestad 
puts it in regard to Muhammed Korau's successors in Katsina: 
•••• they found themselves in the same uncomfortable 
position as many other rulers in West Africa, that of 
having to establish some sort of balance between urban 
Muslims and rural animists - of having to be in a sense 
both Muslims and animists. (Fuglestad, 1978 : 330). 
From the 15th to the late 18th century, Hausaland came to dominate 
economically the Central Sudan, in the process growing increasingly reliant 
upon Muslim traders and clerics to sustain its domination. However, there 
was no political unity across each of the Hausa states nor was there any 
ideological unity as different Hausa rulers expressed a variable commitment 
to Islam, first alienating the privileged but often insecure muslim trader/ 
cleric class, and then incurring the wrath of local animists. 
Towards the end of the 18th century, dissident Muslims, many of 
them Fulfulde-speaking, who like the Wangarawa, had become increasingly 
important in the political, spiritual and economic life of the Hausa , declared 
a holy war Q!had) against the indigenous rulers who were referred to 
disparagingly as Hab'e, the Fulfulde word for "natives" or "non-Fulani 
peoples". Although the causes of the jihad are complex and cannot be 
dealt with here 5, the ostensible reason was the backsliding and arbitrary 
actions of the indigenous Hausa rulers. The result of the years of fighting 
by the jihad leaders and their supporters (both Hausa and non-Hausa) was 
victory for the jihadists and the establishment of an Islamic theocracy over 
most of the Hausa states which lasted from the early 19th century to the 
beginning of the 20th. 
" 
I, 
23. 
The So!<oto Calipha te in the 19th Centur~ 
19th century Hausaland was characterised by two major developments. 
First, the jihad, which began in the late 18th century, culminated in the 
creation of a new kind of political system, the Sokoto Caliphate, which 
incorporated most of the pre-jihad Hausa states and extended into new 
areas popuiated by pagan and partially Islamised non- Hausa peoples. At 
its height, the Caliphate encompassed many millions of people and vast 
areas of land 6 • These included the capital territories of Sokoto and Gwandu, 
the core Hausa emirates of Katsina, Kano , Zazzau, and D'aura , the eastern 
emirates of Had'ejia, Katagum, Jama'are , Missau, Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa 
and Muri, and to the south and south-west the states of Yauri, Kontagora, 
Nupe, Lafiagi, Agaie and Ilorin (see Map 2.2 for the extent of the Caliphate 
in the second half of the 19th century)7 . 
The second development , with its roots in earlier centuries but given 
added impetus by the creation of the Caliphate, was the rise to economic 
dominance of the Hausa region over the whole of the Central Sudan. Based 
on an intimate connection between long-distance trade, organised and 
financed by merchant capital , and pre-capitalist systems of agricultural 
and craft production, a pattern of regional specialisation emerged at the 
centre of which lay the "industrial" emirates of Kano, Katsina and Zazzau 
together with a number of smaller emirates and various towns. The 
Caliphal authority and its representatives provided the ideological, 
administrative and military means by which this economy could grow and 
expand. 
------
.... -, 
/·Dori , 
, 
\ 
\ , 
...... 
................ _----
GURMA 
GOB I R 
----------
"."".- Birnin Konni e 
o K 
Gwari. 
s 
Nikki . 
--- ..... 
- , ----~ ,----/'.Zinder 
/ Maradi I 
-- Katsina-- -- -- __ ...... 
• Daura Hadejia "', 
. 
I , 
, 
, _ .... .., 
o .... -----------Ma~' 
p 
• Bauchi 
• Abuja ,,---, 
·Gombe 
H A T E 
I 
I 
I 
I 
I 
I 
I 
• Keffi / JO$ ~ 
IGBIRA .Nassaraw1PLATEAU' 
. \ / 
Lafia"'--' ~ . 
DAHOMEY 
Banyo. 
Wh~ .Tibati 
Lagos 
Gulf of Guinea 
o lOO 200 300 km 
I ! i i i i 
o 100 200mi. 
Map 2.2 Sokoto Caliphate in the 19th Century (Abstracted from Lovejoy, 1979) 
KANEM 
N 
t 
N 
+:-
---
Caliphate Political Structure 
According to Hiskett, the main result of the jihad was to: 
.••• set up a unified Islamic feudality where previously 
there had been a mere collection of particularistic and 
warring chiefdoms. (Hiskett, 1976 : 149). 
At the apex of this "feudality" was the Caliph, the spiritual and 
political head (amir al-muminin or Leader of the Faithful) of the Islamic 
community (umma). Subject to the Caliph's overall authority were the 
25. 
emirs (from the Arabic word ~ meaning "leader" and/or "lieutenant") who 
ruled specific territories (emirates) created to a large extent out of the pre-
existing Hausa states but eventually including other non-Hausa states and 
peoples. 
Subject to the limits set by the Shari'a or Islamic Law, the Caliph 
was supreme ruler of all those under his jurisdiction. He possessed con-
siderable authority in constitutional matters pertaining to the running of the 
Caliphate such as Caliphal and emirate disputes and the ratification of 
appointments and dismissals of emirs. Furthermore, each emirate was 
expected to provide the Caliph with tribute payments or presents. Caliphal-
emirate relations were usually mediated by the Caliph's official representative 
or vizier (Last, 1967). 
Even though the emirs were not independent of the Caliph (a feature 
which distinguishes them from the pre- jihad Hab'e rulers), they did enjoy 
considerable political and economic autonomy, Adeleye put it well when 
he remarked: 
, ••• the expansion of the Sokoto Caliphate was marked 
by the peculiar feature that it was not achieved through 
expeditions organised and sent out from the centre, It 
was a coming together (voluntarily) rather than forcible 
integration by Sokoto • • •• the leaders and subsequent 
rulers of the emirates were local leaders and not 
resident agents from Sokoto. (Adeleye, 1973 : 75). 
26. 
Indeed, whiie agreeing with Hiskett's observation quoted above that 
the Caliphate represented an important political advance over previous 
arrangements, it should be remembered that creation of a common political 
community remained an ideal rather than a reality right throughout the 
19th century. The Caliphal authorities and their representatives were in 
a state of constant hostility, often culminating in war, with dissident Hab'e 
elements of the pre- jihad period, pagan non-Hausa living within the inter-
stices of the newly-created emirates, non- Hausas within particular emirates 
such as Gombe, Bauchi and Adamawa, and various states and peoples which 
surrounded the Oar aI-Islam. Certain emirates, such as Adamawa, Nupe 
and Kano, also suffered because of internal disputes among Muslims 
(Abubakar, 1978; Mason , 1970; Fika , 1978). 
At the emirate level , each emir was drawn f rom a single hereditary 
dynasty or on a rotational basis where there existed multi-dynastic structures. 
The emir, in turn, ruled his domain through a complex hierarchy of titled 
officials (masu sarauta), local chiefs, slave functionaries (ba yin Sa rki) a nd 
court judiciaries. Each of these had their own hierarchies of subordinates 
of both free and servile status who were delegated officia l duties. 
The structure of emira te government varied from one emirate to 
another and it is not necessary to describe each case. However, it will be 
useful to examine Kano Emirate in some detail. 
Fika (I978 : 31 -37) identifies 5 levels of administration within Kano 
Emirate during the 19th century. At the top was the emir who, after 
the overthrow of the last Hab'e king of Kano in 1806/7, was drawn from 
i 
27. 
one of the Fulani clans which participa ted in the jihad. From the reign 
of Dabo (l819 ~46), the Kano emir was drawn from the Sullubawa clan, a 
practice which has continued to the present day. Thus, unlike other 
emirates, Kano was mono~dynastic. 
Below the emir was the second tier of administra tion made up of 
free-born officials which included titled royalty , leaders of the other non-
royal clans, and clients and servants of the emir. . Known as masu sarauta 
or office holders, these royal and non-royal titled officials formed the 
senior-most level of an hereditary ruling class. Each controlled large areas 
of emirate land, including towns and villages , from which state revenues 
were drawn. These fiefs (hakim} i) were administered by the fiefholder's 
own hierarchy of subordinates who were delegated duties by their usually 
Kano City-based masters. 
The third level of office holders comprised the free -born territorial 
and extra- territorial chieftains. These included the Kano-based ward-heads, 
drawn from the pre-jihad ruling Kutumbawa dynasty and from the descen-
dants of the Fulani Mundubawa clan, and the manyan dagatai who lived in 
the main walled towns outside Kano and acted as local chieftains. 
The fourth level of officials were the Royal Slaves (cucanawa) who 
became increasingly important during the course of the 19th century. There 
were ten of these serving a variety of functions including administration of 
the Royal household, military leadership, and the collection of taxes. Like 
the free-born masu sarauta, they acted as fief- holders and controlled 
important hierarchies of titled subordinates. 
The judiciary was the fifth level of administration. It included the 
Imam of the central mosque, who appears to have possessed only spiritual 
powers, the emir's judicial council , and the Kano Alkali or judge's court. 
28. 
A sixth level of administration not dealt with by Fika consisted 
of the craft officials of which the Chief of the Blacksmiths (Sarkin Mak'era) 
was probably the most important (Jaggar, 1973; 1978). These officials were 
appointed by the Emir and acted as tribute collectors and organisers of 
craft production teams. Of minor political importance such positions were, 
nevertheless, actively sought after. Although detailed information is lacking 
on such officials, (with the exception of the Sarkin Mak'era), it is possible 
that both leather workers and builders had their own craft heads. On the 
other hand, such important crafts as dyeing, cloth-beating, tailoring and 
weaving were not officially integrated into the political structure through 
titled craft functionaries. This contrasts with the situation prevailing in 
other emirates, notably D'aura, Katsina and Zazzau (Smith, 1960, 1978; 
Usman, 1974). 
Within the state-defined political system, all other persons, which 
covered the vast majority of the population, were considered talakawa, 
that is, subjects or people with no official standing. This designation 
applied regardless of the wealth or influence of the person concerned and 
access to official positions was denied to them. 
The ruling class and their agents described above were for the most 
part non-productive. To sustain their positions they relied on a taxation 
and tribute system of considerable complexity. Drawing the bulk of their 
revenue from the talakawa they provided , in return , protection against 
internal and external threat, legal, religious and other services, opportunities 
for personal advancement through patronage, and , in times of war, part of 
the booty obtained in military and slave-raiding expeditions. At the more 
general level of what might be called emirate economic planning, it has 
been suggested that Kano Emirate was comparatively progressive in that 
" 
29. 
it encouraged both trade and craft production through the manipulation of 
taxes and special treatment of the merchant communities (Shea, 1975; 
Tahir , 1975). Although the Caliphal authorities appear to have had a 
general commitment to the expansion of trade and industry, the details of 
such a commitment were largely left to the individual emirates. Kano 
Emirate would appear to have benefitted from having one or two emirs, 
particularly Dabo, who were quite enlightened in this respect. However, 
before discussing in greater detail the economic structure of the emirate, 
it is necessary to examine the general features of taxation and revenue-
collection. 
The first main tax was the ~ (Ar: zakat) which was a grain 
tithe imposed on such crops as guinea corn and millet. Collected after the 
harvest it was usually one tenth of the crop paid by all adult Muslims. 
Its equivalent for Fulani pastoralists was the jangali levied at about ten 
percent of an individual cattle owner's herd. The second major tax was 
the kud'in K'asa. (land money; also known as haraji , from the Arabic kharaj, 
or kud'in gona meaning farm money). It was levied originally by size of 
farm holding but became increasingly standardised over the years. By 
the late 19th century it was 1300 cowries in Kano and 1200 in Katsina. 
Another tax was the ~ud'in shuka (crop money) levied on all non-zakka 
crops. 
Both crafts and trade were taxed. Craft taxes (ku~'in sana'a or 
al'adu) were paid by many types of craft workers including weavers , dyers , 
tanners, butchers, blacksmiths and tailors , although this varied from emirate 
to emirate. Thus, in Sokoto there were no craft taxes (Last, 1967), in 
Kano only smiths and dye pit owners paid craft taxes, while in Katsina, 
D'aura and Zazzau a wide range of craftsmen were assessed (Usman, 1974; 
Smith, 1960, 1978). 
l , 
30. 
Among traders and merchants various taxes were paid. For example, 
the caravan toll (kud'in fito) was paid by long-distance traders, and brokers 
and stall holders in markets paid personal and stall fees. Slaughtering fees 
were also paid by butchers (Ibrahim, 1974). 
Non-Muslims residing within an emirate were required to pay a land 
rent (jiziy~ which in many ways was equivalent to the kud'in k'asa paid by 
Muslims. 
In addition to the taxes described above, other sources of state 
revenue were death duties, appropriation of unclaimed estates, fines, gifts, 
booty from war in the form of slaves and other commodities, and certain 
forms of semi-legal expropriations of property (wasau) from wealthy 
commoners (Tahir, 1975 : 204). 
The free peasantry were also required to do agricultural work on the 
private e~tates of officials and royalty and to engage in corvee labour 
to build walls and carry out other community projects. 
Taxes were collected by the fief-holders' personal retainers (known 
generaliy as jakadu) and those of the Emir. The division of the spoils 
varied from place to place but Fika suggests that in Kano there was a 
three-way split between local dagatai (village heads), hakimai and the Emir 
(Fika, 1978: 41). Cattle taxes were collected by heads of different clans 
of Fulani herdsmen while craft taxes were brought in by craft officials 
and their assistants. 
Caliphate Economic . Structure 
The new ruling classes of the Sokoto Caliphate inherited a regional 
economy the foundations of which had been laid in earlier centuries. This 
economy was built upon and extended during the 19th century ~ giving rise 
to what Adamu describes as 11 • • • • the golden age of Hausa commerce 
with the rest of West Africa" (Adamu, 1976 : 4). 
However, the Caliph ate was not simply a commercial empire. 
31. 
Fundamental to its prosperity were a peasant-based agriculture within which 
food crops and raw materials (for craft manufacturing) were produced for 
domestic consumption and exchange, a livestock "industryll made up of 
nomadic and semi-sedentarised Fulani and Tuareg pastoralists as well as 
settled Hausa livestock keepers, who supplied meat, milk and animal products, 
and a growing number of agricultural estates, which Lovejoy refers to as 
lIplantations" (Lovejoy, 1978, 1979), utilising both free and servile labour 
to produce agricultural and craft commodities for regional distribution. 
Al! of these "sectors" were linked, to a greater or lesser extent, to various 
exchange networks at the local, regional and international leveis. 
Within the Caliphal economy as a whole , a number of regions can 
be distinguished. The core region included the emirates of Kano, Katsina 
and Zazzau plus a number of smaller emirates and various towns. With 
large and concentrated populations, good agricultural land, and ample supplies 
of water, cotton, indigo and the like, weaving, dyeing, cloth-beating and 
tailoring engaged the la bour of many thousands of small peasant farmers, 
their families and slaves. In addition , estate agriculture was well developed 
with merchants, clerics and wealthy craftsmen investing in slaves and free 
persons to produce foodstuffs and craft manufactures. The region was also 
noted for its livestock production, and the manufacture of leather and metal 
goods. 
To the north of the core Hausa states lay the desert-edge region 
populated by Hausas and , in particular, Tuareg peoples and their dependants 
who supplied salt, animals and other goods as well as brokerage and transport 
32. 
services to the Caliphate in return for which they obtained grain, other 
foodstuffs and many manufactured goods, especially indigo-dyed cloth 
(Lovejoy & Baier, 1975; Baier, 1980). The independent and non- Hausa 
state of Borno also supplied potash, horses, oxen and slaves in exchange for 
dyed and un dyed cloth, other manufactures and kola nuts. 
Through their control of camels and trade routes, much of the trans-
Saharan trade to and from Hausaland was in the hands of the desert Tuareg 
although some Hausa participated in this trade but on a limited scale. 
The region to the south-east of central Hausaland included the new 
emirates of Bauchi, Gombe and Adamawa which acted as frontier zones 
through which Hausaland could expand. With some estate agriculture, 
many peasant farming households and areas of craft manufacturing, this 
region was linked to the central parts of Hausaland by Hausa traders. 
Bauchi exported slaves, ponies, smelted tin, spices and white gowns for 
expensive burnouses, imported caps, swords, kola nuts and other commodities. 
Adamawa was a main source of ivory and slaves in return for which she 
obtained cloth, garments, mineral salt, carpets, beads and brass rings 
(Abubakar, 1978). 
The south-western and southern limits of the Caliphate, incorporating 
Ilorin, Kontagora and Nupe, acted as commercial and frontier outposts. 
Nupeland was particularly important in supplying Hausaland with Nupe cloth 
and gowns, kola nuts, pepper, soap and glass beads. 
Of particular importance to the Caliphate was the long-distance 
trade with Gwanja (also known as Gonja) in present-day Ghana. To this 
area (and from there to Ashanti) Hausaland exported dyed cloth and clothing, 
dried onion leaves, hats, leather shoes, leather vessels and gum in return for 
which the principal item of import was the kola nut (grown in the Ashanti 
, 
I 
33. 
forests). Much of this trade was handled by Kano-based caravan leaders 
and long-distance traders who brought in the kola nuts for consumption 
within the Hausa heartlands and for re-export to other parts of the 
Caliphate and beyond (Lovejoy, 1980). 
Hausa trading links extended northwards across the Sahara desert 
but Hausa traders were junior partners in this commerce (Adamu, 1976). 
Many commodities of North African and European manufacture were brought 
in, including European cloth which increased in importance towards the 
end of the 19th century (Johnson, 1976). Slaves, gold, grains and hand-
woven cloth were exported to the Saharan and North African markets. 
North African merchant capital played an important role in the cities of 
the core region, particularly Katsina and Kano, but the bulk of capital 
required to facilitate general trade was generated within the Caliphate. 
The regional trade described here was made easier by the protection 
and encouragement afforded by the Caliphal and emirate authorities, the 
existence of a common monetary zone based on cowrie currency and Maria 
Theresa dollars (Johnson, 1970; Hiskett, 1966: Lovejoy, 1974), and member-
ship of a common religious community which provided a moral and practical 
basis for the cementing of commercial bonds between widely dispersed peoples. 
The mobility of the commercial and trading populations was paralleled 
by movements of craftsmen within and without Hausaland. These movements 
both preceded and followed the territorial expansion of the Caliphate. For 
example, Ha usa craftsmen figure in the oral traditions of many peoples 
living close to, and within, the borders of Hausaland. Hausa butchers are 
thought to have introduced their profession to Yendi in Dagomba during the 
18th century. Hausa weavers, dyers and others settled in Jukun , Dagomba, 
Kong and Bobo Dioulasso. Blacksmiths from Katsina settled near Kuriga 
34. 
town among the Kamuka peoples during the 18th century and a century 
later this town had become an important centre for iron-ore mining and the 
production of the hoe known as 'Yar Kuriga' (Daughter of Kuriga) (Adamu, 
1978 : 205; Usman, 1972 : 174). It is reported by Bray that the makers 
of tim- tim (a kind of Hausa pouf-cushion - also spelt tum~ turn) in Old Oyo 
were taught their craft by Hausa leather workers ' (Bray, 1976 : 128}. Many 
of the clothes worn by mid- 19th century Y oruba were of Hausa sty le and 
had Hausa names which suggests that Hausa tailors may have been resident 
in parts of Yorubaland (Adamu~ 1978 : 124- 126). Certainly this would 
have been possible given that Hausa caravans were trading with northern 
Yorubaland even before the 19th century (Law, 1977). 
Craftsmen (and traders) were often welcomed by the host communities 
as they provided goods not locally produced, were not seen as a threat to 
local leader-s, and being Muslim provided "magical" services and charms. 
It should be remembered that many craftsmen and traders were also religious 
teachers. 
In summary, prior to the end of the 19th century; Hausaland had 
experienced over a thousand years of important political, social and economic 
changes which transformed it from a region of relatively little significance in 
the overall affairs of the Central Sudan to one which dominated its political 
and economic life. The creation of the Caliphate was the culmination of 
this process. Under the Caliphate , and guided by a universalising religious 
ethic, Hausaland reached the peak of its pre- colonial and pre-capitalist 
economic and political development. Muslim rule was consolidated in the 
Hausa heartlands and extended, by both voluntary and involuntary means, to 
new non-Hausa areas. 
35. 
Within the Sokoto empire , Kano, Katsina and Zazzau emirates were 
its commercial and industrial centres and of these Kano was the most 
important. In the. following chapter I shall examine Kano Emirate in greater 
detail , concentrating largely upon the organisation of economic activity , 
particularly craft production, and the role of Kano City in the general 
economic development of emirate. 
i 
'. 
" ,.
36. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER 11 
1. Barkow (1978 : 152) estimates that there are some twenty five million Hausa 
in northern Nigeria and that about thirty one million people in West Africa speak 
Hausa. Studies of the Hausa diaspora include Cohen (1969), Works ( 1976), 
Schildkrout (1978) and Duffield (1981). 
2. Barkow (1978 : 152), for example, suggests that there is " •• • • more cultural 
difference between some Hausa groups than there is between some Hausa 
and non - Hausa peoples". Usman , in Usman (1979), criticises the way in 
which the concept of "ethnic group" is reified in analyses of the historical 
development of Hausa political communities. Although his criticism of other 
students of Hausaland is a little extreme , he is certainly right to stress the 
fluid and historically determined nature of the many communites which came 
to make up the states and peoples of Hausaland. 
3. The Hausa language, one of over one thousand languages currently spoken 
in Africa, belongs to the Chadic language family within the Afro - Asiatic phylum 
(Greenberg, 1963). 
4. However, this view taken from Smith (1972) has been questioned by Sutton 
(1979) who argues that the emergence of Hausa - speaking communites is 
of more recent origin, perhaps during the 1st Millenium. He regards them 
as emanating from an easterly direction in what is today eastern Hausaland 
close to the Borno - Hausaland border. He also prefers to speak of a "middle 
belt", making no strong claims for the existence at that time of a broadly-based 
and culturally and linguistically homogeneous Hausaland. Much of this 
historical work is highly speculative as there is little solid evidence for the 
period prior to the 11th century A.D. Indeed, archaeologically speaking, 
Shaw (1978 : 98) has described the 1st Millenium as the " •• •• silent 
millenium" in Hausaland's history. 
5. On the origins and course of the jihad, see Smith (1961), Hiskett (1960, 1973), 
Waldman (1965), Johnston (1967), Adeleye (1971), Waterman (1975), Smith 
(1978) and Usman (1979). 
6. Accounts of the h:story of the Caliphate and the various emirates included 
within it can be found in the works mentioned in footnote 5 of Chapter I. 
In addition, see Balogun (1970), Mason (1970) and Low (1972). 
7. Usman (1979 : 35, 55) estimates that the Caliphate covered an area of about 
150,000 square miles and consisted of thirty emirates and thirty two formerly 
sovereign entities which were eventually subject to Caliphal authority . 
37. 
CHAPTER III 
. KANO EMIRATE AND KANO CITY IN THE 19th CENTURY 
.- -- - - ~-- , " . - ) 
WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO CRAFT PRODUCTION 
. - - .._ . . 
During the 19th century, Kano Emirate came increasingly to dominate 
the rest of the Caliphate in terms of the productivity of its agriculture, 
the variety of commercial services it could provide, the range of its 
manufacturing activities, the size of its population, and the importance of 
its markets and trade-terminus points for the buying and selling of locally 
produced and imported commodities and their distribution to all parts of 
the empire and beyond. One measure of Kano's growing prosperity was 
that by the 1880's it provided the largest proportion of all tribute paid by 
the various vassal states to Sokoto authority (Fika, 1978 : 56). 
Throughout the 19th century the Caliphate was subject to consider-
able political instability and, in this respect, Kano was no exception. 
However, it can be argued that, relative to other emirates, Kano was able 
to achieve for a considerable period of time a degree of political stability 
which contributed to, or at least did not pose a major threat to, its economic 
prosperity. Of particular importance in this regard were the following 
factors. 
First, Fulani rule was established early and the deposed Hab'e dynasty 
did not present any major challenge to the new rulers. Second, Emir Dabo 
{1819- 1846} was able to centralise political power in his, and his descendants, 
hands and so reduce inter-clan rivalries. Non-royal clan leaders were co-
opted by Dabo through a judicious re-distribution of the main offices of 
state. Royal slaves came to play an increasingly prominent role within 
this system, a development which intensified during the reign of Dabo's son, 
38. 
Abdullahi (1855-1882). By the end of his reign it is suggested that 
" •••• nothing politically or militarily significant could be decided in Kano 
without the concurrence of the key cucunawa - palace slaves - (Fika, 1973 
: 73). 
Third, Kano was a relatively homogeneous emirate with less ethnic 
diversity than others. Thus, whereas such emirates as Gombe, Bauchi and 
Adamawa contained various non-Hausa ethnic groups that resisted integration 
throughout the century, such opposition was much less pervasive in Kano. 
Fourth, Kano lay at the centre of Hausaland and was less subject to the 
threat of external attack than Bauchi; Adamawa, Zazzau and Katsina. Kano 
was not free from either external or internal challenges, as can be seen 
in the D'an Tunku uprising which led to the establishment of Kazaure Emirate 
(Low, 1972), the Kano Civil War of the 1890's and the incursions of Ningawa, 
Madarawa and Damagarawa. However, the greatest danger to the integrity 
~ 
of the emirate came towards the end of the century, from the 1880's on or 
some 70 years after the founding of Fulani Kano. This contrasts with Kano's 
main commercial rival, Katsina Emirate, which had to continually resist 
attempts by the Madarawa to re-establish Hab'e rule. In fact, some have 
argued that Kano benefitted from Katsina's misfortune in that much commerce 
shifted from Katsina to Kano as the latter offered greater security (Johnston, 
1967 : 164- 165; Fika, 1978 : 23; Lovejoy, 1980). 
Fourth, apart from certain general guidelines, the Caliphal authority 
did not direct in any detailed way the economic policy in each of the emirates. h 
. 
Thus, an important political variable in understanding the economic success of 
Kano is that of the emirate government's attitude towards trade and industry. 
It has been suggested by Shea and Tahir (Shea, 1975 : 38-40; Tahir, 1975 : 
238), together with some supporting evidence, that various Kano emirs pursued 
39. 
progressi ve economic policies during the 19th century, including the promotion 
of craft production, particularly textiles. Emir Dabo is credited with being 
the most enlightened ruler in this regard. In contrast with Zazzau, Daura 
and Katsina, he did not impose a uniform system of occupational taxes. 
Thus, apart from a small tax on dye pits, there were no taxes imposed on 
dyers, weavers, tailors and cloth beaters, these craft workers being the 
mainstay of the textile industry. Immigra tion to Kano was also encouraged 
with various emirs bringing in Arab gold and silversmiths, Nupe weavers as 
well as other craftsmen such as tailors, shoemakers, leather workers, makers 
of armour and horse tackle makers (Tahir, 1975 : 238). Merchants from 
Katsina (and from other areas) were provided with land and help in building 
in the old city and many of the oral traditions in such wards as Ayagi and 
Yalwa record this generosity. Emir Bello applied a differential taxation 
policy to the growing of certain crops, providing exemptions or tax holidays 
on such crops as cotton. Abdullahi maje Karofi lifted a tax on cotton 
cultivation to stop the decline of the dyeing industry because of cotton 
shortages (Shea, 1975 : 4-0). Finally, Aliyu, the last pre-colonial emir of 
Kano, sent craftsmen to different rulers in order to encourage trade and 
cement political relations. The demand for such craftsmen testifies to the 
high regard with which Kano's industries were held. 
The presumed greater enlightenment of Kano's rulers with regard to 
taxation policy can be questioned. Thus, Sokoto applied no occupational 
taxes (Last, 1967 : 103). Although Katsina imposed some, their size has 
been disputed (Usman, 1974- : 4-23). Zazzau's system of occupational taxes 
excluded weavers, shoemakers, potters and possibly tailors (NAK SNP 7/10 
4-24-2/1909). Furthermore, in Kano there may have been some taxation of 
leather workers, and blacksmiths were certainly required to contribute to 
", 
" 
" 
., 
joint production teams and pay tribute in hoe blades to the emir (Jaggar, 
1973, 1978). Emir Bello doubled, perhaps trebled, the kud'in k'asa (Fika, 
1978 : 55). Although Abdullahi lifted the tax on cotton, this means such 
a tax existed up to the 1850's. Thus, there was no consistently held 
40. 
economic policy on taxation throughout the 19th century and different emirs 
held different views on such matters. 
However, it is clear that at certain times, particularly during the 
reigns of Dabo and Abdullahi, the emirate government did encourage economic 
activity and that some of the emirs did not impose any onerous regulations 
which might have hindered it. 
It is worth remarking that Kano did not suddenly emerge as a major 
commercial and manufacturing centre during the 19th century. Its economic 
importance was recognised as early as the 16th century at least 1. By the 
19th century Kano had already begun to supersede Katsina, although Katsina 
did not go into as great a decline as some writers have made out. On Kano's 
importance during the latter part of the 18th century, Usman has written: 
it seems •••• that by the late 18th century the centres 
of production for large-scale commerce were shifting to 
the central and southern parts of the Katsina kingdom. 
Old centres like the town of Karofi, and the Marina quarter 
of the Birni city of Katsina were too far removed from the 
main cotton and indigo producing areas to compete with the 
massive output from the K'asar Kano, Nupe and the South. 
The textile industry of Kano with its raw materials close 
to the manufacturing centres, its direct access to the 
markets of Borno and its vast hinterland •••• , had by the 
late 18th century established a dominant position in the 
Central Sudan. (Usman, 1974 : 137). 
41. 
Thus, the decline of Katsina in the 19th century, particularly of 
those areas close to the city, intensified an existing secular trend which 
had been occurring in Kano since before the jihad. 
Usman also mentions the relative abundance of water, cotton and 
indigo in the Kano area which provided essential raw materials for what 
was the mainstay of Kano's economy in the 19th century, namely, the 
weaving, dyeing and exporting of cloth 2. A related point is that although 
the ruling classes in the Hausa Emirates reinforced their power through 
slave-raiding and the collection of booty, Kano Emirate had few areas where 
it could easily locate a supply of slaves and left much of the slave-raiding 
to such emirates as Zazzau, Bauchi and Adamawa. The strength of Kano 
lay not in its involvement in the slave trade, although this was important, 
but in its non-slave commerce and craft manufacturing 3. 
With these few remarks in mind, let me turn to a more detailed 
exaimination of the Kano economy, paying particular attention to the role 
of craft production and the special place of Kano City in the overall economic 
affairs of the emirate. 
Kano's economy was a predominantly rural one with agricultural 
production and craft manufacturing carried out in three main types of 
productive organization: small family farms organised around the ~andu 
system, private estates owned by wealthier commoners, particularly merchants, 
traders, clerics and wealthier craftsmen/farmers, and both private and official 
estates either owned or controlled by members of the ruling class. 
Small family farms in gandu were the most numerous, covered the 
largest part of the emirate's cultivable area, and were the smallest in size. 
- . 
Under the gandu system \ a senior male member of a household (maigida) 
controlled much of the farming land; tools, labour inputs and the product of 
42. 
those who worked for him. Subordinate members of gandu-based households 
consisted of a core of affines and kin and, depending upon the wealth of the 
household head, a few slaves, clients and attached strangers (Shenton and 
Freund, 1978 : 10; Usman, 1974 : 123-124; Fika, 1978 : 43; Hill, 1972, 
Chapter III; Watts, 1980 : 61-62). The use of slaves allowed some household 
heads to supplement their free labour supplies as well as making it possible 
for them to engage in off-farm activities such as craft work, trade and 
commerce. However, most rural Hausa were poor and could not purchase 
slaves. 
As rural Kano contained major inequalities in land holding, it is likely 
that some unknown proportion of gandu farms shaded into larger estates. 
Hill (1967 : 417) argues that it was usually the better-off commoner farmers 
who used slaves but in small numbers. Lovejoy speaks of the Kano economy 
being dominated by what he calls plantations 5, but he includes in his general 
discussion of land holding reference to relatively small farms somewhat akin 
to Hill's wealthier commoner farmers. His more detailed examination of 
larger estate owners may have been atypical of the general popUlation of 
estate agriculturalists. Part of the problem may be purely terminological, 
with Hill preferring not to call wealthier farmers "estate owners" while 
Lovejoy casts his net too widely, including even small farmers who worked 
alongside their slaves as belonging to the "plantation sector". Until further 
evidence is forthcoming, Watts' conclusion that among the mass of small 
farmers " •••• the use of farm slaves was almost insignificant •••• " (Watts, 
1980 : 63) can be accepted. 
Gandu dependents, be they kin, slaves or clients, were expected to 
work the central farms where main crops were grown. In return, they were 
clothed, housed and fed, and any taxes or socially obligatory expenditures 
43. 
(such as in marriage) were met by the gandu head. It should be noted that 
slaves enjoyed many rights which protected them from the arbitrary actions 
of masters. These included the right to marry and have children, to engage 
in off-farm activities such as trade and craft work, to farm private plots 
(alloca ted by their masters), and to purchase their freedom. Islamic norms 
placed emphasis upon the manumission of slaves as a sign of piety and so 
many slaves could look forward to becoming part of the free population 
although they might still be subservient to their former masters and their 
descendants in other ways (Hill, 1977; Hogendorn, 1977; Lovejoy, 1979). 
Indeed, Lovejoy suggests that the freeing of slaves was " ••• • an institution-
alised means of filling the labour pool in the absence of a labour market" 
(Lovejoy, 1978 : 363). 
The ability of households to operate under gandu was constrained by 
a number of factors. At anyone time many households may have consisted 
of a single family (iyali) and most work would have been carried out by the 
male head and his wife or wives. In other words, the gandu arrangement, 
particularly paternal gandu, would have been operative at certain stages of 
the life cycle of the household only. If the senior member died, land was 
usually divided among heirs who mayor may not have continued in some 
other form of cooperative work arrangement such as fraternal gandu. 
Land shortage combined with opportunities to earn a living through 
trade and craft work may also have placed pressures on the household head's 
ability to retain authority over junior members. 
In many households, junior members were allocated small private 
plots of land (~auni; sing: gal:auna) which they worked after meeting 
gandu obligations. In this way they were able to provide some of their own 
food requirements, gain a measure of independence from the gandu head, 
44. 
and t from the point of view of the gandu head, provide some degree of 
security for him in old age when unable to work. 
At planting and harvest times, production bottlenecks brought about 
by shortages of labour were overcome through senior members of households 
arranging cooperative work groups (~ to share labour. This arrangement 
was temporary and dissolved after specific needs had been met. In some 
instances, such work groups were organised by estate owners who drew on 
local labour to work estate fields in return for a portion of the crop. 
The typical farming year in Kano Emirate was divided into a short 
wet season from about May to September followed by a long dry season 
when, in most cases, little farming was done. During the dry season farmers 
had to rely on grain and other foodstuffs produced at harvest time. Some 
harvests were good and ensured a supply of food throughout much of the 
year. Others were bad and great pressures were placed on central grain 
stores. One way of relieving these pressures was to encourage household 
members to engage in craft production, trading or some other off.farm 
activity. 
, I 
Some farmers migrated to centres of trade and industry such as Kano 
City or areas of dyeing and weaving orientated to the export trade. Others 
remained at home and engaged in artisanal production serving local needs. 
Some craftsmen attached themselves to wealthier farmers and estate owners 
and worked on a putting-out basis for them. In areas of high population 
densi ty and land shortage. such as in parts of the Kano Close Settled Zone, 
there may have been chronic shortages of food which forced farmers into 
greater reliance on craft work and trading in return for grain imported from 
other parts of the emirate and further afield. 
45. 
Evidence suggests that a high proportion of gandu-based households 
contained people who engaged in craft production. However, apart from 
the qualitative reports provided by travellers and others in the emirate 
during the 19th century, there are no good quantitative data from this 
period upon which the total numbers involved in craft production can be 
determined. For this , reliance must be placed on British colonial assessment 
reports undertaken during the first decades of the 20th century 6 • Table 3.1 
summarises these data for selected districts and sub-districts of the emirate. 
Assuming these data to be fairly representative of the situation 
prevailing in the latter part of the 19th century, it can be seen that craft 
work formed an important part of the economic life of rural Hausa. An 
average of over one third of adult males engaged in off- farm activities, 
with the crafts of weaving, dyeing and tailoring accounting for a high 
proportion of the total. Although some of these craft workers, blacksmiths 
for example, may have been minimally involved in direct agricultural pro-
duction, the vast majority were a lso farmers. These data also point to the 
predominantly rural location of most craft work, with only a small proportion 
of all craft workers being found in Kano City. 
The figures provided in the Table a re probably underestimates of 
the true total of people engaged in craft activities. First, under-counting 
was common as people feared the tax implications of stating the kinds of 
activities, other than farming , in which they engaged. Second, the method 
of a ssessing total numbers often relied upon estimates made by village heads 
of knowledgeable local people who were subject to pressures not to provide 
accurate counts. Third , women and children were not included in the totals. 
Fourth, other craft workers, particularly slaves working on la rger private 
and official estates, appear not to have been counted. Thus, the estimates 
45. 
Evidence suggests that a high propor tion of gandu-based households 
contained people who engaged in craft production. However, apart from 
the qualitative reports provided by travellers and others in the emirate 
during the 19th century, there are no good quantitative data from this 
period upon which the total numbers involved in craft production can be 
determined. For this, reliance must be placed on British colonial assessment 
reports undertaken during the first decades of the 20th century 6 • Table 3.1 
summarises these data for selected districts and sub-districts of the emirate. 
Assuming these data to be fairly representative of the situation 
prevailing in the latter part of the 19th century, it can be seen that craft 
work formed an important part of the economic life of rural Hausa. An 
average of over one third of adult males engaged in off- farm activities, 
with the crafts of weaving , dyeing and tailoring accounting for a high 
proportion of the total. Although some of these craft workers, blacksmiths 
for example, may have been minimally involved in direct agricultural pro-
duction, the vast majority were also farmers. These data also point to the 
predominantly rural location of most craft work, with only a small proportion 
of all craft workers being found in Kano City. 
The figures provided in the Table are probably underestimates of 
the true total of people engaged in craft activities. First, under-counting 
was common as people feared the tax implications of stating the kinds of 
activities, other than farming , in which they engaged. Second, the method 
of assessing total numbers often relied upon estimates made by village heads 
of knowledgeable local people who were subject to pressures not to provide 
accurate counts. Third, women and children were not included in the totals. 
Fourth , other craft workers, particularly slaves working on la rger private 
and official estates, appear not to have been counted. Thus, the estimates 
TABLE 3.~ Ma~e craft workers in Kano Emirate in the early 20th century: Selected districts only • 
.., Q) 
Ul U Ul Ul Ul lo.I Ul Ul lo.I Ul s:: 
lo.I I lo.I lo.I Q) lo.I Ul lo.I I Ul I Ul Q) lo.I Q) District Q) • Ul .c Q) 0 .c Q) lo.I Q) ~.c Q).c '0 I Q) r-I lo.I 
:> lo.I +J+J r-l +J~+JQ) s:: U+J +J+J r-I 'O~ co lo.I Q) or co Q) o co .... co lo.I 0 ~ s:: co .... ........ .... o lo.I +J co ~ Q) :>. r-I Q) co Q) 0 0 co co r-I S .c S ::3 ~~ 0 Q) Q) Town 8: Cl CJ~ 8 ~8:~~ 8 ~Ul 8:Ul ~ 8 ~ 0:: 
Kano City 227 337 80 3450 473 122 64 204 222 n.i. 5179 1926 A 
Sarkin Dawaki 1 I 2348 1311 174 864 93 124 266 2 210 n.i. 5390 1909 B I Tsakkar Gida ; 
Makama 5499 4199 650 2700 296 563 530 42 n.i. 14479 1912 C 
Dutse 4152 1550 261 1665 n.i. 162 172 83 n.i. 8045 1911 D 
Dan Iya ... 3329 833 159 1028 55 199 115 27 115 5860 1912 E 
Barden 249 290 Kereria 35 113 27 27 14 2 n.i. 757 1912 F 
.. Dan Buram 582 189 55 483 n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i. n.i. 1309 1912 G 
Jaidanawa 278 38 8 142 5 90 37 n. i. n.i. 3 601 1912 H , 
Kura Town l 350 2002 80 11 4 22 59 11 n.i. 2539 1909 I 
Rano 1836 501 113 442 48 36 124 n.i. 119 3219 1925 J 
Kiru 8262 1039 446 2801 374 n.i. 417 n.i. n.i. n.i. 13339 1929 K 
Tudun Wada 1848 429 107 n. i. 95 n. i. 213 n.i. n.i. n.i. 2692 1926 L 
TOTAL 28960 12718 2168 13699 1470 1345 2215 597 237 63409 
Notes: 1 Refers to households or compounds and not individuals, except in case of Kura Town dyers. 
2 No differentiation made between blacksmiths and whitesmiths but most likely to be blacksmiths. 
Sources: See next page. 
+:-
9' 
,;1 
Sources for Table 3.1 
A National Archives, Kaduna (NAK) SOKPROF 260: Census and 
Reassessment of Kano City and Fagge, 1926, by Mr. Hoskyns 
Abrahall. 
B NAK SNP 7: 5570/1909: Assessing Report, Sarkin Dawaki Tsakkar 
Gida District, by Mr. Dupigny. 
C NAK SNP 7: 2793/1912: Kano Province, Makama's District Assessment 
Report, by Capt. Uniacke. 
D NAK SNP 7: 2715/1911: Assessment Report, Dutsi District, Kano 
Province, 1911-12, Mr. F.W. Bell. 
E NAK SNP 7: 4055/1912: Kano Province, Dan Iya Sub-District, 
Assessment Report, Mr. Webster. 
F NAK SNP 7: 6969/1912: Sub-District Report on Burden Kereria, 
Capt. G.L. Uniacke, 1912. 
G NAK SNP 7: 5785/1912: Kano Province, Dan Buram, Chiroma's District 
Assessment Report, Capt. Foulkes, 
H NAK SNP 7: 4817/1912: Jaidanawa sub-District Assessment Report, 
Capt. Foulkes. 
I NAK SNP 7: 2607/1909: Kura District Assessment Report, Mr. Moreton 
Frewen. 
J NAK KANOPROF: 1523: Test Assessment, Rano District, Rano Industrial 
Tax, 1925-26, Mr. H.L. Noble A.D.O. 
K NAK KANOPROF: 210: Kiru District Reassessment Report, 1929, 
Mr. G.E. Watts, Cadet. 
L NAK SNP 7: 2909/1925, Vol. V, Tudun Wada District Assessment 
Revision, 1925-26, Mr. R.F.P. Orme. 
47. 
NB: As these reports were carried out for purposes of taxation by 
the British, it can be assumed that the figures represent 
under-counts of the true numbers. Unfortunately, there are no 
figures for the number of craft workers in these, or any other 
districts, during the 19th century. 
Only a few districts are included here. In the emirate as a 
whole, the total for all craft workers, including certain crafts 
such as potting and mat-making, is probably at least double that 
given in the table. 
with the possible exception of some craftsmen in Kano City and 
other urban centres, the vast majority of craft workers were 
also farmers. 
", 
0 , 
4-8. 
provided should be regarded as conservative and the actual total was higher, 
perhaps as high as two thirds or more, depending on the district. 
All craft production was done by hand utilising instruments of pro-
duction and raw materials provided from within the emirate or other parts 
of Hausaland. Some raw materials and tools did come from outside the 
-
Caliphate, imported needles and various types of thread being good examples 7 , 
but on the whole the bulk of material inputs were locally produced. 
The major types of raw materials used in textile, leather and metals 
production were cotton , indigo plants, hides and skins and iron ore. Other 
materials, some used in these branches of craft production as well as other 
types of craft work, included wood, mud and soil, reeds, non-indigo plants 
and gourds. The craft activities associated with each of these categories 
of raw materials were the following. 
Textile Production 
Textile producers, working with cotton (auduga) and silk (s.,a!2i:an 
tsamiya) derived from the nests of soil worms found in the Tamarind tree, 
were divided into spinners (makad'i; pl: masu kad'i), weavers (masak'i; pl: 
masak'a), indigo dyers (marini; pl: marina), cloth beaters (mabugi; pl: mabuga) , 
and tailors (mad'inki; p l: mad'inka). 
Cotton spinning (kad'in auduga) was a predominantly female pursuit 8 • 
Silk spinning (kad'in tasmiya) was done by both men and women, although it 
was a largely male activity. Weaving (sak'a) on the narrow loom, which was 
the most common type of loom used, was done mainly by men , while broad 
loom weaving, the least important of the two types of weaving as well as of 
more recent origin, was a female preserve 9. Indigo dyeing (rini) and cloth 
beating (£~ were male occupations. Tailoring (d'inki) was also a mainly 
49. 
male activity , particularly embroidery, but women did engage in certain 
types of assembly work (d'inki tsaba) as well as some embroidery. 
Leather Production 
Leather workers were divided into two broad categories, namely , 
tanners (majemi; pI: majema) and leather produce workers (baduku; pI: 
dukawa). Tanning and leather product working were known as jima and 
dukanci respectively. Another name for leather product workers was ~ 
d'inkin fata, that is, sewers of skins. Again, both occupations were performed 
by men, although in the case of leather product making, some women did 
participate, particularly in shoe-making (d'inkin takalmi). 
Tanners, dyers and tailors used various kinds of dyes derived from 
plants and trees with which they coloured the materials used. The use of 
the indigo plant (baba) gave rise to a class of specialists who worked with 
indigo exclusively. However, dyes other than indigo were used by tanners 
and tailors. This form of dyeing is called tiri which means dyeing with dyes 
other than indigo 10. There were no specialised tiri dyers comparable with 
the indigo dyers, tiri dyeing being done within the context of other craft 
specialisa tions. 
Metal Working 
Metal working consisted of two broad specialisations, smelting (dafuwar 
tama) and smithing (k'ira). There were specialist smelters (madafi; pI: 
- -
madafai), although some blacksmiths were able to do their own smelting, 
Those who fashioned products from metal, including smelted iron ore, were 
divided into blacksmiths (mak'irin babbak'u; pI: mak'iran babbak'u) , who 
worked with iron , and whitesmiths (mak'irin farfaru; pI: mak'iran farfaru) 
who worked with other metals such as tin and gold 11, Of the two categories 
" 
'1 
I 
' ,1, 
'~ 'l' 
· i 
50. 
of smith, blacksmiths were by far the most numerous, providing as they did 
all farm implements and many weapons of war. Smithing and smelting were 
male occupations, but in the case of smithing women did perform certain 
subsidiary roles in production. 
Besides these various types of textile, leather and metal workers, 
there were many other specialist activities concerned with the production 
of social useful products. For example, wood workers (massassak'i; pI: 
- --
masassak'a) made a wide variety of products among which the most important 
were wooden bowls and spoons, Koranic writing boards, horse saddles, mortars 
and pestles and other articles of domestic use. Some wood workers made 
handles for agricultural implements, but in many instances this task was 
combined with blacksmithing. Potters (maginin tukun~a; pI: Maginan tukunya), 
many of them women, made a wide variety of earthenware products. Builders 
(magini; pI: magina) formed another group of craft workers who engaged in 
the construction of homes, gates, walls and other structures made largely 
with earth reinforced with other materials. Workers in this trade were 
usually men. Much building work using earth was concentrated in cities and 
towns where mudwbuilt homes were common. Many rural builders used other 
materials and many farmers were able to carry out this work themselves. 
A wide variety of products were made from reeds and plants. Mat-
making, a predominantly female occupation, was found in many places. Mats 
were used for sitting and as containers for carrying such things as cotton. 
Besides mat making (d'inkin tabarma) women also made circular trays (~~ 
faifai) with which containers were covered. There were also straw hat 
makers such as the masu d'inkin malafa and the masu d'inkin gurumfa. 
Finally, the gourd plant formed the basis for the production of 
calabashes used as containers and as prestige goods among married women 12. 
There were two specialised activities within this category: calabash 
splitting and decoration {fafa} and calabash repairing, those engaging in 
the latter activity being referred to as gyartai. 
These few remarks on the range of craft activities gives some idea 
51. 
of the diversity of craft producers and craft products found not only in 
Kano Emirate but throughout Hausaland. I have excluded consideration of 
other craft workers such as butchers , drummers, barbers and the like and I 
have not provided any detailed description of the many products made within 
particular craft specialities. Later I will describe tailoring and certain 
other craft activities in more detail, but at this point suffice it to say that 
there existed a great deal of variation from craft to craft in the level of 
product differentiation, with some crafts producing scores of distinct products 
while others made only one or two different lines. 
As already noted, craft production provided a means whereby farmers 
could supply themselves with the necessities of life such as clothing, farm 
implements, domestic utensils and the like. Thus, a tailor would make up 
garments from cloth supplied by a neighbour in exchange for a hoe or cooking 
pot, the exchange involving either direct barter or being mediated by some 
form of currency like the cowrie which acted as a standard of value. Local 
markets also provided a forum in which diverse craft products could be 
exchanged beyond the confines of the immediate village community. 
Undoubtedly, many village communites were internally stratified with 
some households able to engage in more lucrative kinds of trade and craft 
work while others were too poor to do any more than farm or invest small 
amounts of capital in petty trade and low-paying craft work such as calabash 
repairing. Much of this craft production was destined to be consumed locally 
by people of relatively modest means. However , other outlets existed where 
., 
52. 
the opportunities for profit were greater 13. 
Of particular importance was the export trade in dyed and undyed 
cloth which drew on the services of dyers, cloth beaters, weavers, spinners 
and tailors. The main centres of this trade were located to the south of 
Kano City. This is especially the case with the dyeing and cloth beating 
industries and related craft activities. The location of dyeing was constrained 
to a great extent by the availability of adequate supplies of water and indigo. 
The high water table to the south of the city, combined with supplies of 
cheap and good quality indigo which were expensive to transport, account 
to a great extent for the growth of such centres as Kura town, Dal, Zarewa, 
Makarfi (in Zazzau Emirate), Rano; Kumbotso and Dawakin Kudu. Cotton 
was also grown in the area or imported from northern Zazzau and Southern 
Katsina Emirates. Trade routes linked these centres with Borno, Adamawa, 
Ashanti and other areas of demand. 
The production of textiles took place throughout the emirate, but 
the export trade was concentrated in the southern region. Particular towns 
specialised in certain dyed commodities. Thus, Kura is thought to have 
been a centre of dyeing before the 19th century but its importance grew 
after the jihad through the demand for 'Yan Kura turbans on the part of the 
desert Tuareg who not only purchased turbans for their own use but actively 
engaged in the organisation of the turban trade. The town of Dal, located 
in southern Wudil, specialised in kore cloth and garments which were sold in 
large quantities to the Kanuri of Borno. Both Hausawa and Kanuri peoples 
were involved in the production and distribution aspects of this industry. 
Other dyeing towns linked to the Kanuri trade were Zarewa, Fellatan, Belli, 
Rogo; D'an Guzuri and Makarfi, all in southern Kano and northern Zazzau 
emirates. 
52. 
the opportunities for profit were greater 13 • 
Of particular importance was the export trade in dyed and undyed 
cloth which drew on the services of dyers, cloth beaters, weavers, spinners 
and tailors. The main centres of this trade were located to the south of 
Kano City. This is especially the case with the dyeing and cloth beating 
industries and related craft activities. The location of dyeing was constrained 
to a great extent by the availability of adequate supplies of water and indigo. 
The high water table to the south of the city, combined with supplies of 
cheap and good quality indigo which were expensive to transport, account 
to a great extent for the growth of such centres as Kura town, Oal, Zarewa, 
Makarfi (in Zazzau Emirate), Rano; Kumbotso and Oawakin Kudu. Cotton 
was also grown in the area or imported from northern Zazzau and Southern 
Katsina Emirates. Trade routes linked these centres with Borno; Adamawa, 
I . 
Ashanti a~ other areas of demand. 
The production of textiles took place throughout the emirate, but 
the export trade was concentrated in the southern region. Particular towns 
", 
specialised in certain dyed commodities. Thus, Kura is thought to have 
been a centre of dyeing before the 19th century but its importance grew 
after the jihad through the demand for 'Yan Kura turbans on the part of the 
desert Tuareg who not only purchased turbans for their own use but actively 
engaged in the organisation of the turban trade. The town of Oal, located 
in southern Wudil, specialised in kore cloth and garments which were sold in 
large quantities to the Kanuri of Borno. Both Hausawa and Kanuri peoples 
were involved in the production and distribution aspects of this industry. 
Other dyeing towns linked to the Kanuri trade were Zarewa, Fellatan, Belli, 
Rogo, O'an Guzuri and Makarfi, all in southern Kano and northern Zazzau 
emirates. 
53. 
The growth of the dyed cloth export trade stimulated the development 
of specialised cloth beaters who, using heavy wooden mallets, imparted the 
glossy sheen on cloth , a process which increased the value of cloth goods 
considerably. The services of all tailors were alSo required to embroider 
garments or sew up the narrow strips of cloth in order to make up whole 
pieces suitable for a woman's wrapper or a gown. 
One particular innovation said to have been introduced into dyeing 
during the 19th century was the use of the large, sunken dye pit whicrh 
allowed dye pit owners to dye greater amounts of cloth at anyone time. 
These dye pits replaced the fired clay pots which were smaller in size and 
much more subject to breakage. 
Although some dyers , tailors and other craftsmen were able to control 
the labour of a number of subsidiary craftsmen , either though ownership of 
dye pits (an expensive capitalitem) or control of cloth supplies, the largest 
profits from craft work accrued to those who linked areas of demand with 
the sources of craft goods , namely , long-distance traders , merchants and 
landlords. 
Many of these commercial intermediaries were like country gentry 
who owned agricultural estates. Of particular importance were merchants 
engaged in the kola and cloth trades , but wealthier craftsmen/traders and 
some religious clerics were also estate owners (Tahir , 1975). 
Encouraged and assisted by the emirate political authorities, estate 
owners amassed parcels of land which they used for grain and craft pro-
duction. The larger estate owners supported large numbers of dependents 
who lived on the land and in the City. Foodstuffs were produced for sale 
and to feed these dependents (Lovejoy, 1979; Hogendom , 1977). The main 
work force on private estates consisted of slaves, but also included members 
c· 
11 
54. 
of the estate owner's family, other kin and their families, clients, disciples 
and , in the case of the kola merchants and caravan leaders, people of the 
same geographical-cum ~historical origin (asali). Like the majority of family 
farms, estates were located outside Kano City but most estate owners also 
maintained homes in the city. 
Craft production was a common feature of estate life with some 
estate owners using slave labour to weave cloth for export. In some instances, 
migrant weavers worked for estate owners on a wage labour (kwadago) basis. 
From the admittedly limited evidence available, it is also clear that a number 
of estates acted as terminus points for the long-distance trading system with 
merchants receiving long-distance traders, putting them up in their homes, 
arranging for the purchase and sale of imported goods, and selling to these 
traders and others craft products produced on the estates or by other crafts-
men who were both financed in their production by estate owners and used 
the latter as agents for their own independently-produced output. A good 
example of one of these merchant estate owners is Tulu Babba, described 
by Tahir (Tahir, 1975 : 272-290). 
Tulu Babba owned 15 estates spread across four emirates, He produced 
grain and craft goods, particularly gwado blankets and black turkud'i cloth. 
Slaves engaged in weaving and part of the cloth was put out to local dyers 
and to tailors in the area and in Kano City (where Babba maintained a home), 
He also used local craftsmen not only as processors of cloth provided by 
him but allowed them to sell off part of the output and from this sale he 
would take a cut. Local dyers and tailors also sold off some of their own 
production to him. Payment for work might be in cash, materials, imported 
horse caparisons and expensive embroidered garments, and batches of kola 
nuts. Babba acted as an agent for craftsmen, funnelling goods into the 
r. 
I 
, 
55. 
long-distance caravan trade and purchasing materials and goods on their 
behalf. As some independent craftsmen were themselves merchants and 
traders, he gave them goods on credit which they disposed of through their 
own commercial networks. 
Babba is only one example of the importance of the merchant capit-
alist in the pre-colonial economy of Kano. Others included the kola mer-
chants and caravan leaders, described by Lovejoy Oovejoy, 1973, 1979), who 
organised the long-distance kola trade between Kano and Gwanja. Some, 
such as the Kambarin Bari-Bari, operated from Kano City, others like the 
Agalawa and Tokarawa were largely rurally-based although maintaining homes 
in the city. With large city households, rural estates worked by slaves 
provided food for these big houses. Some part of the craft goods, such as 
cloth, which kola merchants and caravan leaders exchanged for kola may 
have been produced on rural estates. However, in the main they were 
purchased from rural and city craftsmen through normal market channels. 
Apart from the dye pits mentioned above, the technological base 
of craft production remained relatively static throughout the century. 
Most craftsmen lacked the incentive or the means to make technological 
innovations as they produced for a relatively stable local market of poor 
consumers and/or for an export market controlled by merchants and long-
distance traders whose principle aim was to capture and control widely 
scattered markets rather than to revolutionise productive techniques. 
Increases in output were achieved through the lengthening of the working 
day, product specialisation, the increased use of extra free and slave labour, 
and more intensive work patterns, Although the larger rural estates owned 
by commoners were able to produce more than peasant farms, it is unclear 
that they were more productive either in terms of a more efficient use of 
56. 
land or in the organisation of labour lit • 
A final word on the ruling estates of the ruling class. They were 
the largest 15 and were worked by a permanent labour force of farm slaves 
with extra labour provided by the free peasantry at peak periods of the 
agricultural cycle. Foodstuffs and craft goods were produced on the estates 
for consumption by the office holder and the many kin, clients, slaves and 
others he supported. Some portion of the production may have entered 
commercial exchange networks controlled by merchants who were concerned 
to maintain good relations with members of the ruling class. The number 
and size of ruling class estates in Kano are not known but it is argued that 
throughout Hausaland estate ownership was common with some of the estates 
of senior officials and emirs having a slave population ranging anywhere 
from a few hundred to a few thousand (Lovejoy, 1978; 1979). 
In Kano, the emir owned estates at Garko, Fanisau and other locations 
close to the city. Hill reports that in Dorayi, to the south-west of Kano 
City, the emir owned an estate with over 50 slaves (Hill, 1976 : 417). In 
the D'an Buram sub-district of the Ciroma's district, an early assessment 
report records four slave estates, three of which belonged to the emir and 
one to the title holder. D'an Buram (SNP 7 5785/1912). These estates 
covered about 6% of the sub-district's land area but no figures on numbers 
of slave are provided. Minor officials, such as the Chief of the Blacksmiths 
(Sarkin Mak'era), also controlled estates attached to their offices but these 
were usually small in size. 
The rural location of most craft producers, the importance of rural 
trade routes which by-passed Kano City entirely and linked rural centres of 
craft and food production, and the fact that many of the wealthiest merchants 
and long-distance traders ran much of their operations from the countryside 
57. 
has led to a re- thinking of the economic importance of Kano City in the 
life of the emirate. I shall now turn to an examination of some of the 
functions performed by Kano City with a view to providing a better under-
standing of its role in the overall affairs of the emirate. 
Kano City during the 19th century was a highly cosmopolitan one. 
With a resident population of some 30,000 by the early 1850's 16, rising to 
60,000 during the dry season (Frishman, 1977), it contained peoples of diverse 
ethnic origin. Besides the indigenous Hausa and those who had assimilated 
into the Hausa way of life, there were Fulani, Kanuri, Nupe, Arab, Tuareg 
and Buzaye (see Table 3.2 for a list of non- Hausa peoples in the city at 
that time). Barth estimated that the total population was divided between 
free persons and slaves with the latter accounting for, at the maximum, 
half of the total. The vast majority of slaves were owned by the rich and 
powerful (Barth, 1890 : 300). 
The city performed a diverse range of functions. First, it was the 
political centre of the emirate and most members of the ruling class resided 
there (Fika, 1978 : 39). The emir and all senior officials maintained large 
households of kin, affines, clients, slaves and others which they clothed and 
fed from tax revenues and the produce of their private estates. They 
provided an important source of business for the many craftsmen who worked 
in the city, a point I shall develop further later in this chapter. 
Most officials resided to the south of the central market although they 
were also found in other parts of the city. A number of oral traditions 1 7 
from various southern wards recount the settlement of Fulani peoples (from 
whom a high proportion of the ruling class were drawn), a process which 
sometimes involved the displacement of earlier Hausa inhabitants. 
58. 
From the city; the emir (who resided in the Gidan Sarki, an extremely 
large walled compound which was like a small town in itself), in consultation 
with his council, directed emirate policy on military, administrative and 
economic affairs. 
Given the lack of separation in Islamic ideology between secular and 
religious matters, government policy was guided by Islamic law and custom 
and so Kano City acted as the major religious focus of the emirate population, 
or at least those who subscribed to the Islamic faith. Kano played an 
important role as a centre of Islamic learning and scholarship and attracted 
many Islamic scholars and clerics who were encouraged to live and teach in 
the city (Chamberlain, 1975; Paden, 1973). 
Administratively, the city was divided into ten sections: Zango, 
Madabo, Ced'iya, Sheshe, Jingau, Cigari, Shetima, Makama, Goran Dama, 
and DarmQ. Each section had a section head who was responsible for 
administering his area of jurisdiction with the assistance of junior ward 
heads. Section heads and possibly their subordinates were appointed by 
the emir. The exact number of such administrators is not known, but Imam 
Imoru suggests that there were thirty (Ferguson, 1973 : 214). 
The city was fortified militarily with a high mud. built wall enclosing 
- -
areas of settlement plus land for farming 18. During periods of war farmers 
from the surrounding countryside would retreat into the city for protection, 
entering through the many gates which punctuated the wall. The farmland 
provided city residents with sufficient foodstuffs to withstand a sustained 
assault. Some of the adult males would be dragooned into defending the 
city although the emir maintained a military force of slave warriors and 
cavalry (Smaldone, 1977). 
" 
I' 
I 
TABLE 3.2 People of non-HauS~~ origi~' in se1ect~d wards of 
Kano Ci~y during the 19th century. 
Fuskar Gabas 
Ward: 
Satatima 
Zangon Beri Beri 
Gabari 
Makafin K'ofar Wambai 
D'anbazau 
Darma 
K'ok'i 
Kwarim Mabuga 
Tudun Nufawa 
Makwarrari 
Masukwani 
Durmin Arbabi 
'Yan Doya 
Bakin Zuwo 
Sharifai 
zaitawa 
Yo1a 
Agadesawa 
Fuskar Yamma 
Ward: 
Ayagi 
Sudawa 
Ciranci 
Ga1adanci 
Madigawa 
Mararaba 
Sabon Sara 
Bak'in Ruwa 
Magoga 
Yalwa 
Jingau 
Mandawari 
Diso 
Warure 
Gyaranya 
Ethnic Origins 
Kanuri, Fu1ani 
Kanuri 
Nupe, Kanuri 
Kanuri 
Fu1ani 
Mixed HausaiBuzu 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu 
Fu1ani, Kanuri 
Nupe 
Sudanese 
Fu1ani, Kanuri 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu, Arab 
Kanuri, Wangarawa, Arab 
Kailuri or Arab 
Arab 
Wangarawa 
Fu1ani 
Tuareg 
Yoruba 
Sudanese 
Fu1ani 
Fu1ani, Kanuri 
Rambarin Beri Beri (Kanuri origin) 
Kambarin Beri Beri 
Kambarin Beri Beri 
Mixed Hausa!Buzu, Nupe 
Nupe 
Kambarin Beri Beri, Nupe, Gwari, Arab 
Arab 
Wangarawa 
Ranuri, Fu1ani 
Fu1ani 
Ranuri 
59. 
TABLE 3.2 People of non-HauS~~ origi~' in select~d wards of 
Kano Ci~y during the 19th century. 
Fuskar Gabas 
Ward: 
Satatima 
zangon Beri Beri 
Gabari 
Makafin K'ofar Wambai 
D'anbazau 
Darma 
K'ok'i 
Kwarim Mabuga 
Tudun Nufawa 
Makwarrari 
Masukwani 
Durmin Arbabi 
'Yan Doya 
Bakin Zuwo 
Sharifai 
zaitawa 
Yola 
Agadesawa 
Fuskar Yamma 
Ward: 
Ayagi 
Sudawa 
Ciranci 
Galadanci 
Madigawa 
Mararaba 
Sabon Sara 
Bak'in Ruwa 
Magoga 
Yalwa 
Jingau 
Mandawari 
Diso 
Warure 
Gyaranya 
Ethnic Origins 
Kanuri, Fu1ani 
Kanuri 
Nupe, Kanuri 
Kanuri 
Fu1ani 
Mixed HausaiBuzu 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu 
Fu1ani, Kanuri 
Nupe 
Sudanese 
Fu1ani, Kanuri 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu, Arab 
Kanuri, Wangarawa, Arab 
Kanuri or Arab 
Arab 
Wangarawa 
Fulani 
Tuareg 
Yoruba 
Sudanese 
Fulani 
Fulani, Kanuri 
Kambarin Beri Beri (Kanuri origin) 
Kambarin Beri Beri 
Kambarin Beri Beri 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu, Nupe 
Nupe 
Kambarin Beri Beri, Nupe, Gwari, Arab 
Arab 
Wangarawa 
Kanuri, Fulani 
Fulani 
Kanuri 
59. 
TABLE 3.2 Cont. 
Fuskar Arewa 
Ward: 
Dala 
Madabo 
Ced'lya 
Garke 
Rijiyar Biyu 
Masak'ar Kud'a 
Dandalin Turawa 
Makwalla 
Daurawa 
Tudun Mak'era 
Shatsari 
K'ofar Mazugal 
Fuskar Kudu 
Ward: 
Kurawa 
Sagagi 
Wudilawa 
Rimin K'ira 
Tudun Wuzurci 
Daneji 
Dorayi 
Soron D'inki 
Zango 
Alfindiki 
Sources: (1) 
(2) 
(3) 
(4 ) 
Ethnic Origin 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu, possibly Arab 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu, Wangarawa 
Kanuri -
Fu1ani 
Arab 
Kanuri 
Arab, Mixed Hausa/Buzu 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu? 
Fulani 
Arab 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu 
Kanuri 
Fulani 
Fu1ani 
Fulani 
Arab 
Fu1ani 
Fulani 
Kanuri 
Fulani, Kanuri 
Mixed Hausa/Buzu 
Arab 
Field notes 
Fika and Mahmud (n.d.) 
Jaggar (1973, 1978) 
Shea (1975, 1976) 
60. 
61. 
. :~ 
. The size of the city's ruling class is not known but it probably 
accounted for less than 10 per cent of the population. The rest were 
commoners (talakawa) who were generally excluded from political decision 
making, concentrating instead upon commerce, religious teaching and scholar-
ship, petty trading, craft production, farming and the provision of a myriad 
of services. It is to the economic characteristics and functions of the city 
that I shall now turn. 
Commercially, Kano City acted as a regional trading centre for 
locally produced goods and for goods imported from within the Central 
Sudan, North Africa and Europe. Much of this trade took place within 
the central city market (Kasuwar Kurmi) which had been in operation since 
the time of Rumfa in the 15th century. The range of commodities bought 
and sold in the market was very extensive. Table 3.3 summarises the types 
of goods traded. 
TABLE 3.3 Goods traded in Kasuwar Kurmi: c. 1850. 
Camels 
Pack animals 
Slaves 
Kola nuts 
Cotton cloth and clothing, including gowns, caps, trousers and shawls 
Sandals 
Tanned hides and skins 
Natron and salt 
Ivory 
Bleached and unbleached calicos 
Manchester cotton prints 
French silks and sugar 
Red cloth from Europe 
Italian beads 
Italian silk 
Paper, looking glasses, needles, sword blades from Europe 
Woollen cloth 
Perfumes and spices 
Foodstuffs 
Charcoal, copper, silver, iron and a variety of metal products 
Cotton, indigo and various plants 
Sources: Barth (1890), Jaggar (1978), Lovejoy (1973). 
62. 
In addition to the main market, many smaller markets were scattered 
throughout the city. Among these were included Mandawari, Kasuwar Ayagi, 
Kasuwar K'ul K'ul, , Kasuwar K'ofar Na'isa, Hanga, Kasuwar Rimi, and 
Kasuwar K'ofar Wambai. Most of these traded in a much smaller range 
of items than Kasuwar Kurmi of which foodstuffs and petty items of trade 
were the most important. 
The city was also an entrepot for the saharan trade. Much of this 
trade was dominated by Arab merchants who resided in Dandalin Turawa 
(Recreational Open-Space of the Arabs), Jingau and K'ul K'ul (named after 
an early North African trader who settled there). They imported a variety 
of North African and European commodities (particularly clothing) and 
exported locally-made sandals, tanned and dyed hides and skins and perhaps 
a few slaves. Selling their imports direct to the rich and powerful, they 
traded ma0ly from their homes where they kept stocks of goods. Local 
Hausa tanners and leather workers sold much of their own products through 
these merchants. Some Arab immigrants were themselves craftsmen and 
a settlement of shoe makers from Ghadames grew up in Jingau where the 
lea ther slipper, lantami, was made. Local Hausa leather workers copied 
these Arab-made products and eventually came to dominate the trade (Adamu, 
1968 : 44). In addition, local tailors in such wards as Yalwa and Soron 
D'inki began to copy imported Arab horse caparisons and garments. Indeed, 
the local Hausa production of Eastern-Style garments is said to have been 
started by immigrant Katsinawa Hausa in Yalwa ward (see Chapter VIII). 
Some elderly informants in Soron D'inki ward suggested that the production 
of the horse saddle cover (jalala) only began in the 19th century and that 
most of the early jalala makers learned by copying imported styles (see 
Chapter VIII for a fuller discussion of the origins of tailoring in the wards 
I ' 
" 
t, ' 
r J 
'( 
63. 
,\ 
of Yalwa and Soron D'inki). 
The Arabs were an important trading community in Kano during the 
19th century, although they tended to concentrate upon particular lines 
of trade. Most of the cloth and kola trade (these two items constituting 
the major items of commerce in the city) was in the hands of local Hausa. 
All important Hausa merchants and traders owned homes in the city and 
much trade was carried out from them. 
The city was a convenient place for long-distance traders to purchase 
what they needed as this reduced the time they would normally have had to 
spend going from place to place in the rural areas searching for different 
types of cloth or other produce. A city landlord (fatoma), often also a 
merchant, would arrange for rural craftsmen to bring in their different 
products and show them to the visiting trader. Much higher quality 
merchandise by-passed the city market and was channelled through the private 
homes of landlord-merchants. In some instances, the landlord would buy 
goods for their clients using the services of a broker (dillali). Both the 
broker and landlord would visit the market together to arrange a purchase, 
a practice which allowed for the possibility of collusion in setting prices. 
Traders also visited the market directly, purchasing goods through brok~rs 
who acted as an important link between producers and customers. 
The concentration of elite customers as well as the broad mass of 
poorer members of the community, provided many city craftsmen with a 
market for their services. Practically every kind of craft product was 
made in the city and various wards or areas were noted for their craft 
specialisations (see Table 3.4 for a list of craft specialisations by ward). 
The names of a number of wards derive from their association with craft 
producers. For example, Rimin K'ira (White Silk Cotton Tree of Smithing) 
---
64. 
TABLE 3.4 Craft specialisati~ns in ~elected wards of Kano City 
during the 19th century. 
Fuskar Gabas Craft Specialisation 
Ward: 
Durmin Arbabi 
Satatima 
Kwarim Mabuga 
K'walwa 
Lallokin Lemu 
Zangon Beri Beri 
Gabari 
'Yan Awaki 
Dukawa 
Takalmawa 
Kududdufawa 
Tudun Wada 
Jujun 'Yanlabu 
Danbazau 
Masukwani 
Bakin Zuwo 
Fuskar Yamma 
Ward: 
Ayagi 
Warure 
Sabon Sara 
Akwa 
Sudawa 
0' iso 
Galadanci 
Dogon Nama 
Kaigama 
Magoga 
Bak'in Ruwa 
D'andago 
Lokon Mak'era 
Hausawa 
Garangamawa 
'Yar Kasuwa 
Yalwa 
Madungurum 
Gyaranya 
Dausayi 
Silversmithing 
Trouser cuff embroidery 
Blacksmithing, carpentry, cloth-beating 
Dyeing, beating, blacksmithing 
Weaving of women's headkerchiefs, 
tobacco processing 
Silver smelting, gun repairing 
Silversmithing, weaving 
Blacksmithing 
Leather working 
Shoe making, dyeing 
Cap making 
Leather working 
Eastern-style embroidery 
Rope making 
Eastern-style embroidery, tobacco 
processing 
Tailoring and embroidery 
Weaving 
Blacksmi th ing 
Dyeing 
Tailoring 
Dyeing 
Cap making, tailoring, blacksmithing 
Blacksmithing 
Eastern-style embroidery, dyeing 
Tailoring 
Leather working, blacksmithing 
Dyeing, weaving 
Weaving 
Blacksmithing 
Weaving 
Woodworking 
Dyeing 
Eastern-style embroidery, blacksmithing 
Weaving 
Tailoring, blacksmithing 
Making of iron armour 
TABLE 3.4 Cont. 
Fuskar Arewa Craft Specialisation 
Ward: 
Dala 
Shatsari 
Arzai 
IYan Tandu 
Adakawa 
Rijiya Biyu 
Kan Tudun Madabo 
Dawanau 
Dandalin Turawa 
Makwalla 
Tudun Mak'era 
Kabawa 
Karofin Gangamau 
Mazugal 
Fuskar Kudu 
Ward: 
Yakasai 
Indabawa 
Sagagi 
Kan Karofi 
Kurawa 
Zango 
She she 
Rimin K'ira 
K'ofar Mata 
Soron D'inki 
Tudun Wuzurci 
Dorayi 
Zage 
Daneji 
Unguwar Gini 
Blacksmithing, dyeing 
Blacksmithing 
Leather working 
Hide vessel making (tandu) 
Blacksmithing 
Shoe making 
Tailoring of Kano White Cloth 
Dyeing 
Blacksmithing 
Dyeing 
Blacksmithing 
Weaving 
Dyeing 
Blacksmithing 
Embroidery 
Blacksmithing 
Tailoring 
Dyeing, building 
Dyeing, embroidery 
Blacksmithing, whitesmithing 
Dyeing 
Blacksmithing 
Dyeing 
Saddle cover making (jalala), 
Eastern-style embroidery 
Dyeing 
Dyeing 
Dyeing, beating 
Trouser embroidery 
Building 
Sources: (1) Field notes 
(2) Fika and Mahmud (n.d.) 
(3) Jaggar (1973, 1978) 
(4) Shea (1975, 1976) 
(5) Tahir (1975) 
65. 
66. 
is said to have been named after an Arab blacksmith from the Fezzan who 
was given land by the emir upon which he built a home. The specific name 
of the ward derives from the practice of working under a Rimi tree close 
to his home. The smith is thought to have made guns, swords and horse 
stirrups which suggests he specialised in the production of military equipment. 
He may also have been a silver smith as he is known to have made silver 
stirrups for an important aristocrat of the day (Fika and Mahumd, n.d : 2). 
Rimin K'ira is also considered to have been a collecting place for black-
smiths who worked in co-operative work teams producing military equipment 
for the court (Jaggar, 1973 : 19w20). Another ward linked to blacksmithing 
was Lokon Mak'era (Resting Place orAlley of the Blacksmiths). The ward 
was named after the site of a house and well of a blacksmith from Mariri 
village in Kumbotso district. This particular smith came to Kano during 
Suleiman's reign (1807- 1819) and during the 19th century the ward was the 
residence of one of the official blacksmith title holders, Muk'addashin K'ira. 
Today, smithing is no longer practised in the ward. 
K'walwa ward derives its name from the sound of the cloth beater's 
mallets as they hit the beating trunk. A song, using the expression "k'wal, 
k'wal, k'wal", is said to have been sung by a praise singer from Jingau ward 
as he watched a beater at work. 
Wanka da Shuni (washing with prepared indigo) is the original name 
of Takalmawa ward. The name derives from an incident in the late 19th 
century when the local dyers dyed one of the emir's horses blue. From 
this the emir named the place "wanka da shuni". Although named at the 
end of the century, dyers had been operating from there since much earlier 
(Shea, 1976). 
67. 
Another ward, 'lan Tandu (Sons of the Hide Vessel), was named after 
the students of an Islamic teacher who came to Kano during AbduUahi's 
reign. After studying for their malam, the students would make the tandu 
vessel used for storing antimony and clarified butter. 
FinaUy Dukawa ward derives its name of "leather workers" from 
immigrant families of tanners and shoe makers who settled there during 
AbduUahi's reign. It appears that these original families co-operated in 
the leather working process with the shoe makers taking skins to the tanners 
for cleaning, after which they would make the shoes (Tahir, 1975 : 291ff). 
These are just a few examples of the link between craft work and 
particular Kano City wards. Other blacksmithing wards included Diso, 
Galadanci, Indabawa, Warure , Gyaranya, Yalwa, Shatsari, K'ofar Mazugal, 
'Van Awaki, Ced'iyar Fera, and K'ofar Wambai. Dyeing was carried out 
in K'ofar Mata, Zage, Dala, Sheshe, Sudawa, Bak'in Ruwa and Yalwa. 
Tailors were found aU over the city but the main centres were Yalwa, Soron 
D'inki, Masukwani , Gyaranya/Durmin Sambo, Diso, Kan Tudun Madabo, 
Sharfad'i , Kabara, Daneji, Kurawa, Kududdufawa , Akwa, Dogon Nama, and 
Bakin Zuwo. 
Weavers, although they do not appear to have existed on any large 
scale in the city, were to be found in Tudun Nufawa, LaUokin Lemu, Kabawa, 
Hausawa, Dandago. Gabari and Ayagi. Leather workers were concentrated 
in Dukawa. Magoga, Arzai, Dala, and Rijiyar Biyu. 
Of all these craft workers, tailors accounted for a high proportion 
of the total. Compared with the countryside , which had a far greater 
absolute number of tailors than the city , the ratio of tailors to weavers 
was higher in Kano City. For example, the ratio of tailors to weavers in 
68. 
the rural district of D'an Buram was 1 to 1.2 while in Kura town the ratio 
was 1 to 31.8. The ratios are reversed for Kano City where there were 
15 tailors to every weaver (if one includes tailors who were cap makers) 
and 4 to 1 if cap makers are excluded. (See Table for ratio of weavers 
to tailors in selected Kano districts during the first three decades of the 
20th century). 
TABLE 3.5. Ratio of weavers to tailors: Kano Emirate, 
selected districts: 1909-1931. 
District 
Sarkin Dawaki 1 
Tsakkar Gida 
Dan Buram 
Burden Kereria 
Makama 
Dan Iya 
Rano 
Kiru 
Birnawa 
Kura 1 
Gumel 
Zaria City 
Kaura 
Mohamman Na Kota 
Hardawa (Katagum) 
Jaidanawa 
Kano City 
Ratio 
2.7 weavers per tailor 
1.2 " 11 
2.2 11 11 
2.0 " 11 
3.2 11 
4.1 
2.9 
2.7 
31.8 
27.1 
1.3 
9.5 
8.0 
3.8 
1.9 
Year 
1909-10 
1912 
1912 
1912 
1912 
1931 
1929 
1930 
1909-10 
1909- 10 
1909 
1912 
1912 
1912 
1912 
15 tailors per weaver 1926 
4.4 tailors per weaver (excluding cap makers) 
1 Refers to compounds 
Sources: Various National Archive Kaduna Reports. 
See Bibliography for details. 
'I, 
The high ratio of tailors to weavers in Kano City can be accounted 
for in a number of ways. First, much cloth wa s brought into the city 
from rural communities and so tailors there did not have to rely upon 
purely city-based weavers to supply them with cloth. Second, the city 
contained a concentration of purchasing power not found in most other 
places and much of the city demand was for finished , that is, made-up 
and embroidered clothing. Elite consumers would often purchase large 
amounts of clothing either for direct consumption or for export. For 
example, members of the ruling class might buy scores of garments, even 
69. 
a hundred or more, at one time for their families, clients , and others as 
well as to send as tribute to the caliph. Part of these purchases did come 
from rurally-based tailors, but it was also convenient for tailors to live 
close to their customers. Third, it is likely that a large proportion of 
city tailors were embroiderers supplying wealthy customers, usually the 
main purchasers of highly embroidered garments. Although rural communities 
did contain some embroiderers , most could not sustain a specialised class 
of such tailors given the relatively low purchasing power of the genera l 
population. 
Quantitative estimates of the number of tailors in Kano City during 
the 19th century are unavailable. The first useful count was made in 
1926 when a census of city craftsmen showed a total of almost 3,500 
persons engaged in tailoring. Below is a breakdown of the total according 
to the type of tailoring: 
r 
70. 
Type of Tailoring: Number: 
: . 
Cap makers 2,405 
Tailors 877 
Saddle cloth makers 81 
Suka Dubu makers 49 
Sewing machine tailors 38 
r. ' 
I· ( TOTAL: 3,450 
I: 
Tailors made up 22.5% of the total of tax- paying adult male 
"industrials" of 15,315. (See Table 3.6 for complete list of "industrials' 
in 1926). 
With the exception of sewing machine tailors, of which there were 
none in Kano City prior to the present century, all the other types of 
tailor mentioned in Table 3.6 were to be found in the city during the 19th 
century. Although there is no way of knowing whether these figures are 
representative of total numbers in each category at the end of the 19th 
century, the order of magnitude presented in the Table is probably accurate. 
Thus, the largest number of tailors engaged in cap making, followed by 
makers of gowns, trousers , smocks and the like; and then by horse 
caparison makers. 
The high proportion of cap makers can be accounted for as follows. 
First , of all the various types of tailoring it was the easiest to learn and 
required the least amount of capital investment. Second, cap making was 
often pursued as a purely secondary occupation, something one did to 
supplement income from other sources. Thus, many of the minor officials, 
palace courtiers, clients and slaves in ruling class households or who served 
the ruling class in various capacities often took up tailoring as a means 
of earning an extra income. Cap-making was an important part- time 
occupation in this respect, but it is known that they also engaged in many 
--------------------... .....-
71. 
TABLE 3.6 Occupations of Kano City :and Fagge adult male 
I; ~ " taxpayers: 1926. 
Occuj2ation No. Yearly Income 
(Pounds) 
Salaried officials 1066 
Cap makers 2045 11 
Tailors 877 11 
Leather workers 473 19 
Dyers 337 24 
Weavers 227 14 
Builders 222 22 
Whitesmiths 204 24 
Blacksmiths 64 22 
Barbers 167 22 
Tanners 122 14 
Saddle cloth makers 81 20 
Cloth beaters 80 26 
Chief butchers 69 30 
Horse trappings makers 49 11 
Sewing machine tailors 38 19 
Mattress makers 29 22 
Sword sling makers 5 15 
Petty traders 766 14 
Brokers 479 21 
Kola sellers 472 35 
Petty meat sellers 296 10 'I: 
Chief traders _ 280 36 l Gown sellers 226 23 
Meat sellers 161 17 
Skin sellers 153 32 
Grain sellers 143 33 
Groundnut sellers . 142 35 
Salt sellers 78 20 
Snuff sellers 70 15 
Potash sellers 62 25 
Scent sellers 53 16 
Black gown sellers 46 27 
Horse sellers 40 22 I' 
Sweet meat sellers 38 11 
Donkey s,ellers 34 23 
Sheep sellers 33 14 
Sack cloth sellers 28 22 I, 
Cattle sellers 20 21 
Small kola sellers 20 20 
Prepared indigo sellers 20 14 
Kola wrapping sellers 15 15 
Fruiterers 11 8 
Raw cotton sellers 9 9 
Ma llams 1320 8 
Labourers 611 13 
Lodging housekeepers 290 34 
TABLE 3.6 
occupation 
Beggars 
Farmers 
cont. 
Wealthy merchants 
TOTAL 
~. 
197 
423 
143 
2121 
15315 
72. 
Yearl:t: Income 
(Pounds) 
22 
80 
11 
1 Includes sellers of water, grass, wood, panniers and 
pot makers. 
Source: NAK SOKPROF 260/1926 
other types of sewing. including the sewing of saddle blankets and covers, 
the making of gowns and the embroidery of the voluminous trousers worn 
by royalty and the aristocracy. Indeed, some switched between different 
types of sewing during the course of their lives. It is likely that the wives 
of these men did some sewing. Imoru, for example, notes that many women 
sewed saddle covers such as the jalala and zagin sirdi (Ferguson, 1973 : 314). 
These minor functionaries were able to dispose of what they produced 
through their links with senior officials and some were financed by their 
masters with small amounts of money and raw materials. 
After the British rationalised the emirate bureaucracy during the 
20th century, many of these men were forced into greater reliance upon 
cap making. other types of tailoring and .many non-tailoring occupations 
as their former masters no longer had any need for their services. It 
is interesting to compare this situation with that of the Nupe, described 
by Nade1. Nadel points out that cap making among the Nupe was regarded 
as: 
TABLE 3.6 
occupation 
Beggars 
Farmers 
Cont. 
Wealthy merchants 
TOTAL 
72. 
!:!2. Yearl:r: Income (Pounds) 
197 22 
423 
143 80 
2121 11 
15315 
1 Includes sellers of water, grass, wood, panniers and 
pot makers. 
Source: NAK SOKPROF 260/1926 
other types of sewing. including the sewing of saddle blankets and covers, 
the making of gowns and the embroidery of the voluminous trousers worn 
by royalty and the aristocracy. Indeed, some switched between different 
types of sewing during the course of their Jives. It is likely that the wives 
of these men did some sewing. Imoru, for example, notes that many women 
sewed saddle covers such as the jalala and zagin sirdi (Ferguson, 1973 : 314). 
These minor functionaries were able to dispose of what they produced 
through their links with senior officials and some were financed by their 
masters with smal1 amounts of money and raw materials. 
After the British rationalised the emirate bureaucracy during the 
20th century. many of these men were forced into greater reliance upon 
cap making. other types of tailoring and )llany non-tailoring occupations 
as their former masters no longer had any need for their services. It 
is interesting to compare this situation with that of the Nupe, described 
by Nadel. Nadel points out that cap making among the Nupe was regarded 
as: 
73. 
. . •• the ideal occupation for 'lazy people', who can 
do nothing else, meaning particularly those impoverished 
'people of quality' who are neither skilled nor resourceful 
enough to find other means of livelihood. (Nadel, 1942 : 296). 
These 'people of quality' are likely to have included minor government 
functionaries and declasse nobles whose previous source of income had 
dried up. The large numbers of cap makers recorded in the 1926 census 
must have included persons of this type. 
Cap making was also a common part~time occupation among religious 
teachers and their students who were attracted to Kano City because of 
its reputation for learning. Students, in particular, were usually required 
to support themselves through farming for their teachers, begging and any 
other types of craft work available. Cap making was particularly attractive 
because it was cheap to do, easy to learn through simply observing groups 
of cap makers along streets and alleyways, and could be picked up and 
set down at a moment's notice. As no heavy equipment was used, Koranic 
students and their masters who travelled the countryside or were drawn to 
Kano saw cap making as espeCially compatible with their peripatetic way of 
life. It is likely that the 1926 census actually omitted many Koranic 
students as they were not treated as residents of Kano City. On the 
other hand, some of the censused cap makers may have lied about their 
occupation in order to avoid tax (cap making being subject to low tax levels 
because of the low incomes derived from such work). Furthermore, some 
religious teachers enumerated in the census became annoyed with British 
offiCials who found it difficult to assess their incomes from teaching. 
Some gave their occupation as cap-maker possibly to avoid the indignities 
of questioning by foreign intruders. However, even with these qualifications , 
74. 
it is clear that cap making was a common occupation among many types 
of people in Kano City. Indeed, people whose main occupation lay outside 
tailoring and who were not malams, or students or courtiers often engaged 
in cap making but this would not have been recorded in the census. 
If cap making was a predominantly part-time occupation, other 
kinds of tailoring, particularly gown assembly and embroidery, were often 
the primary sources of income for many tailors in 19th century Kano. 
Thus, artisan tailors supplying neighbourhood needs played an important 
role in the city's economy. However, even here many artisan tailors (as 
well as other types of craftsmen) did some farming on family farms both 
inside and outside the city 19. There were also highly skilled embroiderers 
who combined tailoring with religious teaching, trading and merchandising. 
Thus, a number of Yalwa long-distance traders dealt in high quality garments 
as well as- doing a certain amount of embroidery themselves. Some combined 
cattle trading between Sokoto and Kano with tailoring. Many of these 
put-out work to local tailors on a piece-rate basis supplying cloth and 
thread. In Soron D'inki ward horse caparison dealers were often skilled 
jalala makers in their own right who drew on family labour and the labour 
of local jalala makers. These men did some trading outside Kano but also 
supplied visiting traders from other places. Again, a number enjoyed the 
favour of the court and supplied royalty and others with horse caparisons. 
Some even travelled to homes of emirs and aristocrats in emirates close to 
Kano in order to meet their demands. Kano's reputation for horse caparisons, 
including hand-sewn saddle covers and the like, was particularly high during 
this period. 
One particularly good example of a skilled embroiderer who combined 
tailoring with religious teaching and agricultural estate ownership is provided 
75. 
by Tahir (Tahir, 1975 : 307- 314). This man, Malarri Huseini Ibrahim, lived 
in Madabo ward and from the entrance room of his home he organised the 
tailoring work of six permanent tailors who were also students of his. 
", 
In addition, he .financed other local tailors , put-out work to agents, clients 
and disciples in rural Kano and in Katsina, Daura and Sokoto and sent 
students to Adamawa and other places to sell garments to aristocrats and 
merchants and to bring back orders. Some part of his total output was 
produced on his rural estates run by students and kinsmen. Again, 
tailoring work was put-out to local tailors in these areas. 
A point to note here is that the city was not isolated from its 
surroundings and many city craftsmen-cum-merchants used the services 
of rural craftsmen to fill orders , much along the lines described above. 
In particular t tailors were not constrained by the need to be close to 
sources of raw materials such as was the case with many dyers and weavers 
and, given the important distributive role of Kano City and the presence 
there of many wealthy customers, the city was a convenient location for 
the assembly and embroidery of garments. 
Some craftsmen benefitted greatly from the concentration of elite 
purchasing power in the city. Besides tailors, whitesmiths appear to have 
been exclusively city-based, providing expensive jewellery, swords, bangles 
and other products. Whitesmiths also repaired swords, made brass stirrups, 
halters and other horse tackle and as the use of these products was 
monopolised by members of the ruling class, the craftsmen were better 
able to profit from being located close to the source of demand for their 
skills. In the case of certain whitesmiths' products, there may have been '. ,
sumptuary regulations limiting their use. One 19th century source remarks, 
for example, that commoners were not allowed to tie brass stirrups to 
their saddles (Ferguson, 1973 : 334). 
Sumptuary regulations relating to the use of other kinds of craft 
goods also existed in 19th century Kano. These regulations symbolised 
and served to reinforce the growing political power of the ruling classes 
and their increasing isolation from the commoner population 20 . They 
may also have acted as a warning to wealthy merchant commoners with 
political pretensions. For example, Tahir remarks: 
Certain types of imported garments, the bournous, the 
Nupe style robes woven of tamarind silk thread, Arabian 
dresses and the deep dyed black and shiny turban of Kura 
design (D'an Kura) and certain types of decorated shoes, 
Arabian boots and trousers , like Wandon Tun(is of Tunisian 
wool thread were reserved for the ruling class , the 
courtiers and ulema, of high reputation. Rank was further 
marked by the wearing of several garments of different 
colours and enormous values a t once (Hausa: had i). 
Commoners who built splendid homes or adopted such 
attire became the objects of wasau [seizure of property] 
unless they had ensured their protection. 
(Ta:hir , 1975 : 203-204). 
76. 
With regard to commoners apeing the ways of their betters through 
wearing aristocra tic clothing styles , one elderly t rouser embroiderer (himself 
of royal descent) 21 recounted to me the following story concerning a 19th 
century merchant who began to wear the richly embroidered t rouser known 
as wand on mai kamun k'afa. Summoned before the emir of the day, he 
was asked why he wore such t rousers. His answer was that he liked them. 
To this the emir replied: "Did your fa ther wear them?" "No", replied 
the merchant. "Then are you better than your father?" came the retort. 
"No", said the merchant. To which the emir responded: "Then it is better 
you stop wearing them." 
77. 
Both Fika (1978 : 19) and Tahir (1975 : 219) note how Emir Dabo 
adopted the distinctive style of wea ring the turban with its two rabbit- like 
"ears" pointing upwards which symbolise d the word of Allah 2 2 . 
According to elderly informants in Yalwa ward , the wearing of 
the Alkyabba cloak was largely restricted to senior officials in the emirate 
bureaucracy and only the emir would wear an Alkyabba with the hood 
covering the head. In addition to the brass stirrups mentioned earlier, 
other types of horse tackle such as the zagin sirdi (a richly embroidered 
saddle cover) were reserved for use by the emir and office holders alone 
(F erguson, 1973 : 314). 
However, it does not appear that the ruling classes limited the 
production of these (and other) craft goods as they were traded both within 
and outside the emirate. For example , there was a great deal of trade in 
horse tackle with Borno and Adamawa , all types of garments were sold 
throughout the region, and the 50 ,000 German sword blades which Barth 
estimated were imported annually into Kano and which were set by Kano 
smiths were re-exported to Borno and Nupeland and others places (Jaggar, 
1978 : 23). 
Kano City also contained a la rge concentration of leather workers 
who benefitted from being close to one of the main markets for their goods , 
namely, the important North African community of the city who exported 
skins and leather goods to North Africa and beyond. On the other hand, 
city leather workers had links with rural producers, sending out both slave 
and free labour to search the countryside for skins to be tanned in the 
city or to be brought in a tanned state ready for sale or for further 
processing (Tahir , 1975 : 291 ff.). 
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78. 
The city possessed special building needs which probably accounts 
for the disproportionate number of master builders mentioned in the 1926 
census. There existed, for example, a large number of mud-built buildings, 
many of which were quite substantial. These included the Emir's Palace, 
the homes of other officials, aristocrats and wealthy merchants , the Emir's 
summer palace close to the southern edge of the city , the central mosque 
and other smaller ward-based mosques, and finally the homes of other resi-
dents of the city. There was also the need to maintain the city roads 
and the huge wall which surrounded the city and reached a length of twelve 
miles. These buildings and walls, being built of mud , required special 
attention, subject as they were to rapid decay and even total collapse, 
especially during the rainy season. The Emir is known to have had a Chief 
Mason (Sarkin Gina) who was responsible for the Emir's Palace and who :, 
" 
" 
dealt with other builders (Ferguson , 1973 : 214). Specialist masons were 
hired by wealthier members of the community to layout a building's design 
and to recruit labour to make bricks, transport building materials from 
local quarries, and to do the actual physical work involved in building. 
In the case of the city walls , city residents and farmers close to the city :' 1 ' 1' 
',-
were recruited to maintain them , although it is likely that such work was 
supervised by master builders and specialist bricklayers were used to ensure 
proper construction. Outside Kano there were many walled towns with 
mud-built dwellings, but they were usually less grand than those in the 
city and fewer people were able to afford to build them. Much rural 
building was done with materials other than mud and building may, in fact , 
have been a part- time activity , something farmers did during the dry season. 
In summary , Kano City performed a number of functions vital to 
79. 
the well-being of the state. As an economic centre it acted as a large 
regional market place and as an entre pot for the trans-Saharan caravan 
trade. It contained many craftsmen involved in meeting local needs and 
also supplying goods for the regional and long-distance markets. What 
proportion of total craft output in the emirate was produced in the city 
is impossible to say, but overall it must have been small. However, a 
much greater amount of total craft production was handled by city merchants 
and others than was actually produced there. 
Certain lines of craft production may have depended upon the city 
and were concentrated there. For example, Eastern Style embroidery, 
certain horse caparison tailoring lines, building, and whitesmithing. Certain 
categories of blacksmith also relied upon work from the court and bene-
fitted greatly from being resident there. As will be shown , some smiths 
performed~important political functions which necessita ted their location 
in the city. However, all these craftsmen represented a small proportion 
of the total number of craft producers in the emirate. In the case of 
the cloth industry, the core of Kano's prosperity, Kano City was not a 
pre-eminent producer of textiles. The vast majority of weavers, dyers, 
spinners and tailors operated from the countryside, although some proportion 
of them sold part of their independently produced output through the city 
or worked on a putting out basis for city-based craftsmen and merchants. 
Using Weber'S three types of city, Kano was mainly a merchant and consumer 
city and secondarily a producer one (Weber, 1968, Vol. 3 : 1215- 1217). 
.\ 
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80. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER III 
. 
1. On the political and economic history of Kano before the 19th century, see 
Pad en (1973), Tahir (1975) and Fika (1978). Primary oral traditions relating 
to this period include "The Kano Chronicle" , (Palmer, 1967) and "The Song 
of Bagauda" , (Hiskett , 1964, 1965). For a brief review of Kano's commodity 
trade during the 18th century , see Adamu (1979 : 69- 71). Although involved 
in the trans - Saharan trade, Adamu concludes that at this time Kano played a 
major role in trade with the south. 
2. As Barth noted during his visit to Kano in the 1850's: "The principle commerce 
of Kano consists in native produce, namely , the cotton cloth woven and 
dyed here or in the neighbouring towns, in the form of tobes or rigona [sic] 
•••• ; turkedi , or the oblong pieces of dress of dark- blue colour worn by 
the women; the zenne or plaid of various colours; and the rawani bak'i, 
or black litham (1890 : 300) ," 
3. This was noticed by Barth who remarked: "The great advantage of Kano 
is that commerce and manufacturers go hand in hand, and that almost every 
family has its share in them . There is really something grand in this kind of 
industry, which spreads to the north as far as Murzuk, Ghat , and even Tripoli; 
to the west, not only to Timbuktu, but in some degree even as far as the 
shores of the Atlantic, the very inhabitants of Arguin dressing in cloth woven 
and dyed in Kano; to the east , all over Bornu, although there it comes in 
contact with the native industry of the country; and to the south it maintains 
a rivalry with the native industry of the Igbira and Igbo, while towards the 
south - east it invades the whole of Adama wa , and is only limited by the 
nakedness of the pagan sansculottes, who do not wear clothing (1890 : 300)." 
Barth estimated Kano's cloth manufacturing exports to be worth at least 
24,000 pounds sterling. The internal and external trade in slaves was worth 
between one half and two - thirds this figure although by the end of the century 
it was considerably less. 
4. For a discussion of the concept of gandu which emphasises the various 
ambiguities in the way in which the term is used , see Wallace (1978). 
5. Lovejoy uses the term to refer to " •••• large - scale agriculture employing 
sla ve labor, often organised into gangs" (1979 : 1271). Other characteristics 
of plantation agriculture mentioned by Lovejoy include: use of slave overseers, 
farming of common fields for a master, division between large fields and 
small garden plots for slaves, division of labour- time between work for a 
master and work on private plots, and well - defined rights with regard to 
religion, marriage and other social practices. 
He considers these features were common to all plantation economies but 
is careful to note the differences between the Caliphate plantations and 
those found in the Americas. These include weaker and more regional -
centred market forces , lack of importance of racial differences between 
masters and slaves , greater possibilities for manumission , and more varied 
uses to which slaves were put . 
.1 
, . 
81. 
6. A number of assessment reports make it quite explicit that a high proportion 
of craftsmen were farmers. Thus, in Kura town, 2,000 dyers were counted 
all of whom were farmers (NAK SNP 7 2607/1909). In Zaria the acting 
Resident reported that outside of Zaria City , most artisans farmed and that 
they did not depend upon their crafts for a living (NAK SNP 7/10 4252/1909 : 
13). In Dutse District of Kano Emirate , the assistant Resident remarked: 
" • • •• out of a population of 26,000 odd adult males returned considerably 
more than a third (in addition to farming) all engaged in various industries 
and trades" (NAK SNP 7 2715/1911 : 25). Finally , in Burden Kereria sub -
district of Kano almost every household engaged in craft work also did 
farming. "There was only one instance found of a man solely engaged in 
business and not farming as well, he is a blacksmith" (NAK SNP 7 6969/1912 
: 3). 
7. Barth (1890 : 306) observed a brisk trade in European - made needles used 
for cotton and silk sewing. Red silky thread (Alharinj) from North Africa 
was also sold for weaving and sewing and was most likely used on higher-
priced cloths and clothing, including footwear. According to Shea (1976 
: 2), dyes were imported but accounted for a tiny proportion of dyes used 
in the local dyeing industry. The same applies to imported European cloths. 
8. The fact that women were mainly responsible for spinning is reported by 
many 19th century observers. See, for example , Imam Imoru's comments 
in Ferguson (1973 : 303), those of Clap pert on (Bovill, 1966: 658), Barth 
(1890 : 293) and Baba of Karo (Smith , 1954 : 54) . Assessment reports of 
the early 20th century also support such a view. However, here the evidence 
is indirect in that such reports contain no entries for spinning as only male 
occupations are considered. On other occupations where women made 
an important contribution, for example , mat making and potting , assessment 
report entries are either not made or contain few people , again suggesting 
that such crafts were done by women . For example , the 1911/12 Dutse 
District Assessment report remarks that mat and basketmaking and pottery 
were practised, yet in the tables provided there are no entries for potters 
and a total of only 55 basket makers. This is out of a total adult male 
population of 30,000. 
Both men and women did make pots. For example lmoru reported that the 
small water pot (d'an Tozo) was made by men (Ferguson , 1973 : 338) . 
City women made tunkunxa pots. , In Birnawa District of Kano women were 
the potters (NAK KANOPROF 279 , 1930). Nicolas reports that both men 
and women make pots in present - day Niger, the women specialising in 
Tukunya (Nicolas et. al. : 1968 : 89). Imoru also notes that in Kano City 
pot makers were called Bambad'awa and lived in Jingau ward . Women 
were largely responsible for making cooking and water pots. Meek (1971 , 
Vol. I: 163) , writing in the early 1920's, refers to the pot makers of Kano 
as the Bombadawa (sic), most of whom were women. According to him 
the Bambad'awa were a tribe of Katsina Fulani slaves who, besides potting, 
engaged in professional begging. In Kebbi women made malufa hats woven 
with dum - palm fronds. The circular mat (faifai) , used as a cover for 
containers, was also made by women (Ferguson, 1973 : 339- 340). The 
Birnawa report mentioned above lists faifai weaving as a female preserve. 
. '" 
I . . 
82. 
9. Shea (1976 : 1) suggests that women's vertical looms were introduced to 
Hausaland from the south during the 19th century . Why men have never 
taken up broad loom weaving is not known . See Lamb and Holmes (1980) 
for a description of women's weaving in Nigeria today. 
10. Sources of non - indigo dyes included: 
a. the bark (bawo) of the guinea - corn stalk (karan dafj) which provides 
a red dye "'U'SeCi in tanning and the dyeing of dum - palm fronds for mats 
and hats. 
b. Tumeric (gangomo) from which a yellow dye is extracted for use in 
tanning. 
c. The shrub Cochlospermum tinctorium(rawa ya) with yellow flowers. 
The root is used as a dye in cooking and also in dyeing of garments. 
For example the yellow turban is known as rawayan rawani and the 
yellow gown, rawayar riga. The author found this dye to be used today 
in the dyeing of thread for the horse saddle cover, jalala. 
d. sour milk, iron pieces and other metals arid salt mixed with other 
ingredients to make a blue - green dye. 
e. Striga senegalaensis , a red - floweredparastic weed (k'udujq mixed with 
water to produce a black dye. 
f. various types of cotton plant (auduga) from which red dyes are made 
for dyeing thread . 
g. Acacia arabica , an acacia shrub (gabaruwa) used for making a black 
dye (kuloko). 
For further discussion of sources of dyes see Shea (1975), Ferguson (1973) 
and Dalziel (191 6). For a general discussion of African dyeing techniques, 
see Polakoff (1982). 
11 . On Kano tin miners and mining and the destruction of this industry by 
European mining interests, see Freund (1981) . 
12. For a recent discussion of decorated gourds and their uses in northern 
Nigeria , see Chappell (1977). 
13. The following discussion is based largely on Lovejoy (1973) , Shea (1975) 
and Tahir (1975) . 
14. As Hogendorn notes: "Further fieldwork is necessary on differences in 
working conditions between small - scale slave operations and large- scale 
~!.!Jl!. [slave estatesJ operations. It is not clear from my field - work whether 
there was sufficient division of labour in large- scale operations so that 
significant economies of scale resulted (Hogendorn , 1977 : 373 , ft . 17). 
However, Lovejoy (1979 : 1287) argues that the market was not adequate 
enough for slaveholders to produce solely for sale. He goes on: " •••• the 
extent of market orientation was restricted , and the lack of economies of 
scale meant that independent peasants, often with a few slaves as field 
hands, competed for the same market." Indeed , many so - called plantations 
were highly fragmented both spatially and in terms of ownership. 
83. 
15. This is the view of Lovejoy( 1978 : 359). However, Hill (1977 : 9) argues 
that ruling class estates " •••• were usually diminuitive in size relative to 
that of their District." More work needs to be done on this issue. 
16. Kano's true population size during the 19th century will probably never be 
known. Below are estimates made by contemporary observers at various 
times during the century: 
TABLE 3.7 
Date: Estimated Population: Source: 
1824 30,000 - 40,000 Clapperton In Bovill 
( 1966). 
1851 30,000 - 60 ,000 Barth (1890). 
1891 50 ,000 - 60,000 Monteil (1895) 
1894 100,000 Robinson (1897). 
More recently, Frishman (1977) conSiders the population to have been above 
60,000 in 1903 and Hill (1977 : 3) gives a figure of between 60,000 and 
90,000 for the same period. 
17. Some of these oral traditions can be found in Fikaand Mahmud (n.d .), Bashir 
(1972), Chamberlin (1975), Lovejoy (1973) and Adamu (1968). See also 
Chapter VIII of the present work . 
18. For a history of the walls and gates of Kano , see Moody (1969). 
19. What proportion of 19th century Kano's craftsmen/trader population owned 
or otherwise had access to farms is not known. However, many of the 
city's wealthier merchants, ~and craftsmen owned rural estates worked 
by slaves, clients and disciples (Lovejoy : 1980; Tahir, 1975). Poor craftsmen 
and traders (both city-resident and immigrant) also farmed on a seasonal 
basis. According to the 1926 census, some dyers, most weavers, the majority 
of builders, many tanners and a few small wares traders engaged in farming. 
In the three wards of Soron D'inki , Hausawa and Yalwa studied by the author, 
some 38 per cent of the city - born paternal grandfathers and 43 per cent 
of maternal grandfathers of tailors currently working in these wards also 
farmed either as a secondary or primary occupation. A 1921 Kano City 
and Fagge assessment report classified the following types of occupational 
specialists as part farmer/part industrial workers: weavers, small tailors , 
calabash workers, shoemakers, carpenters, small leather workers, medicine 
sellers, small retail traders, cap makers, barbers , grass sellers, roof makers, 
bed makers, horse cloth makers, malams, clients and hangers- on of the 
aristocracy, some beggars, labourers, mattress makers, dyers' assistants, 
blacksmiths' assistants, and retail kola nut sellers (Kanoprof 4/7 82/1921). 
All of these, it should be added , were among the poorest sections of the 
city community. 
By the mid- 1940 's farm tax still represented 21 , 2.5, and 16 per cent of 
total tax collected in Fuskar Yamma, Kudu and Arewa respectively (Gidan 
Shatima/Lissafin Kud'in Sana'a da na Gona na Birnin Kano , 1946/1947). 
Furthermore, many city residents today continue to farm on family farms 
both inside and outside the city walls (see Chapter VIII). 
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20. For a more general discussion of the relationship between craft products 
and their aesthetic and other uses in symbolising political leadership in 
various African societies, see Fraser and Cole (1972). 
21. Interview (June, 1975) withM. Shehu , an 80 year- old trouser embroiderer 
in Soron O'inki. M. Shehu's grandfather was the son of Suleimanu, first 
Fulani emir of Kano. 
22. Monteil remarked on the sumptuous dress of the Hausa on his visit to the 
palace of the Emir of Kano in the late 19th century: 
84. 
Les gens sont sumptueusement vetus de pantalons et de boubous 
artistement brodes, par-dessus lesquels sont jetes de beaux manteaux 
de drap importes de la cote par les Arabes. Leur habillement est 
complete par un ehorme turban qui n'est pas sans etre quelque peu 
ridicule et dont la dimension marque I'importance du personage (Monteil , 
1895 : 275). 
In Zaria, Smith reports that in the past Emirs were obliged never to wear 
washed clothes, but to wear them for a week and give them away (Smith, 
1955 : 84). Hiskett (1966) provides a partial inheritance schedule of a 
senior Kano official in the late 19th century which includes over 150 garments. 
Most senior officials gave away large numbers of garments to subordinates 
and others in return for services rendered. Thus, at anyone time, such 
officials, including the Emir, might have owned far more clothing than they 
could use personally. · 
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85. 
CHAPTER IV 
. CRAFT RECRUITMENT! GUILDS AND THE · STA TE 
The vast majority of craft workers in the Hausa states, be they 
urban or rural, were drawn from the ranks of the subject population 
(talakawa) and most were settled agriculturalists who pursued craft work 
as an adjunct to farming. Craft recruitment and training took a number 
of forms but perhaps the most common method was the hereditary 
transmission of skills with male children being taught by their fathers, 
fathers' brothers, and other close kin. Female children acquired their 
craft skills in their natal homes from senior kinswomen or , when married, 
from co-wives and other female affines. It is also likely that some women 
were taught by husbands and other males. 
The emphasis upon the hereditary transmission of craft skills served 
the interests of household heads who were obliged to feed, clothe and 
provide other services to family members as well as meet any craft tax 
obligations imposed on local communities by the state. Under such 
conditions, it was important that family members be trained to contribute 
to overall family income. In this way , household heads could ensure the 
reproduction of the family unit and help prepare junior members to become 
household heads themselves once old enough to marry. Given the long 
period during which crop growing was impossible (except in those areas 
where water supplies permitted dry season (fadama) cultivation), and where 
households had to rely upon stored grains, the fact that junior kinsmen 
and kinswomen could practise one or more crafts went some way to 
reducing their demands for grain. To have trained unrelated persons in 
preference to kin would have jeopardized this basic household strategy. 
86. 
However, craft skills were neither transmitted exclusively along 
descent or kinship lines nor were they the sole preserve of free-born 
talakawa. Slaves, for example, who were extremely important as agri-
cultural workers within the Hausa regional economy, also participated a 
great deal in craft production (Meyers, 1971; Shea, 1975; Tahir, 1975; 
Hogendorn, 1977; Lovejoy, 1979). Some were recruited for this purpose. 
Thus, according to Tambo (1976 : 201), the Nupe-Hausa trade in slaves was 
" .... for the most part . . .. a specialised trade in persons skilled in 
weaving and other craftsll. Clapperton, a contemporary observer, noted 
that shuni, a type of dyed robe, was manufactured by Nupe slaves in Sokoto. 
He remarked that" .... [Nupe] men were considered the most expert 
weavers in the Soudan, and the women the best spinners" (Bovill, 1966 
702). Others acquired their skills in their eventual place of residence. 
Thus, according to elderly tailoring informants in Kano City , slave members 
of households were sometimes allowed to learn tailoring and worked for their 
masters who decided what work they should do. Dyers, too , are known 
to have used slaves in the production of dyed cloth, often in menial 
capacities (Shea, 1975 : 184). The major Kano City leather working families 
also used slaves as tanners, collectors of animal skins and selling agents 
(Tahir, 1975). 
Given the Islamic emphasis upon manumission, alloWing slaves to 
pursue craft occupations provided masters with a means by which slaves 
could earn sufficient income to purchase their freedom. As Imam Imoru, 
commenting upon the situation in late 19th century Hausaland, put it: 
A slave owner can make a slave work on a farm , or 
do some other type of work, or pay a tax called 
murgu. If he makes him pay the tax , it can be paid 
f: 
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~ · I 
I 
I 
daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. When he is 
planning to impose this tax he calls together people 
to discuss the matter: if the slave's occupation 
brings him money, a high tax is imposed on him; if 
it doesn't bring much money, he does not pay much 
tax (Ferguson, 1973 : 230). 
Hogendorn suggests that murgu payments to obtain freedom were 
87. 
more common where opportunities for craft work and trade were available 
as in Kano (Hogendorn, 1977 : 378). The economic returns to slave masters 
who encouraged or allowed self-purchase have been noted by Lovejoy (1979 
1291) who comments: 
By allowing them to produce crops on their own 
account and to engage in craft production and 
retail trading , the masters propelled the slaves 
into the market. This reduced obligations because 
the slaves became responsible for part of their 
upkeep, and it provided the master with a dividend 
in the form of a cash payment by the slave. 1 
On many rural estates owned by wealthier commoners; slave labour 
was used extensively in weaving and other crafts, the slaves often working 
side by side with freeborn members of the household. Who taught slaves 
to do craft work, assuming they did not already possess a craft skill , is 
unclear. Slaves on rural estates would not have been taught by their 
owners as the latter rarely, if ever , engaged in craft production themselves. 
It is likely that they learned from other slave members of the household, 
from fr eeborn junior household members or from other craft workers in the 
local area. It is possible that in some areas those slaves who became 
craftsmen and craftswomen were not first -generation slaves but had been 
born on the estate or farm. For example, Baba of Karo describes the craft 
88. 
work of slaves on a small rural estate in late 19th century Zazzau Emirate 
as follows: 
Some [slaves] wove on the men's narrow loom, some 
were brokers in the market, some were salt- sellers , 
some sold kola-nuts or sugar cane or sweet potatoes 
or cotton, or other things. Some were dyers, some 
grew onions or sugar cane in the marsh plots .... 
Those who did crafts had been born in therinji; 
sla ves who were bought in the market could not do 
anything except farming. If a slave had a son he 
would see a craftsman working, he would go and watch 
him and he would learn. (Smith, 1964 : 42). 
It is implied in this quotation that the slave father was not himself 
a craftsman which meant that his son was taught by someone else. One 
source (Ferguson, 1973 : 232) states that slaves were not allowed to do 
the same work as free persons, but th~re is no evidence to suggest that 
particular craft occupations were reserved exclusively for slaves. It is 
probable that the above comment refers to first -generation slaves, those 
born into slavery having greater freedom in their choice of work , other 
than farming, which was something the vast majority of people, free or 
slave, did 2 . 
Apart from slaves used in craft production on small farms, commoner 
estates and in the households of city-based craftsmen, many slave members 
of aristocratic households did tailoring of caps and trousers as a part- time 
activity. . Some tailors in such households were the off-spring of unions 
between freemen and slave concubines and enjoyed higher status than those 
who were the descendants of slave fathers and mothers. 
Besides slaves, freemen unrelated by ties of kinship to craftsmen 
were taught various skills. The practice of dry season migration (cin rani) 
' .' 
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89. 
by rural Hausa opened up new opportunities to people and thus increased 
their chances of acquiring skills not practised by their kin. Even a man 
who migrated to another town or region in order to do craft work taught 
to him within the domestic household would be open to new influences and 
might easily abandon his old craft altogether or adapt it to new conditions. 
One common type of dry season migration was that of young men 
seeking religious instruction 3. One way in which these migrants survived 
was to take up various types of work where ever they went. Tailoring, 
dyeing, farming and general labouring were favoured activities in this respect. 
Thus, one dyeing centre in Kano City is said to have been established by a 
malam in order to provide work for his students (Shea, 1976 : 8-9). These 
students may have been dyers prior to becoming attached to the malam in 
question, but it is possible that some took up dyeing because of the 
opportunity presented to them. Many malams were skilled embroiderers and 
students picked up tailoring skills while being taught. The embroiderer-
scholar mentioned earlier (see page 75) is known to have trained his 
students as tailors, their ties to him being based on religion rather than 
blood. 
An important factor accounting for recruitment of labour on grounds 
other than kinship appears to have been the extent to which a craftsman 
or merchant was involved in market production. Where they supplied a 
large and expanding market , pressures were placed on the operating unit 
which necessitated the use of labour drawn from a wider network than 
that of kinship. The labour involved might include piece-rate workers 
working directly under the entrepreneur, independent producers who were 
supplied with materials on a putting-out basis, slaves or apprentices. Where 
a craftsman worked to small orders and where demand was low, on the " • 
". 
90. 
other hand, he had little incentive to train people other than his kin. 
Outside craft production, among merchants , long-distance traders 
and caravan leaders who had extensive trading connections throughout the 
region, employment of non-kin was common in ensuring the success of 
trading ventures. In some cases, non-kin were given more responsible roles 
to perform than kin. Trusted slaves (yardedde), for example, were sometimes 
key men in the chain of trading operations and were able to trade on their 
own account , build up their own networks of clients and eventually become 
merchants themselves (Tahir, 1975 : 284). The organisation of the business 
was something like a corporation with avenues of mobility open to a wide 
range of "corporate members". Ascription, in the sense of merchants 
selecting pre-defined categories of people to fulfil various functions, was 
a key mechanism of recruitment, but this was not entirely based upon some 
form of automatic right of linea l descendants to inherit any particular 
position. 
If a man used persons other than kin to run key parts of an operation, 
the direct lineal descendants of that man may have been in no position to take 
over the running of the business upon the owner's death or retirement, even 
if they formally inherited the "company". Often the merchant would keep 
much of the information about trading affairs to himself. The failure to 
prepare a new set of recruits to take over the total affairs of the business 
must have been one factor accounting for the disintegration of many trading 
ventures after one generation (Tahir; 1975). Furthermore , where a man had 
many sons, he may have trained only one of them to run a business, often 
that son being his first and eldest. Younger sons may have been too young 
to learn anything about their father's business and thus would have to rely 
on either the eldest son or leave the enterprise altogether. The Islamic 
',: 
.1 
," 
., 
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90. 
other hand, he had little incentive to train people other than his kin. 
Outside craft production, among merchants , long-distance traders 
and caravan leaders who had extensive trading connections throughout the 
region, employment of non-kin was common in ensuring the success of 
trading ventures. In some cases, non-kin were given more responsible roles 
to perform than kin. Trusted slaves (yardedde), for example, were sometimes 
key men in the chain of trading operations and were able to trade on their 
own account, build up their Qwn networks of clients and eventually become 
-
merchants themselves (Tahir, 1975 : 284). The organisation of the business 
was something like a corporation with avenues of mobility open to a wide 
range of "corporate members". Ascription , in the sense of merchants 
selecting pre-defined categories of people to fulfil various functions, was 
a key mechanism of recruitment, but this was not entirely based upon some 
form of automatic right of linea l descendants to inherit any particular 
position. 
If a man used persons other than kin to run key parts of an operation, 
the direct lineal descendants of that man may have been in no position to take 
," 
over the running of the business upon the owner's death or retirement, even 
if they formally inherited the "company". Often the merchant would keep 
much of the information about trading affairs to himself. The failure to .. 
prepare a new set of recruits to take over the total affairs of the business 
must have been one factor accounting for the disintegration of many trading 
ventures after one generation (Tahir; 1975). Furthermore, where a man had 
many sons, he may have trained only one of them to run a business, often 
that son being his first and eldest. Younger sons may have been too young 
to learn anything about their father's business and thus would have to rely 
on either the eldest son or leave the enterprise altogether. The Islamic 
" 
91. 
ideal and practice of marrying four wives must have meant many children 
were too young to be trained to follow in their father's footsteps. 
Of the three trading communities which dominated the kola trade in 
19th century Kano, only one used the principle of inheritance by a son or 
grandson to fill the top position of caravan leader (madugu). As Lovejoy 
notes: 
All other madugai achieved their positions because 
of personal skills. A man had to be a successful 
merchant, but, more important, the other traders 
had to recognise the man's leadership potential 
and promote his candidacy. (Lovejoy, 1973b : 645 -646). 
In the case of these kola trading communities, a certain principle of 
ascription operated - that of asali - which " • . . • indicated a state or 
town or origin or an historical event or process with which a person's 
ancestors identified" (Lovejoy, 1980 : 20). Within these quite large 
categories of people who imposed a sort of intra- Hausa ethnic monopoly on 
the trade, there was much room for achievement and personal mobility. 
Under some circumstances, craftsmen attempted to restrict access to 
craft skills connected to the production of particular lines of products. 
Thus, in both Yalwa and Soron D'inki wards in the 19th century when 
Eastern-Style garments and imported saddle covers began to be produced 
by local tailors , production sometimes took place behind closed doors as 
tailors attempted to preserve for themselves knowledge of the new styles. 
However, this fear of competition, common during the early stages of the 
development of commodity production (Lenin, 1960 : 335-337), and the attempt 
to fend off potential competitors was short- lived as other tailors began 
to copy the new lines. Without legal protection from the state or the 
ability to control supplies of essential raw materials , this temporary advantage 
92. 
gave way to more generalised commodity production. 
With regard to tailoring, that it was a relatively open occupation 
in late pre-colonial times is attested to by many Kano City tailors. On 
the one hand, some elderly informants endorsed the view that much tailoring 
took place within the confines of the family. Thus, an 80 year old tailor 
in Yalwa, who came from one of the oldest established tailoring families in 
the ward, remarked: 
Yes, they (tailors) preferred to teach relatives. 
Because of the kind of work we did in those days a 
man would go into a room so no one would see and 
learn, except your children or your relatives. At 
that time, people hid their jalala or alkyabba, they 
hid everything. 
Another elderly informant in the same ward said: 
Our parents taught us, they gave us food, they made 
us clothes, they did everything for us. On our part, 
if we became 'qualified' somebody would bring us some 
tailoring work and pay us commission. We would 
accept this and so be able to eat. 
Yet another, in Soron D'inki, remarked: 
•••• if your father was qualified at something, you 
were too .••. 
However, all informants agreed that there were no formal restrictions 
upon people becoming tailors. Some expressed the ideal that teaching one's 
children one's own craft was a good thing, but when pressed said that in 
fact some children were no good at tailoring and thus it was better for 
them to do something else. For example, an old jalala maker in Soron D'inki 
stated that he did not give preference to his own children, although he had , 
'. 
taught them his work. He put it this way: 
You learn by doing. If you have skill (fasaha) and 
if you have insight (basira), those who want to learn 
will learn. There is no preference for family. Many 
can't do it [his particular type of work]. No one is 
prevented from learning. 
93. 
I have mentioned the common practice of acquiring craft skills while 
engaging in religious learning t although it should be noted that those who 
came to be taught the Kuran or other holy books did not automatically 
become tailors (or whatever the craft may have been) nor did those who 
learned a craft have to be disciplies. One trouser embroiderer described 
to me the way in which he came to learn his work: 
I learned here in this house [the house of an important 
liman who was unrelated to the informant]. My malam 
taught me. He was a teacher of religion, both the 
Kuran and other books. One did not say one was 
teaching tailoring, come and be taught. Rather, you 
would (as a student) see sewing being done all the time, 
until you too could sew. 
Another elderly jalala maker who had originally started as a cap 
maker said he learnt cap making by sitting with a group of cap makers who 
let him copy what they were doing. He pointed out that he had not been 
asked specifically to join them nor was he sent by his father. He was 
given a needle and some old cloth from his family home, but there was 
no special agreement between the father and any particular tailor to teach 
him. 
Cap making was probably the most open of all the different types of 
tailoring that a person might do. In other instances, fathers did send their 
sons to tailors they knew to be taught. A boy living in a particular ward, 
\ ' 
' ) 
, I 
':" 
! 
94. 
where his family was probably known by craftsmen resident there , would 
hang around a group of tailors and express an interest in learning. During 
this preliminary inter-change the tailors would find out about his family 
background and would take this into consideration. However, there was 
no formal initiation into an apprenticeship and no fees were paid , although 
a few kola nuts might be exchanged. . No set period existed for training and 
instruction took the form of learning by doing with old bits of cloth, slowly .' 
progressing to simple embroidery work on cheaper garments until an appren-
tice could do a wide range of work. In the words of one Soron D'inki 
jalala maker: J 
...• if there are tailors here , learners will come here 
to learn. If its jalala they are learning, the first 
thing they learn is bud'in geza [hand weaving of jalala 
edging], they then learn bosoruwa [jalala made of rag 
cloth pieces]; if he can do that then he will be bought 
a good doro [jalala centre piece] to sew. 
An elderly trouser embroiderer said: 
I learned through watching because all the time people 
were sewing. , If I made a mistake the one who knew how 
to do the work would correct my mistake. 
On the question of pa.yment, the difference between the Hausa and 
other peoples was put in this way: 
Here, people come to learn but in the East [of Nigeria] 
its expensive to learn as a man must pay before he is 
taught and pay after he is taught. But for us here 
one is taught for free. 
Other scholars have noted that in craft occupations such as black-
smithing and dyeing methods of training were relatively informal with no 
" 
,., 
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. ~ , \ 
95. 
fee payments or formal ceremonies to mark entry into and exit from the 
period of apprenticeship. Even among blacksmiths, often regarded as the 
quintessentially inherited craft occupation, non- kin were never excluded 
from acquiring craft skills (Shea, 1975; Jaggar, 1973, 1978). 
Where the level of skill required in a craft necessitated a long period 
of association between novice and master and where the capital costs of 
setting up and maintaining production were high, craftsmen were in a better 
position to exercise control over who did or did not enter the profession., 
Thus, among dyers who owned dye pits and among blacksmiths who used 
anvils, bellows, hammers and other tools, the craft producers could limit 
access to their respective crafts. ' In the case of dye pit owners producing 
for the export trade , there would appear to have been the growth of a "1 h 
limited number of wage labouring dyers who submitted themselves to dye 
pit owners in order to obtain work. Among jalala makers in Soron D'inki 
'0 
towards the end of the last century, piece-rate working was common as 
',~ 
those without cloth and no access to big buyers found it convenient to 
work on a putting-out basis for local horse trappings dealers, a number of 
whom had themselves been purely craft workers at one time. Total sub-
ordination to trading-cum-putting out intermediaries was, however , uncommon 
as many jalala makers continued to work on anartisanal basis using very u' 
poor quality cloth and thread. 
The most open occupations in Kano Emirate, such as rope-making, 
cala bash repairing and spinning, did not require a great deal of skill, were 
poorly remunerated and did not involve much capital outlay on the part of 
the individual worker. In addition, the raw materials for these occupations 
were readily available with the main customers being local people whose 
purchasing power was limited. In the case of spinning , production was 
96. 
dominated by women who bought small amounts of cotton or grew cotton 
on family farms. Spinning required a great amount of effort for a limited 
output, using a technology no more advanced than the simple hand spindle. 
In fact, given the low level of technology in spinning, without a very large 
labour force of spinners, supplies of thread to weavers would have been 
restricted. This accounts to some extent for the wide diffusion of spinning 
skills among rural and urban households in 19th century Kano. Although 
some men did a little spinning, it was generally regarded as women's work 
largely because the returns from it were so low no man would consider 
taking the craft up as either a primary or secondary occupation. 
The level of co-operation required for the production of craft goods 
was another factor which influenced the degree to which a craft activity 
would be closed or open. For example, high quality cloth beating of dyed 
cloths for the export trade involved co-operation among a number of men 
who had to master the art of using heavy mallets. Working in unison in 
order to meet orders and to provide a spur to productivity, these craftsmen 
were more efficient than a person working alone. Furthermore, cloth 
beating required access to a beating tree upon which cloth was laid, and 
to carved mallets to carry out the beating process. Given the necessity of 
using such capital equipment, the location of this craft was usually fixed 
which meant that a single beater could not simply decide to practise the 
craft where ever he wished. In fact , ther e were few cloth beating centres, 
compared to dyeing, largely because it was only at such centres, mainly 
oriented to the export trade, where sufficient work could be provided to 
warrant a specialised group of cloth beaters. Where dyers were meeting 
purely local needs, any beating involved was done by the dyers themselves 
using a stone or other heavy object. 
97. 
The emphasis upon co-operation and the necessity of working with 
others who could be trusted allowed those who controlled the means of 
production to determine who would be trained. Among blacksmiths too, 
a certain level of co-operation was required on many types of smithing 
work and this probably played a role in limiting access to outsiders. 
Of course, other craft occupations of a relatively open nature did 
involve cooperation. For example , tailoring work could be divided between 
a man and his sons with the latter sewing cloth strips together while the 
former did embroidery work It. However, the individual tailor had much 
greater freedom to practise his craft alone as all he needed was a certain 
level of skill and, as one tailor put it to me, a degree of youthfulness 
(K'uruciya), a needle or two and perhaps some thread. Fur~hermore , he 
would not necessarily have had to learn embroidery as he could earn a 
small inco"me from making-up clothes. Indeed, most Kano people wore 
clothing with little or no embroidery and few tailors could rely upon a 
constant or secure market for embroidered garments. 
The lack of heavy capital equipment and the ability to work on 
an individual basis also gave the tailor the freedom to work in diverse 
locations 5. 
The tendency towards occupational closure was enhanced where 
craftsmen were able to become the clients of members of the ruling class. 
Luxury items, such as lavishly embroidered gowns and trousers, horse 
trappings and the like, and weapons of war were in great demand at court 
and some groups of craftworkers, largely uuban-based, were able to secure 
for themselves privileged access to the state. The wealth and status which 
accrued to these craft producers provided them with an incentive to control, 
if not exclude, potential competitors. I shall have more to say about this 
.. 
~ .:, 
98. 
later when I examine the question of Hausa guilds. 
It is suggested by some writers (Smith, 1959; Nicolas, 1975) that 
inherited occupations (variously referred to as gado, ~, and gargajiya) 
were more highly regarded than those which were freely chosen (referred 
to as shigege or katsiro). However; it is clear that the distinction between 
gado and shigege applied largely within already ' established status categories. 
Thus, members of the ruling class, whether by birth, appointment or personal 
achievement, enjoyed much higher social and political standing than commoners. 
Furthermore, among commoners, wealthy merchants, caravan leaders and long-
distance traders, be they self-made men or the sons of the already successful, 
were more highly regarded than farmers and most craftsmen. Despite what 
some have argued (Smith, 1959; Low, 1972; Nicholas, 1975), among craft 
workers it was not always the case that hereditary craft occupations were 
ranked more highly than those acquired on other grounds. For example, some 
occupations, notably butchering and certain categories of musician, were 
regarded as polluting, unclean or involved certain practices which conflicted 
with Islamic norms and Hausa custom 6 • 
Butchers, although key persons in the life of a community, often 
quite wealthy by local standards, and traditionally associated with the 
founding of market places, were thought to be unclean and irreligious in 
so far as they dealt with the flesh of animals in an un-Islamic way. Although 
there are no accounts of butchers from Kano Emirate, Nicolas provides 
some interesting observations on the ambiguous status of butchers among the 
Niger Hausa: 
L'activite du 'boucher' qui parodie l'acte 
sacrificiel, apparalt c'omme une practique en 
quelque sorte 'contre-rituelle', car il manie le 
.' 
I: 
, 
, , 
· .' 
· . 
· . 
sang et la chair de fausses victimes, detournees 
de la voie sacrificielle , et ne sert les dieux , qui 
se rassemblent autour du lieu d'abbatage , que de 
mariiere meprisante: en leur abandonnant seulement 
des restes, et non en leur offrant leur nourriture 
avec respect. (Nicolas, 1975 : 426). 
The low respect accorded butchers, reinforced by the belief that 
they possessed magical powers which enhanced the feelings of awe with 
which they were viewed, translated itself into an unwillingness on the 
part of many parents to allow their children to enter the profession or 
let their daughters marry into butcher families. 
99. 
Some musicians acquired their low status through acting as clients 
of butchers and hunters or through their connection with non-Muslim ~ 
spirit possession cults, cults which were denigrated by pious Muslims as 
pagan (Ames, 1973). 
Musicians were often looked down on for other reasons. They were 
thought to possess a weak character because they had to solicit in order 
to earn a living. As they depended upon the largesse of others, they were 
compared with women who held an inferior position in society. Some 
musicians were feared because they were able to diminish a man's status 
through reference to . his cha racter in song. . In Ha usa society , where a 
man's status was judged in part by his generosity, praise singers were in a 
position to abuse people in public if they did not reward their services 
well enough on public occasions, such as marriage, when they performed. 
The denigration of particular occupations could result in financial 
benefits for their practitioners. On the one hand, their services were 
highly valued in the community while , on the other, they were stigmatised 
by some or all members of the community. The effect of the latter would 
,' , 
. 
. . 
-I 
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• 
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100. 
have been to discourage people taking up such work as a vocation, an 
attitude probably encouraged by the craftsmen concerned in order to 
ensure their scarcity value, to increse their control over who entered their 
ranks and so to increase the profitability of their work. 
These few remarks on butchers and musicians suggest that more than 
one set of standards of right conduct operated in Kano Hausa communities 
during the 19th century. At this time, an Islamic ruling class and its 
supporters, particularly the Muslim clergy, encouraged people to convert to 
Islam. In so doing they discouraged many practices regarded as non-Islamic. 
One way of going about this task was to down-grade those occupations 
which appeared to exhibit characteristics closely associated with the 
traditional religion, regardless of whether such occupations were hereditary-
or not. Butchers, some musicians and, to a lesser extent, blacksmiths and 
tanners were prime targets in this respect. Yet, for those who clung to 
their traditional beliefs such craftsmen were not only essential to the 
material existence of their communities but symbolic carriers of some of 
the central values of the society, values which provided a meaning to life. 
For these reasons, they are likely to have enjoyed a much higher status 
than Muslim propaganda would have us believe 7 • 
From the discussion in this and previous chapters it can be seen 
that much craft production took place within relatively small-scale domestic 
groupings where goods were ,manufactured or processed largely for use 
with some proportion of total output finding its way into more extensive 
exchange networks controlled by merchant capital. In addition, there 
existed rural estates utilising large numbers of slaves who produced craft 
and other commodities pal"tly , but not wholly , for export. Finally, under 
certain conditions there grew up specialised centres of craft production, 
.1 
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,,' 
101. 
largely devoted to dyed cloth and clothing exports , where production units 
transcended the limits of the family farm and involved the use of slave 
and free wage labour as well as the kin of those who controlled the means 
of production. 
Most of this craft production took place outside the capital cities 
away from the seats of political power although the state appropriated 
part of the surplus product through tribute, monetary taxes and compulsory 
labour services which were rendered on ruling class farms and estates or 
organised by craft officials acting as agents of the sarakuna, and ~ 
sarauta. In few instances did the state provide these craft officials, 
or any other groups of craft workers, with a permanent official monopoly 
in the production of particular goods. Furthermore , although the evidence 
is fragmentary and the subject requires further historical examination , it 
appears' unlikely that private groups of craft workers developed trans-
familial and supra-kin-based guild structures which incorporated the bulk 
of producers specialising in a particular branch or branches of industry. 
This latter conclusion may appear surprising in view of the oft-
repeated assertion (Hopkins, 1973; Onokerhoraye, 1977; Paden, 1973) that 
most crafts in West Africa, including Hausaland, were guild-organised. 
However, Smith, in his work on the Zazzau Hausa, remarks: 
• ••• an exhaustive study of craft processes and 
organization has failed to discover any traces of 
guild structure. . •. (Smith, 1955 : 9). 
Shea, the main authority on Kano dyers , concludes that dyers did 
not have any organisation which could be called a guild and that access 
to the craft was relatively open '(Shea, 1975: 72). My own work on Kano 
tailors failed to reveal any evidence of guild organization. There were no '; . 
102. 
tailoring officials in either the rural or urban areas , no formally constituted 
trans-familial associations of tailors existed, and there were no craft-wide 
regulations concerning entrance requirements , periods of training, and 
control of tools, prices , wages, and working hours. In Kano Emirate, only 
Jaggar has detected the existence of anything like a guild structure among 
Kano City blacksmiths. 
Jaggar compared the situation of Kano City smiths with that of 
Nupe smiths described by Nadel. Nadel argues that Nupe smiths (along 
with certain other craftsmen) possessed guildlike structures. He remarks 
that: 
These crafts. . .• present a picture closely resembling 
the organization of craft-guilds in Imperial Rome and 
the Middle-Ages. (Nadel , 1942 : 257). 
In his reference to Rome and Medieval Europe, two different kinds 
of guilds are being considel"ed. European craft guilds were, according to 
Pirenne, " ...• privileged groups of artisans endowed with the exclusive 
right to practise a certain profession in accordance with regulations laid 
down by public authorities" (Pirenne, 1932 : 211). The emphasis upon 
exclusive right is mirrored in Postan's view of the medieval guild as 
" • • .. The chosen instrument of the monopoly (of local trade)" (Postan, 
1975 : 241). He\goes on to say that besides the enforcement of a local 
monopoly and the protection of guild members' rights, medieval guilds also 
controlled prices, the quality of products made and employment conditions. 
The social functions of guilds were , in Postan's view, of minor importance. 
Thrupp emphasises that guilds functioned best in what she calls" . . •• towns 
of middling siz e • .• • " (Thrupp, 1965 : 230), that is, towns with between 
10,000 and 30,000 people. According to her , such towns " • • . • lived 
103. 
mainly from industry for local consumption, with some admixture of trade. 
This environment offered more scope for specialised skill than did the little 
rustic towns. At the same time, demand remained more stable than in 
ports and manufacturing centres dependent on markets and sources of supply 
. that were under foreign political control and far distant". (Thrupp, 1965 : 
230-231). 
In contrast, Finley has argued that in ancient Rome there were no 
guilds comparable with those found in Medieval Europe. He regards the 
Roman collegia (a term which, according to Finley, is mistranslated as 
"guild") as playing: 
••.. an important part in the social and religious life 
of the lower classes, both free and slave; they sometimes 
performed benevolent functions, as in financing burials; 
they never became regulatory or protective agencies in 
their respective trades, and that, of course, was the 
raison d'etre of the genuine guilds, medieval and modern. 
(F inley, 1973 : 138). 
Burford supports this view in referring to ·Romah collegia as cult 
organizations serving largely social ends (Burford, 1973 : 160). In this 
regard they were not unlike many voluntary associations in modern West 
African cities which finance burials or provide financial assistance in times 
of need. 
Nadel's work on Nupe guilds tends to concentrate upon their regu-
latory functions and so his description comes closest to that of medieval 
guilds. Like medieval guilds, most Nupe craft guilds were city-based. 
Among the characteristics which gave certain Nupe crafts their guild-like 
structure are: 
" 
103. 
mainly from industry for local consumption, with some admixture of trade. 
This environment offered more scope for specialised skill than did the little 
rustic towns. At the same time, demand remained more stable than in 
ports and manufacturing centres dependent on markets and sources of supply 
that were under foreign political control and far distant". (Thrupp, 1965 : 
230- 231). 
In contrast , Finley has argued that in ancient Rome there were no 
guilds comparable with those found in Medieval Europe. He regards the 
Roman collegia (a term which, according to Finley, is mistranslated as 
"guild") as playing: 
•••. an important part in the social and religious life 
of the lower classes, both free and slave; they sometimes 
performed benevolent functions, as in financing burials; 
they never became regulatory or protective agencies in 
their respective trades, and that , of course, was the 
raison d'etre of the genuine guilds, medieval and modern. 
(Finley, 1973 : 138). 
Burford supports this view in referring to Romah collegia as cult 
organizations serving largely social ends (Burford, 1973 : 160). In this 
regard they were not unlike many voluntary associations in modern West 
African cities which finance burials or provide financial assistance in times 
of need. 
Nadel's work on Nupe guilds tends to concentrate upon their regu-
latory functions and so his description comes closest to that of medieval 
guilds. Like medieval guilds, most Nupe craft guilds were city-based. 
Among the characteristics which gave certain Nupe crafts their guild-like 
structure are: 
1. Closed membership, usually hereditary in particular 
families. 
2. Outsiders can join only through formal adoption and 
through taking an apprenticeship. 
3. The craft is centrally controlled and has a hierarchy 
of ranks and grades. 
4. Politically, the craft is officially recognised and 
derives certain social and political privileges from 
the court. 
Nadel further points out that blacksmiths were the most guild-
104. 
organised of all Nupe crafts. Jaggar (1973) contrasts the situation of Nupe 
smiths with those in Kano City. He concludes that Kano smiths were not 
a closed group and always accepted outsiders into the craft , did not have 
any formal apprenticeship and adoption procedures, did not exercise the 
same degree of political control over others as the Nupe did , and had very 
little influence at court. He notes further that Kano smiths did not 
regularly cooperate in production. Rather , after meeting certain orders 
from the court, they split up into separate groups and worked independently 
of each other. There were graded ranks of craft officials who enjoyed 
special privileges not available to others , but these officials were low-level 
state functionaries. 
The discussion so far suggests that a number of distinctions must be 
kept in mind when examining guilds. Historically; there have been organ-
izations or associations which functioned largely as self-help agencies 
performing social functions, economic associations of a private character 
concerned with regulation and protection of association members' trade 
and craft privileges, and organizations which have acted as arms of the 
state serving its particular needs. 
" 
'" 
" 
". 
" , 
: . 
105. 
In my view, in 19th century Kano Emirate there were no exclusively 
craft- based associations serving either social or regulatory functions akin to 
Roman collegia or Medieval guilds. Of course, craftsmen co-operated with 
each other, but this was done on family , neighbourhood, and other informal 
grounds 8. In rural areas, where most craft workers lived, the population 
was often widely scattered in dispersed hamlets and it is very unlikely 
that there existed sufficient concentrations otpeople to provide the basis 
for any kind of craft-based self-help group or regulatory agency. Any 
such co-operation would be more likely in larger, more densely populated 
settlements such as Kano City. However, as already stated , formal 
organizations serving co-operative functions were generally absent. For 
the most part, craftsmen attempted to ensure for themselves a share of 
the market through cultivating personal links with customers, becoming 
clients of the wealthy, including merchant suppliers of cloth and other 
raw materials, or attempting to combine production with merchandising 
through buying up small amounts of raw materials and putting out work 
. to others. Furthermore, many craftsmen were purely pa rt- time workers 
who did not rely upon their craft for a livelihood. This militated against 
the creation of craftsmen's associations which might have acted as the 
,sole means of distributing work to members. 
The one area in which something like a formal organization of 
craftsmen existed was in the state-controlled system of tribute collection. 
Practically every emirate in the Caliphate had craft officials although not 
all crafts, notably tailoring, were subject to their authority (Smith , 1955, 
1960, 1978; Low , 1972; Ferguson, 1973; Aliyu,1974; Usman, 1974; 
Nicolas, 1975; Freund, 1981). However , these officia ls were vertically 
integrated into the state and acted as bureaucratised tax collectors and 
organisers of compulsory work groups for the emirate authorities and not 
" 
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., 
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106. 
as relatively autonomous producers who were powerful enough (or granted 
the right) to limit competition from other producers (both rural and urban) 
and immigrants, enforce quality standards across the board and restrict 
technological innovation, as was the case in Medieval Europe. Rather, 
the perquisites of office (in the form of freedom from tax and the right 
, , 
to appropriate part of the tribute) enjoyed by craft officials, the large 
number of craft specialisations in the city, and, perhaps, the considerable '" 
economic power and political influence which lay in the hands of merchant 
capital militated against urban craftsmen joining together to act as an 
autonomous centre of power independent of the state. In this respect, 
" 
they were not unlike the urgan Maghrebin craftsmen who, according to 
Stambouli and Zghan (1976 : 10) were " •••. devoid of autonomous economic 
institutions under their own exclusive control •• .• " and who " •••• remained 
in a condition of dependence on the state". ,I 
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NOTES TO CHAPTER IV 
1. This cash payment was also an important means by which masters could 
purchase new slaves and so perpetuate the slave system. Freed slaves also 
acted as a buffer stra tum (Lovejoy, 1981 : 235) between masters and other 
slaves as they often continued in a relationship of subordination to former 
masters, acting as "spies" and reporting on recalcitrant slave behaviour. One 
subject requiring further investigation is that of slave opposition to their 
subordinate status. Lovejoy (1981) suggests that the worst conditions for 
slaves were on merchant estates and that the newly enslaved were often 
treated badly. He comments that some tried to escape, others rebelled while 
others protested against the conditions under which they worked by "working 
to rule". However, there is little evidence of major slave revolts and Lovejoy 
cites only one example. 
2. The Hausa drew a broad distinction between recently enslaved persons (baXj) 
and those born into slavery (cucanawa or dimajaj). The latter were generally 
accorded more rights and greater protection (for example , against re - sale) 
than bayi as they were acculturated into the Hausa way of life. Bayi were 
. usually pagan without established ties in the community . 
3. Such persons were (and are) referred to as almajirai or gardawa. For a 
discussion of religious education in 19th century Kano, see Chamberlin (1975) . 
4. Many women also engaqed in cloth - strip joining (d'inkin tsaba). Another 
cooperative practice among tailors involved a division of work between 
embroiderers skilled in different aspects of embroidery . For example, one 
might do ciko stitching while another would do the sirfani work on such motifs 
as the baka (bow) or tambari (drum). -
5. This was clearly of some advantage to itinerant malamai and accounts, in 
part, for the popularity of tailoring among them. 
6. Butchers in some areas were accorded low status because they were slaves 
or of slave descent (Smith , 1959, 1978). There is some divergence of Views, 
not to say confusion , in the literature over the question of which occupations 
were hereditary or more open in their pattern of recruitment. For example, 
Low concludes that many craft occ upations in Hadejia, Katagum and Kazaure 
were hereditary in the late 19th century and also erijoyed more prestige than 
others. Yet , his own data do not entirely support this conclusion. Leaving 
aside ruling class pOSitions, of the occupations ranked in terms of prestige 
by elderly informants, at least fifty per cent of the top twelve in all three 
emirates were not hereditary . In Katagum and Hadejia , four of the five top 
occupations were classified by informants as open . Smith , speaking about 
Zazzau, placed butchers at the bottom of the prestige hierarchy which, 
according to his own criteria , would suggest butchering was not hereditary . 
In fact, he classifies this occupation as hereditary . Low places butchers 
close to the top of the prestige hierarchy in two of the emirates he studies 
and in the middle in the remaining one. According to him, butchering was 
regarded as an hereditary occupation in all three emirates. 
There is further variation with regard to certain other occupations. For 
example, Low classifies cloth beating as an open occupation whereas Shea, 
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108. 
although not firmly committing himself on this point, speaks of cloth beating 
as remaining within particular families. On the other hand, Shea considers 
dyeing as a more open occupation than cloth beating but Low comes to the 
opposite conclusion. I have suggested in the text why some occupations 
may have become more or less open and enjoyed greater or lesser prestige. 
In addition, the hereditary principle may have served the interests of the ruling 
classes whose own claim to legitimacy was based to some degree on ethnicity 
and, by extension, kinship. Encouraging commoners to aspire above their 
station might have been perceived as a threat to that legitimacy. However, 
expanding trading opportunities and changes in the conditions of production 
in relation to some craft occupations probably put pressures on this principle. 
There needs to be more work done on the material conditions within and between 
emirates which shaped the ideological responses of different interest groups, 
e.g., traders, craftsmen and office-holders, to their pOSitions within the social 
structure. 
7. The relationship between muslims and non - muslims at the local village level 
during the 19th century needs much more investigation. Substantial 
. proportions of the talakawa,particularly farmers and poorer craftsmen , were 
pagan at this time and their opportunities for advancement into more lucrative 
occupations such as long - distance trading were restricted by their non - muslim 
identity. Last (1979 : 239-241) remarks that non- muslim traders had to convert 
to maintain or increase their trading activities because expansion necessitated 
the cultivation of networks of religious ties. The advantages and disadvantages 
of conversion for non - muslims living within the emirates are examined by 
Greenberg (1946) and Last (1979). As late as 1952 there were still many 
non-muslims residing in Hausaland (Clarker,' 1982 : 220). Although many 
of these were Immigrant southerners who had moved north during the colonial 
period, there were also pagan communities of indigenes, both Hausa and non -
Hausa. 
8. Sufi brotherhoods may also have played an integrative role for some craftsmen 
but such brotherhoods were never exclusively organised around particular 
occupations. On suflsm in Kano, see Paden (1973). 
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CHAPTER V 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF CRAFT PRODUCTION IN 
KANO EMIRATE DURING THE 20TH CENTURY WITH 
PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO TAILORING 
Prior to the imposition of British rule in 1903, Kano Emirate (and 
the rest of the Caliphate) was relatively autonomous from developments 
outside the region. As a consequence of this, local crafts enjoyed a certain 
degree of protection from competing products from outside. Admittedly, 
some products and raw materials from North Africa and Europe did filter 
into the economy over the course of the 19th century, particularly during 
its last 30 years (Johnson, 1976), but for the most part they formed a very 
small proportion of the total amount of products and raw materials consumed 
by the emirate's population. Furthermore, the bulk of these imports were 
consumed by the rich and powerful (always a minority in the society) who 
could afford them. In the case of textile products, one observer noted 
in 1907: 
I estimate that not more than two percent of the 
clothes worn by the natives . • • • are of European 
manufacture. (Birtwistle, 1907. 08 : 90). 
However, with the British conquest of the Hausa states I, power 
was transferred from the Caliphal authority and its representatives in the 
emirates to the British. This development laid the basis for the trans-
formation of Hausaland from a region of little importance in the eyes of 
the western, particularly British, Imperial powers to one which was to play 
a specific role as a peripheral region in the world capitalist economy. 
The incorporation of Hausaland into this world economy was initially 
mediated by the British colonial authorities who envisaged Nigeria (of which 
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110. 
Hausaland eventually became a part} as a supplier of raw materials for 
British industry and as a market for metropolitan-produced manufactured 
commodities 2. ' In this regard, the British were successful and by the 1940's 
Nigeria had taken on all the characteristics of a raw materials export 
economy within the traditional international division of labour 3 • 
The role of Nigeria as a supplier of raw materials, particularly 
groundnuts, cocoa and oil palm products, continued up to the 1960's when 
petroleum began to be extracted in increasing quantities It . Today, Nigeria's 
main export is oil and agricultural exports are of much smaller significance. 
However, even though the main source of export earnings has shifted, Nigeria 
still retains its position as a raw materials export-oriented economy. The 
post- second world war development of a domestic manufacturing sector 
has not altered this as such manufacturing accounts for a low percentage of 
G.D.P. (about 11 .7 per cent in 1976-7) and is largely based on import- substit-
ution rather than production for export 5 (Kirk-Greene and Rimmer , 1981 : 
97-107). 
Within Nigeria, Hausaland in general and Kano in particular were 
originally seen by some members of the colonial elite and certain metro-
politan manufacturing interests as potential areas of cotton production 
to supply British textile mills which , since the 1870's, had to face competition 
from other industrial producers and needed both markets for her textiles 
and cheap and reliable sources of raw cotton after the American Civil War 
had disrupted her traditional supplies 6 . In fact , neither Kano nor Hausaland 
did become the great cotton producing areas envisaged by the British. 
Rather, the agricultural crop which formed the basis of Kano's prosperity 
during and after the colonial period was the groundnut , a product with a 
, variety of uses in the growing European margarine and oils industry 7 • 
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However, whether cotton or groundnuts, pressures began to be placed on 
the Hausa to produce crops for the export market in return for which 
Britain would supply her own manufactures. Thus, for the first time, Kano 
craft producers had to face the prospect of competing with large-scale 
imports of textiles and other manufactured commodities from a country 
which at that time was the leading commercial and industrial power in the 
world. 
The official British view on the future of Kano and its craft 
industries was put by Lugard, High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria and 
later to become Governor of all Nigeria , after the British conquest of Kano 
in 1903. He wrote: 
I foresee with great regret the decline of Kano as a 
commercial centre when European goods supersede her 
manufactures, and the exports of other provinces are 
diverted by more direct routes to the factories of British 
merchants instead of passing through the hands of 
middlemen and brokers. The cotton of Zaria will then 
cease to come to the looms of Kano • • •• but she will 
for many years no doubt continue to supply the Sudan by 
her industries. • • • (Lugard; 1905 : 89). 
Lugard predicted 8 that Kano would suffer as a commercial centre 
because (a) imported products would replace local manufactures, (b) exports 
from the region would by-pass Kano , and (c) the emirate's industrial base 
would shrink, presumably because local craft industries would be unable 
to compete with foreign imports and because raw materials essential in 
local craft production would be diverted to the export trade. 
What Lugard did not foresee, however, was that in spite of the 
decline in the importance of locally manufactured craft products, urban 
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111. 
However, whether cotton or groundnuts, pressures began to be placed on 
the Hausa to produce crops for the export market in return for which 
Britain would supply her own manufactures. Thus, for the first time, Kano 
craft producers had to face the prospect of competing with large-scale 
imports of textiles and other manufactured commodities from a country 
which at that time was the leading commercial and industrial power in the 
world. 
The official British view on the future of Kano and its craft 
industries was put by Lugard , High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria and 
later to become Governor of all Nigeria, after the British conquest of Kano 
in 1903. He wrote: 
I foresee with great regret the decline of Kano as a 
commercial centre when European goods supersede her 
manufactures, and the exports of other provinces are 
diverted by more direct routes to the factories of British 
merchants instead of passing through the hands of 
middlemen and brokers. . The cotton of Zaria will then 
cease to come to the looms of Kano • • •• but she will 
for many years no doubt continue to supply the Sudan by 
her industries. • • • (Lugard; 1905 : 89). 
Lugard predicted 8 that Kano would suffer as a commercial centre 
because (a) imported products would replace local manufactures, (b) exports 
from the region would by-pass Kano , and (c) the emirate's industrial base 
would shrink, presumably because local craft industries would be unable 
to compete with foreign imports and because raw materials essential in 
local craft production would be diverted to the export trade. 
What Lugard did not foresee, however, was that in spite of the 
decline in the importance of locally manufactured craft products, urban 
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112. 
Kano (including the old city) would emerge as the main commercial and 
industrial centre of northern Nigeria, a development which occurred to a 
considerable extent at the expense of the Kano countryside where the 'vast 
majority of craft producers lived at that time. Furthermore, the growth 
in importance of urban Kano provided a stimulus to certain craft industries 
loca ted there. 
Although Lugard was right in suggesting that pre-colonial crafts 
would play a less important role in Kano's economy than in the past, he was 
too sweeping in his assertion that local manufactures in general would decline. 
In fact, the political and economic changes which Kano underwent from 1903 
onwards had a variable impact on craft production, with some crafts being 
better able than others to adapt to changing circumstances. 
It should be made clear from the outset that , with one or two 
exceptions, there was no wholesale elimination of Hausa craft industries. 
The most casual observer of Kano's cities, towns, villages and hamlets is 
likely to see tailors, weavers, dyers, leather-workers, blacksmiths, builders, 
potters, calabash repairers and other types of craftsmen working outside 
their' homes in rural areas, in the alley-ways and streets of cities and towns, 
and in the many urban and rural marketplaces. In addition, much craft work 
is carried on behind closed doors, especially by secluded married women. 
Yet, even though almost the whole range of traditional Hausa crafts 
can still be observed, some have undergone a secular decline from which 
they have .never recovered. Good examples of these are spinning, weaving 
and dyeing. On the other hand , certain crafts, notably blacksmithing and 
tailoring, continue to play an essential role in the economic life of many 
communities. By this I mean that such crafts continue to provide many of 
the basic goods and services demanded by the general population and that, 
113. 
in doing so, offer important sources of employment and income to large 
numbers of people. In the case of the two crafts mentioned, not only 
have they competed relatively successfully with foreign imports, they have 
actually benefitted in some respects from the availability of particular 
types of imported commodities. Those smiths and tailors who work in the 
urban area have been particularly advantaged in this regard. 
All traditional Hausa crafts have been transformed in one way or 
another over the past 70 years. Some of the ways in which this trans-
formation has manifested itself include: 
a. relative and absolute declines in the numbers engaged in 
particular crafts, for example, spinners, dyers and weavers. 
b. a reduction in the proportion of overall output accounted for 
by craft producers. Practically every craft can be included 
here. 
c. changes in the type and range of goods produced. Some produce 
a narrower range of goods, for example, weavers , while others 
have expanded the range of products they make, for example, 
tailors. 
d. a decline of old skills and the growth of new ones. Both black-
smiths and tailors have experienced these two changes. 
e. shifts in the source, type and range of raw materials and 
instruments of production used by craft producers. Crafts 
such as building, weaving, dyeing, smithing, tailoring and wood-
working have been subject to one or more of these changes. 
f. changes in the organization of work. Slave weaving on rural 
estates no longer exists and corvee labour in building and black-
. smithing has been abolished. Outwork, sub-contracting and 
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114. 
various other forms of wage- labouring have increased in 
importance. 
g. changes in markets for finished products. Regional export 
production in traditional dyeing and beating centres has 
virtually disappeared as has production for the emirate military. 
11 
Rurally-based export production has, in general, declined in 11 
importance while urban centres have increased their hold over 
much of the regional distribution of commodities. 
h. changes in the composition of the craft work force. Many 
people with no previous links to craft production have become 
:1 
craft producers, tailoring being a good example of this develop-
ment. Also , certain types of craft work have increasingly 
devolved onto secluded women. 
i. changes in prestige attached to specific craft occupations 
and/or positions. For example, blacksmithing craft officials 
no longer enjoy the positions they once did. Hand sewing is 
a minor aspiration among most potential craft workers. In " ,' 
general, most craft occupations have suffered a decline in 
prestige as new , more lucrative, occupations have become 
available. 
Among the factors which have contributed to the changing role 
of traditional craft producers are the following. The f irst, and most obvious, 
has been the importation of mass-produced commodities which compete 
directly with the products of craftsmen. Second, as part of the . post-
second world war policy of import-substitution pursued by successive Nigerian 
governments, local craft producers have had to compete with the products of .... ".' 
Nigerian industries using more capital-intensive techniques of production. 
1\ 
115. 
For example, the establishment of a Nigerian textile industry has meant 
competition for local weavers and dyers. Factory-organised enamelware 
production has reduced considerably the demand for plain and decorated 
calabashes, containers and the like. A third factor, arising out of the 
first tWo, has been the shift in consumer tastes away from the traditional 
goods to more modern consumer products. Fourth, the creation of an 
export economy based on the production of cash crops and the growth of 
new opportunities in industry, commerce and government have made 
traditional craft production a less attractive prospect for both existing and 
potential craftsmen. Fifth, better transport facilities, more peaceful 
conditions throughout the country, the growth of urban areas as centres 
of commerce and industry, and the declining reliance upon rurally-produced 
raw materials have all contributed to a decline in the role of long-distance 
trade as it was organised in the 19th century and, consequently, an under-
mining of the position of those craft producers who relied upon such trade. 
Some craft producers have been able to adapt to new circumstances 
through shifting the focus of their production from one type of commodity 
to another, by specialising in particular lines of goods for which there are 
no locally-produced or imported substitutes, by locating themselves close 
to areas of concentrated demand and where raw materials are readily 
available, and by using new types of raw materials and · instruments of 
production, Some have been able to exploit supplies of cheap labour in 
cities and towns and so take advantage of the failure of successive 
government policies of urban-centred industrialisation to absorb those 
attracted by the prospect of better-paying work. Others have attempted, 
albeit it with little success, to form associations or co-operatives aimed 
at bulk-purchasing , price-setting and control of labour supplies. All these .. 
116. 
developments have taken place within the context of a state policy which, 
at best, has been half- hearted in its attitude towards craft producers and , 
at worst, either indifferent or hostile to them 9 • 
Other crafts have been unable to adjust to change , some dying out 
quite quickly, others experiencing a slow decline over many years, punctuated 
by periods of revival extending over years rather than months. 
These few remarks suggest the complexity of the changes, and the 
responses to th~m, that have occurred since the beginning of the present 
century. Let me illustrate the differential impact of these changes through 
an examination of weavers and dyers, both of diminishing importance, and 
of blacksmiths and tailors who, although subject to many pressures , have 
had some success in responding to the changes brought about by the creation 
of what Hopkins (1973) refers to as the "open economy"l o. I shall begin with 
a brief examination of weavers, dyers and blacksmiths , followed by a more 
ext~nded discussion of tailors. 
Weaving 
In 1900 practically all of the cloth needs of Kano's population were 
met by local hand- loom weavers. In addition, Kano's weavers, along with 
weavers in other emirates, supplied many markets throughout the region. 
As one of the colonial officials in Kano noted in 1910: 
Of the cloth in use I should think ten per cent a 
liberal estimate of the quantity of European manu-
facture, and the export of Kano cloths north to French 
Soudan, south to Nupe, east to Bornu, and west to 
Sokoto, immensely surpasses in quantity and value the 
small importation of European manufactures. 
(NAK : 7/11; 3835/1910). 
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A t this time cotton was grown extensively in Kano and any extra 
supplies were provided by cotton growers in neighbouring Katsina and Zaria 11, 
Today, weaving in Kano is of minor jmportance, local Hausa relying 
largely upon imported cloth and the output of Nigerial textile mills to satisfy 
their cloth requirements. Hand-loom weavers survive, in much reduced 
numbers, through supplying limited groups of customers such as the nomadic 
Fulani, immigrant Buzaye, and some local Hausa. The types of cloth still 
in demand are women's wrappers and men's smocks worn by the Fulani , 
indigo-dyed turbans and some gowns bought by the Buzaye and members of 
the traditional elite, and burial shrouds purchased by the general Hausa 
popula tion. 
The gradual decline of local weaving J along with many other crafts, 
is commented upon by many observers of Kano and Hausa society. For 
example, Hill remarks: 
Improved availability of many manufactured goods, 
especially cloth, may be on balance beneficial, but 
an offsetting factor is the associated decline of 
traditional crafts , such as weaving and dyeing , which 
have been replaced by few modern crafts or 
industries. (Hill, 1972, : 32). 
Okediji , in her review of economic change in the Hausa Emirates 
during the present century; makes the following comment: 
Imported textiles had replaced the locally made 
cotton materials by the 1930's. Thus there was 
limited local demand to absorb the production (of 
cotton). (Okediji, 1972 : 164-). 
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In Nigerien Hausaland, Nicolas observes: 
La profession de tisserand a connu • • • • une prospei"ite 
tres grande jusqu'au debut de ce siecle. Les artisans 
locaux habillaient alors, en effet, non seulement les 
habitants de la region , mais encore les nomades des 
environs, et les caravanes emportaient leurs produits 
au loin. Mais ils n'ont pas su s'adapter aux change-
ments de mode qui ont valorise les tissus a grand 
metrage. et leur industrie . est en voie de disparition. 
(Nicolas, 1975 : 423). 
Hull , working among the Katsina Hausa, states: 
Gradually, imported goods, often of inferior quality, 
began to compete with the local manufactures and 
resulted in a steady decline in the number of artisans 
and industrialists. An increasing proportion of men 
abandoned their old trades and took up peanut and 
cotton cultivation (Hull, 1968 : 318). 
Apart from Odediji, who dates the decline of weaving from the 
1930's 1 2, none of the above commentators specify the main period of 
decline. However, others have suggested that it was mainly after the 
second world war that local weavers suffered most. Thus, in a study 
118. 
carried out largely in one district of Katsina Province in the early 1950's, 
Grove comments: 
With the high prices paid for export crops in recent 
years, farming has been more profitable, and more 
important to this class than their crafts and trades. 
The value of an acre of groundnuts may well exceed 
i. 6 and of corn only slightly less. Furthermore, 
during 1952, imported cloth was cheaper than before 
while export crops retained their comparatively high 
price. (Grove, 1952 : 43). 
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Tiffen, working in Gombe Emirate , confirms this view of the joint 
importance of higher export prices and .increased imports of cotton goods. 
She says: 
The price offered (by the Cotton Marketing Board) was lJ.d. 
per lb. from 19lJ.8- lJ.9 to 1950-5.1. The following year it 
was raised to 6d. per lb. At the same time, local weaving 
went into decline as a result of increasing cloth imports. 
Consequently, there was an increase in the proportion of 
(cotton) production which was sold to export markets ••.• 
We can probably assume that by 1951-52 only a small 
proportion of production was being used by local weavers; 
most was going to the Marketing Board. (Tiffen, 1976 : 78). 
Hogendorn, referring to Kano, states: 
Cheap, colourful textiles from abroad and from Nigeria's 
own mills have since 19lJ.5 considerably weakened cottage 
weaving. (Hogendorn, 1978 : 139). 
Niven, writing in 1952, comments on the increased use of factory-
made cloth in the making of clothes: 
One of the most striking changes •••• which is entirely 
due to European influence, is the growing habit of 
making rigas and turbans out of gay British textiles 
instead of from the heavier and more enduring locally-
woven cloth. (Niven, 1952 : lJ.5). 
Finally, Lamb, who visited Hausaland during the late 1970's to study 
the technical and artistic aspects of local weaving, remarks: 
••.• in much of Hausaland male weaving was very much 
on the decline, kept alive by certain highly specialised 
traditional uses such as the demand for white sawaye 
cloth for burial shrouds and other cloths still sought 
by Saharan nomads. (Lamb and Holmes, 1980 : 89). 
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From these quotations, it can be seen that there is general agreement 
that local weaving no longer plays the central role that it once did. 
Competition from cheap imports and from Nigerian textile mills, increased 
earnings from agricultural crops, particularly cotton and groundnuts , and 
the resulting shifts in consumer tastes away from traditional products have 
all played a part in weakening the once dominant position of hand-loom 
weaving in the local economy. Furthermore, it is in the rural areas that 
the decline has been felt most severely as the bulk of woven cloth in pre-
colonial times was produced there. What remains of Kano's weaving industry 
is still found in the countryside. In Kano City itself, where hand- loom 
weaving was never a major craft industry, weavers have all but disappeared. 
All these remarks pertain to male weaving. It is possible that female 
weavers have filled the gap left by men to a small extent , but in the 
absence of any studies of female weavers, little can be said about them 13. 
In assessing the extent of the decline and its major causes, the 
student is hampered by the fact that, to date, there have been no detailed 
anthropological or sociological studies of Hausa weaving either in Kano or 
in other parts of the region. Those who have commented on the changing 
fortunes provide little, if any, quantitative evidence to support their views14 • 
However, some estimates on the changing numbers of weavers can be made. 
Thus, in 1920 it was reported that Kano Province (covering an area somewhat 
larger than the emirate) contained over 80 ,000 weavers (Gowers, 1921 : 38), 
with the bulk of these probably residing in Kano Emirate. By 1946 t he 
emirate had about 53,000 weavers (Kano Native Authority Tax Records). 
Today, there are probably no more than a few thousand , perhaps anywhere 
between 10 and 15 thousand 15 • 
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TABLE 5.1. Dyers and weavers in selected Kano Districts: Early 
20th century and 1946. 
District Year: 
Early 20th century 
Year: 
1946 
Weavers Dyers Weavers Dyers 
(A) 
Kano City and 
Fagge: (1926) 
(B) 
Wudil and 
Sumaila: (1912) 
(C) 
Rano: (1925) 
(D) 
Kiru: (192.9) 
(E) 
Tudun Wada: (1925) 
(F) 
Birnin Kudu and 
Gwaram: (1909) 
(G) 
Kumbotso: (1911) 
(H) 
Gezawa: (1912) 
(I) 
Ungogo: (1911) 
(J) 
Dawakin Kudu: 
(1912) 
(K) , 
Dutse: (1912) 
227 
5499 
1836 
8262 
1848 
2348 
1291 
1282 
676 
4500 
4152 
337 80 481 
4199 4114 498 
501 192 669 
1039 1173 328 
429 1044 289 
1311 4721 844 
509 748 138 
585 3425 104 
60 557 82 
966 1495 113 
1550 5008 868 
Sources: Early 20th century figures taken from Assessment 
Reports, details of which are listed in Table 3.1. 
In some cas es I have given the Dis tricts their 
modern names in order to facilitate comparison 
with 1946 figures. 
1946 figures taken from Native Authority 
Tax Records found in Gidan Shatima, April 1975 . 
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TABLE 5.2 Weavers and dyers in the three home districts of 
Kumbotso, Vngogo and Gezawa: 1946 and 1974. 
District Year 1946 Year 1974 
Weavers Dyers Weavers Dyers 
Kumbotso 748 138 276 136 
Vngogo 557 82 216 
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Gezawa 3425 171 1849 231 
TOTAL 4730 391 2341 367 
NB: Figures for Gezawa dyers include cloth beaters. .. 
Source: Local Government Authority Tax Records 
In the case of particular districts within Kano, of 13 of 25 districts 
for which I have data, the number of weavers declined in 10, possibly 
remained static or declined in 2, and increased in one at different times 
over the period 1909 to 1946. For the period 1946 to 1973, the number 
of weavers declined in all of the three "home ll districts of Gezawa, Kumbotso 
i 
and Ungogo. (See Tables 5.1 and 5.2). 
Fragmentary evidence from other parts of Hausaland adds some 
weight to the view that weaving has declined. Thus, in Kaita village 
(Kaduna State) the number of weavers declined from 56 in 1947 to 16 in 
., 
1977 (Watts, 1980 : 425). In Maska town, famous during the 19th century 
for its Bunu Dlan Maska cloth (Usman, 1974 : 439), there were only 16 
weavers in 1968 compared with 101 in 1917 (Olofson, 1976 : 59 and 171). 
These admittedly limited data go some way in providing quantitative 
support to the qualitative observations made by many scholars that weaving 
no longer plays as central a role as it once did in supplying basis cloth 
123. 
needs. Furthermore, in so far as the level of weaving technology is much 
the same today as it was in pre-colonial times and given the very large 
increases in the population of Kano and of other emirates, the decline in 
weaving is much greater than these data ' suggest. 
The undermining of local weaving took place over a long period 
of time. U ntH the 194-0's weavers existed in large numbers in Kano and 
probably in other emirates as well. In fact, the demand for locally-woven 
cloth remained buoyant and even increased for many years. This occurred 
in spite of attempts by the British Cotton Growing Association (BCG A), 
a body formed in Manchester in 1902 to promote cotton cultivation in 
Nigeria, to encourage the export of cotton to Britain and divert it away 
from local weavers. For a large part of the period from the early 1900's 
to as late as 194-8 the BCGA was unable to offer prices for raw cotton 
competitive with those offered by the local weaving and spinning industry 1 6 • 
There are constant references in the official literature to the resilience of 
the local textile industry. Thus, in 1919 it was observed: 
The great bulk of the cotton in [Northern] Nigeria is still 
absorbed by the local hand-spinning and weaving industry. 
This state of affairs is bound to continue until the margin 
between the price offered for raw cotton, and the price 
at which manufactured cloth is offered for sale, can be 
cut far finer. It is quite extraordinary at how Iowa 
remuneration the native is prepared to work at his home 
industries. (Trade Statistical Abstract, 1919 : 55). 
According to the 1931 Annual Report of the Northern Provinces of 
Nigeria: 
A large proportion of the (cotton) crop was purchased 
in the local markets for the weaving industry and the 
.' 
I 
.' 
., 
price paid was considerablly higher than the export 
price. (Annual Report, 1931 : 39). 
124. 
With regard to Kano, the Acting Resident of the Province remarked 
in his annual report for 1938 that: 
The export of cotton from the Province is negligible 
but a very large amount is still grown and purchased 
by the local weavers whose celebrated varieties of 
cloth are still valued far and wide above the imported 
materials. (Annual Report of the Northern Provinces, 
1938 : 32). 
Until the opening of the Kano-Lagos railway in 1912, Kano's weavers 
enjoyed a measure of protection from cloth imports a s transport costs to 
the north remained high. Fika argues that the weaving industry expanded 
during these early years as new markets opened up throughout the region 
and south as far as Lagos, a process that was assisted by the establishment 
of more peaceful conditions in the countryside (Fika, 1978 : 148- 149). 
With the coming of the railway imported cloth became more easily 
available. Thus, cloth imports to Kano increased from 945 tons in 1912 to 
2,000 tons in 1916 (Hogendorn, 1978 : 62, NAK SNP 10/4 1700P/1916 : 8). 
In addition, the opening of the rail link coincided with the beginning of the 
groundnut boom and the development of a growing export orientation of 
Kano's economy as local farmers were encouraged to devote their farming 
energies to the cultivation of groundnuts to supply the European margarine 
and oils industry. High prices offered by groundnut buyers , the need to 
earn money to pay the new taxes introduced by the British colonial author-
ities, and the attraction of new consumer goods (including cloth) all contri-
buted to the development of this industry. Farmers traded their groundnuts 
for imported cloth and salt (Hogendorn, 1978 : 61 -62) but they also spent 
I 
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., 
'," 
125. 
part of their increased incomes on locally-woven cloth. According to 
Hogendorn (1978 : 110) imported fabrics were not perfect substitutes for 
local varieties in that they were of inferior quality and local peoples 
preferred the products of their own weavers as they were much more 
durable 17 • 
The BCGA, anticipating that the opening of the railway would lower 
transport costs and so improve the price which they could offer for local 
cotton, became increasingly disenchanted over the years as farmers devoted 
more of their land to the cultivation of groundnuts rather than cotton. 
The groundnut buyers offered higher prices to farmers than the BCGA were 
able to do for cotton. Cotton cultivation in the province is thought to 
have declined and practically all of the crop that was grown was absorbed 
by local weaving. Indeed , demand was so great that raw cotton was 
imported from neighbouring Katsina and Zaria which further reduced the 
amount available for export. . Twenty five years after the beginning of 
the groundnut export industry, such comments as the one below were 
commonplace: 
Not only was the area under groundnuts increased at 
the expense of the area under cotton, but the fact 
that groundnuts replaced cotton almost entirely in 
Kano Province and in Northern Katsina made it 
necessary for the local weaving industry to purchase 
its cotton in areas which normally produce cotton for 
export. (Trade Report, 1937 : 8). 
Ironically , BCGA attempts to improve cotton strains for export by 
distributing free seed also helped indigenous weavers and spinners as the 
new strains were longer and tougher than many indigenous varieties (Okediji, 
1972 : 155). This meant that there was less breakage in the spinning and 
, 
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126. 
weaving process, a factor which contributed to greater productivity among 
cloth workers. 
The BCGA and their supporters in the colonial administration hoped 
that increasing imports of British textiles would swiftly undermine the demand 
for local cloth. Certainly from the early years of the century until the 
late 1930's cotton piece goods were imported in large quantities, with the 
yearly average imports between 1913 and 1937 reaching some 98,252 
thousand yards (computed from Helleiner, 1966). . These imports did make 
inroads into the local market but in the early part of the century they 
were often of poor quality and at other times, such as during the first 
world war and in the depression years, they were unable to compete in 
price. Thus, in 1913 one pound sterling could buy about 74 yards of bleached 
cotton cloth while in 1917 that same pound exchanged for only 51 yards . 
. Similar increases in price were recorded for printed and coloured cotton 
piece goods (Trade Statistical Abstract , No. 9, 1917 : 14). During the 
1930's the British imposed quotas on imports of cheap Japanese cotton- piece 
goods which made the cost of buying cotton goods more expensive 18 and 
increased the attractiveness of locally-made varieties. The depression 
years saw a stagnation in trade and Nigerian per capita incomes fell 19 • 
Although import prices are thought to have fallen in the worst years from 
1929 to 1934, they fell by much less than export prices; 30 per cent compared 
with 75 per cent. Cotton prices were particularly badly hit, falling by 90 
per cent. Groundnut prices also fell but by much less than other crops. 
Although local weavers must have suffered from the reduced incomes 
accruing to groundnut farmers, this would not necessarily have led to an 
abandonment of the craft as weavers . were still required to earn an income 
to pay taxes and meet other household obligations 2 o . In so far as cloth 
" , . 
. 
.... 
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127. 
import prices became more expensive, there may have been an intensification 
of weaving (and other craft) production to meet the shortfall in demand for 
imported commodities. Furthermore, supplies of local cotton to local 
weavers increased as cotton producers diverted more of their crop to the 
domestic industry in the face of falling export prices for cotton. 
.j 
L 
Cotton export prices recovered somewhat from 1933 to 1936 but 
declined again in 1937 and 1938. According to Wardle , this was If ••• • the 
result of a combination of low Liverpool prices for cotton and sustained 
domestic Northern Nigerian demand for cotton" (Wardle, 1981 : 26). By 
1939 the highest Northern Nigerian export price for cotton was only 1/3rd 
of what it had been in 1929/30. 
During the 1930's weaving continued to be a major industry in Kano 
and other emirates. For example, Forde reported in 1937 that spinning 
and weaving were the most widespread crafts among the rural population 
of Zaria Emirate. . In Kano, weaving was the chief non-farm activity in 
Kazaure Emirate in 1934, was engaged in by over 1,000 people in Kumbotso 
District in 1932, and by 3,000 people in Dawakin Kudu District in 1937 
(Forde et. al., 1946 : 138 and 148; NAK Kano Prof. 5/24, No. 764 , 1932). 
."' 
However, in both of these latter two districts the number of weavers was 
less than it had been in 1911. 
Besides locally-grown cotton, local weavers were also beginning 
to shift to imported yarn as one source of raw materials for their looms. 
' " 
. Thus, Shea reports that in the 1930's the weavers of Dawakin Kudu were 
making imitations of the D'an Kura turbans using imported white thread 
(Shea, 1975 : 80). Further south in Nupeland , the Bida weavers are said 
to have shifted to using imported thread by the 1930's , although local cotton 
'ob.' 
thread was still the main source of supply for village craftsmen (Nadel, .~ 
128. 
It was noted earlier that Kano Emirate contained a total of 53,000 
weavers in 194-6. At first glance this does not appear to indicate a very 
steep decline in the numbers of weavers compared with earlier times 22 . 
However, I have argued that the resilience of the local weaving industry 
in pre-wartimes was the result of the inability of cotton exporters to offer 
high enough prices to cotton producers to divert production into export 
channels. This lack of competitiveness was, in turn, caused by a low 
metropolitan interest in Nigerian cotton, particularly during the war years 
and the depression. Furthermore, the fortunes 6f the local weavers fluc-
tuated with the import price of cotton-piece goods. When the import price 
was low, local weavers suffered, when it was high, the demand for locally-
made cloth increased. During the second world war the quantity of cloth 
imported declined which had the effect of protecting the domestic weaving 
industry Z3. ' Thus, to some extent, the large numbers of weavers still 
operating in Kano Emirate at the end of the war can be explained by this 
fact. According to Cowley, in the Northern Provinces of Nigeria (including 
Kano), the bulk of the 50,000 bales harvested was consumed by the local 
spinning and weaving industry which he considers to have been the result 
of wartime restrictions on the importation of cotton goods (Cowley, 1966 
189). Although the bulk of this cotton was grown outside Kano, it is likely 
that supplies were available from other provinces and emirates , particularly 
Zaria and Katsina. 
·After the second world war cotton piece goods began to be imported 
in increasing quantities and the expansion of groundnut production in Kano 
continued, spurred on by the relatively high prices obtainable on the export 
market 2 It . Indeed, from the late 194-0's to the early 1960's, Nigerians 
enjoyed a period of increased prosperity based mainly on the sale of export 
l 
L 
cash crops. As Rimmer notes: 
•••• by the early sixties Nigerian purchasing power 
over imports was about three times what it had been 
both immediately before and after the second World 
War. (Rimmer, in Panter-Brick, 1978 : 146). 
129. 
By the late 1950's a tiny proportion of total acreage , between 1 and 
3 per cent, was devoted to cotton production although some expansion in 
cotton cultivation occurred during the 1950's in response to higher prices 
offered by the Northern Nigerian Marketing Board. As in the pre-war 
years, the main areas of cotton cultivation lay outside Kano with the latter 
supplying no more than about 3 per cent of the total cotton crop for the 
whole of the northern region between 1954/55 and 1970/71 (Mirchaulum; 
1974 : 140). Although various estimates made during the 1950's place the 
proportion of locally produced cotton going into the domestic hand spinning 
and weaving industries at anywhere between 36 and 40 per cent (Helleiner, 
1966 : 127; IBRD Report, 1955 : 385). Mirchaulam argues that over 50 
per cent of the total amount purchased or used by local weavers went to 
Kabba and Niger Provinces. Kano is thought to have absorbed no more 
than 10 per cent (Mirchaulam, 1974) . . Imported textiles took an increasing 
share of the total market for cloth during this period. According to Kilby, 
between 1955 and 1965 imports of cotton-piece goods averaged over 200 
million yards per year and synthetics 95 million yards. He estimates that 
hand- woven cotton cloths averaged 50 million yards per annum. This 
represents just under 15 per cent of the total supply of cotton and synthetic 
fabrics (excluding Nigerian mill production) (Kilby, 1969 : 109). Assuming 
that Kano weavers were responsible for producing ten per cent of locally-
woven cloth and that all the cloth produced was consumed by residents 
'I' " 
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0" 
," 
130. 
of Kano State (about 5 million persons at the time), then it can be concluded 
that Kano weavers supplied something like one yard per person. As it 
. 
is estimated (Kilby , 1969 : 110) that Nigerian per capita consumption of ' .. ,' 
cotton and rayon textiles in the late 1950's was 8.1 yards, then Kano weavers 
were responsible for supplying 12.5 per cent of the per capita cloth needs 
of the local population. These admittedly speculative assumptions and 
estimates, which do not take into account inter-state and inter-emirate 
competition among weavers, intra- and extra-regional differences in 
purchasing power, the extent of sale of Kano-made cloth outside the state, 
and regional and other differences in productivity among Nigerian weavers, 
serve to suggest that by the 1960's Kano's weavers were providing a small 
proportion of the total supply of textile fabrics. 
Although it is not known just how much locally-produced cotton was 
sold to the newly-created Cotton Marketing Board and how much was 
siphoned off for use in domestic spinning and weaving, there is some evidence 
to show that increasing amounts of cotton were purchased by the state 
both for export and for sale to Nigerian textile mills. Cotton production 
has expanded in northern Nigeria since the second world war in response to 
rising prices offered by the various buying agencies. HeIleiner (1966 : 132) 
estimates that between 1948 and the early 1960's, real earnings from cotton 
production per acre rose by 150 per cent. According to one source, of the 
137,000 tons of cotton grown in northern Nigeria during the 1957/58 season 
(most of it is grown outside Kano), some 124,000 tons , or over 90 per cent, 
was purchased by the Northern Nigerian Marketing Board for export (Northern 
Nigeria Statistical Yearbook, 1965; figures computed from Tables 79 and 88). 
In Gombe Emirate , where cotton production expanded after the war, only a 
small proportion of the cotton produced in 1951/52 went to local weavers. 
131. 
Tiffen estimates that between 85 and 90 per cent of the total crop was 
purchased by the Cotton Marketing Board. It would appear that at this 
time and in later years the small amount of cotton available for local sale 
was either of low quality and thus rejected by the marketing board and/or 
that portion of the crop still unsold at the end of the official marketing 
period (Tiffen, 1976 : 71 and 78). 
During the late 1950's and through the 1960's there was a steady 
growth in the proportion of the total cotton crop purchased for domestic 
processing in the Nigerian spinning and weaving mills. Mirchaulum, for 
example, estimates that between 1957 and 1969 the Nigerian textile mills 
increased their consumption of local cotton from around 6 per cent of the 
crop to nearly 60 per cent of a much larger crop. Tiffen considers that 
during 1967/68 almost all the local cotton produced in Gombe went to the 
Nigerian textile industry. By 1970/71 the volume of domestic cotton grown 
was insufficient to meet mill demands and imports were increased. The 
considerable growth of the Nigerian textile industry is shown by the fact 
that in 1951 there was only one weaving firm using 60 looms while in 1978/79 
there were 43 spinning and weaving firms with 672,000 spindles and over 
17,000 looms. Furthermore, domestic mill production of cotton fabrics 
increased from under 1 million square metres in 1957 to 367 million square 
metres in 1978. Total domestic production of all fibres (cotton, synthetics 
and blends) equalled 407 million square metres in 1976 (Scott, 1979 : 17). 
From the available evidence it would appear that after 1948 the 
Marketing Board was able to offer higher prices to cotton producers than 
those offered by hand spinners and weavers. Also, through pursuing a 
policy of uniform pricing for cotton purchases and with the growth of 
cotton buying points and easier transport access, the more remote parts of 
• 
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, 
132. 
the cotton growing regions were able to obtain a better price for their 
product than before (Helleiner, 1966 : 129; Tiffen, 1976 : 78). Local 
spinners and weavers, who continued to buy or use local cotton, were left 
with poorer quality cotton and, as they bought in small amounts, this left 
most of the crop for the Marketing Board. 
In conclusion, although weavers continue to exist in rural Kano and 
other parts of Hausaland, the industry is a shadow of its former self. 
Pockets of weavers are to be found in many locations, but their output is 
small and confined to . lines of cloth which do not compete with the products 
of the Nigerian mills and imported, factory-made cloth. With few exceptions, 
young men are no longer attracted to the craft and without a major govern-
ment initiative to revitalise rural industry this state· of affairs is likely to 
continue. The 1975-80 . na tional development plan, · after decades of neglect, 
envisaged funding craftsmen's cooperatives throughout the country, but it 
remains unclear to what extent hand-loom weavers have benefitted from 
this. Kano State's Small Industry Credit Scheme, which provides loans 
to small businesses, appears to have had almost no impact upon hand-loom 
weaving as th~( bulk of the loans made to manufacturers and processors 
have gone to those investing in machine-based production. In an interview 
with the sche me's secretary in 1976, he offered the view that applications 
from hand-loom weavers were unlikly to be successful because hand weaving 
was not a modern industry nor was there much demand for the products 
made 25. Overall, the pessimistic conclusion drawn by Lugard at the 
beginning of the century that the cotton of Zaria would cease to come to 
the looms of Kano appears to have been borne out , although the process 
took longer than he anticipated. 
, 
... 
133. 
Dyeing 
Like weavers, cloth dyers can still be found in various parts of the 
emirate. However, the industry has suffered a greater decline than weaving. 
As Shea notes in his work on Kano dyers, the existence of thousands of 
unused dye pits throughout the emirate is evidence of this decline (Shea, 
1975 : 94). In addition , there is much quantitative evidence to support 
this contention. Thus, in 1920 Kano Province contained 50,000 dyers 
but by 1946 their numbers had declined to about 12,000 (Kirk-Greene , 1972 , 
Vol. 1; Kano Province, 1921 : 38; Kano Native Authority tax records, 
1946). There is no reason to doubt that this decline has continued to the 
present. For example, in the three home districts of Kumbotso, Gezawa 
and Ungogo, dyers definitely declined in two of them and probably declined 
in the third. 
The decline is even more dramatic when particular districts are 
examined. Thus, Kura town, one of the major dyeing centres in the 19th 
century, was estimated to have contained over 2,000 dyers in 1909 (NAK 
SNP 7 2607/1909) whereas in 1946 in the district of Kura, which includes 
the town of Kura, there were only 439. The number of Kura town dye pits 
in 1909 was over 1400 but in the late 1970's there were about 108. Lamb 
reports that at that time there were only 20 dyers actually working (Lamb 
and Holmes, 1980 : 92). Again, in Makama's District (since divided into 
Wudil and Sumaila Districts) to the south east of Kano City , which includes 
the important 19th century dyeing centre of Dal , there were over 4,000 
dyers in 1912 but by 1946 they had been reduced to no more than 498 , a 
decline of almost 90 per cent. 
In Kano Emirate as a whole, of the 13 districts for which I have data, 
dyers declined in 10, increasing slightly in 3, between the early 1900's and 
1946. 
", 
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, 
134. 
This pattern is repeated in places outside Kano. Thus, 01ofson 
reports a decline in the number of Maska dyers from 53 in 1917 to 25 in 
1968. However, in the case of Funtua town, dyers increased from 20 in 
1917 to 85 in 1958 and then declined again to 30 in 1968 (Olofson, 1976 : 
59 and 171). In Kaita village, studied by Watts, dyers declined from 7 in 
1947 to none in 1977 (Watts, 1980 : 425). 
The decline in dyeing has had the most severe effect upon those 19th 
century centres which grew up around the export trade. Places like Kura, 
Oal, Bunkure and Oawakin Tofa are of minor economic importance today , 
although some production still takes place. For example, Kura dyers 
continue to produce dyed turbans for Buzu visitors from Niger but often 
at considerable cost. However, even the dyeing of cloth for the mass of 
the local population is much reduced as consumers have switched to buying 
coloured prints. . In fact, dyed garments are now considered as dirty in 
that they soil the skin and clothing , an interesting example of the reversal 
of cultural tastes (Skinner, 1977b : 43). 
Much of the trade in dyed cloth which remains in the emirate has 
shifted to Kano City which was never a major centre of this industry in 
the past. Thus, in 1926 there were 337 dyers in the city and by the late 
1960's this figure had increased to 512. One major reason for this revival 
has been the growing , but limited, popularity of adire or resist-dyed cloth, 
-
a technique of dyeing copied from Yoruba immigrants who brought the skill 
from the south during the 1940's. The new adire products were made up 
into women's wrappers and men's smocks, and in recent years there has 
been some increased trade in dyed jumpopi (known locally as O'a n Barasoso) 
worn by men. Some of the dyers associated with this revival came from 
rural Kano dyeing centres which had been important during the 19th century 
~ ," 1 
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135. 
while others were completely new to the craft. A parallel development 
occurred in Funtua town in Kaduna State where Olofson reports a similar 
demand for tie-dyed cloths. However, in Funtua town there has been a 
decline in numbers of dyers due to the availability of factory prints and 
the movement of sons of dyers into non-dyeing jobs (Olofson, 1976 : 81). 
Rural dyers have also sUffered from the shift to imported factory -
made tinned indigo. The use of natural indigo, the plant being grown in 
large quantities in the rural areas, is of little importance in the urban dyeing 
areas and even in the countryside one sees local dyers using the tinned 
varieties. 
The emphasis in this new kind of adire production is on inexpensive 
cloth and a high turnover. The city dyers work to order from traders and 
dyer-traders with enough capital to invest in cloth and tinned indigo. As 
Shea puts it, referring to the growth of the industry in the 1940's: 
The most successful city dyers were now men who had 
adequate capital to buy large amounts of baft and tinned 
indigo and who could buy sewing machines and hire tailors 
to stit ch the baft into the right siz~s and stitch patterns 
onto the cloth. (Shea, 1975 : 91). 
The existence of a revived dyeing industry in Kano City constitutes 
a minor development. The combined effects of declining rurally-based 
export trade, competition from coloured prints,. the shift to using tinned 
indigo and the cultural down-grading of indigo-dyed cloths have undermined 
the industry. Limited markets remain among the Buzu, in Borno and among 
some Hausa consumers, but overall the industry provides a small proportion 
of the textile needs of the public at large. 
r .. ' 
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136. 
Blacksmithing 
In pre-colonial times, blacksmiths were essential components of the 
Kano economy because they supplied both final consumer and producer 
goods to the local population. They made agricultural implements for 
farmers, many different types of products for other craftsmen, and they 
were responsible for the production of weapons of war (kayan yak'i) 
purchased or levied as tribute by the traditional ruling class. 
Examples of traditional blacksmiths' products include the anvil 
(uwar mak'era), various types of hammers (such as the masaba and the 
masko), hoes (including the fartanya, garma and sungumi), adzes, hatchets, 
axes, knives and reaping tools. Articles made for use by other craftsmen 
include the butcher's skinning knife (wuk'ar paw~), the scissor (almakashi), 
of which there are a number of different types, needles for leather work, 
calabash mending and thatching, and razors and tweezers used by barbers 2 6 • 
. In the case of needles for cloth sewing, it would appear that by the mid-
to late-19th century, many tailors had switched to imported needles as 
they were much more finely -made than the varieties available from local 
smiths. 
Both the military and hunters used blacksmiths' products in their 
respective activities, for example, the sword (takobi) , the spear (kuyi- kuyi), 
the arrow (kibiya) and gun (bindiga). 
These are but a few examples of the wide range of goods produced 
by blacksmiths in the past. As in all other crafts, production was entirely 
hand-based and supplies of iron ore were provided by local smelters and 
miners, some of whom were themselves blacksmiths. 
Today, most rural communities contain blacksmiths who make farming 
and other tools in much the same way as they did in the past. These tools 
,. " 40 
~ . 
, " ~ 
" 
137. 
are sold within village communities and through rural markets alongside 
other metal goods, including imports. Although foreign-made tools are 
increasingly used by Hausa people, among farmers they have not been 
sufficient to undermine local production. Factors accounting for their 
continued use include their lower cost when compared with imported varieties, 
their durability, and the lack of imported substitutes for many Hausa farm 
implements, especially the many kinds of hoe found throughout Kano and the 
rest of Hausaland (Jaggar, 1978 : 44-52). Furthermore, as the organisation 
of farming continues to be on a small -scale, consisting of hundreds of 
thousands of small peasant farms in which most farmers possess little capital 
or incentive to invest in more complex technology, local blacksmiths are 
able to find a market for their skills. Even when investment in ox-driven 
ploughs has increased, local smiths have been able to produce copies, do 
repairs and make spare parts. However , it is likely that most ploughs 
are not made by local smiths but are purchased in Zaria and Kano or obtained 
second-hand. 
Besides making traditional farm tools, many smiths, particularly 
those in the main urban centres and their rural hinterlands, have diversified 
their productive base and now make many products for which there are no 
traditional equivalents. Items of this type include metal roof-drains, metal 
boxes, mouse traps, bicycle stands, shovels, door- hinges and the like. Kano 
City is particularly noted for this kind of smithing. 
Blacksmiths, whether they make traditional or modern products, 
no longer use indigenously mined and smelted iron ore but rely upon imported 
metals such as railway lines, tin cans, old car bodies, metal drums and other 
products of modern industry, These metals are recycled by smiths into 
products for local consumption, 
.i; 
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138. 
The shift to imported metals, which began early in the century and 
gathered momentum after the opening of the Lagos-Kano railway , led to 
the gradual disappearance of that class of m~tal workers who traditionally 
specialised in mining and smelting. Some blacksmiths, who combined smithing 
and mining/smelting, were affected by this development but it would appear 
that most smiths did not do this kind of work but concentrated upon the 
manufacture of finished goods. 
The new railway provided the means by which large quantities of 
scrap metal, consisting of railway sleepers, railway keys, and iron plating 
from old river boats, were imported to Kano. The smiths who benefitted 
most from this were those living along the line of the track and in Kano 
City where the railway terminated. The advantages of scrap metal were 
quickly perceived by local smiths and during the 1920's there were thousands 
of cases in Kano City of blacksmiths and others stealing railway lines and 
other metals from the railway authority (Fika, 1973 : 311). This "iron 
rustling'" eventually made it necessary for the colonial authorities to organise 
the side of scrap to local dealers, a service which has been provided ever 
since 27. 
The effect of the shift to imported iron was to enhance the position 
of Kano City as a distribution point for scrap metal supplies. This occurred 
at the expense of rural smiths who now had to travel to Kano to obtain raw 
materials (Jaggar, 1978 : 40). Another effect of this development was 
to make local smiths increasingly subject to economic forces outside Kano 
and Hausaland as metal imports increased and declined according to the 
vagaries of the international economy. Thus, it was reported around 1920 
that the import of bar- iron to Hausaland and other parts of the north had: 
. 
,". 
• • • • to a considerable extent displaced the smelting of 
local iron-stones, and the reduction in supplies of 
imported iron during the (first world) war was keenly 
felt in many districts where the art of smelting had 
long been neglected. (Meek, 1925 : 150). 
139 . 
Jaggar reports that in the case of Kano smiths the elimination of 
local mining and smelting was virtually complete by the end of the 1930's, 
a pattern repeated in other parts of Hausaland (Jaggar, 1973 : 24; Forde 
et. al., 1946 : 136). 
Traditional blacksmithing , oriented largely to the production of farm 
implements and based on the use of fire , hand bellows, and local charcoal 
for the heating and melting down of metal , would appear to have survived 
best in rural areas , although all rural smiths now depend upon scrap metal. 
Production in rural Kano remains largely locally-based supplying local needs. 
However, in Kano City and in some of the surrounding rural 
communities there has been a relative decline in the production of traditional 
farm implements as smiths have taken advantage of the growing demand for 
modern metal products and have become tied into a wider network of ex-
change relations which take in large areas of northern Nigeria. Traditional 
products are still made in the city as a consequence of a rising population, 
growth in incomes, better transport facilities and the high cost of imported 
substitutes for local products. In fact , during the early colonial period 
there was an increase in the number of traditional smiths in Kano which is 
partly explained by the migration of rural smiths who became increasingly 
reliant upon urban sources of raw materials and opportunities for work. 
On the other hand , since the second world war the most important develop-
ment in city smithing has been the shift to the making of new types of 
products and the establishment of what Jaggar refers to as an import-
.,' 
140. 
substituting metalware industry (Jaggar, 1978, Chapter 5). 
This novel industry consists of smiths who specialise in cold-smithing 
(k'iran sanyi) which is distinguished from traditional hot-smithing (k'iran wuta) 
by the kinds of products made, the raw materials used and by techniques of 
production. Cold-smiths do not generally make traditional farm tools but 
concentrate upon modern products such as bicycle stands , mouse- traps, 
watering cans, door-bolts , shovels, hasps and hinges. They dominate city 
smithing today and outnumber traditional hot smiths, who tend to look down 
upon them because they no longer produce according to traditional standards. 
The origins of this industry date back to the second world war when 
imported metalwares were restricted. Local dealers in metal products 
approached the city smiths and asked them to make copies of the previously 
imported articles. A few took up the challenge and made good profits 
from it. Since that time more and more city smiths have taken up the 
work and profitability has fallen. However, in the early 1970's, the bulk 
of smiths operating from the central market, which became the main centre 
of cold-smithing, engaged in this type of work. Practically all are drawn 
from the city itself and many come from traditional blacksmithing famil ies. 
A t present, Kano's smithing industry consists of: 
1. Full- time specialist traders in cold smith goods who are mainly 
from the city and who operate as market wholesaler/retailers buying up 
and selling both imported and locally-made goods. 
2. A number of producer- traders who produce metal goods for 
sale to personal clients and traders and who deal in goods in their own 
right. They employ kin and immigrant and casual labour, usually on a piece-
rate basis. Some buy up traditional goods from rural smiths and may even 
finance them in their activities. 
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141. 
3. Rural smiths who are either totally dependent upon city 
producer-traders for work or who divide their time between making farm 
" 
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implements on their own account and production of such items as knives 
for city-based producer-traders. 
4. City smiths who are the employees of larger operators although 
often linked to them by ties of kinship and personal clientage. 
Overall, there has been a growth in contractual-type relations and 
forms of wage- labouring which has reduced the importance of kin ties to 
some extent. Indeed, some city producers have in the past attempted to 
form unions to set minimum p'rices and buy up stocks of raw materials in 
order to avoid exploitation by metals traders. A few of the larger traders 
and trader-producers have become quite wealthy by local standards and 
have branched out into other forms of commerce. The most successful 
have, according to Jaggar, pooled part of their capital , and drawn in 
capital from others, to establish a factory for the produCtion of shovels, 
picks, headpans, plough shares, window and bed-frames, bolts, staples, 
hasps and hinges. Using modern machinery and loans from the state govern-
ment, this development constitutes an important break with traditional . 
" 
forms of production relying as it does on the greater use of wage labour j 
more advanced techniques of production, more modern book-keeping methods, 
and longer production runs. 
Before concluding this section, it is worth noting that one category 
of traditional blacksmiths' products for which there is little demand today 
is that of weapons of war. The British deprived the traditional emirate 
authorities of their monopoly of the use of force and so undermined one 
source of economic power of the Kano City smiths who were largely res-
ponsible for organising the production of weapons. Some rural smiths were 
142. 
affected by this change, but as production for the government was largely 
extra to their main source of work in the villages, the dismantling of the 
military structure of the pre-colonial state probably had little effect upon 
the mass of rural producers (although it did mean that they no longer had 
to perform corvee labour or give up part of their product as tribute). 
The same conclusion can be drawn with reference to the removal of 
traditional tax-gathering functions from blacksmiths. Again, city smiths 
were the senior officials in the system of tax collection from blacksmiths 
and suffered the greatest loss of power, prestige and income from its 
removal. The Sarkin Mak'era (Chief of the Blacksmiths) still exists, but the 
title is largely honorific, although the holder of the title retains control 
over a small farming estate to the south of the city (Hill, 1977 : 215). 
Of all the crafts in Kano, the disappearance of titled craft officials 
affected the smiths the most as few other crafts were organised in this 
manner 2 8. 
In summary , smithing continues to play an important role in Kano but 
has undergone a number of changes over the past 70 years. All smiths 
depend upon scrap metal for production and so the pre-colonial link between 
smiths and iron smelters and miners has been broken. Rural smiths still 
provide a wide range of traditional farm implements (including repairs) 
and orient their production to known local needs. Under present conditions 
of agricultural production, they are likely to continue to do so into the 
foreseeable future. However, since the second world war some sections of 
the smithing community, mainly those in Kano City and surrounding rural 
areas, have moved into the production of a new range of metal products 
known locally as cold-smithing. This largely urban-centred trade and 
production extends beyond the local community and cold-smiths' products 
f 
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143. 
are exchanged throughout the north. Production is still mainly hand-based 
although in recent years some of the more successful smiths have attempted 
to establish a modern metalware factory in Kano. This represents a novel 
development in the history of smithing which has enhanced the position 
of urban smiths and dealers in metal goods at the expense of their rural 
counterparts. 
Tailoring 
Traditional Hausa tailoring, one of the most widespread of crafts 
in pre-colonial times, has been subject to many of the same pressures which 
have affected the other crafts described earlier in this chapter. The result 
of these pressures has been to alter and transform some of the main charac-
teristics of the tailoring process and, in certain respects, the importance of 
indigenous tailoring has declined in the local economy. However, this 
decline has not been as drastic as in, say . weaving and dyeing. Indeed, 
compared with these other crafts, tailoring has been the most successful in 
surviving the many economic and other changes which have occurred in 
Hausa society over the past 70 years. 
The relative success of tailoring is the result of (a) the existence of 
special conditions which have, to some extent, protected local tailors and 
(b) the ability of tailors to adapt to changing circumstances. The remainder 
of this chapter will concern itself with outlining the main features of the 
transformation of tailoring, the special conditions which have afforded 
tailors a measure of protection, and the ways in which tailors have adapted 
to change. 
With regard to the question of the decline of traditional tailoring , 
four developments stand out as being worthy of attention. 
144. 
First; there has been a major shift away from local supplies of hand-
spun thread and hand-woven cloth towards the utilisation of factory-made 
" 
thread and textile fabrics (both imported and domestically produced). . In 
" 
other words, the former dependence of tailors upon local hand weavers and 
spinners for supplies of essential raw materials has been considerably 
weakened; not to say broken. There remain some tailors who make-up and 
embroider hand-woven cloth, but they are in the minority. Most of these 
work in the rural areas of Kano and it is rare to find a city tailor who 
works ' regularly with either hand-spun thread or hand-woven cloth. Today, 
the vast majority of rural and urban tailors obtain their raw materials from 
Asian and European textile producers and from the Nigerian spinning and 
weaving mills. (See .Tables 5.3 and 5.4 for thread imports. Cloth imports 
and domestic production are discussed in the section on weaving.) Access 
to these raw materials is mediated by cloth merchants and cloth and thread 
retailers most of whom operate from the main urban centres. Rural tailors 
.' 
either have to visit the main towns and cities for supplies or purchase them 
from local traders who, in turn, are dependent upon urban-based middlemen. 
This places urban tailors at a decided advantage over their rural counterparts 
in so far as they are close to the major cloth and thread outlets. 
Second; the combination of increasing clothing imports dating back 
to the early years of this century and the largely post-second world war 
establishment of a number of domestic firms making certain types of modern 
garments such as shirts and singlets has made some inroads into the markets 
traditionally supplied by local tailors. Whereas in the past local tailors did 
not have to compete on any large scale with such products, today the range 
of garments available from a wide variety of sources has eroded the 
previously protected position of the local tailoring industry. Overall, there 
: '" 
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145. 
TABLE 5.3 Yearly imports of yarn and cotton thread: . 1914-1970. 
Year Yarn Thread 
(1bs) (Thos. yards) 
1914 971,905 1,081,409 
743,764 1,423,487 
'" n.i. n.i. 
1915 
1916 
1917 543,127 1,168,592 
. . 
1918 394,403 1,584,627 ' . 
1919 152,956 7,824,779 
1920 n.i. 10,837,832 
1921 n.i. 5,027,121 
1922 I). i. 9,007,602 
1923 n. i. 13,555,221 
1924 703,633 1,760,384 
1925 873,078 19,936,753 
1926 644,576 2,204,124 
1927 841,894 5,740,476 
1928 967,304 2,109,508 
1929 638,338 2,112,766 
1930 726,171 2,688,828 
1931 362,784 8,511,303 
1932 736,128 2,390,514 
1933 616,822 2,764,650 
1934 616,651 2,207,798 
1935 980,503 3,193,307 
1936 1,170,245 5,438,813 
1937 1,876,179 452,448 (1) 
1938 740,040 241,620 
1939 700,454 308,888 
1940 657,291 254,298 
1941 359,953 203,752 
1942 514,976 393,205 
1943 439,263 435,448 
1944 501,470 220,919 
1945 458,042 290,928 
1946 559,084 268,214 
1947 710,674 276,991 
1948 1,114,334 501,129 
1949 1,112,824 606,593 
1950 1,235,249 371,730 
1951 1,186,975 418,905 
1952 1,383,219 637,154 
1953 1,734,461 870,069 
1954 (2 ) 1,632,282 571,343 
1955 2,009,871 781,934 
1956 2,186,504 887,972 
1957 1,965,164 773,997 
1958 2,054,028 908,930 
1959 3,577,259 1,167,389 
1960 2,397,497 1,147,247 
1961 3,703,852 1,157,919 
1962 4,528,344 5,770,259 
1963 1,390,330 5,037,631 
TABLE 5.3 
Year 
1964 
1965 
1966 
1967 
1968 
1969 
1970 
Cont. 
Yarn 
(lbs) 
1,698,312 
947,295 
544,140 
1,347,187 
1,548,258 
5,960,885 
8,481,580 
Thread 
(Thos.yards) 
4,011,720 
4,562,778 
4,156,751 
4,694,171 
4,552,379 
7,153,410 
7,855,049 
146. 
NB: (1) From 1937 on thread volume was recorded in Ibs. 
rather than thousands of yards. 
(2) From 1954 until 1960, the categories of "yarn" 
and "cotton thread" were subdivided into: 
a) cotton sewing thread 
b) cotton yarn and thread, other than sewing thread 
c) yarn and thread of synthetic fibres, except spun 
glass. 
Figures in the table refer to (a) and (b) only. Thus, 
total yarn and thread imports were higher than those 
given in the table. 
Further changes were made in 1960. 
classification became: 
The new 
a) thrown silk and other silk and thread 
b) cotton yarn and thread, grey unb1eached and 
mercerized 
c) cotton yarn and thread, bleached, dyed and 
mercerized 
d) yarn and thread of synthetic fibres 
e) yarn and thread of regenerated artificial 
fibres 
f) yarn of textile fibres. 
not 
In the table, from 1963 on "yarn" refers to sub-classification 
(b) and "thread" to (c). 
See Table 5.4 for breakdown of yarn and thread imports 
according to the new classification for the years 1965, 1970 
and 1975. 
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146. 
TABLE 5.3 Cont. 
Year Yarn Thread 
(lbs) (Thos.yards) 
1964 1,698,312 4,011,720 
1965 947,295 4,562,778 
1966 544,140 4,156,751 
1967 1,347,187 4,694,171 
1968 1,548,258 4,552,379 
1969 5,960,885 7,153,410 
1970 8,481,580 7,855,049 
NB: (1) From 1937 on thread volume was recorded in Ibs. 
rather than thousands of yards. 
(2) From 1954 until 1960, the categories of "yarn" 
and "cotton thread" were subdivided into: 
a) cotton sewing thread 
b) cotton yarn and thread, other than sewing thread 
c) yarn and thread of synthetic fibres, except spun 
glass. 
Figures in the table refer to (a) and (b) only. Thus, 
total yarn and thread imports were higher than those 
given in the table. 
Further changes were made in 1960. 
classification became: 
The new 
a) thrown silk and other silk and thread 
b) cotton yarn and thread, grey unbleached and 
mercerized 
c) cotton yarn and thread, bleached, dyed and 
mercerized 
d) yarn and thread of synthetic fibres 
e) yarn and thread of regenerated artificial 
fibres 
f) yarn of textile fibres. 
not 
in the table, from 1963 on "yarn" refers to sub-classification 
(b) and "thread" to (c). 
See Table 5.4 for breakdown of yarn and thread imports 
according to the new classification for the years 1965, 1970 
and 1975. 
TABLE 5.4 Yarn and thread imports: 1965, 1970 and 1975 
(quantities in 1bs. only). 
Type of yarn/thread Year 
147. 
1965 1970 1975 
Thrown silk and other silk 
yarn and thread 
Cotton yarn and thread, grey 
unb1eached and not mercerized 
Cotton yarn and thread, 
bleached dyed and mercerized 
Yarn and thread of synthetic 
fibres 
Yarn and thread of 
regenerated articifia1 
fibres 
Yarn of textile fibres 
15,000 
947,295 
4,562,778 
542,602 
4,032,422 
604,536 
110,831 507,696 
8,481,580 28,333,474 
7,855,049 16,353,048 
6,530,665 101,417,056 
11,101,847 76,763,557 
n.a. 527,551 
Sources for Tables 5.3 and 5.4: Blue Books and Annual Trade 
Reports. 
has been a decline in the proportion of total clothing output accounted 
for by traditional tailors. 
Third, although the widening of consumer choice and the shifts in 
consumer tastes have affected all tailors to some extent, the decline in 
demand for certain lines of traditional garments has affected some tailors 
more than others. A good example of the effect of changing consumer 
tastes upon a particular group of specialist tailors is that of horse-caparison 
makers. In pre-colonia l times, the horse was an important means of trans-
port among certain sections of the population and was also used in the 
traditional emirate military bureaucracy (see Smaldone, 1977 and Law, 1980). 
The growth of motor vehicular and railway transport during colonial times 
and the dismantling by the British of the emirate's military machine have 
led to a considerable decline in the market for horse- related products, 
. . 
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including those products previously made by specialist tailors such as the 
saddle-cloth and horse blanket makers. Horse caparisons are still made in 
pes ent-day Kano, but production is on a much smaller scale than in the past 
and those predominantly male tailors who specialised in such work have been 
much reduced, their place having been taken in many instances by secluded 
married women. 
Another example is that of tailors who devoted part of their productive 
efforts to processing indigo-dyed garments at the 19th century centres of 
export production, The demise of the long-distance trade in indigo-dyed 
clothing and the subsequent decline in those towns and villages where export 
production was concentrated deprived some tailors of what was once a 
lucrative source of income. 
Finally, the introduction of the sewing machine , a largely post- 1910 
development, has had a major impact upon hand tailoring, the dominant 
type of tailoring in pre-colonial times. Over the years hand tailors have 
had to compete with a new class of machinists (many of them former hand 
sewers) who are much more productive than their hand-sewing counterparts. 
Consequently, machine tailors have reduced enormously the share of the 
market formerly supplied almost entirely by hand tailors. Apart from the 
loss of certain skills associated with hand tailoring, the capital costs of 
becoming a tailor have risen and this has advantaged those with capital 
to invest in sewing machines. More attention will be given to this develop-
ment later in the chapter. 
These four factors have all contributed to a reduction in the relative 
importance of traditional tailoring over the years. In this respect, tailors 
have much in common with other traditional textile workers. However, 
unlike them, tailors continue to be an extremely common sight in towns, 
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149. 
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villages and market- places in Kano and the rest of Hausaland. Not only 
do tailors supply luxury items to the better-off, they provide many of the 
basic clothing requirements of the general Hausa population. Although it 
is possible that there are fewer full-time tailors today than in the past, 
in the main urban centres of the north such as Kano and Zaria, tailoring 
is the most important employer of labour in the small-scale manufacturing 
and processing sector. (Appendix I attempts to estimate total number of 
male tailors in Kano from 1926 to 1972). It may, in fact, be the most 
commonly- found type of small-scale industry in Nigeria as a whole. 
., 
Certainly, many studies show a high proportion of people who continue to 
work as tailors (see Table 5.5). Also, an absolute decline in the number 
of full-time tailors is not inconsistent with their continued, even growing , 
importance in the economy as the adoption of the sewing machine has 
meant considerably increased productivity among those who remain. Further-
more, very large numbers of people who are not officially classified as 
tailors in various government and other statistical reports actually engage 
in tailoring as a part- time pursuit. Chapters VII and VIII discuss this 
in more detail. 
Apart from urban tailoring, garment production is an important off-
farm activity in Kano's rural areas and some communities enjoy a consider-
able local reputation for high quality embroidery. Also, cloth-strip joining, 
although of limited and declining significance, is still carried ' out in rural 
Kano, especially where there are concentrations of hand-loom weavers • 
. The success of Hausa tailors, relative to other textile workers , in 
adapting to change and ensuring for themselves an important share of the 
total market for garments can be explained in a number of ways. Although 
the comments made here are concerned mainly with the situation in Kano, " 
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150. 
TABLE 5.5 Tailoring establishments in selected cities, towns and villages 
in Nigeria: Various years. 
Town, City 
or Village 
(A) 
Kano City 
and Waje (i) 
Kano City 
and Waje (ii) 
(B) 
Zar i a 
(C) 
Ibadan 
(D) 
100 North- east 
state Towns 
(E) 
49 Towns and 
Vi llages in 
weste r n state 
(F) 
Sou t h- east 
State 
(F) 
Benue- Plateau 
(G) 
14 Eas tern 
Niger ian Towns 
(H) 
Mid- west 
State 
(H) 
Lagos State 
(H) 
Kwara State 
(1) 
No. of 
tailoring 
establishments 
1365 
1133 
617 
1349 
1392 
7907 
1274 
892 
3450 
1300 
2095 
426 
(2) (3 ) (4 ) 
Total no. of (1) as Av . no. of 
small - scale % persons per 
industry of (2 ) tailoring 
establishments establishment 
4595 29.7 2.2 
2665 42.5 n.a. 
1178 52.2 1.4 
5135 26.3 n.a. 
3600 38.7 2.3 
15266 51.8 1.6 
4062 31.4 3.2 
3260 27.4 
10728 32.2 2.1 
3083 42.2 n.a. 
4240 49.5 n.a. 
1032 41.3 n.a. 
Sources: (A) (i) ABU Survey, 1972: (ii) Mabogunje and Filani, 1981. 
(5) 
Year 
of 
survey 
1972 
1976 
1970/71 
1963 
1973 
1969 
1972 
1973 
1961 
Early 
1970's 
11 
11 
(B) Remy and Weeks, 1973. More recently, A11en (1982:128- 129) 
has reported that of a sample of 1000 males working in small-
scale industries in Zaria (1977), some 40 per cent were 
engaged in textile-related trades (tailoring, weaving and 
cap- making) • Given the decline in weaving, it is likely 
that the bulk of these were tailors and cap makers. 
(C) Callaway, 1963. (D) 01ufemi Lewis, 1974. 
(E) Aluko, et al, 1972 ~ (F) Iwuji & Okorafor, 1975. 
(G) Kilby, 1969. (H) Aluko, et al, 1973. 
In Kaduna State in the early 1970's, Jaworek (1980:31) reports that 
35 per cent of all persons engaged in small-scale industries in the 
state were tailors. 
151. 
they can be regarded as ha ving general applicability to the rest of Hausaland. 
First, unlike many other peoples of Africa, the Hausa have not 
abandoned their traditional forms of dress for western-style clothing. The 
continued adherence to traditional styles has made it easy for local Hausa 
tailors to supply clothing as they can draw upon already existing tailoring 
tradi tions relating to technique and design. 
The attachment of the Hausa populace to traditional items of dress 
- of which the long, flowing gown (riga), the circular-shaped cap (hula) 
and the distinctively-styled smock (taguwa) are the most common and the 
most desired among Hausa men - serves not only a utilitarian function but 
also acts as a badge of identity or "ethnic marker" (van den Berghe, 1981 : 
28-34) which distinguishes Hausa people (and many other northern Nigerian 
Muslims) from the rest of the population. 
The strong commitment of the Hausa to their "national" dress has 
deep roots in their cultural and economic history and Hausa tailoring 
traditions go back many centuries. The growth of these traditions is 
intimately tied to the penetration of Islam into Hausa society. As part 
of the civilising mission undertaken by Muslim Hausa (and other Muslims 
who have settled in Hausaland over the centuries and who were partly 
responsible for introducing some of the clothing styles which eventually 
became identified as Hausa), new converts to Islam were usually required 
or encouraged to mark their transition from the status of ~ (pagan) to 
that of musulmi (muslim) by donning Hausa-style clothing 2 9. In early 
times , such an action may have symbolised the superiority of the more 
settled agricultural way of life of the Muslim over that of the pagan hunters 
and gatherers who invested their own forms of clothing, particularly leather 
loin cloths, with magical significance. In other words, the change in clothing 
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152. 
- from leather to cotton - signified a different attitude towards nature 
(Nicolas, 1975 : 60-60. 
This process of Islamization among the Hausa and among other peoples 
living in areas contiguous with Hausaland has been occurring since the 
14th and 15th centuries but gained momentum in the 19th century after the 
jihad. During the century the use of Hausa clothing spread as the Caliphate 
extended its borders through trade and conquest. Indeed, the diffusion of 
Hausa clothing has continued to the present day. 
Many observers have commented upon the importance of dress as a 
sign of civilisation among the Hausa , but one quotation from a study done 
among the Niger Republic Hausa will suffice to make the point: 
Ce costume [a reference to the large Hausa rigaJ est 
associe a la religion musulmane cl tel point qu'il est 
une sorte d'uniforme par lequel on reconnai:1t en 
principe les adeptes de cette religion. U ne 
conversion religieuse se marque avant tout par une 
conversion vestimentaire. (Nicolas, 1975 : 59). 
During the present century, the wearing of Hausa clothing as a 
mark of Islamic identification has been called upon by some as a means of 
opposing British rule and its attendant implications for public morality. 
For example, Hiskett draws attention to the poem of a Hausa malam, written 
in the 1930's, which condemns the adoption of western ways 3 o . Included 
in the poem is the following reference to clothing: 
Whatever article of their clothing, if you wear it, 
I tell you that you may understand , 
If you pray a thousand times you will not be vindicated -
And the same applies to the maker of h.urricane 
lamp globes -
Your short trousers together with your tight-fitting 
trousers, 
Whoever puts them on, his unbelief is wide. 
" 
Whoever wears suits with buttons, he was apostatized, 
he has no religion at all, only pride, 
His state is the state of the makers of silver dollars, 
They are beyond our power to imitate. One should not 
wear shirts with collars. 
Whoever wears them, his unbelief is wide. 
Khaki and pyjamas; whoever it is _ 
Who wears them and prays in them, he has committed 
a crime, •.•• 
(Hiskett, 1973 : 164). 
During the 1940's and 1950's, the growth of Hausa cultural 
153. 
nationalism in the face of fears that they, the Hausa, would be dominated 
by other ethnic and cultural groups within an independent Nigeria further 
reinforced the wearing of distinctive Hausa clothing. In particular, much 
opposition was expressed towards the Ibo who were sometimes stereotyped 
by the Hausa as cannibals and wearers of loin cloths (Lloyd, in Panter-
, 
Brick, 1970 : 3). 
Second, the ability of local tailors to supply the Hausa market has 
not been undermined by the large increases in the importation of garments 
into Nigeria over the past 70 years 31. The bulk of imported clothing is 
made in the western-style and cannot be considered as perfect substitutes 
for the wide variety of gowns, most of the caps, and many of the smocks 
and trousers made by Hausa tailors. . Some imports; such as shirts and 
singlets, are worn by Hausa men, but they usually continue to wear the 
short Hausa shirt ('Yar Ciki) and alternate between the different styles. 
Many clothing imports, such as brassieres, corsets, socks and 
stockings, cardigans, jerseys, pullovers, and waterproof clothing, have no 
tradi tional equivalents and so constitute net additions to the clothing range 
available in the society. Of course, in so far as Hausa consumers spend 
part of their incomes on these new types of garments, some pressure is 
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placed upon local tailors as consumers must apportion their incomes among 
the increasingly wide range of clothing .available. However, these new 
styles have not displaced most traditional products. The one item of 
traditional clothing which does appear to have been almost displaced by 
imported substitutes is the hand-woven under-pant (bante) 3 2 . 
Furthermore, it is possible that the demand for imports, on a per 
capita basis, is greater among non-Hausa peoples in central and southern 
Nigeria where the westernisation of dress styles has gone the furthest. 
Also, income per capita is somewhat higher in the southern parts of the 
country which, combined with a greater proximity to the entry points of 
imports which reduces their cost, increases the attractiveness of those 
imports to southern consumers compared with consumers in the north, 
particularly Hausaland 33. 
Thir~d, where there is a demand for western-style clothing among 
Hausa people, local tailors have responded by producing such garments 
themselves. In Kano, tailors who specialise in such work include both 
Hausa and non-Hausa who are located mainly outside the old city in Fagge 
and Sabon Gari. They make loose and tight- fitting shirts, regular and 
wide-bottomed trousers, and custom- made suits. Customers at these 
tailors' workshops are often the young and fashion-conscious (known locally 
as 'Van Zamani [sons of the modern times] or 'Van Kaifi [the sharp ones] ) 
who demand a good fit, something which is more difficult to obtain if one 
buys lIoff-the- peg ll, These tailors compete in price as well as quality. 
For example, imported European trousers sold by Lebanese shopkeepers 
retail at between 15 and 20 Naira whereas a local tailor can make copies 
of these trousers for half or less (including the cost of materials) that 
charged by ready- made sellers. Cheap Korean shirts retail at about 6 Naira 
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TABLE 5.6 Clothing imports: 1965, 1970 and 1975. 
Mens and boys outer garments not 
knitted (except for shirts) 
Womens, girls and infants outer 
garments (not knitted or crocheted) 
Mens and boys undergarments (not 
knitted or crocheted) 
Womens, girls and infants under 
garments (not knitted or crocheted) 
Handkerchiefs 
Shawls, scarves, mufflers, veils 
etc. (not knitted or crocheted) 
Gloves, mittens, stockings and 
socks (not knitted or crocheted) 
Gloves, mittens etc. knitted or 
crotcheted. Not elastic nor 
rubberised 
Stockings, understockings socks, 
ankle socks, sochettes, etc. 
Other outergarments knitted or 
crocheted. Not elastic nor 
rubberised 
Shirts of all descriptions 
Other undergarments, nightwear, 
knitted. Not elastic nor 
rubberised 
Headgear of felt 
Headgear plaited 
Other headgear 
169,600 doz. 
124,141 doz. 
59,765 doz. 
105,172 doz. 
722,657 doz. 
1,215,619 doz. 
89,387 doz.prs. 
34,643 pair 
79,931 doz.prs. 
61,036 doz. 
53,250 doz. 
25,855 doz. 
161,684 no. 
6,142 no. 
2,320,541 no. 
155. 
15,957 176,309 
12,110 737,270 
25,999 119.084 
52,813 165,649 
32,034 335,892 
12,746 184,124 
12,696 51,038 
68,978 285,990 
30,071 55,085 
45,969 99,180 
2,138 418,333 
12,526 11,647 
107,927 593,609 
5,176 1,528,227 
567,805 997,814 
This is not a complete list but covers the main categories of clothing 
imports. Excluded are ties, bows, cravats, collars, cuffs, jabots and 
similar accessories, corsets, suspenders, leather clothing and accessories, 
knitted or crocheted fabric (elastic or rubberised), chemises, .singlets, 
undervests (knitted or crocheted). No figures on volume are given for 
these. 
Source: Nigerian Trade Summaries for 1965, 1970 and 1975. 
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in Sabon Gari market but local tailors make copies of these for around 
4 Naira (1976 figures). 
It should be remembered that in rural areas, where most of the 
population lives, where average incomes are lower than in the city, and 
where a significant proportion of tailored goods made in the old city are 
sold, western styles are much less important. Even in the urban areas it 
156. 
is still extremely rare to find a Hausa man who wears a western-style suit. 
As far as female customers are concerned, Hausa women do not wear modern 
clothing such as pantsuits, short skirts, ' brief tops and the like. Long 
wrappers and blouses are the most common items of female attire and these 
are usually tailored by male and some female tailors in the city. 
In general, there has developed in Kano a spatial division of tailoring 
labour with old city tailors, most of whom are Hausa, specialising in Hausa-
style garments and tailors outside the city making Hausa clothing, modern 
garments, and garments for the many non-Hausa people who reside there 
and whose clothing preferences reflect the diverse ethnic backgrounds of 
the population. In the rural areas most tailors are Hausa and supply local 
markets. Some are artisans working for a largely local clientele although 
there are those who sell what they make to visiting traders or work on 
a putting-out basis for city merchants, tailors and other middlemen. This 
applies particularly to hand tailors living close to urban centres who are 
able to combine sewing with farming and so produce garments at a lower 
price than their urban counterparts. 
Fourth, although there are basic indigenous Hausa styles of clothing, 
fashion changes do occur and one important response on the part of local 
tailors to these changes has been the modernization of traditional garments. 
For example, there has been a move towards lighter and less bulky clothing 
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(known as k'aramar kaya or small goods among the Hausa), which means that 
garments use up less cloth and thread and require less labour time, the 
net result of which has been to lower the cost of garments. A similar 
trend can be observed in embroidery work. These changes have been 
encouraged , in part, by the availability of lighter factory -made fabrics 
which have all but replaced many of the heavier hand-woven cloths. 
Fifth, imported clothing is usually without embroidery and so tailors 
who specialise in machine and hand embroidery, as distinct from those who 
assemble garments, still provide a unique service to Hausa customers. Some 
deskilling has occurred in embroidery work as a consequence of the use 
of sewing machines and the demand for cheaper, and therefore, less elaborate 
embroidery designs. However, this has worked to the advantage of many 
embroiderers , particularly machinists, in that there is a greater demand 
for embroidered garments as increasing numbers of people, who in the past 
would not have been able to afford embroidered clothing, are now able to 
purchase more simply-made and cheaper copies of older styles. In addition, 
machine embroiderers have been responsible for introducing embroidery 
designs which incorporate both traditional and novel motifs. 
A sixth factor accounting for the survival of local Hausa tailoring 
is the growth in the size of the local and regional market brought about 
by increases in population. Thus, Kano' State's population increased from 
around 3 million in 1900 to between 7 and 10 million in the mid to late 
1970's. In Hausaland as a whole, population has grown from about 10 million 
in the early 1900's to between 20 and 30 million today. Thus, there are 
far more people to clothe than in the past. 
There have also been some increases in the per capita consumption 
of clothing as industry , commerce and the public sector have all expanded , 
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providing employment and increased incomes for many; Also , for many 
years farmers benefitted from the growth of the groundnut exporting industry 
established after 1912. Part of the increased incomes earned from this 
industry were spent on clothing. 
Growth in consumption of clothing per capita is particularly apparent 
in the urban areas where there are greater concentrations of middle and 
upper-income consumers. In rural areas, where incomes are lower, people 
tend to purchase less clothing per head and what they do purchase is often 
of inferior quality and lower in price. The division between rural and 
urban markets is reflected in the differentiation among city tailors between 
artisans producing for urban clients and those who produce, often on a 
bulk-sale basis, . for the poorer rural market. Chapters IX and X discuss 
the division between artisans and market producers in more detail. 
A seventh factor which has operated to protect local tailors who, it 
must be remembered, operate with limited amounts of capital in small work-
shops, is the failure of larger capitalist enterprises, both foreign and 
domestic, to establish large clothing plants throughout the country. Official 
statistics, which exclude the vast majority of both Hausa and other Nigerian 
tailoring workshops, indicate the relative absence of large clothing firms 
using sophisticated textile machinery, Thus, in 1972 there were only 31 
wearing apparel establishments employing 10 or more persons per establish-
ment in the whole of Nigeria. Total employment in these establishments 
was 1,976, giving an average of 64 employees per establishment (Berger, 
1975 : 26- 27}, Furthermore, the majority of these establishments were 
located outside Kano and Hausaland. In 1972, for example, of the 31 
establishments, 27 (87 per cent) were in Lagos and the then East-Central 
State (Nigeria, Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1973 : 45-49). 
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During 1975/76 only three firms producing articles of clothing were 
listed in the Kano trade directory 3 It. One specialised in the production of 
socks and stockings , another in singlets and briefs, and the third in singlets 
and blouses. A fourth was established in 1974 and specialised in the pro-
duction of children's dresses and boys' shirts. 
None of these firms produce garments which are also made in any 
great quantity by Hausa tailors in the city and in the countryside, although 
they have some impact on the local industry in so far as consumers spend 
part of their limited incomes on singlets, children's shirts, blouses, socks 
and stockings. ' However, given the size of the Kano and Hausa market 
for clothing, their impact is limited. 
Potential foreign investors have tended to ignore garment production 
in Nigeria. Prior to the second world war, most foreign investment was 
in commerce, transport, finance and mining. Manufacturing was not regarded 
as an attractive proposition because the commercial firms did not wish to 
disadvantage themselves and metropolitan manufacturers with whom they 
had commercial agreements. Also, because of the seasonal and unpredictable 
nature of Nigerian export earnings in the inter-war years, there were fears 
of potential idle capacity through investment in production to supply domestic 
consumers. As Mars put it: 
If they (the commercial companies) merely import 
manufactured goods they are saved this capital loss, 
for, if there is a reduction of revenue from export 
trade, they import correspondingly less and thus 
prevent capital from lying idle in the colonies; 
they use their idle capital for short- term investment 
at home. (Mars, in Perham, 1948 : 69). 
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160. 
Mars also suggested that merchant capital was wary of productive 
investment which would create a class of wage labourers who might put 
pressures on company profits through demands for higher wages. 
Pre- war colonial government policy with regard to industrialisation 
was one of indifference and neglect rather than active discouragement. 
The colonial authorities were more concerned to encourage peasant- based 
export agriculture in order to ensure supplies of raw materials to the 
metropole and, as war approached in Europe, to the Allies. In addition, 
as the colony was expected to provide most of the revenue needed to run 
its own affairs; this aim was perceived to be better achieved through 
import and export taxes (along with other forms of domestic taxation) 
rather than through revenues which might have been raised from the wages 
and profits of a local manufacturing sector (Kilby, in Gann and Duignan, 
Vol. 4, 197: : 491 -492; Rimmer, in Panter- Brick , 1978 : 145; Hopkins, 
1973, Chapter 6 and 237-267). Thus, until the 1950's there existed little 
in the way of a modern industrial sector throughout Nigeria. 
Since the 1950's Nigeria has pursued an import- substitution policy 
in manufacturing in order to free itself from dependence on imported 
manufactures and a reliance on export agriculture as the mainstay of the 
economy. This new policy was given considerable impetus by the growth 
of a Nigerian elite who gradually took over power from the British and 
who wished to create a more modern and industrialised society. In 
addition, the commercial firms which had held such a monopoly of trade in 
pre-war days began to suffer competition from other interests and, in order 
to protect their share of an expanding market, began · to consider import 
substi tution behind tariff barriers as a means to achieve this. However, 
the emphasis upon manufacturing has led to limited investment by foreigners 
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in clothing manufacture. Thus, by the years 1966 to 1970, investment 
in clothing production had not reached one per cent of total foreign manu-
facturing investment (Ndioumu, 1974). One reason for this relative lack 
of interest in garment production was the greater incentives given to 
investors in areas other than clothing. In general, these incentives were 
designed to encourage investment in new types of manufacturing and , apart 
from hosiery and singlets, excluded the production of traditional Hausa-
style garments. No explicit protection was either requested or given to 
this part of garment manufacture. , It is likely that foreign investors have 
been loathe to commit large amounts of capital to traditional garments 
where demand is divided among many regional and ethnic markets and, where 
there still exists considerable seasonality and unpredictability in rural 
purchasing power which makes the mass production of standardised items 
of clothing and the realisation of economies of scale difficult , especially 
when compared with other industries such as textiles. Those who have 
invested in clothing production tend to be smaller capitalists such as the 
Lebanese and Nigerian citizens. 
Between 1972 and 1981 foreigners were barred from investment 
in clothing production as part of the Nigerian government's attempt to 
indigenise the economy. However, this measure simply legalised an already 
existing de facto situation in which few foreign investors showed any interest 
in producing clothing 35. 
Nigerians themselves have not been attracted to large-scale garment 
production for some of the same reasons already mentioned. Among Hausa 
capitalists greater profits have traditionally been made in commerce, trans-
portation and trading and it is only since the 1950's that Hausa capital has 
sought an outlet in modern manufacturing. What investment has been made 
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by Kano-based Hausa investors has gone mainly into t extiles, furniture , 
beer and soft drinks, tanneries, perfumes and food-processing (Tahir , 1975 
162. 
74). There are examples of Kano Hausa investing heavily in sewing machines 
and garment production, with some owning fifty or more machines and 
employing as many tailors, but they are few and such investment has often 
been viewed as a stepping stone to more lucrative opportunites in commerce. 
Also, tailoring firms set up by such men have utilised the same technology 
(treadle-operated sewing machines) and forms of organisation as are found 
in many of the smaller tailoring establishments. At the time of the field 
work there were no more than fifteen or twenty tailoring workshops in 
Kano City in which could be found twenty or more workers employed by 
a single employer. The vast majority of workshops were much smaller 
than this (see Chapter VI) 3 5 • 
The final factor which has contributed to the survival of local 
tailoring has been the introduction of the sewing machine. One important 
effect of the increasing use of the sewing machine was to greatly increase 
the speed of production with a consequent lowering of the labour time 
per unit of output when compared with the labour input required when 
all tailoring was done by hand. Thus, a machine tailor could produce in 
one day what would take a hand sewer anywhere between four and seven 
days. 
Today, the majority of male tailors, particularly in the urban areas , 
use sewing machines. 
All machines were originally imported, and this continues to be the 
case. Despite ups and downs in the yearly level of imports, the figures 
show a general upward trend between 1925 and 1975, with a considerable 
import expansion after the second world war (see Table 5.7). To give an 
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163. 
TABLE 5.7 Sewing machine imports to Nigeria: 1925-1974. 
Year No. Year No. 
1925 8350 1950 22605 
1926 8372 1951 32425 
1927 8701 1952 27636 
1928 9106 1953 37897 
1929 7269 1954 25877 
1930 6190 1955 29761 
1931 2404 1956 45515 
1932 2295 1957 19464 
1933 2745 1958 16150 
1934 2477 1959 26611 
1935 3633 1960 37423 
1936 6603 1961 36467 
1937 13189 1962 20424 
1938 4112 1963 23484 
1939 3174 1964 19416 
1940 1314 1965 15000 
1941 783 1966 15826 
1942 .· 1290 1967 21600 
1943 302 1968 7032 
1944 310 1969 1696 
1945 791 1970 3877 
1946 1633 1971 11002 
1947 6640 1972 23968 
~1948 16227 1973 42204 
1949 19507 1974 31383 
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Sub-total 137417 Sub-total 594743 
Grand total 732,160 
Source: Blue Books and Trade Reports 
example of the growing importance of sewing machines in the Nigerian 
economy, in 1925 some 8,350 machines were imported while in 1975 the 
figure was 56,181. 
Elderly informants date . the coming of the first sewing machines 
to Kano to between 1910 and 1914, especially after the completion of the 
rail link in 1912. The earliest models were operated by means of a hand-
driven wheel on the machine's head , but over the years they were gradually 
replaced by machines with a foot - treadle (known as k'afar wa~ or IIfoot 
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of wire" after the wire which connects the machine head to the treadle). 
Less cumbersome and quicker to operate than the hand wheel varieties, 
foot-treadle machines are now the main form of technology in local tailoring ; 
although some female tailors continue to use hand-driven ones. 
Until the mid to late-1930's, sewing machines were used almost 
exclusively for garment assembly. From that time, and mainly after the 
war, there have been increasing imports of embroidery machines which 
have given rise to a special class of machinists skilled in producing copies 
of hand-embroidered garments. 
The earliest machines were brought to Kano by European import 
firms and by Hausa and Yoruba traders who travelled to the coast to purchase 
supplies or who acted as agents for coastal-based import firms. In Kano City, 
machines were not a common sight until the 1920's and the 1930's, most 
tailoring still being carried out by hand. Thus, the 1926 Kano City census 
of trades and crafts lists only 38 machine tailors out of a total of almost 
3,500 tailors 3 7 • . It is difficult to say how many machines reached the 
rural areas, but they are unlikely to have been many. Thus, assessment 
reports of Kano's rural districts before 1930 fail to make any mention of 
machine tailors. However, during the 1930's there are occasional references 
to rural machinists and in one district of Zaria Emirate, Forde remarks that 
the bulk of clothing output was machine-made (Forde et. al., 1946 : 136). 
On the other hand, Smith reports that in parts of rural Zaria during the 
late 1940's and early 1950's; hand tailors outnumbered machinists by a ratio 
of six to one, with most machine tailoring taking place in Zaria City (Smith, 
1955 : 144). Interviews with elderly informants in Kano City tend to support 
Smith's view that machine tailoring up to the 1940's was largely concentrated 
in the urban areas. Furthermore, these elderly informants argued that 
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even in Kano City, hand tailors outnumbered machinists at this time, although 
the latter were more productive and took a greater share of the market than 
their numbers would suggest. 
In Kano during these early years people of diverse social and 
occupational backgrounds purchased sewing machines , although the high 
cost involved, anywhere from five pounds to twelve pounds per machine , 
restricted ownership to those with spare capital. Some were traders who 
set up workshops and employed others or rented out machines to local 
tailors. A number of Native Authority employees obtained machines from 
traditional office holders with whom they had clientage or kin ties. 
Abdullahi, the then Emir of Kano, gave one of his personal tailors a machine . 
. In fact, many minor functionaries in the traditional emirate bureaucracy 
moved into tailoring when they were made redundant by administrative 
reforms introduced by the British. Some started off as hand tailors and 
later shifted to machine work with money obtained through savings or were 
partly financed by gifts from senior administrators. Well-established hand 
embroiderers purchased machines for use in their own work. For example, 
in Soron D'inki . ward a well-known jalala maker bought a second-hand 
machine from a trader in Alfindiki ward as early as 1920 and used it to 
assemble jalala which he continued to embroider by hand. Eastern-style 
embroiderers belonging to the main tailoring families in Yalwa also used 
machines in a similar fashion. 
Malams who had engaged in hand sewing as a subsidiary activity 
also invested in machines. For example", in Ayagi ward one malam who 
hand embroidered clothing and traded in imported cloth invested part of 
his savings in a second-hand machine bought from a market tailor at a cost 
of 54/- . A number of long-distance traders who were becoming too old to 
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166. 
travel or who were suffering the effects of a decline in this form of commerce 
also saw the opportunities offered by tailoring and invested in machines. 
These men either used the machines themselves or trained others to work 
for them. A former ward head of Ayagi ward who was also a hand tailor 
and landlord/trader bought a machine from a Yoruba trader he knew who 
brought it from Lagos sometime in the 1930's. He was encouraged to take 
up machine tailoring after the trader told him that in Lagos machines were 
very popular and many people were using them. The trader had himself 
learned to machine tailor and taught the informant how to use it. 
A far larger number of people acquired machine tailoring skills than 
those who actually purchased them. , Through renting or working as an 
apprentice the ability to use machines became more widely diffused. There 
was also a second- hand market in machines which made them available to 
people of more modest means. A few men, including tailors and blacksmiths, 
took up machine maintenance and repair as spare parts were often in short 
supply. No formal training was provided for potential machine repairers. 
Rather, they learned by doing and eventually acquired a local reputation. 
Although many Kano City hand tailors saw the impact that sewing 
machines were likely to have upon their livelihood, there were no organised 
attempts to oppose their use. First, as already noted, the advantages of 
machines were quickly perceived by those with enough money to invest in 
them. These men were often well- respected in their communities and 
neighbourhoods, which made any form of protest difficult. As one ward 
head/tailor put it to me: "Hand tailors did not prevent me from using my 
machine. . They did theirs , I did mine. . Nobody ever asked me to stop 
machine tailoring. They had no power". Second , the impact of the machine 
was uneven, affecting some branches of tailoring more than others. Thus, 
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167. 
in pre-war times, hand embroiderers were not directly threatened by machine 
assembly, although it did cut into any hand making-up that they did. Some 
embroiderers may have welcomed the assembly machines as ·they allowed 
them to concentrate upon the more lucrative work of embroidery, leaving 
the tedious and time-consuming task of making-up to machinists. If the 
embroiderer also happened to be able to afford his own machine, so much 
the better. Third , the extent of any threat to hand sewing may have been 
hidden at certain times as a consequence of the growth of population and 
the rise in incomes which stimulated the demand for the services of both 
hand and machine tailors. In addition, the reduction in supply of imported 
fabrics and their increased cost at such times as the first world war, the 
post-war period of inflation in Europe, the depression years, and during 
the second world war provided a temporary advantage to hand sewers who 
worked with hand-woven cloth. Machinists preferred factory-made materials 
because they were much easier to use on a sewing machine. Hand-woven 
cloth was cumbersome to work with as it was thicker than factory cloth and 
got caught in the machine's mechanism. Also, machinists had to sew 
together many cloth strips to make up a piece and often used more material 
than hand sewers. . In order to make a firm seam the machinists could not 
join together the narrow strips of cloth in such a fine way as the hand 
sewer and this meant a greater amount of material wasted on the seam and 
an increase in the cost of the final garment. 
Fourth, many tailors in the rural areas were only partially dependent 
upon tailoring for a living and if demand slackened they had their farms 
to fall back on. . In any case, the widely scattered and fragmented nature 
of the rural tailoring labour force would have made organised protest 
difficult. Finally, Hausa tailors never had any organisational structure 
167. 
in pre-war times, hand embroiderers were not directly threatened by machine 
assembly, although it did cut into any hand making-up that they did. Some 
embroiderers may have welcomed the assembly machines aS ' they allowed 
them to concentrate upon the more lucrative work of embroidery, leaving 
the tedious and time- consuming task of making-up to machinists. If the 
embroiderer also happened to be able to afford his own machine, so much 
the better. Third , the extent of any threat to hand sewing may have been 
hidden at certain times as a consequence of the growth of population and 
the rise in incomes which stimulated the demand for the services of both 
hand and machine tailors. In addition, the reduction in supply of imported 
fabrics and their increased cost at such times as the first world war, the 
post-war period of inflation in Europe, the depression years, and during 
the second world war provided a temporary advantage to hand sewers who 
worked with hand-woven cloth. Machinists preferred factory-made materials 
because they were much easier to use on a sewing machine. Hand-woven 
cloth was cumbersome to work with as it was thicker than factory cloth and 
got caught in the machine's mechanism. Also, machinists had to sew 
together many cloth strips to make up a piece and often used more material 
than hand sewers. , In order to make a firm seam the machinists could not 
join together the narrow strips of cloth in such a fine way as the hand 
sewer and this meant a greater amount of material wasted on the seam and 
an increase in the cost of the final garment. 
Fourth, many tailors in the rural areas were only partially dependent 
upon tailoring for a living and if demand slackened they had their farms 
to fall back on. , In any case, the widely scattered and fragmented nature 
of the rural tailoring labour force would have made organised protest 
difficult. Finally, Hausa tailors never had any organisational structure 
which might have acted as a model for opposition to new developments. 
By the 1930's, machine assemblers in Kano City were cutting into 
the market for hand assembled garments and were supplying both rural 
168. 
and urban customers with cheap clothing. One particularly popular gown 
at that time was the kad ta kwana (don't spend the night). This term was 
applied to gowns produced by tailors who were able to work rapidly on a 
number of garments and sell them in the city market all on the same day. 
Machine tailors were able to out-produce and under-sell hand sewers while 
at the same time earning a higher income. One elderly informant desc-
ribed to me how he was able to do this. In one day he could finish any-
where between five and ten garments compared with the hand sewer's 
one or two. He would buy 15 to 20 yards of cheap cloth for about 16/-
from which he made three kad ta kwana gowns. He sold these gowns for 
between 24/- and 27/-, making a profit of about 7/- to 9/- after paying 
for thread and other working costs. A hand sewer, on the other hand, 
was able to make only one gown at the maximum during the same time 
and in order to make the same amount of profit had to sell it for over 
12/- , that is, at a price between a third and fifty per cent higher than 
the machinist. Thus, by producing more in a given time period, the machi-
nist was able to sprea d his costs over a la rger number of garments. In 
addition, the machinist was able to lower the selling price of garments 
without impairing his standard of living to as great an extent as the hand 
sewer. 
Although some embroidery machines were imported into Kano before 
the second world war, the French Comely and certain brands of German 
machine being the most common, the increasing use of such machines was a 
largely post-war development 3 8 . However, some machine assemblers did 
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try to copy certain embroidery styles. The usual way in which this was 
done was for a machine tailor to get women to lay large numbers of thread 
strands onto the face of a gown (usually the Aska Biyu which had a large 
motif in the shape of two knives down the gown IS front). . These threads 
would be lightly tacked to the cloth by hand, but sometimes by machine, 
and then the tacked threads were sewn more securely onto the cloth by the 
machine assembler, a process known in Hausa as ~ or ~anniya (felling-
stitch), 
The advantage of this innovation presumably lay in the fact that 
women could be paid little or nothing (especially if family labour were 
used) and so the machine tailor could break into the market for embroidered 
clothing by appropriating part of the profits from embroidery for himself. 
However, this type of work seems to have been short-lived as embroidery 
machines largely killed the market. 
After the war large numbers of assembly and embroidery machines 
were imported into Nigeria. How many reached the north is not known 
but in 1950/51 the number of machines entering Kano Province was 2,321 
or seven per cent of the total imports for that year. In 1961 out of a 
Nigeria total of between 31,500 and 36,500 sewing machines imported (the 
numbers vary according to different sources), the then Northern Region 
is estimated to have consumed 9,500 or between twenty six and thirty per 
cent (Economic Survey, Kano Province, 1950/51; Ministry of Trade and 
Industry, Northern Nigeria, 1963). The embroidery machine provided a 
major stimulus to the tailoring industry as it made cheap, embroidered 
clothing available to a large, relatively untapped, market of consumers 
whose per capita consumption of cloth rose by about fifty per cent during 
the 19501s. 
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170. 
From the early 1950's up to the present machine embroidery has 
tended to remain concentrated in the urban areas, particularly Kano City, 
where there exists easy access to cheap labour, a ready availability of 
raw materials and sewing machines, people with the means to purchase 
embroidery machines, established outlets for the sale of embroidered 
clothing to the rural population, and a large concentration of urban con-
sumers. In Kano City itself, there have grown up many tailoring workshops 
in which a single employer combines the labour power of machine embroi-
derers and assemblers under the same roof and produces garments in bulk 
for sale to the regional market through city market clothes dealers, 
merchants and visiting traders. In addition, some tailors work on their 
own account as machine embroiderers, producing embroidered garments 
for private, usually city- resident, customers (see Chapter VII). 
Although one finds a few machine embroiderers in the rural areas , 
they are greatly outnumbered by machine assemblers. The widely scattered 
nature of the rural population, the greater local demand for plain garments, 
the higher costs of rurally-purchased raw materials, and the competition 
from city-based embroiderers make investment in machine embroidery a 
risky business. In larger rural markets there are usually some machinists, 
but they are most often machine assemblers who make-up and repair clothes 
for market visitors. Even machine assemblers are more likely to be found 
in small towns and nucleated village communities than in places where home-
steads are scattered. 
, The advent of the sewing machine has not killed the demand for 
hand tailored garments. Hand embroidery is still highly desired by Hausa 
people, particularly the better-off. This sustains a number of city embroi-
derers in their work and also provides an income to farmer -embroiderers 
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who lives outside, but close to, Kano City and who work for city-based 
middlemen who supply them with orders. In general, the demand for hand 
embroidered garments is closely related to the degree of prosperity of the 
general society so that during periods of rising incomes a greater proportion 
of the household budget is devoted to clothing of which part goes to embroi-
dery; The oil boom of the 1970's saw a growth in demand for particular 
styles of hand embroidery which allowed some tailors to expand their operations. 
The kind of hand work provided and the sources of workers to produce 
hand- made garments have changed in a number of ways. Styles have become 
more simplified ' requiring less work per garment, increasingly certain hand 
embroiderers have specialised in more limited designs and motifs, and the 
division of tasks within hand sewing has increased. , In parts of Kano City, 
many women and children have taken up certain types of hand sewing no 
longer attractive to men, a good example being jalala embroidery. Speci-
alist hand sew ing such as the tacking of inside seams on Eastern-Sty le 
garments is a largely adolescent and pre-adolescent male preserve (see 
Chapter VII). The hand embroidery of caps is widely diffused throughout 
the general population but is a largely part-time activity carried out by 
secluded women, Koranic students and by men whose primary occupations 
lie outside tailoring. 
Overall, hand tailoring is today almost entirely confined to embroidery. 
The making-up of garments by hand has virtually disappeared from Kano City 
and is much reduced in rural areas. All hand embroiderers depend upon the 
services of machine assemblers who make-up all garments, be they plain or 
embroidered. 
Since the second world war, sewing machines, particularly cheaper 
Japanese and Chinese assembly machines, have become available to more 
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and more people. Although sewing machines represent a new kind of capital 
investment, they are within the financial reach of many people and so there 
has been no concentra tion of ownership of machines in a few hands. This 
contrasts with the highly expensive and complex technology required in 
modern weaving and spinning which makes it impossible for the ordinary 
Hausa person to envisage any future in this branch of manufacturing other 
than as an employee of a large company. 
There are, however, two qualifications which must be made to the 
point about the general ease of availability of, and access to, sewing 
machines. First, the cheapest machines and those which enjoy the widest 
diffusion among the general population are the single-stitch assembly 
machines. Indeed , many older tailors look back with some nostalgia to 
earlier days when they were among the first to capitalise on the expansion 
in demand for machine-made garments. They consider that in the present 
day there is an over- supply of assemblers which has reduced the opportunities 
for earning a decent living in tailoring. Embroidery machines are more 
likely to be found in larger tailoring workshops run by men either with 
many years involvement in tailoring or who have been able to obtain funds 
to invest in a number of machines at one time. Machine tailors usually 
begin their tailoring careers in machine assembly and , if they are successful, 
may decide to invest in an embroidery machine to break into the market 
for embroidered garments. In the case of the machine tailors in the three 
wards to be examined later in this study, capital for investment comes 
largely from private sources of which the most important are accumulated 
savings in tailoring and other occupations or gifts from kin. State assistance, 
in the form of loans, is of limited significance. However, it should be 
noted that in the north as a whole during the 1950's and early 1960's, the 
. ' 
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173. 
Northern Region Development Corporation acted as an important disburser 
of funds to hundreds of small-scale tailoring projects. A few applicants for 
loans received amounts in excess of a thousand pounds, but on average the 
size of loans was small. From 1950 to 1959 the Corporation granted a 
total of 2,578 loans of which 522 were for tailoring projects (Northern 
Region Development Corporation, 1958/59). This represented some 20 
per cent of all projects but only 6.5 per cent of all funds (31,340 pounds 
out of a total budget of nearly 500,000 pounds). As such loans required 
some security or a guarantor, often the local Native Authority in the area 
where the applicant resided, it is likely that many went to people with 
connections in local government or who had no known record of hostility 
to the ruling party, the Northern People's Congress (Kilby, 1969 : 332). 
Although these loans did provide help to many tailors, given the 
larger number of tailors in the Northern Region at that time, the vast 
majority received no government aid. Later government schemes, such 
as the small-scale industry credit scheme, have had the same limited effect. 
The second qualification is that there are more sewing machines 
per head of population in urban Kano than in the rural areas. U nfortuna tely , 
I do not have figures on the urban-rural distribution of sewing machines, 
but from my own qualitative observations and many conversations with 
urban and rural tailors, this seems to be a reasonable conclusion to draw. 
Furthermore , it is in the city that the tailoring division of labour reaches 
its most developed form. City tailors are close to a concentrated market 
of urban consumers, raw materials and instruments of production are readily 
available from specialised suppliers, tailoring labour is easy to obtain, and 
the city is the commercial centre for a wide regional market and is located 
within an area of dense rural settlement known as the Kano Close-Settled 
' " 
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174. 
Zone (K.C.S.Z.). City tailors produce large quantities of garments for these 
markets, disposing of them through city market clothes dealers, merchants, 
and visiting traders or selling them direct to rura l customers who come to 
Kano to work or to buy various commodities for domestic consumption. 
It is to the situation of tailors in present-day Kano City that I shall 
now turn ~ using illustrative material collected in the three wards of Soron 
D'inki , Hausawa and Yalwa. I shall begin with a few remarks on Kano 
as a commercial and industrial centre and the importance of small -scale 
manufacturing and commerc'e within it. Later chapters will concentrate 
upon the general features of tailors and tailoring in the city and the 
organization of tailoring in the three wards. 
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175. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER V. 
1. On the British conquest of the Calipha'te, see Adeleye (1971), Blackwell (1927) 
and Muffett (1971). On events in Kano, see Anjorin (1966) and Fika (1978). 
2. Works on the development (or underdevelopment) of the Nigerian economy 
under colonialism are many. Good overviews can be found in Ekundare (1973), 
Helleiner (1966), Kilby (1969) and Perham (1946). More radical interpretations 
are covered in Nnoli (1981) and Williams (1976). On northern Nigeria, see 
Shenton and Freund (1978). More general studies of West African colonial 
development include Ake (1980) and Hopkins (1973). 
3. The concept of a traditional international division of labour is examined in 
Frobel et. al. (1979). 
4. The development of the Nigerian oil industry is examined in Pearson (1971), 
Schatzl (1969) and Turner in Nore and Turner (1980). Commercial oil 
production began in 1957 and by 1978 had reached 695 million barrels per 
annum by which time crude petroleum accounted for 89 per cent of total 
exports. Nearly half of the oil went to the U.S.A. (Kirk - Greene and Rimmer, 
1981 : Chapters 7 and 11). 
5. However, West Africa (31/5/82) reports that Nigeria plans to establish 
industrial free zones to produce exclusively for export. 
6. For an excellent discussion of the perceived role of cotton as an export crop 
see Hogendorn (1978). Wardle (1981) discusses the role of the British Cotton 
Growers ' Association. 
7. The best available study of the establishment of groundnut export production 
in Kano remains Hogendorn (1978). 
8. Johnson (1974 : 182-184) suggests that Lugard opposed the development 
of local crafts in favour of imported goods and, in the case of cotton, in order 
to encourage local farmers to produce cotton for export. She points out 
that caravan tolls after 1906 discriminated against local Hausa textiles by 
exempting imported British cotton goods. However, whatever Lugard's motives, 
tolls were abolished in 1907 by Acting Governor Wallace, a free trader. 
9. This attitude began to change with the Third National Development Plan (1975-
1980). However, according to Wolgin (1978 : 691), the Nigerian government 
was still relying on what he calls a "big push" strategy of heavy industrialisation. 
Only 3% of public investment in manufacturing went to the small industry 
sector. 
10. Hopkins (1973 : Chapters 5,6 and 7) considers open economies to have the 
following characteristics: 
(a) Export of a few agricultural and mineral products in exchange for 
manufactured commodities. 
(b) Domination of one or more sectors of the economy by expatriate 
interests, largely in overseas trade. 
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176. 
(c) Control of the colony's economy by major industrial powers. 
(d) Expectation on the part of the metropole that the colonies would balance 
their budgets. 
(e) The monetary systems of the colonies are extensions of those of the 
metropoles. 
In Nigeria, the open economy period lasted until the 1950's. 
11. According to one report made in 1904, some 20,000 bales of cotton were 
imported annually into Kano from surrounding areas by donkey (PRO C0446 
43 (1904) , No. 30132 : Trade Prospects, Capt. C. W.J. Orr). 
12. However, she provides no quantitative evidence on this. Her main comments 
on local weaving are that from the mid- 1920's " •••• there was the long 
expected erosion of the local weaving trade in these [Zaria, Katsina and Sokoto] 
areas" which she assumes to have been the result of competition from cheap 
imports. (Okediji, 1972 : 161). 
13. However, see Lamb and Holmes (1980 : 260- 262). They identify a number 
of cloth types woven by women on vertical looms. Items made include baby 
ties , wrappers, underclothes, chair covers (a new development), head covers 
and wrappers, smocks and trousers for nomadic Fulani. 
14. For example, Hill in her village study in Katsina reports that in 1967 no male 
weavers remained whereas " • ••• formerly there was a man weaver 'in every 
house', •••• " (1972 : 332). In her 1971 study of Dorayi she also notes the 
absence of male weavers but says almost nothing about weaving there in 
the past. In three Kano villages studied by Matlon in the mid - 1970's, only 
three households engaged in spinning and weaving (Bienen and Diejomaoh, 
1981 : 345). On the other hand, Mortimore and Wilson (1965 : 64) report 
that in an area of Ungogo District close to Kano City in 1964 weaving was 
the most important secondary occupation with fourteen families out of seventy 
eight engaging in such work for the nearby Kano market. However, these 
two latter works contain no references to the role of weaving in the past. 
15. This is a guess based on conversations with local state officials in the Depart -
ment of Trade and Industry. Unfortunately, I was unable to gain access to 
tax records for each district of present - day Kano. According to one ministry 
official, the main weaving centres in Kano State are Garko, Minjibir, Gwaram, 
Maraku, Kunfada , D'an Maliki, Ajingi , K'araya , Gurjiya, Zango, Dakwara, 
Riga, Biraimawa, Kaiyu, Gwarzo Town, Dawakin Kudu , and D'an Zaki. 
16. However, the BCGA and various merchant firms were always able to purchase 
some cotton for export. According to Okediji (1972 : 152- 153) , even though 
the BCGA offered lower prices than local weavers, it was able to obtain cotton 
because of the nature of the local demand: 
Although the demand for local industry was continuous the 
higher price offered in local markets did not persist throughout 
the season. Informants in Katsina stated that shortly before the 
new crop was harvested when there was a general shortage of 
cotton the local price would rise considerably above the export 
price. But during the height of the marketing season the local 
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177. 
market could not absorb the quantity offered; the local spinners 
and weavers could only buy a few pounds of cotton since they 
had neither the storage capacity nor the capital to buy their 
requirements in bulk and the local price would fall below the 
export price. 
17. Numerous contemporary observers made reference to the greater cheapness and 
durability of locally-woven cloth when compared with imported varieties. 
See, for example, the comments of the manager of the London and Kano 
Trading Company in 1907: 
As regards the cheaper lines of cotton and other materials it 
is unquestionable that European goods are not yet as popular 
as those of native manufacture, for two very sound reasons, 
(1) durability, (2) cheapness; in both these respects Hausa 
cloth far excels any European stuff •••• (PRO CO 446, 64, 
1907). 
Kano's Acting Resident Palmer noted in 1911: 
•••• the natives in the South have now a faculty for buying 
Hausa cloths such as they never had before, and on the whole 
they prefer Hausa cloth to English cloth, and demand it 
(PRO CO 446 96 1911, N. Nigeria). 
18. According to Charle Jr. (1967 : 83), in 1938 Japanese textile imports were 
less than one- third of what they had been in 1933. He comments that ~ 
"Nigerian members of the Legislative Council had argued against the proposed 
restrictions, stating that they would benefit only British interests and would 
lower the living standards of Nigerians. " 
19. Per capita incomes of Nigerians were lower in 1945 than they had been in 
1929 (Helleiner, 1966: 18). 
20. Forde (1946 : 144) comments: 
In the Northern Division of Kano Province in the early 1930's, 
the income from groundnut production was less than the tax 
assessment which necessitated production of other marketable 
commodities to meet taxes and other obligations. This included 
selling of grain and an intensification of craft work . 
Watts remarks that during the 1930's the increasing utilisation of land for export 
cropping in the close - settled zones, including Kano , meant that the poorer 
households especially could not meet their tax obligations without further 
involvement in exchange relations. This pushed farmers into wage labour, 
seasonal out - migration, greater craft production, and increased dry season 
farming where possible. In other words, rural subsistence was undermined 
(1980 : 208- 211). 
21. Just how much imported yarn went into local weaving is not known . However, 
in the absence of a modern textile industry in Nigeria until the 1950 's, it is 
likely to ha ve been considerable. See Table 5.3 (pp. 145- 146) for yarn and 
thread importsbetween 1914 and 1970. 
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22. It is likely that the 1921 estimate ·of over 80,000 weavers in Kano Province 
is an under- estimate and that the true figure was greater than this. 
23. Smith remarks that in Zaria Emirate during the second world war It • •• • when 
shipments [of all imports] from Europe were curtailed , necessary products, 
such as cloth, were made locally in increased quantities to meet the demand .... " 
(1955 : 145). 
A report on the cost of living in Nigeria undertaken at the end of the second 
world war makes the following observations: 
a. Imports declined during the war, 
b. Prices increased. 
c. There was increased consumption of the local cotton 
crop by spinners and weavers making local cloth . 
d, The more remote areas suffered more than cities which 
led to a greater increased demand for locally - produced cloth. 
The report also provides figures on Imported cloth prices between 1939 and 
1945: 
Cloth tYRe 
Khaki: 
Drill: 
Cloth Prices 
6d. per yard 
6d. per yard 
Shirting material 9d, to 10d, per yard. 
4/ - to 5/ - per yard. 
4/6d. to 5/6d, per yard . 
3/6d. per yard . 
Tailoring prices also went up. Shirts jumped from 1/ 6d. in 1942 to 3/- or 
more in 1945, jumpers increased from 9d, to 2/3d. , and suits, coats and 
trousers increased from 7/ 6d. to between 15/- and 17/ 6d. (Enquiry into 
the Cost of living • • • • , W. Tudor Davies, 1946 : 113 and 126). 
24. With regard to groundnut producers, Helleiner argues that by 1962/3 producers' 
real incomes were nearly four times that of 1947/ 48, itself double the pre - war 
income (Helleiner, 1966 .: 116- 117). 
25. In Sokoto , the Sokoto hand loom factory closed in 1978 because of lack of 
funds and patronage (West Africa , 23/10/1978: 2115). 
26. See Jaggar (1973) for a description of the many types of products made by 
Kano blacksmiths, 
27. For example, Jaggar (1978 : 39) reports that by the early 1950's some 16,000 
iron sleepers were being issued to Kano by the railway authorities. He comments: 
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"This scrap was off - loaded at the Kano Railway Station where it was then . I 
sold by the Railway Authority to dealers for eventual distribution to the various 
centres of demand in the North". 
179. 
28. However, there has been a general decline in craft titles throughout Hausa -
land. For example, in Zazzau Emirate in the late 1940's Smith asked why 
craft titles were no longer of importance to wh ich the response was: 
'Sarauta maras amfani wanne yana so? ' - that is 'who wants 
a useless title?' Titles without 'use' (amfani) - that is, 
perquisites - rapidly die out , since they are not sought for. 
(Smith, 1955 : 7) . 
29. Clothing was a source of conflict between the jihadists and local Hab'e 
rulers in the late 18th century . For example, Bawa, the ruler of Gobir, 
prohibited the wearing of caps and turbans and his brother, Nafata , later 
extended the ban to the wearing of veils by women (Last , 1967 : 1xix). As 
Hiskett remarks: 
The ban on the wearing of turbans and veils is especially 
significant. It is by these articles of dress that Muslim men 
and women can be identified - a kind of uniform , in fact . 
The Muslims gained many of their converts through example 
- their impressive prayer rituals and their elitist bearing - and 
by depriving them of their distinctive dress Nafata sought to 
diminish the visual impact they made upon his subjects. 
(Hiskett, 1973 : 48). 
30. The association of western clothing styles with declining moral standards 
is not unique to the Hausa. For example, as recently as 1981 , the Sydney 
Morning Herald (25/8/81) carried the following news item from Peking: 
Some older people, equating unusual clothing with degenerate 
morals, are patrolling the streets of some south Chinese cities 
with scissors to cut off the bell bottoms from young people's 
fashionable trousers. 
The resurgence of interest in traditional clothing as a symbol of resistance 
to cultural, political and economic dominance by other groups is seen among 
the Palestinians. For example , Widad Kamel Kawar, a Palestinian living in 
Jordan who is active in preserving traditional Palestinian clothing , remarks 
as follows: 
The preservation of Palestinian culture has become a national 
duty , and for a number of years, there have been movements 
in many Arab countries, mainly Jordan, Lebanon and the 
occupied West Bank , to establish and supervise embroidery 
centres. These centres have a dual purpose. They keep 
Palestinian embroidery tradition alive by teaching it to young 
girls, and also turn embroidery into a profeSSional skill by which 
a woman can earn a living. (Kawar, 1980 : 128). 
In another context, El Guindi (1981) describes the way in which young urban 
female college students in Egypt are turning to the traditional Islamic dress 
in order to assert their new public role as modern , yet authentic , muslim 
women. 
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180. 
31. In 19.3.3 Nigeria imported 20,536 dozen shirts. In 1975 shirt imports reached 
418, .333 dozen. Singlet imports in 1937 equalled 2,247, .303 while in 1960 
(the last year for which there is a separate entry for this item) they reached 
3,862,296 . This was a decline on previous years partly accounted for by 
the establishment of small singlet manufacturing companies in Nigeria during 
the 1950's. The value of clothing imports grew considerably after the 
Nigerian Civil War. For example, in 1970 clothing imports were valued at 
~4.8 million. In 1975 they had reached +462.3 million. See Table 5.6 (p. 155) 
for information on apparel imports during the years 1965, 1970 and 1975. 
32. However, Lamb reports that ~are still made in parts of Hausaland (Lamb 
and Holmes, 1 ~80). 
33. Income per head by region in the early 1950's was as follows: West: 34 
pounds; East , 21 pounds; North: 17 pounds (IBRD, 1954 : .398). No recent 
statistics on regional incomes per capita are available. However, a discussion 
of regional disparities in development can be found in the contribution by 
Diejomaoh and Anusionwu to the Bienen and Diejomaoh volume. In general, 
the northern states, particularly those in the far north where most Hausa and 
related peoples are concentrated, come off worst. 
34. By 1978 there were five garment firms recorded in the Kano State Ministry 
of Trade and Industry's Handbook. They were: 
Textile Commodities Ltd., established in 1964 and producing socks 
and stockings (current total output = 180,000 dozen pairs) with a total 
workforce of .300. 
Nornit Ltd., established in 1963 to manufacture knitted singlets and briefs. 
Current output equalled 1.2 million garments and the total workforce was 
94. 
Star Modern Industry Ltd., established in 1970 to produce singlets and 
blouses. Current output was 292,000 pieces and the workforce equalled 
23. 
Nigerian Garment and Allied Industry Ltd., established in 1974 to produce 
children's and adult's garments. In 1976 the total workforce was about 
15 which had increased to 21 by 1978. Current output was 100,000 
items. 
Maililo Umbrella Manufacturing Co. Ltd., making umbrellas and children's 
clothes. Established in 1977 it employed 65 workers. No data are 
available on output, but installed capacity was 2 million items. 
35. In the late 1970's wearing apparel imports were prohibited to save foreign 
exchange and to stimulate local production . According to African Business 
(May, 1980 : 81): "In view of the restrictions on imports there is an urgent 
need to expand garment production. In an attempt to equal the quality of 
fashion dresses previously imported , plans are in hand to set up , largely with 
backing from within the EEC., new manufacturing plant which will produce 
24,000 dresses a year in the second year o.f operation. " 
New African (April, 1981) reported that the Nigerian Government relaxed 
the ban on foreign participation in clothing manufacture and foreign companies 
were allowed up to 40 per cent share ownership. The Minister for Industries 
11, 
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181. 
remarked: "The intention was to try and discourage smuggling of those goods 
by setting up more local industries •••• "(69). Furthermore , wearing apparel 
was deleted from the list of absolutely prohibited imports (Quarterly Ec . Rev. 
of Nigeria , 4th Quarter, 1981 : 23). These developments indicate the high 
demand for clothing and the failure of domestic producers to meet it . 
36. According to the 1972 small - scale industry survey , out of 598 tailoring 
establishments in the old city, only 20 (3.5 per cent) employed 5 or more 
workers and none employed more than 15. My own estimate is based on 
a non - random count in the main tailoring wards. Of course , the true figure 
may be higher but it is unlikely to be much greater. However, this ignores 
putting - out arrangements where workers do not work on their "employers'" 
premises. 
37. Unfortunately, there are no data on sewing machine ownership for this early 
period. Thus, there were probably a larger number of machines than the 
1926 census figure suggests. In Zarla town in the early 1920's it is reported 
that there were 118 machine tailors compared with 860 hand sewers (Urquhart, 
1977 : 6). 
38. What proportion of machine imports were for embroidery is not known. However, 
according to the 1960/61 Annual Report of the Northern Region Development 
Corporation , of the 163 sewing machines purchased with loan funds, 30 (18.5 
per cent) were embroidery machines. 
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182. 
CHAPTER VI 
MODERN KANO CITY AND ITS ENVIRONS 
Kano City today forms one part of a much enlarged Kano Metro-
politan Area which includes, besides the ancient walled city itself, the 
inner urban residential settlements of Fagge, Sabon Gari, Gwagwarwa, Gama, 
Tudun Wada, the old Township and Nassarawa, and the peri-urban districts 
of Ungogo and Kumbotso (see Map 6.1). By the mid-1970's the total metro-
politan population was about 500,000 1 of which some fifty per cent resided 
in Kano City (Frishman, 1977 : 233). The population is a highly cosmopolitan 
one but predominantly Hausa 2. Kano City and Fagge remain the core areas 
of sett lement for Hausa-speaking people within the inner suburbs but the 
Hausa are found throughout the metropolis. Quarters such as Sabon Gari, 
Gwagwarwa, Gama and Tudun Wada contain mixed populations of Hausa and 
non-Hausa, many of the latter being southern immigrants who have been 
migrating to Kano since before the first world war 3. All these residential 
areas are internally stratified with rich and poor living side by side, although 
many of the better-off Nigerians who work in commerce, industry and the 
public service, as well as most expatriates, reside in the old government 
residential area to the south-east of the old city and other less densely 
popula ted parts of the metropolis. The outer pe ri- urban districts of U ngogo 
and Kumbotso are overwhelmingly Hausa in ethnic composition. 
Metropolitan Kano is the single most important urban centre in Kano 
State (created in 1967 out of the old Kano Province and consisting of Kano 
Emirate and the emirates of Gumel, Kazaure and Had'ejia) It and the third 
largest city in Nigeria. , However, within Kano State the level of urbani-
zation is low with metropolitan Kano accounting for about seven per cent of 
the state's estimated population (in 1976) of 8.1 million. If one excludes the 
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182. 
CHAPTER VI 
MODERN KANO CITY AND ITS E~VIRONS 
Kano City today forms one part of a much enlarged Kano Metro-
politan Area which includes, besides the ancient walled city itself , the 
inner urban residential settlements of Fagge, Sabon Gari, Gwagwarwa, Gama, 
Tudun Wada, the old Township and Nassarawa, and the peri-urban districts 
of Ungogo and Kumbotso (see Map 6.1). By the mid- 1970's the total metro-
politan population was about 500 ,000 1 of which some fifty per cent resided 
in Kano City (Frishman, 1977 : 233). The population is a highly cosmopolitan 
one but predominantly Hausa 2. Kano City and Fagge remain the core areas 
of settlement for Hausa-speaking people within the inner suburbs but the 
Hausa are found throughout the metropolis. Quarters such as Sabon Gari, 
Gwagwarwa, Gama and Tudun Wada contain mixed populations of Hausa and 
non-Hausa, many of the latter being southern immigrants who have been 
migrating to Kano since before the first world war 3. All these residential 
areas are internally stratified with rich and poor living side by side, although 
many of the better-off Nigerians who work in commerce, industry and the 
public service, as well as most expatriates, reside in the old government 
residential area to the south-east of the old city and other less densely 
populated parts of the metropolis. The outer peri-urban districts of Ungogo 
and Kumbotso are overwhelmingly Hausa in ethnic composition. 
Metropolitan Kano is the single most important urban centre in Kano 
State (created in 1967 out of the old Kano Province and consisting of Kano 
Emirate and the emirates of Gumel, Kazaure and Had'ejia) Lt and the third 
largest city in Nigeria. . However, within Kano State the level of urbani-
zation is low with metropolitan Kano accounting for about seven per cent of 
the state's estimated population (in 1976) of 8.1 million. If one excludes the 
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Main roads 
Secondary roads 
City gates .J L 
(Waje is the area to the 
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~oKatsina 
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peri-urban districts, much of which are given over to farming, then Kano's 
urban population as a percentage of the state total is much lower. In 
Nigeria as a whole, Kano State is the most populous with an estimated 10.6 
per cent of the total national population of 76.5 million (1976 figures). 
The bulk of Kano's population is rural consisting of predominantly 
small peasant farming households working plots of land ranging in size from 
as little as 0.5 acres to ten or more acres (King, 1981; Matlon, 1981; 
Wallace, 1981 a). Inequalities in land-holding, access to credit and extension 
services, and opportunities for off-farm work are common (Clough, 1981; 
Hill, 1977; King, 1981; Matlon, 1977, 1981; Mortimore and Wilson, 1965; 
Stokes, 1978; Wallace, 1980, 1981a). Although a small minority of city-
based merchants and members of traditional elites and their rural represent-
atives control quite large areas of land, in some instances in excess of 100 
acres, there is nothing comparable with, for example, the latifundia estate 
. . 
systems common in a number of Latin American countries 5. 
Farm labouring for wages is well established, but as yet there is no 
substantial landless proletariat in the rural areas. However, recent Federal 
Government and World Bank efforts to stimulate food production based on 
irrigated agriculture may be creating a degree of landlessness in specific 
locales (Wallace , 1980, 1981b). There are few, if any, purely subsistence 
farmers in the state and most engage in some marketing and trading of food-
stuffs and other crops. Indeed, the colonial and post-colonial prosperity of 
the state up to the late 1960's was built upon the production of groundnuts 
for export. 
Dry season migration in search of work and trading opportunities is 
common and many poorer families have migrated permanently from the 
country to urban centres such as Kano. In those parts of the pe ri-urban 
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185. 
districts close to Kano there is a growing dependence of many farmers upon 
Kano brought about by the fragmentation of landholdings , opportunities for 
trade and urban employment , and the gradual encroachment of urban Kano 
upon rural land 6 • 
The pattern of development in Kano State since 1900 has enhanced 
the role of urban Kano at the expense of the countryside so that today it 
is the commercial and industrial capital of the state and, together with 
Kaduna, the rest of the northern region. In addition, Kano is the political 
cent re of the state and all major Federal, State and Local Government offices 
and agencies are located there. 
Commercially, Kano dominates the north's distributive network. For 
example, in the mid- 1960's it was estimated that Kano handled fifty per cent 
of all trade in northern Nigeria (Trevallion, 1966 : 84), a position it has 
retained to the present. In fact , Kano is today the largest inland container 
port in black Africa (Financial Times Survey of Nigeria, 2/11/1981, XV). 
Practically all of the state's commercial, financial and banking institutions 
are found there. 
Much of this commercial development has been at the expense of Kano 
City which lost its role as the entrepot for the trans-Saharan trade as trade 
routes shifted southwards to Lagos, a process partly facilitated by the Lagos-
Kano rail link. Thus, many of the North African traders moved their 
operations from the old city to Fagge-ta-Kudu in order to be closer to the 
railway and to the growing number of European firms which were established 
there during the colonial period (AI-Hakin and Adeniyi, 1972). Taking textiles 
as an example, Kano's wholesale cloth trade is now centred on Fagge- ta-Kudu 
(known locally as Kantin Kwari) which lies to the east of the old city walls. 
By the early 1970's about 278 wholesale textile enterprises were located 
. 
,. 
, . 
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185. 
districts close to Kano there is a growing dependence of many farmers upon 
Kano brought about by the fragmentation of laf)dholdings , opportunities for 
trade and urban employment , and the gradual encroachment of urban Kano 
upon rural land 6 • 
The pattern of development in Kano State since 1900 has enhanced 
the role of urban Kano at the expense of the countryside so that today it 
is the commercial and industrial capital of the state and, together with 
Kaduna, the rest of the northern region. In addition, Kano is the political 
centre of the state and all major Federal, State and Local Government offices 
and agencies are located there. 
Commercially, Kano dominates the north's distributive ne twork. For 
example, in the mid- 1960's it was estimated that Kano handled fifty per cent 
of all trade in northern Nigeria (Trevallion, 1966 : 84), a position it has 
retained to the present. In fact , Kano is today the largest inland conta iner 
port in black Africa (Financial Times Survey of Nigeria, 2/11/1981, XV). 
Practically all of the state's commercial , financial and banking institutions 
are found there. 
Much of this commercial development has been at the expense of Kano 
City which lost its role as the entre pot for the trans-Saharan trade as trade 
routes shifted southwards to Lagos, a process partly facilitated by the Lagos-
Kano rail link. Thus, many of the North African traders moved their 
operations from the old city to Fagge-ta-Kudu in order to be closer to the 
railway and to the growing number of European firms which were established 
there during the colonial period (AI-Hakin and Adeniyi , 1972). Taking textiles 
as an example, Kano's wholesale cloth trade is now centred on Fagge- ta- Kudu 
(known locally as Kantin Kwari) which lies to the east of the old city walls. 
By the early 1970's about 278 wholesale textile enterprises were located 
. 
,. 
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, , 
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..... :. 
i' ';"1 
:. I 
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186. 
there most of which were owned and controlled by foreign, particularly 
Lebanese, interests. Since that time, there has been a growing indigenous, 
much of it Hausa, control of this trade as a consequence of Federal indigeni-
zation policies. However, many of the Hausa textile wholesalers are Kano 
City residents who commute daily to Fagge- ta- Kudu from city homes. 
In addition, during the colonial period a new market, Sabon Gari , 
developed outside the city walls as a result of the immigration of many 
southern Nigerians, particularly Yoruba and Ibo, who were attracted to Kano 
by the prospects of trade, particularly once the groundnut export industry 
got under way. Other southerners were recruited by the colonial authorities 
and import/export firms to act as clerks in the absence of a pool of western-
educated Hausa with experience in the modern sector (Allyn, 1976; Fika, 
1978). 
The Sabon Gari market serviced the growing number of southern 
immigrants and eventually came to dominate the retail and wholesale trade 
in many imported manufacturers and a diverse range of foodstuffs from the 
south. Today, the main commodities traded there are, according to AI-
Hakin, southern foodstuffs, tinned food, modern drugs and medicines, western-
style furniture and the better quality textiles, clothing, footwear and 
mechanical and electrical equipment (AI-Hakim , in Greenhill, 1972 : 25- 26). 
It draws most of its customers from within Metropolita n Kano, particularly 
the people living in Sabon Gari , Gwagwarwa, Tudun Wada and the township. 
Precisely how many traders operate from Sabon Gari market is not known, 
but in the early 1970's there were over 8,000 market stalls and trading 
spaces and perhaps as many as 7,500 traders (Adeniyi, in Greenhill, 1972 
: 40). 
, ' . 
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187. 
Up to 1966; much of Sabon Gari's trade was controlled by southern 
Nigerians but after the wave of communal violence in that year, directed 
largely at Kano's Ibo population, the majority of Ibo left the city and many 
Hausa (and other ethnic groups) took their place. Since the end of the civil 
war in 1970, the Ibo began to return to Kano and re-establish their presence 
in Sabon Gari. 
The shift of trading activity to Fagge-ta- Kudu and Sabon Gari meant 
that the old city market (!5asuwar Kurmi) lost its pre-eminent position. 
However, it still acts as a local and regional market centre for the purchase 
and sale of a mixture of traditional Hausa and modern commodities. The 
vast majority of customers continue to be Hciusa people from Kano City, 
Kano State and other states in the north. Among the main items traded 
are textiles (largely factory~made with a few dealers in hand-woven cloths), 
clothing (produced by city tailors and of traditional Hausa design), local Hausa 
foodstuffs, leather goods, jewellery and ornaments, and many other commodities 
which are sold to poorer urban and rural Hausa communites. 
In the early 1970's, the market contained a total of 8,000 built-up 
stalls and open trading spaces and anywhere between 5 and 6,000 traders 
(Adeniyi and Benna, in Greenhill, 1972 : 33). The majority of traders are 
drawn from Kano City and many city craftsmen and craftswomen, including 
tailors, depend upon the market not only as an outlet for finished goods but 
as a source of supply of raw materials. 
Besides Kurmi market, there are many other smaller market places 
scattered throughout the city. Rimi market, with some 600 stalls, is the 
largest of these and trades in foodstuffs, cotton mattresses and other items. 
There is a night market around the Central City Mosque which trades in 
a wide variety of non-food consumer goods, many of which are sold to 
Q 
, 0, 
188. 
secluded Hausa women who shop at night. Smaller food markets are also 
found in the city of which K'ul K'ul market in Yalwa ward is one of the 
most important. . Furthermore, many elderly women sell food from roadside 
markets (maciyai; s: macil~) ' young girls hawk petty items of trade along :' I 
the streets, and men engage in table trading and the sale of packaged foods , 
cigarettes, matches, and other commodities from shops and kiosks. Large 
retail stores stocking the more expensive food and non-food consumer goods 
are an uncommon sight. However, during 1975 a small supermarket opened .. , 
. , 
close to the author's residence and was owned by a local Hausa merchant. 
Finally, house-trading in cooked foods, baby clothes; tea service covers, 
sweets and the like is extremely common, the trade being dominated by 
secluded women. In general . it is probable that few households in Kano 
City are without someone who engages in some form of petty trade. Although 
market traders are fewer in number than petty traders, they are found in 
practically every ward of the city and in some wards, notably those that 
ring the central city market , they are very common (Perchonok, in Greenhill , 
1972). Many of these market traders are not independent men using their · I '~ .. 
-" I 
own capital but clients of larger merchants who supply them with goods on H' 
cash or credit. , ',,' I 
Turning to the question of industrial development in Ka no, of all the 
nineteen states in the Federation, Kano ranks fifth in level of industrialization, 
if measured by the number of manufacturing establishments with ten or more 
employees, and fourth in terms of the total number of employees in such 
establishments. Practically all of the officially enumerated modern manu-
facturing firms are located in metropolitan Kano making it, together with 
Kaduna t one of the two largest centres of modern manufacturing in the north. 
189. 
However , these remarks must be treated with caution as the level 
of industrialisation in Nigeria is low, with manufacturing accounting for 11.7 
per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 1976 (Kirk-Greene and Rimmer , 1981 
: 64-). Taking numbers employed in manufacturing firms with ten or more 
employees, Nigeria has a very small manufacturing base. Thus, in 1975 it 
was estimated that total employment in such firms · was only 324-,000, or one 
per cent of the gainfully employed (the percentage figure is computed from 
Tables 32.2 and 32.8 of the Third National Development Plan, 1975-80, Vol. 1, 
1975 : 370 and 375). As a proportion of the total numbers engaged in what 
the development plan refers to as "Manufacturing and Crafts", which includes 
establishments with less than ten employees, it was about seven per cent. 
Overall , there were estimated to be some 4-.7 million persons employed in 
manufacturing and crafts in 1975 which amounted to just under seventeen 
per cent of the total gainfully employed. Thus, from these data it can be 
concluded that the bulk of the manufacturing and crafts labour force in 
Nigeria work in enterprises of very small size. Furthermore, the bulk of 
these enterprises consist of Nigerian owned and run apprentice workshops, 
family businesses and single-person operations utilising relatively unsophisti-
cated technology to produce a wide range of manufactured and processed 
commodities for mainly local or regional sale. 
Lagos State dominates Nigerian medium to large-scale manufacturing 
in terms of such indicators as the number of manufacturing firms (27 per 
cent), manufacturing employment (4-3.1 per cent) and industrial output (65.5 
per cent). This domination becomes even more clear when it is realised 
that Lagos State accounts for only 2.5 per cent of Nigeria's population. 
Kano State, on the other hand, with just over ten per cent of the 
country's population, contributes seven per cent of all manufacturing firms, 
· , . 
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190. 
less than eight per cent of manufacturing employment, and just under six 
per cent of national industrial output (see chapters by Diejomaoh and 
Anusionwu and by Ayeni in Bienen and Die jomaoh, 1981 for more detailed 
treatment of these issues). 
In spite of being overshadowed by Lagos, Kano's industrial develop-
ment has been rapid and has occurred mainly in the past twenty five to 
thirty years. Thus, in the late 1940's there were about four medium to 
large-scale manufacturing plants in Kano. By 1975 the number had risen 
to around 130. U ntH the 1970's the sector was dominated by Asian and 
Levantine-owned businesses, although, according to Tahir , about a quarter 
of firms were wholly owned by indigenous capitalists and many more had 
local equity capital participation (Tahir, 1975 : 74). Since 1972, there has 
been increasing multi-national penetration of the sector either in the form 
of buying up established enterprises or investing in new ones (Lubeck, 1978 
: 37-38), a development encouraged by the petroleum boom and the con se-
quent growth in income. In addition, Hausa capitalists have increased their 
investment in manufacturing as a result of the restrictions placed upon full 
foreign ownership of indigenous industry by the Federal Government (see 
Collins, 1977). For example, Hoogvelt points out that two thirds (over 
# 15 million) of the value of equity divested by a sample of 54 industrial 
firms in Kano between 1972 and 1978 was purchased by local private investors, 
most of them Hausa. Furthermore, fifty per cent of all shares divested 
went to six Kano merchant-industrialists, three of whom held important 
political positions at the time of the first indigenisation decree in 1972. 
The rest were purchased by two hundred and eighty five individuals. The 
bulk of the remaining divested equity went to the Kano State Investment 
Corporation. Northern Nigerian Investment Limited, and the latter's parent, 
.. 
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191. 
the Northern Development Corporation. Less than three per cent was 
reserved for a Worker Participation Fund for purchase by the employees of 
the affected firms (Hoogvelt, 1979 : 56- 68). 
These data show a high degree of concentration of indigenous owner-
ship in a very few hands, either private merchant- industrial capitalists or 
state institutions. As these latter institutions contain many traditional 
aristocrats , their families and descendants, it may be true, as Lubeck has 
suggested, that we are witnessing the formation of a new class made up of 
members of the commoner bourgeoisie and elements of the former traditional 
office-holding aristocracy (Lubeck, 1978 : 38-39). ,However, in so far as 
foreigners continue to control decisions relating to the supplies of materials 
and production techniques in many of these jointly owned enterprises, it is 
possible that the indigenous capitalist-cum-bureaucratic class may for some 
time play a subordinate comprador role to multi-national interests 
(Hoogvelt , 1979, 1980). 
Kano's manufacturing sector consists largely of firms engaged in the 
production of import-substituting consumer goods and the processing of agri-
cultural raw materials. There are no heavy or primary goods producing 
industries such as iron and steel (see Table 6.1). Total manufacturing 
employment amounted to between 25,000 and 35,000 in 1975 7 and has grown 
since with the establishment of new industries such as the Fiat truck and 
tractor assembly plant which opened in 1980 and will employ 1,800 when 
fully operational (West Africa, 24/11/80 : 2374- 76). However, most of Kano's 
industrial firms employ much less than that envisaged for the Fiat plant. 
For example, average employment in textiles is about 275 while in tiles and 
concrete it is only 54. The most labour-intensive firms are those owned by 
Lebanese (who were able to get round the rules relating to indigenization) 
, ~ 
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TABLE 6.1 Manufacturing/processing establishments in urban Kano, 
1978: Ten or more employees. 
192. 
Type of Industry No. of 
Establishments 
Total 
Employment 
Average 
Employment 
Iron, steel and metal products 
Wood and wood furniture 
Textiles 
Tanneries and leather works 1 
Plastics and chemicals 
Food processing and vegetable oils 
Sweets and confectionery 
Beer and soft drinks 
Perfume and cosmetics 
Suitcases and corrugated cartons 
Candles and soap 
Tiles and concrete blocks 
Other 
TOTAL 
25 
9 
20 
15 
16 
13 
9 
2 
4 
3 
7 
4 
6 
133 
4774 
1255 
5482 
2122 
1509 
4351 
1745 
410 
642 
337 
351 
219 
420 
23617 
1 This includes 5 firms engaged in exporting of skins. It is 
not clear if any do processing of skins prior to export. 
191 
139 
274 
141 
94 
334 
194 
205 
160 
112 
50 
54 
70 
177 
Source: Kano State Ministry of Trade and Industry. Information 
kindly supplied by Angle Hoogvelt, University of Sheffield. 
Dr. Hoogvelt suggests that these figures are an under-
count. They are, in fact, little different from the 1973 
figures (not included here) obtained from the same source. 
while the British, French and German firms employ more capital-intensive 
techniques of production, a state of affairs encouraged by various provisions 
in the indigenization decrees and the links these firms have with parent 
companies. 
Most of Kano's industrial development, like that of commerce, has 
taken place outside Kano City 8. Early industrialisation was centred on 
:: 
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193. 
the Bompai/Tudun Wada area but in recent years there has been further 
expansion in other parts of the metropolis, especially the southern districts. 
Much of the industrial work force is drawn from around the industrial estates 
and from the eastern and south-eastern parts of the per i- urban areas (Lubeck, 
1975). Kano City itself contains almost no modern industrial development 
and supplies a small proportion of the total number of wage workers to the 
modern manufacturing sector. 
In general, by the mid-1970's, Kano contained a small, but growing, 
modern industrial sector. Employment opportunities in this sector have not 
kept pace with the growth in Kano's population and, although the various 
governmental institutions absorb between 15,000 and 20,000 persons, a high 
proportion of the work force is found in c~mmerce and in small-scale industry 9 • 
In addition, many employees in the modern private and public sectors obtain 
part of their incomes through involvement in small-scale industrial and 
commercia l activities. 
With regard to the role and importance of small-scale industry in 
Kano's economy, although a detailed analysis cannot be provided here, a 
number of points are worth noting. 
First, available data suggest that about 97 per cent of all industrial 
establishments in Kano are small -scale, tha t is, employ less than ten persons 
per establishment. Thus, a 1972 survey counted lJ. ,581 such establishments. 
Total employment in these establishments was 21,568, giving an average of 
lJ..7 persons per establishment. As a proportion of all industrial employment, 
small-scale industries accounted for lJ.2 per cent. As it is the author's 
opinion that the 1972 survey under-counted this sector of the economy, both 
in terms of number of establishments and numbers employed, then small-
scale industry is of greater importance than officially available figures suggest. 
". 
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194. 
Second, the vast majority of these establishments are owned and 
operated by indigenous people, both Hausa and non-Hausa , with the highest 
proportion of Hausa ownership being found in the old city. 
Third, the category of small-scale industry covers a wide range of 
types of economic activity. It consists predominantly of those activities 
orientated to the production of saleable non-food physical commodities (e.g. 
shoe-making, tailoring, leather-working and carpentry), the provision of 
services (e.g. barbering, hoteling and laundry), the processing and production 
of food stuffs (e.g. corn grinding and baking) and repairs and maintenance 
(e.g. T.V./radio and bicycle repairs and the maintenance of motor vehicles) 
(see Table 6.2). 
Fourth, the majority of those activities which result in the production 
of manufactured goods consist of final consumer goods rather than inter-
mediate products used in the production of other commodities. 
Fifth , there is a preponderance of industries which use relatively 
unsophisticated capital equipment (e.g. sewing machines, hand tools and baking 
ovens) and which rely little upon the incorporation of complex chemical 
transformations into the fashioning of usable .products out of raw materials. 
Sixth, there is a high concentration in the old city of those activities 
which have their roots in pre-colonial craft manufacturing. For example, 
over 50 per cent of all wood-working, smithing, dyeing, cap-making, leather 
working, mat-making, calabash carving and rope- making establishments or 
production units are found there. In contrast, most types of industry whose 
origins lie in the colonial and post-colonial period are found outside the old 
city. Thus, the city has less than 25 per cent of all radio/T.V., motor 
vehicle and motor cycle repair shops , welding, photography, printing, tyre 
retreading and painting establishments. 
, . 
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TABLE 6.2 Types of small- scale industry in the Kano urban area: 1972. 
Type of Industry No. of Establishments 
Tailoring 
Bicycle repair 
Carpentry 
Barbers 
Shoe making 
Radio/T.V. repair 
Photography 
Motor Vehicle repair 
Hotelier 
Tinker 
Goldsmithing 
Blacksmithing 
watch repair 
Grain grinding 
Motor cycle repair 
Dyeing 
Cap making 
Welding 
Leather working 
Shoe repair 
Laundry 
Mattress making 
Baking 
. Painting (Art) 
Mat making 
Battery charging 
Printing 
Calabash carving 
Rope making 
General repair 
Weaving 
Sieve making 
Soap making 
Butchers 
Furniture renting 
Musical instrument making 
1 
All 
1363 
512 
327 
224 
155 
161 
144 
134 
126 
140 
104 
98 
97 
88 
75 
77 
63 
60 
153 
52 
53 
56 
50 
35 
30 
28 
26 
20 
17 
16 
14 
10 
12 
8 
7 
6 
Type retreading and vulcanising 
Glass making 
8 
7 
8 
6 
3 
5 
3 
Construction 
Block making 
Ice block making 
Perfume making 
Potting 
TOTAL 4,581 
NB: "City" refers to Kano City. 
Source: Ahmadu Bello University (n.d.) 
2 
City 
(598) 
(224 ) 
(180) 
( 89) 
( 71) 
( 39) 
( 36) 
( 15) 
( 10) 
( 74) 
( 39) 
( 54) 
( 40) 
( 41) 
( 9) 
( 77) 
( 57) 
( 2) 
( 91) 
( 23) 
( 3) 
( 18) 
( 13) 
( - ) 
( 17) 
( 9) 
( 4) 
( 16) 
( 17) 
( 4) 
( 1) 
( 3) 
( - ) 
( 3) 
( - ) 
( 6) 
( - ) 
( 6) 
( 3) 
( 2) 
( - ) 
( 5) 
( 3) 
1,902 
2 as % 
of 1 
44 
44 
55 
40 
46 
24 
25 
11 
8 
53 
38 
55 
41 
47 
12 
100 
90 
3 
59 
44 
6 
32 
26 
57 
32 
15 
80 
100 
25 
7 
30 
38 
100 
86 
38 
33 
100 
100 
42 
195. 
, u . 
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196. 
Seventh, the small-scale industry sector is essentially concerned with 
supplying the general population of private consumers with goods and services 
which are either not provided by larger enterprises (e.g. goldsmithing, certain 
branches of tailoring, dyeing and watch repairing) or, if obtainable from 
such enterprises, are either beyond the financial means of most or provided 
at a higher price (e.g. motor vehicle repair ; hoteling and carpentry). 
Finally, most small -scale industries, be they "traditional" or "modern", 
rely to a greater or lesser extent upon larger manufacturing and commercial 
establishments for supplies of raw materials and instruments of production. 
Thus, tailors use imported sewing machines and needles and work with 
factory -made cloth, dyers purchase aniline dyes from importers, photographers 
require imported chemicals and cameras, blacksmiths use scrap metal of 
industrial origin and which they re-cycle, and all repairers and mechanics 
depend upon factory-made tools with which to work and imported or domestic 
factory -produced T.V.ls, radios, cars, motor cycles and bicycles upon which 
to work. 
In terms of the present study, one major feature of the small-scale 
industry sector is the numerical importance of tailoring establishments. 
Thus, nearly 30 per cent 10 , or 1,363 of all establishments, are classified 
as engaged in tailoring, although less than 15 per cent of all persons working 
in small-scale industries are tailors. Furthermore, of these 1,363 tailoring 
establishments, 44 per cent are located in the old city and account for 37 
per cent of all tailors. (See Table 6.3 for distribution of tailoring workshops 
and numbers employed throughout the Kano urban area). 
The average size of tailoring workshops is small, and lower than the 
average for all small-scale industries , ranging from 1.8 persons per establish-
ment in Kano City and Tudun Wada to 2.6 persons in Sabon Gari. Over 
, 
t . 
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".' 
, ~ '., 
'" 4"-
197. 
TABLE 6.3 Tailoring establishments and numbers employed in 
Kano urban area: 1972. 
District 
Kano City 
Fagge 
Sabon Gari 
Gwagwarwa 
Tudun Wada 
Other 
TOTAL 
No. of 
Establishments 
598 
147 
321 
199 
28 
70 . 
1,363 
Total 
Employed 1 
1,098 
354 
859 
490 
49 
141 
2,991 
Average Size 
of Establishments 
1.8 
2.4 
2.6 
2.4 
1.8 
2.0 
1 This includes owner/managers and own account tailors as 
well as employees and apprentices. 
Source: Ahmadu Bello University (n.d.) 
50 per cent of all workshops, and more than 60 per cent of those in Kano 
City, are single- person establishments. 
It is to the main characteristics of Kano City tailors and the organi-
sation of tailoring that I shall now turn and with which the remainder of 
this study will be concerned. 
198. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER VI. 
1. Lubeck (1981 : 45) considers Kano's urban population to have been between 
750,000 and 1 million in the early 1970's. However, he provides no evidence 
to substantiate his claim. 
2. Unfortunately, there are no recent data on ethnic identification across the city 
as a whole. The 1931 census records 77 per cent of the city population as 
Hausa. Paden (1973 : 22) points out: "In recent times •••• most people 
in Kano City have come to use Hausa as a first language and have accepted 
Hausa as an ethnic identification." Perchonok (1972 : 85) reports that in all 
but one of ten wards close to the city market, a minimum of 86 per cent of 
residents identified themselves as Hausa. I found a similarly high Hausa ethnic 
identification in Soron D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa (see Chapter VIII). 
3. In the mid-1960's the non-northern population in the waje district accounted 
for 56.5 per cent of the total. In Sabon Gari, the largest quarter within waje, 
non-northerners accounted for 89 per cent of the population of which the 
majority (68.5 per cent) were Ibo (WAS/9 Vol. 11/252 and 257). 
4. In 1981 (West Africa, 20/4/81 : 898) the Governor of Kano State created four 
new emirates - Gaya, Rano, Dutse and Auyo - out of the state. 
5. For Nigeria as a whole, it is estimated that 81 per cent of all rural households 
farm plots of six acres or less (I.L.O., 1981 : 80). 
6. On rural commuters to urban Kano, see Lubeck (1975) and Hill (1977). Although 
Hill emphasises the autonomy of the village area she studied from Kano City, 
I calculated from her own data that out of 602 married men and labourers studied, 
at least 40 per cent depended directly or indirectly on Kano City for part or most 
of their incomes. 
7. These figures refer to large and medium - size firms (10 or more employees). 
No precise data are available on total numbers employed in such firms. A 1975 
source (Nigeria Year B'ook, 1975) gives a figure of 25,087. Hoogvelt (personal 
communication) mentions a total of 23,617. Lubeck (1978) suggests 35,000, 
remarking that the official statistics exclude casual labourers. 
8. The uneven development of urban Kano, which involved the residential 
segregation of non-Hausa, particularly non-muslim southern Nigerians, from 
the city Hausa, was to a considerable degree the result of the collusion of the 
colonial government with emirate authorities through the policy known as 
indirect rule. Fika (1978 : 269) defines this policy as " •••• an administrative 
device which sought to perpetuate British authority by utilizing the traditional 
powers of the native rulers." He provides an assessment of the policy as it 
applied in Kano. Paden (1973) is also a useful source. On the development 
of the Sabon Gari system in Kano and other northern cities, see Allyn (1976). 
One result of this policy was to hold back the educational and economic 
development of the inhabitants of the city. 
" I. 
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199. 
9. Commercial employment is greater than that in industry. I do not have reliable 
data on total numbers in commerce, but a 1976 survey of .what the authors say 
was an attempt to cover all enterprises employing 10 or less persons (one of 
the standard definitions of the informal sector) , recorded that out of a total of 
6,665 enterprises enumerated, 4,000 (60 per cent) were in trading activity 
(Mabogunje and Filani , 1981 : 8.3). 
10. Using Mabogunje and Filani's 1976 data, I calculate that tailoring enterprises 
(11.3.3) accounted for 42. 5 per cent of all manufacturing arid repair workshops, 
12.5 per cent more than in the 1972 survey. However, this was some 200 
fewer tailoring enterprises. I consider both of these surveys to have under-
counted the true number of tailoring enterprises in Kano. 
'. 
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" 
200. 
CHAPTER VII. 
TAILORS AND TAILORING IN THE OLD CITY OF KANO 
The high proportion of small-scale industries in Kano City which 
engage in tailoring, and the large numbers of people who practise tailoring 
both within these enterprises and others not included in official and non-
official published reports, makes tailoring the single most important employer 
of manufacturing or processing labour in the old city. Indeed, tailors are 
an ubiquitous sight and can be found working in the central city market , 
which contains a special tailor's section, and in every city ward. Some of 
these wards have quite large concentrations of tailoring workshops producing 
a wide range of garments. As one elderly tailor put it to me: 
There is no ward without a room for tailoring. 
In every ward there is a room where people collect 
and do tailoring. 
The aim of this and subsequent chapters is to examine the many kinds 
of tailors found in the city, the kinds of products they make, the conditions 
under which they engage in production, the spatial distribution of tailoring 
activities, raw materials and instruments of production used and the markets 
served by tailors. In this chapter I shall concentrate mainly upon the pro-
ducts made, traditions of tailoring, the raw materials and instruments of 
production used, and the spatial distribution of tailors in the old city. 
The Occupation of Tailoring 
The Hausa name for an occupation is sana'a (from the Arabic word 
san 'a meaning craft, trade or, less commonly, guild (Baer, 1964 : 16) 1. In 
addition, the name sana'a carries the connotation of a vocation or career, 
t , 
201. 
a specific activity or set of activities which not only possess a market value 
once the person has mastered the activities involved but also provide the 
person with a central part of their social identity and something to which 
they can commit themselves on a long- term, possibly life-long, basis. 
The Hausa recognise the existence of a large number of sana'a (pI 
sana'o'i), of which tailoring is one. The general term for tailoring is d'inki 
(which transla tes literally as "sewing") and the tailor is referred to as 
mad'inki or maid'inki (pI : mad'inka or masu d'inki),. that is , one who sews. 
Ideally, the tailor is considered to be a mai sana'a as distinct from a ma'aikaci 
(wage- worker) or lebura (labourer) 2 in that he enjoys a degree of independence, 
expressed in self-employment, and masters a range of skills, usually obtained 
during a period of apprenticeship , not open to the other two. However, 
as I shall show in a later chapter, this meaning of the term is somewhat 
misleading as a description of actual practice in so far as many tailors are , 
in fact, employees of others and have no commitment to tailoring as a career. 
It is generally understood that a mad'inki is one who sews with thread 
on cloth (and sometimes on leather), although the term can be used to describe 
other kinds of sewer such as leather workers as in the phrase !}lad'inkin fata 
or sewer of leather. In more recent times the English word "tailor" has 
become an established part of the Hausa language in its Hausa form ~ 
(pi: teloli). However , this latter word tends to be used to refer to machine 
tailors and/or tailors who make modern clothes. Of the two terms, "mad'inki" 
is the more inclusive and is generally preferred by Hausa speakers. 
Although for many tailors tailoring is a full - time career, there are 
large numbers of people, male and female, young and old , who engage in 
tailoring on a casual or part- time basis. For these persons tailoring does 
not constitut e the major focus of their occupational identity and it would 
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be inappropriate to regard tailoring as their sana'a. For example, although 
there is a Hausa term for female tailor , mad'inkiya, t a iloring is most 
frequently regarded as a male occupation, as men dominate most lines of 
clothing production, and it is unusual to hear a · woman who does tailoring, 
and there are many who do, referred to as a mad'inkiya. For most women, 
any tailoring work they do is secondary to their main role as housewives 
and mothers. Another example of the division between full - time and part-
time tailors is that of the many men who engage in tailoring as a secondary 
(even tertiary) activity while pursuing another occupation on · a full -time basis. 
Both in the past and today, tailoring was a preferred secondary 
occupation of religious teachers or students of Islam who practised sewing 
in order to earn a . living but whose main social identity was more closely 
bound up with religion. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that 
sewing carries a somewhat exalted status under certain conditions because 
of the intimate connection between becoming a Muslim and becoming clothed 3 • 
Many learned Muslim scholars did tailoring at some point in their careers, 
one of the best examples in recent times being Umar Falke, a noted scholar-
trader from the 1930's to 1960's, who, according to Mohammed (Mohammed, 
1978 : 69) If •• • • learned to sew riguna as a young man financially to underpin 
his scholarly endeavours.If Another example , this time from the 19th century, 
is Husaini Ibrahim of Madabo who combined the three roles of religious teacher, 
agricultural estate owner and master tailor (see Tahir , 1975 for an extended 
discussion of this man). 
However , although there are many religious teachers in Hausaland 
who practise sewing , the bulk of tailors have little connection with religious 
teaching. 
Finally , within the rural and peri-urban areas of the state, many farmers 
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practise tailoring as a part- time activity. One particularly important group 
of farmer/tailors can be found in Jajira, a rural district to the north-west 
of the city It. Most of these are hand embroiderers who work on a putting-
out basis for city- based merchants and for other city tailors. These tailors 
either receive work brought to them from the city or visit the city from 
time to time to spend a few days tailoring or take back work to their homes. 
Tailored Products (D'inkakkun Kaya) 
Kano tailors produce a wide range of clothing (!.ufaj pI: t~ fafi) worn 
by men, women and children. In addition, there is a special class of tailored 
products for use on horses (kayan doki or horse trappings). I shall deal with 
each of these two classes of clothing in turn. 
The vast majority of garments produced today are worn by people. 
Of these, men's clothes are the most varied in style and usually the most 
expensive. The basic wardrobe of men consists of caps, gowns, shirts and 
smocks, and trousers. 
Caps (~j pI: huluna, or tagiya; pI: tagilu , from the Arabic word 
for cap, taqiyyah) come in many shapes and sizes, may be embroidered or 
plain, and are made from different types of cloth. The most common generic 
form which a cap takes is one consisting of circular piece of cloth into which 
the head fits and on top of which is sewn another piece of cloth which 
completes the enclosure of the head. Most men wear such a cap in public. 
The most popular cap worn by the Hausa is the Zanna Bukar, a multi-
coloured and densely embroidered product named after Zanna Bukar Dipcharima, 
a member of the Federal Government of Nigeria between 1959 and 1964 who 
is said to have been the first to have worn this particular style. The Zanna 
Bukar is of Kanuri origin and it is likely that the first caps of this type were 
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made by Hausa or Kanuri tailors living in Borno. Borno is regarded by many 
Kano tailors as the area from which the best hand embroidered caps come. 
This cap, although very popular, can also be very expensive, costing 
anywhere from a few Naira to 50 or 60 Naira (35 to 42 pounds). Expensive 
caps are bought mainly by upper and middle- income consumers, although there 
is a trade in second-hand caps which, along with cheaper- made Zanna Bukar 
varieties, makes them available to poorer members of the community. 
The cap has a basic decorative design with many variations. While 
in the field I collected the names of many designs worn by Hausa men. These 
designs are usually abstract and often have names which refer to specific 
events, people, animals and so on. For example, at the time of the Angolan 
civil war (1975) one cap appeared with the name !3ikicin Angola (the Angolan 
Conflict/Entanglement). Another commemorated the death and mourning 
period of the assassinated Head of State, Murtala Mohammed, and was known 
as Makokin Murtala (The Mourning Period of Murtala). 
Many other types of cap are made and sold in Kano, including the 
~ (a Fez- like cap) , Marafiya (usually worn by older men), Bakwala, ~ 
Manga, Hab'ar Kada (literally "jaws of the crocodile" because of its similarity 
to the open mouth of a crocodile), D'ankwara, and ~u Hadu a Banki (an 
embroidered cap whose name means "let's meet at the bank" because initially 
it was only the better-off who could afford to wear it). In the city many 
of these caps enjoy limited popularity today but in rural areas they can still 
be found. 
The best caps of all varieties are usually hand embroidered, but 
machine- made substitutes are available. The very cheap machine- made caps, 
many of which are made in Hausawa ward, also have their own names but 
these names are often known only by the tailors who make them 5 • 
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made by Hausa or Kanuri tailors living in Borno. Borno is regarded by many 
Kano tailors as the area from which the best hand embroidered caps come. 
This cap, although very popular, can also be very expensive, costing 
anywhere from a few Naira to 50 or 60 Naira (35 to 42 pounds). Expensive 
caps are bought mainly by upper and middle- income consumers, although there 
is a trade in second-hand caps which , along with cheaper- made Zanna Bukar 
varieties, makes them available to poorer members of the community. 
The cap has a basic decorative design with many variations. While 
in the field I collected the names of many designs worn by Hausa men. These 
designs are usually abstract and often have names which refer to specific 
events, people, animals and so on. For example, at the time of the Angolan 
civil war (1975) one cap appeared with the name !3-ikicin Angola (the Angolan 
Conflict/Entanglement). Another commemorated the death and mourning 
period of the assassinated Head of State, Murtala Mohammed, and was known 
as Makokin Murtala (The Mourning Period of Murtala). 
Many other types of cap are made and sold in Kano, including the 
~ (a Fez- like cap), Marafiya (usually worn by older men), Bakwala, Da 
Manga, Hab'ar Kada (literally "jaws of the crocodile" because of its similarity 
to the open mouth of a crocodile) , D'ankwara, and ~u Hadu a Banki (an 
embroidered cap whose name means "let's meet at the bank" because initially 
it was only the better-off who could afford to wear it). In the city many 
of these caps enjoy limited popularity today but in rural areas they can still 
be found. 
The best caps of all varieties are usually hand embroidered, but 
machine- made substitutes are available. The very cheap machine- made caps, 
many of which are made in Hausawa ward , also have their own names but 
these names are often known only by the tailors who make them 5 • 
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In the past, the wearing of turbans (rawani j pi: rawana) was a common 
sight, but is less so today. One of the most sought-after turbans, known 
as Q'an Kura, or Son of Kura, named after the town where it is made to the 
south of Kano, is still produced , but in the 19th century there was a large 
export trade in this item, particularly between Kano and Tuareg country in 
present-day Niger Republic. It was also worn by members of the various 
Hausa ruling classes. Today, the trade has declined, but there remains a 
small market for it among the Buzu (ex-Tuareg serfs) who come to Kano to 
find work and among traditional rulers in the north. Tailors play a role in 
the production of this type of turban as it consists of very narrow strips of 
hand-woven cloth sewn together, dyed and then beaten to give it a glossy 
appearance. 
Other forms of male head-dress which I shall not deal with here as 
they are not made by tailors, include the large straw hats , some very large 
to accommodate a turban inside, such as the Gurumfa and Malafa. 
If caps are one of the standard items of male attire , it is the loose-
fitting and free- flowing gowns (riga; pi: riguna), often requiring up to 12 
or 15 yards of cloth for their production, which are usually best remembered 
by visitors to Hausaland as a distinctive sign of Hausa-ness. Like caps, 
gowns come in different shapes and sizes and the most expensive are those 
with elaborate embroidery which in some cases covers the entire front and 
back of the garment. In recent years, many of the most expensive gowns 
have been those made from lace imported from the Middle East and Europe, 
although in the late 1970's the Federal military government imposed a ban 
on imported lace in an attempt to curb the habit of conspicuous consumption 
indulged in by all those who could afford it (Africa Research Bulletin, 1978 
: 4647). 
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All Hausa men wear gowns and thus provide Kano City tailors with 
a large market. The three basic types of gown are the Gare, Sace, and 
Shakwara, distinguished from each other by general cut , size of neck-opening, 
shape and size of pockets, and by the presence or absence of gussets. Most 
Hausa men prefer to wear gowns with some embroidery, however minimal , 
and the most basic decorative design consists of what is known as kwad'o 
da linzami (literally "frog and bridle") found on the neck opening and top part 
of the back of the gown. 
In the past many gowns were dyed with natural indigo, either blue or 
black or varying hues of these two colours, but since the introduction of 
factory-made cloth of different colours, most people have switched to wearing 
gowns made from these fabrics. Furthermore, gowns have got lighter in 
weight partly as a consequence of the use of factory made cloth and also 
because many people, especially the young, prefer what they call k'aramar 
kaya or gowns of smaller size which use up lesser amounts of cloth. 
Embroidery work on gowns reached a high degree of artistry prior to 
the present century and this tradition has continued to the present 6. Gowns 
are often known by the embroidery designs sewn into them and the range of 
such designs is large. The names of some of the well-known designs include 
the Malum- Malum , Aska Biyu (Two Knives) , Bala Kura (from the Kanuri 
language meaning "Big Town"), 'Yar K'ok'i (Daughter of K'ok'i), 'Yar Kumashi 
(Daughter of Kumasi) and 'Yar Tambutu (Daughter of Timbuktu). Common 
design motifs include circles (tambari, from the Hausa word for "drum"), 
knives (as in Aska Biyu or Two Knives and Aska Takwas or Eight Knives), 
arrangements of squares (Gidan Biyar. or Five Houses), incomplete circular 
motifs usually referred to as ~ after the Hausa word for bow, and the 
very common ?agi or knot. Many embroidery designs and motifs are not 
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restricted to tailored products but can be found in leather work and on the 
faces of buildings. This is especially the case with the ~a&i which in recent 
times has come to symbolise the idea of northern unity 7 • 
Another very popular type of top garment, distinct in cut from the 
traditional riga , is the taguwa (pI: taguwoyi) 8 . This is the generic name 
for a number of top garments distinguishable from the riga by being closer 
fitting, often with a circular neck-opening and in certain cases by long, 
narrow sleeves. 
Some t aguwa are short in length reaching no further than the knees 
while others reach down to between the knees and ankles. The short taguwa 
without sleeves and open at the side is very popular as a work shirt. One 
such shirt is the 'Ya r Shara which means "Daughter of Sweeping" a nd it may 
have acquired this name from its association with physical labour. This 
type of shirt is often worn by bush Fulani , as well as by Hausa. There are 
other , more elaborate taguwa including the Binjima with its pleated look 
created by the use of gussets. 
Another popular taguwa- type shirt is the Jumea, (presumably t a ken 
from the English word "Jumper") which has short sleeves, side pockets a nd 
reaches down to the crutch. This type of shirt , often with embroidery on 
the neck and pockets , is very c ommonly worn by young people, especially 
students, and also finds a market among expatriates. Another shirt , similar 
to the Jumpa, but without embroidery and often with a button-up neck , is 
the 'Yar Ciki ("Da ughter of the Inside") and is generally worn, as its name 
implies, under a gown. 
The long taguwa come in many styles and include the Jalabiy~, 
D'ahariya, Hartum, Aganiya, Akimposule and ~. Many of these styles 
a re plain but some , particularly the Kufta, have embroidery done on the 
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neck, shoulders and sleeves. The names of these latter embroidery styles 
include the 'Yar Misra (Daughter of Egypt) , 'Yar Marocc9 (Daughter of Morocco), 
'Yar Saliyo (Daughter of Sierra Leone) and ~Yar Dikwa (Daughter of Dikwa). 
There was a heavy demand for the 'Yar Marocco during the early and mid-
1970's and much of this demand was met by the tailors of Yalwa ward. 
Trousers (wando; pI: wand una) are another major item of dress among 
Hausa men, the traditional styles being distinguished from modern varieties 
by large crutch pieces, sometimes touching the ground, wide waists, often 
several feet across and drawn together with a trouser-string of cloth known 
as mazagi, and narrow ankle-bands. The most commonly used name for this 
type of trouser is Buje, but there are other varieties such as ~ and Shan 
Beri Beri. Trousers of more modest proportions with smaller crutch pieces 
include the D'an Itori, a style imported from Yorubaland, and !sala. 
More modern styles of western origin and increasingly preferred by 
the urban young are the Trosa (from the English word "trouser"), and the 
Pantalo (from the English "pantaloon"). The trosa is the conventional western-
style, narrow-legged garment with flies, belt loops and narrow waist. The 
pantalo corresponds to the flared trouser and is very popular among the 
fashion conscious 'Yan Kaifi ("Sharp Ones") and those who wish to identify 
themselves with international trends in clothing styles. 
Some of the old style trousers are embroidered, the two main types 
of embroidery being the wando mai kamun k'afa (trouser with caught foot) 
and the wando mai sirfani (trouser with open chain-stitch embroidery). Less 
common today than in the past, they are not usually worn as everyday 
garments. One style, however , known as wandon Tunis (trouser of Tunis), 
enjoys a limited popularity and is sometimes made as part of what might be 
called a Hausa suit consisting of trousers, embroidered Jabl?2. (a sleeveless 
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gown) and Falmaran (an embroidered waistcoat) , the whole ensemble being 
known as Kisuwa. 
All the above mentioned styles and types of men's clothing are made 
by Kano City tailors (and, to a lesser extent, by farmer- tailors in the 
surrounding countryside). In addition, tailors make clothes for women and 
children. I shall briefly describe the main types of women's clothing, 
omitting any discussion of children's wear because most children wear clothing 
similar to adults but usually with much less embroidery (if at all). Many male 
children, in fact, wear little other than a singlet and a pair of shorts. 
Women's clothes do not show the same variation and originality as 
those of men. There appears to be no tradition of tailoring comparable with 
that for men. There are examples of elaborately embroidered blouses worn 
by women, but many of these are of 20th century origin (Heathcote, 1973). 
Women in the past did wear a variety of wOVen cloths, but any designs on 
them were usually woven and not sewn. In addition, women tended to 
adorn themselves with jewelry, various dyes and other substances such as 
henna and indigo. Scarification and tatooing were also common. 
Today, what is distinctive about women's dress is not the range of 
tailored styles and designs, but the preference for brightly-coloured cloth 
upon which various patterns are factory -stamped. The basic items of 
women's dress consist of the ~ or wrapper, a small blouse, known as 
rigar mata or women's gown; a head-scarp (fatala) , and shawl (mayafi). 
Some of these garments require a certain amount of tailoring, but for many 
women any embroidery work is optional. Furthermore, even where a woman 
can afford to have embroidery work done on a blouse, the range of styles 
is very limited, compared with men's clothing. 
Apart from clothing worn by men and women, tailors participate in 
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the production of horse caparisons. This tailoring work forms part of a 
wider productive effort including blacksmiths, silversmiths, tanners, weavers, 
and leather-workers. Today, all kinds of work associated with the production 
of what the Hausa call ka¥an doki or horse goods are much less important 
than they were in the past, but in Kano City there still exist pockets of 
craftsmen, including tailors, who are expert in this field. 
Tailored horse caparisons include the 1..alala, §bba ti , suka dubu, 
d'auki, saka, zagin sirdi, and sittara. All these items are used as either 
under- or over-blankets on horse saddles. Some , such as the i,stlala and 
suka dubu, involve a lot of embroidery and/or sewing work. For the purposes 
of this study, it is jalal~ making which is of most importance. 
A ialala is a saddle cover, usually embroidered, which is placed over 
the saddle and today is most often seen on festive and ceremonial occasions, 
although in the past it was more widely used. The embroidery work is done 
on the centre piece of the ~lala, known as the ~, and the edge of the 
~ is then sewn with strips of cloth of varying colour. Finally, a fringe 
of plaited thread (geza) is sewn around the edge. 
There are many kinds of ialala (pI : jalalu) which are most often, but 
not always, distinguished by the embroidery work done on the~. There 
is also a distinction made between a 1alala embroidered with hand-spun cotton 
thread, abawa, (or, more usually today, mercerised cotton thread (siliki) ) 
and one made with tinsel thread (asiliki), broad pieces of metallic braid (karfe) 
and silver-like (salta) braid. 
There are over twenty different kinds of jalala, but only a few of 
these are made today. 
Besides clothes for people and caparisons for horses, there are other 
kinds of tailoring work done in the old city. Some tailors sew plastic bags 
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used for carrying flour. One or two do flag designing and sewing. In 
recent years women have begun to embroider pillow cases for personal use 
and for sale, much of the embroidery work being directly representational, 
in contrast with most embroidery done by males. However, the number 
involved in such activities is a small proportion of the total tailoring popu-
lation, and in most cases these types of work are combined with other 
tailoring activities. 
This brief, and somewhat incomplete, description of the range of 
garments made by Kano tailors gives some idea of the richness of the Hausa 
tailoring tradition. It should also be noted that no single tailor engages in 
the production of all, or even most, of the garments described. There is, 
in fact, a great deal of specialisation by product with particular tailors 
producing certain lines. Thus, one finds specialist cap-makers, gown-makers, 
jalala-makers and, within each of these specialisations, there are further 
specialisations. There is one important feature of Kano tailoring which 
affects the kind of tailoring a particular person will engage in and the kinds 
of products he will make, and that is the tradition of tailoring within which 
the person has been trained. 
Traditions of Tailoring 
There are two classical traditions of tailoring in Kano, with a third 
which is a modern development. The two basic traditions can be referred 
to as d'inkin gargajiya (old-style tailoring or tailoring of our ancestors) and 
d'inkin gabas (Eastern-style tailoring, sometimes referred to as Mecca 
tailoring). 
Although Hausa tailoring styles are the product of :a variety of factors, 
including copying of styles of other peoples, adaptation of foreign styles to 
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used for carrying flour. One or two do flag designing and sewing. In 
recent years women have begun to embroider pillow cases for personal use 
and for sale, much of the embroidery work being directly representational, 
in contrast with most embroidery done by males. However , the number 
involved in such activities is a small proportion of the total tailoring popu-
lation, and in most cases these types of work are combined with other 
tailoring activities. 
This brief, and somewhat incomplete, description of the range of 
garments made by Kano tailors gives some idea of the richness of the Hausa 
tailoring tradition. It should also be noted that no single tailor engages in 
the production of all, or even most, of the garments described. There is, 
in fact, a great deal of specialisation by product with particular t ailors 
producing certain lines. Thus, one finds specialist cap- makers, gown- makers, 
jalala-makers and, within each of these specialisations, there are further 
specialisations. There is one important feature of Kano tailoring which 
affects the kind of tailoring a particular person will engage in and the kinds 
of products he will make, and that is the tradition of tailoring within which 
the person has been trained. 
Traditions of Tailoring 
There are two classical traditions of tailoring in Kano, with a third 
which is a modern development. The two basic traditions can be referred 
to as d'inkin gargajiya (old-style tailoring or tailoring of our ancestors) and 
d'inkin gabas (Eastern-style tailoring, sometimes referred to as Mecca 
tailor ing). 
Although Hausa tailoring styles are the product of :a variety of factors, 
including copying of styles of other peoples , adaptation of foreign styles to 
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local requirements, and original designs created by local Hausa tailors, most 
Hausa regard d'inkin gargajiya tailoring as more ancient and more authenti-
cally Hausa than the d'inkin gabas tradition. Indeed, Hausa people do not 
see the need to distinguish old-style tailoring from other styles by the use 
of special category names. . The term d'inkin gargajiya is my own creation, 
although based upon what informants told me. Tailors knew what I meant 
when I used this phrase, but they used other phrases to refer to roughly the 
same thing. For example, the term d'inki na mutanen da, or tailoring of the 
people of the past, is sometimes used as a general term to refer to all old-
fashioned tailoring. However, as this phrase can and does include reference 
to d'inkin gabas styles, I thought it necessa ry to use a new term to distinguish 
between the two. 
In the case of the term d'inkin gabas, it forms part of the general 
vocabulary of Hausa people, especially tailors. The Hausa treat this kind 
of t ailoring as both exotic (North African) in origin and typically Hausa. 
Some of the characteristics which help to distinguish one tradition 
from the other include origins of the clothing styles, types of cloth used , 
types of stitching techniques, embroidery designs, and the cut of the garments 
worn. 
D'inkin gargaiiya clothing, which includes such ga rments as the loosely 
-fitting riga, embroidery styles such as ~alum -Malum ! Aska Biyu., and ~ 
Takwas, various smocks of the taguwa-type , and a range of caps and trousers, 
were, in the past, made from locally-woven cloth, the most common example 
of which is fari) or white cloth. Sewing thread, made from locally-grown 
cotton thread (aba wa) and thread made from silk (tsamiya) of the silk worm , 
which nests in the Tamarind tree, was hand-spun into various grades and 
qua lit ies. The thread was then used for both assembly work and embroidery. 
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In the case of embroidery, a variety of stitching techniques were used, the 
most common being the open-chain stitch (sirfani), the button-hole stitch 
(ciko), and the couch-stitch or~. Many of the motifs were densely 
embroidered, using two- or three-ply thread, and certain of them tend to 
recur from gown to gown. Examples of embroidery stitches can be found in 
Heathcote (1974). 
D'inkin gabas clothing, on the other hand, tended to be made from 
imported cloth brought across the Sahara by North African merchants. 
Particularly popular types of cloth were karammuski (velvet), had'alashi (satin) 
and mulufi (serge or flannel). The thread used in making up d'inkin gabas 
clothing was also imported. Alharini or ~ (silk thread) was particularly 
common. 
Compared with d'inkin gargajiya tailors, those who sewed in the 
Eastern tradition were relatively few. They usually made clothes exclusively 
for the ruling class and wealthier commoners largely because the raw materials 
involved in production were so expensive. There were also specific styles of 
clothing made only by these tailors, including the Alkyabba, Jauha, Jabba , 
Falmaran, Zubuni, and Wandon Tunis. Embroidery designs also differed from 
those found within the other tradition, there being much greater emphasis 
on motifs characterised by rococo-like shapes. The better types of ~lala, 
such as the Jalala Mai Bakin Karfe (Jalala with the Metallic Edge), were also 
made by tailors within this tradition. Apart from differences in embroidery 
design, the actual stitching technique employed by d'inkin gabas tailors 
showed one important variation from the other tradition. The silky thread 
was often spun together until it reached string-like proportions. The thread 
was then sewn into the body of the garment by means of a couching stitch 
and as the tailor progressed he would arrange the stringy thread into the 
required shape. 
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In contrast with d'inkin gargajiya_ tailors, most d'inkin gabas garments 
had some embroidery on them, and like embroidery in the older tradition, cost 
varied with the elaborateness of the design. , This variation in elab- orateness, 
moreover, was reflected in the traditional hierarchy of the 
society with emirs and senior councillors wearing the most extravagant 
clothing , while lower ranks wore cheaper, more sparingly-embroidered, 
styles. 
I have spoken of the two traditions in the past tense, and it is true 
that in recent times the divisions between them have become blurred in 
certain respects. Thus, today , both types of tailors use factory- made cloth, 
often of the same colour and quality, sew with the same kinds of thread, and 
even embroider motifs having the same design and name. In addition, 
d'inkin gabas tailors produce far more of the long taguwa- type embroidered 
top garment than previously as the demand for such distinctively s!:inkingabas 
clothing as the Alkyabba, ~auha and ~ has declined. However , the 
divisions between the two traditions are still very strong in Kano City and 
it is still often the case that a tailor trained within the d'inkin gabas tradition 
cannot embroider in the d'inkin gargajiya fashion, and vice-versa. 
Whereas the previously described traditions have been long established, 
the third tradition, d'inkin zamani or modern tailoring, is , as the name implies, 
of more recent origin. The term is used to refer to clothing styles of 
Western origin such as buttoned and collared shirts, flared trousers, suits and, 
to a certain extent, clothing which combines features of Western and Hausa 
styles. Within Kano City, there are few tailors who specialise completely 
in this kind of tailoring. Those who can make modern clothing usually 
combine such work with more traditional tailoring. 
D'inkin zamani garments are popular among young people , although 
more and more older men can be seen wearing western-style shirts and 
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215. 
trousers. Teen-agers find flared trousers and tight shirts particularly 
attractive. The most fashion-conscious among them usually take their 
business to tailors in Fagge and Sabon Gari where it is generally recognised 
that the best modern tailors can be found. 
Among city tailors it is usually those below the age of forty who have 
learnt how to make modern clothes and who have adapted certain traditional 
Hausa garments to suit the needs of the growing market for modernized Hausa 
dress styles. Older tailors, used to making the loose-fitting clothing typical 
of the Hausa, are much less likely to devote a great deal of their time to 
producing modern styles and in some cases have given up tailoring altogether. 
However, there has been no wholesale change-over in clothing preferences 
among the Hausa. Rather, the process has been more gradual with an 
increasing emphasis upon making smaller and less bulky gowns, simplified 
embroidery patterns, and slimmer-fitting trousers. 
It is important to remember that city tailors serve a large rural market 
where clothing preferences are more traditional. Thus, even though there 
are increasing numbers of city people who wear selected western styles of ., ~" I • 
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clothing, for many tailors this represents a small proportion of their total 
market. Furthermore, city residents, both young and old , still wear Hausa-
style caps and gowns as well as taguwa-type shirts and it is rare to see even 
a young Hausa man clothed in a modern suit. 
One fundamental difference between d'inkin zamani tailoring and the 
other two traditions is that modern tailoring is almost exclusively done by 
machine. Furthermore, within the two "classical" Hausa traditions of 
tailoring there has been a secular decline in the proportion of total output 
accounted for by hand sewers. However , hand sewing is still an important 
component of the tailoring process. It is to this division between hand and 
machine sewing that I shall now turn. 
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216. 
Hand and Machine Tailoring 
Hand sewing is known as d'inkin hannu while machine tailoring goes 
by the name d'inkin kekeJ or , less popularly , d'inkin machine. The Hausa 
term for sewing machine is keken d'inki, the word ~ also meaning "bicycle". 
(The mixed Arabic/Hausa term for machine sewing, d'inkin na'ura, is rarely 
used.) 
Although I do not have precise quantitative data on the proportion of 
machine tailors to hand sewers, I would estimate that machine tailors out-
number their hand-sewing colleagues by a ratio of at least 5 to 19. I am 
here excluding all those men, women, and Koranic students who do either 
hand or machine tailoring as a part- time activity. 
As already noted, tailors who specialise completely in d'inkin zamani 
tailoring and those who produce clothing in this style as part of their total 
tailoring effort work almost exclusively with sewing machines. In addition, 
the majority of tailors working largely within the other two traditions are 
machinists. This is especially the case with d'inkin garga jiya tailors. 
In general, machine tailors do not see themselves as heirs to any 
partieular tradition and are often ignorant of many of the styles of 
embroidery produced by their predecessors. Part of the reason for this lies 
in the fact that many machine tailors are drawn from diverse occupational 
backgrounds and have no previous experience in tailoring, other than that 
associated with machine work. In addition, the kind of knowledge required 
to opera te a sewing machine is different from that required by hand sewers. 
For example, embroidery machinists do not have to learn how to sew the 
wide variety of stitches known to the hand sewer. The machine itself has 
built into it a range of stitches required to produce the garment. In order 
to alter the type of stitching, the operator simply changes the dial on the 
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217. 
machine. Furthermore , the range of stitches found on an embroidery machine 
is less than that known to the skilled hand sewer. . The machinist may not 
even know the names of the stitches. The effect of this is to simplify the 
type of embroidery motifs produced on the garment and reduce the subtlety 
of design. 
This shift from hand work to machine production illustrates the point 
made by Marx over 100 years ago when he described the difference between 
tools and machines in the following way: 
The machine proper is • • •. a mechanism that, after 
being set in motion, performs with its tools the same 
operations that were formerly done by the workman 
with similar tools. • •• From the moment that the 
tool proper is taken from man, and fitted into a 
mechanism, a machine takes the place of a mere 
implement. (Marx, 1974 : 353-354) 
The machinist, although required to guide the cloth along the path 
of the needle, does not need to have any knowledge of the actual stitches 
themselves. The stitching he is able to do is pre-determined by the structure 
of the machine. . In addition, the advantage of the machine is its speed and 
this reduces the labour-time necessary for the production of a particular 
commodity. This reduction in labour-time reduces the cost of production 
per unit of output and so allows machine embroiderers to produce embroidered 
garments at a lower price than those of hand sewers. I shall have more to 
say about this later. 
There are three major types of sewing machine used by Kano City 
tailors, each of these machines being related to different types of tailoring 
and different phases of the tailoring process. 
The machine with the longest history of use in Kano City is the single-
stitch machine, referred to as d'ai-d'ai by the Hausa. D'ai-d'ai means "one-
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218. 
by-one" and, as the name implies , is used for most kinds of assembly work. 
Of all the machines found in Kano City, this is the most common as well as 
the most basic in that a tailor can produce a wide variety of garments without 
the assistance of other kinds of machinists. The d'ai-d'ai machinist has almost 
entirely replaced the hand tailor who traditionally made-up garments and it 
would not be an exaggeration to say that almost 100% of the clothing sold 
either privately or through the central city market has at some point involved 
the services of this kind of tailor. Although d'ai-d'ai machinists can do 
certain kinds of elementary embroidery or decorative work on garments using 
this machine, its main function is that of assembly. 
It should be noted that the term 'dai-d'ai does not refer to one 
particular brand of sewing machine , but covers the whole range of machines 
which do assembly work. Thus, in the past it was the Singer sewing machine 
(largely from Britain) which was most commonly found in Kano, but today 
it has been replaced by cheaper machines from China and Japan 10 • 
The second most common type of sewing machine and one which is 
used almost exclusively for embroidery work , is called sirfani by the Kano 
City tailors. The word sirfani means "chain-stitch" in Hausa and is one of 
the most common embroidery stitches in hand sewing. Among mad'inkan keke 
na sirfani, that is, machine embroiderers, a sirfani sewing machine is one which 
can imitate the embroidery work of hand sewers and the term covers a variety 
of different brands of machine such as Bernina, Necchi, and Refrey 11 • 
Sirfani embroiderers tend to work exclusively on embroidering garments 
and few combine this work with assembly 12 • This division between mad'inkan 
sirfani and mad'inkan d'ai-d'ai is one of the most common features of the 
organization of workshops where assembly and embroidery work are carried 
out. 
219. 
Sirfani machines began to be imported in large numbers during the 
1950's, but before this time another kind of embroidery machine enjoyed a 
limited popularity in Kano, having been introduced by Yoruba tailors from 
the south and by Hausa traders who bought the machines on their travels in 
southern Nigeria and in Ghana. This machine is known as zig-zag by Kano 
-
tailors, but in other places, such as Zaria City, it is also called mai cinko 
which means "the one with the five-franc piece". It presumably gets this 
name because the most common motif embroidered by zig-zag machinists is 
that of a small circle which resembles a coin 1 3 • 
There are relatively few zig-zag embroiders in Kano City. Although 
. I was not able to count all the zig-zag machinists working in the city, one 
zig-zag tailor from Yorubaland estimated that there were no more than 50 
such tailors. Outside the city, in Fagge and Sabon Gari there are a number 
of zig-zag machinists and it is likely that this kind of work is more common 
there than in the city. For example, I visited two workshops , one in Fagge 
and one in Sabon Gari, with a combined total of 10 such machinists, and 
tailors in these workshops told me that there were a number of other work-
shops of this type in the area. 
Zig-zag machines are very expensive and difficult to buy and for this 
reason they are not usually bought new by tailors. Those who can afford 
to import such machines are usually wealthier entrepreneurs who pay up to 
#1,000 for them. Sirfani machines cost around N400 to #450 during 1975/76 
while the d'ai-d'ai variety were selling for about #200. Second- hand machines 
can be bought for anywhere between one third and one half of the price of 
new ones , and there is an important market in second- hand machines in Kano 
City. 
Whereas the sirfani machine provides machine-embroidered equivalents 
of many of the d'inkin gargajil a embroidery styles, the zig-zag embroidery 
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work resembles more closely the hand embroidery done on 5!,'inkin gabas 
garments. However, both machines are used to produce embroidered garments 
specific to machine embroidery. Two good examples of this are the styles 
known as 'Yar Kumashi and 'Yar Tambutu. 
Another reason, apart from the cost and difficulty of obtaining zig-zag 
machines, why the latter are less frequently found in Kano relates to the 
above-mentioned difference between the types of embroidery work produced 
" 
by sirfani and zig-zag machines. The most popular type of embroidery work 
is still that derived from the d'inkin gargajiya tradition and the sirfani machine 
is best able to reproduce such work. Also there are d'ai-d'ai machinists who 
are able to sew onto a garment the string-like thread of d'inkin gabas 
tailoring and can produce a machine copy of hand embroidered styles with 
such precision that it is almost impossible for the untrained observer, and 
that includes customers, to tell the difference between machine and hand 
work. 
Of the three types of machines, zig-zag work is regarded by tailors 
as the most tiring, involving as it does the operation of three moving parts 
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- a handle under the machine, the moving of the cloth under the needle, and 
the treadle - compared with two on the other machines. The noise of zig-
zag machines is also much louder than either of the other two and it is 
difficult to make oneself heard when this type of machine is operating. 
The motive power of sewing machines is predominantly human, the 
machines being propelled by means of a treadle operated by foot. . In recent 
times, that is,over the past 4 years, some tailors have bought small electric 
motors, of American and Japanese origin, which they attach to their machines 
and which removes the necessity of using the foot-treadle. The effect of 
this has been to increase the pace at which machinists can work as they can, 
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221. 
theoretically, take fewer breaks. However , the use of such an attachment 
pre-supposes the availability of electricity and many workshops and homes 
do not possess any form of electrical lighting, let alone points where plugs 
could be inserted14 • . The attachment also costs about N20 to N40, depending 
upon the quality, and many tailors cannot afford to make such an investment, 
especially where the market for their goods is irregular. For these reasons, 
few tailors use such attachments and I would estimate that 95% of Kano City 
tailors still work with the foot- treadle. 
One problem associated with the use of such attachments, commented 
upon by tailors who had begun to employ them in their work, is that they 
had a tendency to break down. One particular tailor , who had been using 
this device for a few days, actually dismantled part of the mechanism which 
appeared to have been short-circuiting. He complained that he had lost 
almost a day's work because of this. I asked him why he did not take it 
back to the man who had sold it to him. He replied that it was pointless 
to do this as he would not get his money back. Other tailors in the same 
workshop saw this as a reason why they would not invest in such an attach-
ment , although, in fact, few of them could have afforded to do so anyway. 
The division between hand and machine tailors cross-cuts the various 
product divisions described earlier. Thus, there are hand sewers and mach-
inists who make caps, gowns, trousers; horse caparisons and the like. As 
already noted , d'inkin zamani clothing is made entirely by machine, but within 
the other two traditions there is still a demand for hand-embroidered garments , 
although even here make-up work is almost always done by machine. 
Earlier. I contrasted the skills of the machinist with those of the 
traditional hand embroiderer and concluded that machine embroiderers today 
generally work with a narrower repertoire of embroidery designs • . However , 
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222. 
from the point of view of the ordinary consumer, who in the past was unable 
to afford hand embroidered clothing, the advent of machine embroidering has 
meant that a greater choice of embroidered garments is available to him at 
a price he can afford. 
It is misleading to portray the shift from hand to machine tailoring 
as one characterised by increasing specialisation and dilution of skill among 
machine embroiderers as though all traditional hand embroiderers were experts 
in sewing the whole range of traditional Hausa embroidery styles. . In the 
past, the number of expert and creative embroiderers was a small percentage 
of the total numbers engaged in tailoring. Many pre-colonial tailors were 
assemblers who made-up garments and did little embroidery. Others may 
have known a few embroidery styles which they produced for a local market 
of poor consumers who could not afford expensively embroidered clothing. , ~ . 
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. In other words, in pre-colonial times there existed a differentiation among 
tailors according to their knowledge of styles, their skills in sewing. and the 
kinds of markets at which they aimed their production. 
Taking this point one step further, it would be wrong to assume that 
all of today's hand embroiderers in the city are general experts in embroidery 
who can produce any style on demand. There is, of course, the division 
between d'inkin gabas and d'inkin gargajiya embroiderers. However, within 
each of these traditions, many hand embroiderers specialise in one or two 
lines of embroidery work and rarely work outside those styles. For example, 
many younger d'inkin gabas tailors have never been, and probably never will 
be , called upon to embroider a whole garment such as the Alkyabba or ~. 
Many are employed to sew one or two motifs on a gown or pair of trousers 
and they do this on a regular basis. By specialising in this way they become 
very fast at their work and, given that they can be supplied with a steady , t' , 
stream of orders , are able to earn a regular income. 
223. 
This process of design specialisation has probably gone furthest among 
d'inkin gabas tailors, but even among d'inkin gargajiya tailors the satne process 
can be observed. Some of these latter tailors do know how to sew a complete 
design on a gown, but have found it more profitable to specialise in work 
of a more limited character. When asked why they did not produce more 
elaborately embroidered clothing , they argued that they would have to charge 
more than a machine tailor because it would take them a week to complete a 
design which would occupy a machine tailor for one morning. They also 
pointed out that today's consumers were willing to pay extra for hand 
embroidered work as long as it was not too elaborate or , to put it another 
way, at a price which was within their means. Again, by specialising these 
tailors became extremely proficient at hand sewing as measured by the amount 
of time they spent on each garment. As long as they could work quickly 
on a number of gowns for three or four customers they were able to realise 
a small income sufficient to meet their daily needs. However , they were 
aware that it was only through working long hours at high speed that they 
were able to survive, and even then it was a common complaint among them 
that they barely ma<;le ends meet. 
The inability of many hand sewers to make a living at their work has 
meant that some of them abandon hand sewing and shift to working with 
machines. However, the majority of machine tailors working in Kano City 
today have spent most of their tailoring lives as machinists and have little, 
or no, experience in hand tailoring. In addition, it is by no means always 
the case that hand sewers are brought up in families where hand tailoring 
is a long-established tradition. Tailoring of all kinds is a relatively open 
pursuit with no explicitly recognised principles which limit access to the 
occupation to members of particular families or kin groups. I shall have 
more to say about this in Chapters IX and X. 
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If some hand sewers become machine tailors, it is unusual for the 
reverse process to occur. During the course of my work I came across no 
examples of people who considered their major ~ana'a as hand sewing who 
had left machine tailoring to become hand sewers at some earlier stage in 
their careers. Of course, there are those who can do both hand and machine 
tailoring, but in these cases it was machine tailoring which provided them 
with the major part of their income from tailoring, and any hand work they 
did was usually irregular or something they fell back on when the occasion 
arose. 
Spatial Distribution of Tailors 
I have already noted that there are no special areas in the city set 
aside for the exclusive use of tailors. Tailoring, like many other small- scale 
economic activities, forms part of the general fabric of city life and tailors 
can be found working in private homes; along streets and alley-ways, and 
in workshops scattered throughout the whole urban area. Probably every 
one of the 130 or so wards of the city contains a few tailors, even if one 
excludes the many women cap-makers who, for reasons related to Hausa 
conventions regarding marriage and family life, are confined to their homes 
for most of the time. 
However, if attention is confined to those tailoring activities dominated 
by men, there are areas and wards of the city where relatively large concen-
trations of tailors can be found. Without a large survey of the whole city 
population, it is not possible to give precise details on the numerical distri-
bution and concentration of the various kinds of tailors in the city. However, 
using my own data on selected wards, the views of informed tailors, and other 
statistical and documentary sources, a general picture of the spatial distri-
bution of activities can be formed. 
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225. 
According to a survey of small -scale enterprises in the Kano urban 
area carried out in 1972, there were 598 tailoring establishments in the old 
city of Kano employing a total of 1,098, including employers, employees and 
apprentices. Almost 63% were single person enterprises while another 23% 
were enterprises with a single employer and one apprentice. Thus; over 85% 
of enterprises had 2 or less workers. These two categories of workshop 
accounted for almost 72% of all tailors. For the whole 598 establishments, 
the average employment per establishment was 1.8 persons. 
Looking at all establishments covered by the survey, tailoring was 
the most heavily represented category, indicating the importance of tailoring 
in the overall structure of small-scale enterprises in Kano. . Indeed, small-
scale enterprise is the dominant form of organisation of tailoring in the city 
as there are very few establishments in which more than 10 persons are 
employed. 
However, the evidence provided by this survey should be considered 
as a conservative estimate of the total number of people engaged in tailoring , 
for the following reasons. First , the survey covers only male tailors and 
thus excludes the many hundreds of women who do tailoring as a part- time 
activity 15. Second, although not indicated in the survey, it is likely that 
many enterprises employed others on a casual basis according to the demands 
of the market for tailored goods. Third, the survey did not count the many 
young people who do cap-making as a part- time pursuit nor did it consider 
the many men who engage in tailoring as a secondary occupation, large 
numbers of whom have no fixed premises and/or work from inside their homes 
and thus are not visible on the street. Fourth, a number of wards included 
in the survey contain more workshops than were counted. For example; in 
the three wards studied by the author, the survey revealed a total of only 3 
workshops and 9 tailors whereas my own count, made between December 1975 
226. 
and February 1976, showed a total of 133 workshops and around 300 tailors. 
Other wards where. I consider that an under-count was made are Gyaranya, 
Makwalla, Diso, Gwangwazo, Kabara, Dala, and Masak'ar Kud'a. 
Furthermore, certain wards where the survey did not record the 
presence of any tailors in fact, contained a number of tailoring workshops 
in 1975. These wards are D'andago, Dogon Nama, Sudawa, Garangamawa, 
Madungurun, Kangiwa, Madabo, Kwarin Mabuga , Indabawa , Satatima, and 
Daneji. 
, I conservatively estimate that the total number of male tailors oper-
ating from publicly accessible workshops was between 1,500 and 2,000 in 
1975/76. 
Certain wards and ward areas are noted for particular tailoring 
specialisations. Table 7.1 provides a list of these tailoring wards together 
with the types of tailoring specialisations found there. There are no exclu-
sively hand tailoring wards. Those in which hand sewing is a speciality also 
contain machinists. With the possible exception of Yalwa , there are no wards 
in the city where hand sewers outnumber machinists. 
The main concentrations of tailors are found in wards which run in 
a band from the north-east side of the city market around the market's north 
and west sides and then southwards. Noted tailoring wards included within 
this band are Bakin Zuwo, Madabo, Makwalla, Masukwani , Durmin Arabi, 
Gyaranya, Sudawa, D'andago and Hausawa. Other concentrations are found 
in the Yalwa/Dogon Nama/Dala area, in a cluster of wards around the Emir's 
Palace, of which Soron D'inki and Kabara are the most important, and in the 
wards of Yakasai, K'ofar Wambai , K'ofar Mata and K'ofar Nassarawa. (See 
map 7.1 for distribution of main tailoring wards). 
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TABLE 7.1 Tailoring specialisations within selected Kano City 
wards: 1976. 
Yalwa (W) 
Dogon Nama (W) 
Dala (W) 
Hausawa (W) 
D'andago (W) 
Gyaranya (W) 
Sudawa (W) 
Madungurun (W) 
Garangamawa (W) 
Makwalla (N) 
Madabo (N) 
Karofin Kangiwa (N) 
Masukwani (E) 
Jujin 'Yanlabu (E) 
Durmin Arbabi (E) 
Kwarim Mabuga (E) 
Zaitawa (E) 
Bakin Zuwo (E) 
K'ofar Wambai (E) 
Sharfad'i (E) 
Cediyar Kud'a (E) 
K' ofar Mata (S) 
K' ofar Nassarawa (S) 
Daneji (S) 
Soron D'inki (S) 
Ku r awa (S) 
Kabara (S) 
Ku r mi Market 
Tradition 
Eastern Style 
Eastern and Old 
Style 
Old Style 
Old Style 
Old Style 
Old Style 
Eastern Style 
Old Style 
Old Style 
Eastern Style 
Eastern Style 
Old Style 
Eastern and Old 
Style 
Eastern Style 
Old Style 
Products Made/Techniques Used 
Much hand embroidery with growing 
machine embroidery of cloaks, gowns 
smocks and trousers. 
Machine embroidery and assembly 
with some hand embroidery. 
Mainly caps, gowns and smocks with 
some trousers. Machine embroidery 
and assembly. 
Machine embroidery and assembly 
of gowns, smocks and trousers. 
Machine embroidery and assembly of 
caps and a few gowns. 
Machine embroidery and assembly 
of gowns, smocks, caps and 
trousers. 
Hand embroidered cloaks, gowns, 
smocks and trousers. 
Machine embroidery and assembly 
of gowns, smocks, caps and 
trousers. 
Mainly machine assembly with some 
machine embroidery of gowns, 
smocks and trousers. 
Hand embroidery of jalala and 
trousers. 
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Hand embroidery of sittara. ', "I" : : 
Machine assembly, wi th some embroidery ~",'I ',:' ;;~;o;;~:~;~;;: o;:;~~;;;;~~:!o~:lala . l,:l'. 
assembly of gowns, smocks and trousers. ':' ': 
Hand and machine embroidery of jalala 
and labbati. 
Machine assembly, some machine 
embroidery of gowns, smocks and 
trousers. 
Kano City districts 1975 
o METRES 500 1000 
m 
Nassarawa 
Gate 
Map 7.1 Location of main tailoring wards in Kano city (1975) 
Key (District noted: North, South, East, West) 
I Dala (N) 8 Hausawa (W) 15 Madabo (N) 
2 Dandago (W) 9 Kabara (S) 16 Makwalla (N) 
3 Daneji (S) 10 Kangiwa (N) 17 Masukwani (E) 
4 Dogon Nama (W) II Kofar Mata (S) 18 Soron D'inki (S) 
5 Durumin Arbabi (E) 12 Kofar Nassarawa (S) 19 Sudawa (W) 
6 Garangamawa (W) 13 Kofar Wambai (E) 20 Yalwa (W) 
7 Gyaranya (W) 14 Kwarin Mabuga (E) 21 Zaitawa (E) 
228. 
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229. 
The majority of old city tailors are Muslim Hausa and are culturally, 
as well as spatially, distinguished from a large proportion of their non-Hausa 
counterparts who live and work in the waje district of the Kano Metropolitan 
Area. This distinctiveness is reinforced by an economic division of labour 
in that old city tailors produce clothing for a predominantly Hausa market 
of urban and rural consumers whereas many of the tailors in the waje district, 
particularly those from southern Nigeria or of non-Hausa ethnic origin, orient 
their production to non-Hausa peoples , most of whom live within this district. 
Co-operation between Hausa and non-Hausa tailors is minimal, the 
vast majority of city tailors working with, and trained by, other Hausa. 
There are Hausa tailors living and working outside the city and some city 
tailors commute to work in such waje district quarters as Fagge, but the 
bulk of Hausa tailors within the more urbanised parts of the K.M.A. live and 
work in the old city. 
The ultimate consumers of the commodities made by Kano City tailors 
are individual customers the bulk of whom live in Kano City and parts of 
waje, other parts of Kano State, states contiguous with Kano and, in some 
cases, other states of the Federation, especially those in the north. There 
is some direct and indirect trade with the southern region of Niger Republic 
and even with southern Nigerian states. However, most of the output pro-
duced is sold within the Hausa-speaking region of northern Nigeria and in 
a few places on the periphery of this region. The potential market for 
clothes made in the city is, at the minimum, between 10 and 15 million people. 
I use the word "potential" to emphasise the point that city tailors do 
not operate within an economic vacuum. Apart from competition among 
themselves, they must also compete with other tailors in waje, with village 
tailors and with tailors in the other cities and towns of the north. 
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However, Kano possesses a number of advantages over rural areas 
and many of the smaller towns in the region and these advantages underlie 
the relatively sophisticated tailoring division of labour which characterises 
urban production. Among the most important advantages are the following. 
First, Kano is a major commercial and industrial centre and raw materials 
and instruments of production such as cloth, thread and sewing machines are 
easily available either because they are produced in Kano itself or brought 
in by the many commercial interests which link Kano with other parts of 
Nigeria and overseas. Second, Kano is served by good road and rail systems 
which link it to all parts of Nigeria. Compared with rural areas, small towns 
and many larger cities in the north, Kano acts as a nodal point within the 
north's transportation system thus providing for the speedy delivery and 
distribution of raw materials, instruments of production and finished commo-
dities. . Third, Kano contains a large and compact population which is strati-
fied cby income and wealth. Although the bulk of this population are low-
income consumers, there are many middle and upper-income consumers whose 
demand for clothing is more varied that that of the poor 16. In particular, 
they are likely to spend a higher proportion of their incomes on relatively 
high-cost and good quality garments. Thus, local tailors, apart from satis-
fying the clothing needs of many poorer customers, are able to tap the more 
up-market demand .. 
A fourth factor of importance is that Kano lies at the centre of a 
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densely populated agricultural zone, referred to by Mortimore and Wilson as ,; 
the Kano Close Settled Zone (hereafter called the KCSZ) (Mortimore and Wilson , 
1965). This zone, which extends 6'0 miles to the south-east of Kano and 30 
to 40 miles in other directions (see Hill, 1977, Chapter III for an extended 
discussion of the zone), probably contained close to half Kano State's popu-
lation in the mid- 1970's. That is a population of some 4 to 5 million people. 
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231. 
The existence of this population so close to Kano provides an important 
market for many city tailors, particularly those producing machine-made, low 
cost and low quality embroidered caps, gowns, and smocks. 
Fifth, Kano contains a large pool of both Kano-born and long and 
short-term migrant labour which is readily available for employment in the 
many tailoring workshops. There are also many employers with sufficient 
capital and market skills to employ these workers as well as a highly diver-
sified group of specialist clothes dealers and traders who operate through 
the city and other markets and who provide one of the main links in the 
chain connecting urban producers with rural and other non-Kano customers. 
In summary, on the supply side Kano provides a concentration of 
labour, raw materials and instruments of production together with those with 
the capital to set these forces of production in motion. On the demand side 
there exists a large market of consumers both within the urban area and 
beyond. In the following chapters I shall provide a more detailed analysis 
of the main characteristics of the labour force engaged in clothing production 
and the various ways in which tailors organise their productive strategies 
to meet the demand for clothing. A ttention will focus on three wards where 
concentrations of tailors are found. Through a comparison of these wards 
I shall highlight the similarities and differences in labour force characteristics, 
in the historical development of tailoring in each of the wards, and in the 
present-day organisation of production found there. 
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NOTES TO CHAPTER VII 
1. Baer argues that in 19th century Egypt the word ~ gradually lost its meaning 
of guild and became associated with an earlier meaning of craft or trade. Nicolas, 
working among the Nigerien Hausa, points out that the term sana 'a came to be 
applied to formerly pagan clan - based occupational specialities when they were 
integrated into the muslim state structure. He writes: 
Ces organisations portent le nom, d'origine arabe, de 
sana 'a. • •• Chacune se trouve directement rattachee 
au pouvoir central par un dignitaire nomme en son se in 
et integre a la sarauta (Nicolas, 1975 : 170). 
2. As the term implies, lebura derives from the English word "labourer" and is of 
recent, colonial, origin. It has a number of meanings in the present -· day context: 
a. Wage-worker in modern-sector private companies 
and government offices. 
b. Casually employed labour. 
c. Impoverished service workers such as barbers, 
porters and washerman. 
3. Smith (1978 : 38- 39) suggests that the settled Fulani preferred occupations such 
as embroidery, sewing and malanci (Koranic teaching and study). The preference 
for tailoring is likely to have been a result of their ties to Islam rather than a 
feature of traditional Fulani life in general. 
4. Jajira falls within the Ungogo District. In 1973/74, out of a total adult male 
tax-paying population of 734, some 155 (21 percent) did tailoring alongside 
farming. However, the true number of tailors is much larger than this. The 
Mai Garin Jajira (sub - district head) estimated that in 1974/75 over 320 farmers 
were tailors, some portion of whom were dependent males not paying tax. 
Tailoring was the single most important off - farm activity and for most was 
secondary to farming. However, a few farmers earned more from tailoring than 
farming work. Weaving was of minor importance with only 7 men doing it. 
Prior to the 1930's, weaving was engaged in by most households but from the 
early 1930's has declined considerably so that by 1950/51 there were only 17 
weavers in the sub-district . All informants agree that many weavers took up 
tailoring once weaving began to decline. Women still weave in the area. The 
Mai Gari estimated that there were 50 female weavers making gwado cloth. 
In addition, many married women, particularly younger ones, have taken up 
sewing. There are no machine tailors and practically all tailors are hand 
embroiderers with a very small number doing d'inkin tsaba. Completed work 
is either taken to Kano for making-up or given to city - based traders and 
merchants who put - out embroidery to the local tailors. Formerly, hand tailors 
used their own capital obtained from farming to purchase cloth and thread but 
now most work is d'inkau (sewing for pay) with commercial middlemen (some 
of them city tailors) supplying cloth and thread (especially if a garment requires 
considerable amounts of embroidery). Tailors either work in their homes or 
commute to the city where they work from the entrance rooms of clients, 
traders and from market stalls in Kurmi market. Many tailors have relatives in 
the city, particularly in Gwammaja ward. 
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5. Such caps include: 
Doguwar Hula (Long/tall cap.) 
Baranbajau (child's metal anklet) 
Bole 
Gobe Salla (Salla tomorrow) 
Arewa da Murd'iya 
Tela ya gaji (the tailor is tired) 
Kwankwada 
Zita 
'Yar Tofa (daughter ofTofa, a town near Kano) 
Bagobira (Person from Gobir) 
Mai D'ege D'ege 
Kwamfara (locust eggs) 
Mai Gidan Dara 
Alhaji ya zo Lafiya (the Alhaji came in good health). 
6. It is not possible to examine here the impact of Islam upon Hausa design. 
233. 
However, it is clear that many Hausa embroidery motifs are representational, 
although not intentionally or obviously so. Objects typically represented in 
embroidery are animals, tools, animal movements, household utensils, and 
natural features. There are no motifs which take human form (although some 
have names which refer to categories of people). However, in recent times 
human representation can be found in painting. On this, see Heathcote (1976) . 
Objects represented on gowns and caps are quite abstract and only the experts 
(and not all of them) are able to specify what they are. However, even here 
it is rare for a Hausa embroiderer to admit that he is actually engaged in any 
type of representation. Rather, when asked why, for example, a particular 
motif is called "the head of a male rainbow lizard" (kan Kiski), he will typically 
reply that that is what it has always been called. He will certainly not see 
himself as fashioning a naturally - occurring object. 
It may be that many designs are pre - Islamic in origin and possibly associated 
with animistic cults. However, this is sheer speculation as there have been 
no detailed studies to date of the link between pre - Islamic and Islamic aesthetic 
forms among the Hausa. For an interesting study of the accommodation of 
Islam to tribal art forms in West Africa, see Bravmann (1973). For examples 
of embroidery designs still in use among the Hausa , see Appendix 2. 
7. See Prussin (1976) for a recent discussion of dagi symbolism in Hausa 
architecture. 
8. According to one oral tradition (Huseini Madabo, 1979 : 35), tailoring had its 
origin with a Hausa man called Guwa who pierced a piece of cloth and put it 
on, sewed the edges and from that day on continued to sew. He said that 
he had made a type of gown called Guwa , thus the word Taguwa . 
9. However, the ratio of hand to machine tailors varies from ward to ward. In 
the three wards studied by the author, the numbers of hand and machine 
tailors are as follows: 
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TABLE 7.2 Three study wards by number of hand and machine tailors. 
Ward Type of Tailoring (% of all tailors in the ward in 
brackets) 
Hand Machine Both Total 
Soron D'inki 8 (26.5) 20 (66.5) 2 (6.5) 30 
Hausawa 101 (100) 101 
Yalwa 50 (54) 28 (30 ) 15 (16) 93 
TOTAL 58 (26) 149 (66.5) 17 (7.5) 224 
10. In 1935 Britain supplied 84 per cent of all sewing machines. By 1964 only 3 
per cent came from Britain and almost 75 per cent from Japan. During the 
early 1970's China began to replace Japan as the main supplier so that by 
1975 some 64 per cent came from that source with the bulk of the remainder 
originating in Brazil (18 per cent) and Japan (4. 5 per cent). 1975 percentages 
refer to the months from January to October only . 
11 . In the three wards studied, the number of machine assemblers and embroiderers 
are as follows: 
TABLE 7.3 Three study wards by type of sewing machine used. 
Ward Type of Machine Used 
Assembly Embroidery Both Total 
Soron D'inki 16 4 2 22 
Hausawa 43 39 19 101 
Yalwa 38 5 43 
TOTAL 97 43 26 166 
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235. 
12. Some assembly machine tailors in Yalwa sew the cord - like thread into embroidery 
motifs on Eastern - Style garments. 
13. The early zig - zag machines were French , particularly a brand known as Cornely. 
However, in recent years cheaper Japanese varieties have come into the market. 
14. Some workshops overcome the lack of electricity outlets by illegally attaching 
premises to the main electricity supply running along the streets. 
15. For example, out of a total of 77 adult women living in a randomly selected 
sample of 27 compounds in Soron D'inki ward , over 85 per cent do some kind 
of tailoring. Of these, 42 per cent (28 cases) specialise in the hand embroidery 
of caps, 36 per cent (24 cases) in hand jalala embroidery , and 6 per cent (4 
cases) do both. Practically all tailor for sale rather than domestic consumption 
and almost 85 per cent (56 cases) consider tailoring their most important single 
source of income out of all the income- generating activities in which they engage. 
Only 14 per cent (9 cases) of women tailors are machinists making- up women's 
wrappers and the like. 
Cap embroidery is the most profitable type of hand sewing with most women 
working on their own account and selling finished caps to market traders through 
male and female intermediaries. Thus, of the 32 cap embroiderers, 16 (50 per 
cent) sell exclusively to market cap dealers, 5 (15 per cent) sell to both cap 
dealers and private customers, 9 (28 per cent) deal wholly or largely with private 
clients, and 2 (6 per cent) produce intermittently for kinsmen and relatives. 
Jalala embroiderers usually work on a putting out basis for local horse tackle 
dealers and, in contrast with cap embroiderers, are supplied with all raw materials 
except needles and, occaSionally , thread. 
Of married male tailors (175 cases) in the three wards , 75 per cent (130 cases) 
have tailoring wives of whom 91.5 per cent are hand tailors , 9 per cent machinists 
and 2 per cent both. 30 per cent of wives tailor gowns, 43 per cent caps, 
7 per cent both, 11 per cent jalala , 4.5 per cent women's and children's clothes 
and 4. 5 per cent other garments. 66 per cent are embroiderers, 5.5 per cent 
assemblers, 21 per cent do both , including sab'iya sewing , 4.5 per cent are 
button - holers and 3 per cent do other types of sewing. 
All wives work behind closed doors and 63 per cent work for themselves, 19 
per cent for their husbands, 5. 5 per cent for their husbands and others, 1.5 
per cent for themselves and others and 1 per cent are learners. 
16. It is estimated that in urban Nigeria as a whole , per capita real incomes are 4.5 
times greater than those of rural Nigeria. Urban inequality in income is quite 
pronounced. Thus, in 1973 wage earners and informal sector workers comprised 
67 per cent of the population but earned only 21 per cent of urban income. 
Formal sector entrepreneurs and Nigerian and non - Nigerian professionals accounted 
for 10 per cent of the population but took 55 per cent of urban income (I.L.O., 
1981 : 219 - 221). 
An engineer or administrative officer in the Federal Public Service earned almost 
five times more than an unskilled labourer in 1975. Furthermore , the ~-income 
self - employed earned an average 62 per cent of the average income of the 
lowest paid wage earners. In Kano , the differential was 58 per cent (Fajani , 
in Bienen and Diejomaoh, 1981 : 215 , 226). Mabogunje and Filani (1981 : 85- 86) 
report that in 1976 out of a sample of 903 informal sector workers , some 36 
per cent received no income, 27 per cent received between 1 and 60 Naira 
(the latter figure being the minimum industrial monthly wage in that year) , 17 
per cent received between 60 and 100 Naira and 20 per cent got over 100 Naira 
per month. 
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CHAPTER VIII 
TAILORS AND TAILORING IN THE THREE WARDS 
9F SORON DtINKI, HAUSAWA AND YALWA 
In the previous chapter it was shown that although most wards of 
the city contain a few tailors, certain wards are noted for their tailoring 
specialisations. . In this, and following chapters, I shall examine in greater 
detail the tailoring labour force and the organisation of tailoring in three 
wards, each of which has either an historical or contemporary association 
with particular types of tailoring. 
Although the wards examined here were not chosen at random from 
all the city wards where concentrations of tailors are found, they do provide 
contrasting examples of the role of tailoring in the lives of Kano City Hausa. 
Location of the Three Wards 
Each ward is located in different parts of the city, (see map 7.1). 
Soron Dtinki lies to the north of the Friday mosque prayer ground (!l!.!!!. 
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massalacin Juma'a) with its southern edge running along a main east- west 
road constructed during colonial times. Apart from this southern edge, the 
ward is hemmed in on its western, eastern and north sides by other wards 
and is bisected by another colonially-built main road which links the mosque 
area with the central city market. Administratively, it forms part of Fuskar 
Kudu (southern face or division). 
Both Hausawa and Yalwa are located in Fuskar Yamma (Western face) 
to the south-west and north-west of Soron D'inki. In contrast with Soron 
D'inki, they open westwards onto open fields , parts of which are used for 
farming. In recent years Hausawa has been divided into two wards - one 
retaining the old name of Hausawa and the other, which lies to the west 
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of Hausawa,called Sani Mai Nege. 
Each ward has its own administrative identity complete with a ward 
head (maiunguwa) who is responsible , through the Division Head (Wakilin 
Fuska), to the Sarkin Shanu, administra tive head of Kano City within the 
Kano Local Government Authority (formerly known as the Native Authority). 
The wards differ in geographical size, population, and population 
density. Soron D'inki covers the smallest area (1l .33 acres) and has the 
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smallest population (987 persons in 1973). , In contrast, Hausawa and Yalwa 
cover much larger a reas and have larger populations. Thus, Hausawa has 
a total land area of 40.54 acres and a population of 2,357 while Yalwa covers 
37.06 acres and has a population of 6,156. The highest density of population 
is found in Yalwa (166 persons per acre) followed by Soron D'inki (87 persons 
per acre) and Hausawa (59 persons per acre) 1 • 
Soron D'inki has seen no outward expansion over the recent past a nd 
the population increased by only 3 per cent between 1945 and 1973. During 
the same period, Hausawa's popUlation increased by 119 per cent and that of 
Yalwa by a massive 300 per cent (see Table 8.1 for population changes). 
TABLE 8.1 Population growth in the three wards: 1945- 1973. 
Ward 1945 1973 % Change 
Soron D'inki 956 987 +3 
Hausawa 1082 2375 +119 
Yalwa 1524 6156 +300 
Source: Local Government Authority Tax Records 
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Apart from natural increase, which occurred in all three wards, the 
rapid increase of population in Hausawa and Yalwa can be accounted for 
by immigration to Kano and internal movement of people from more crowded 
parts of the city. More precise information and understanding of the 
dynamics of this process will have to wait until further studies are made. 
Occupationally, the bulk of adult male tax payers in each ward is 
concentrated in the craft and trading sectors of the economy. Few are 
employed in government or larger private companies with the lowest 
proportion of government/private company workers being found in Yalwa 
ward (see Table 8.2 for data on sectoral distribution of adult male taxpayers 
in the three wards for selected years). 
TABLE 8.2 Occupationa1/sectora1 distribution of adult male tax 
payers in Soron D'inki, Hausawa and Ya1wa: Selected Years. 
Occupation/Sector 
Craft or Trade 
(1) Soron D'inki 
(2) Hausawa 
(3) Ya1wa 
Government or 
Private Company 
(1) Soron D'inki 
(2) Hausawa 
(3) Ya1wa 
1945 
155 (78.5) 
224 (100) 
257 (79.5) 
42 (21.5) 
n.i. 
n.i. 
Year 
1952 
213 (100) 
234 (100) 
311 (100) 
n.i. 
n.i. 
n.i. 
1969 
214 (86) 
340 (84.5) 
512 (97) 
94 (14) 
63 (15.5) 
16 (3) 
1974 
181 (73) 
351 (71.5) 
560 (98) 
66 (27) 
140 (28 • .5) 
12 (2) 
NB: Figures in ,brackets refer to numbers in each occupation/sector 
expressed as a percentage of total adult male tax payers in 
each ward. 
Source: Local Government Authority Tax Records 
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With regard to tailoring, over the 1945/1976 period all three wards 
have seen a decline in the proportion of adult male taxpayers who are 
tailors. However, whereas the absolute number of tailors has remained 
relatively static (even increased if one uses 1952 as the base year) in Hausawa 
and Yalwa, there has been a dramatic absolute decline in the number of adult 
male taxpaying tailors in Soron D'inki (see Table 8.3). By 1975 Soron D'inki 
was a minor tailoring ward whereas Hausawa and Yalwa had managed to 
maintain their positions as important centres of particular types of tailoring, 
despite their relative decline. It should be noted that the level of tailoring 
activity in each of the three wards is higher than the data suggest if one 
takes into account the many women and children who continue to do 
tailoring work. 
TABLE 8.3 Adult male tax paying tailors in Soron D'inki, Hausawa 
and Yalwa: 1945-1976. 
Ward Year 
1945 1952 1976 
(1) (2) (1) (2) (1) (2) 
Soron D'inki 80 40.5 79 37 18 7.5 
Hausawa 73 32.5 50 21.5 75 15.5 
Yalwa 89 27.5 50 16 82 14.5 
TOTAL 242 32.5 179 23.5 175 13 .5 
(1) = No. ~ of tailors (2) = Per cent of tax payers 
Source: 1945 and 1952 figures from Local Government Authority 
:ax Re70rds; .1976 figures based on tax records for 1974/75, lntervlews wlth ward heads of the three wards and author's 
count, 1975/76. 
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240. 
Like all other wards in the city, Soron D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa 
were given legal and administrative form by the British during the 1930's. 
However, each of the wards is of more distant origin. . Thus, oral traditions 
link the founding of Hausawa to the 17th century and that of Soron D'inki 
and Yalwa to the 19th. What follows is a brief description of the historical 
origins and development of the wards, concentrating upon how they came to 
acquire their distinctive names and the historical association of tailoring with 
them. 
Origins and Development of the Three Wards 
Soron D'inki (Room of Tailoring) 
Soron D'inki became known by this name during the 19th century. 
Prior to 1800 the area was sparsely populated with indigenous Hausa-speaking 
peoples and a few immigrant Fulani, possibly of the Danejawa clan. Most 
inhabitants of the area were farmers and cattle keepers some of whom 
practised a number of non-farming occupations including weaving , tailoring 
and , perhaps, dyeing. 
By the end of the 18th century Soron D'inki lay within the walls of 
Kano City, the walls having been extended during the reign of Muhammed 
Rumfa (1463- 1499 A.D.). Rumfa, who is remembered in Kano's history as 
an Islamic reformer and administrative innovator (Fika, 1978 : 8-11), built 
a new Emir's Palace (Gidan Sarki) to the south of the main area of con-
centrated settlement in order to separate himself and his followers from 
the predominantly non-Islamic population of the city. What became Soron 
D'inki during the 19th century lay to the immediate north of the palace and 
marked the northern limit of most Fulani settlement a t that time. 
To the west of Soron D'inki , Fulani immigrants from Kura settled 
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241. 
while to the east Danejawa Fulani lived in what eventually came to be 
Daneji ward. Daneji, in fact , extended across Soron D'inki into present-day 
Kurawa ward (named after the immigrant Kura Fulani) which was known as 
Daneji ta Gabas (Eastern Daneji) before the jihad (Bashir, 1972 : 67). 
After the jihad, which removed the traditional Hab'e ruling class from 
power, the area began to fill up with Fulani supporters of the jihad, including 
many Kurawa Fulani who had assisted in deposing Alwali, the last Hab'e king 
of Kano. Many indigenous Hausa were pushed out of Kurawa into an area 
roughly approximating present-day Soron D'inki and Sharfad'i wards. However, 
the area contained a mixed population of Hausa, Fulani and some Kanuri 
from Borno who, according to oral testimony, were Muslim and supported the 
jihad . 
. It was during the 19th century that Soron D'inki began to take shape 
and acquired its distinctive name. . Two features of the period stand out. 
First the ward took on the characteristics of a mainly Fulani ward with many 
residents serving as warriors , slaves, court retainers, clients and court 
musicians within the emerging Fulani bureaucracy. , In particular, many 
people worked as subordinate officials to Royal Slaves such as D'an Rimi, 
Shamaki, and, later in the century, Shetima. Some were court messengers 
or agents (jakadu) who assisted the ruling class in supervising the rural 
commoner classes, acting as tax collectors and as a sort of rural gendarmerie. 
Important officials and warriors of the time included Makaman D'an Rimi, 
Baden D'an Rimi and D'an Doki Kariya . . The last-named was a slave jakada 
and D'an Lifidi (cavalry man) with the nickname Mai Babu Tagiya (the one 
with no cap on his head), so-called because he was regarded as a fearless 
warrior who went into battle without head protection 2. 
The other main feature of the period , partly associated with the 
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242. 
growth of the administrative and military functions of the government , was 
the increased importance of tailoring in the life of the ward. . The increasing 
prosperity of Kano Emirate led to a growth in conspicuous consumption among 
the Kano ruling class which translated itself into a heightened demand for 
extravagant garments. Furthermore , new developments in military organi-
sation, particularly the increasing use of the cavalry, stimulated local crafts-
men to produce horse caparisons both for military and ceremonial purposes 
(Smaldone, 1977). In Soron D'inki a number of residents began to engage 
in the production of the horse saddle cover known as jalala 3 and also the 
embroidery of expensive trousers. Many of those who acquired tailoring 
skills were minor officials, slaves and hangers-on who supplemented their 
income from palace work by sewing these garments for the ruling classes 
in Kano and other emirates. Ties of kinship, slavery and clientage with 
the ruling class provided important means by which such people obtained 
outlets for what they produced. The ward residents also engaged in cap 
making as a part- time pursuit. A few families also established themselves 
in the long-distance horse trappings trade , particularly with Borno, although 
the demand for such goods was extensive throughout the Caliphate. 
In the case of jalala making , local people began to copy what had 
previously been imported by North African and Hausa merchants. Using 
rags and bits of cloth, these local tailors began to compete with the imported 
varieties and new styles of jalala were introduced. 
The ward got its name through the growing association of tailoring 
with the ward's residents. The name was first used during the reign of 
Dabo and referred to the entrance room (soro) of a court tailor who used 
the room as a workshop. According to oral testimony, the man was called 
Bello d'an Gwaino (or possibly d'an Kwaido) and was the son of immigrant 
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243. 
Hausa parents from the Bici area of the emirate. Of humble origin , he 
established himself as a supplier of gowns and jalala to both Emirs and 
aristocrats. 
Although Soron D'inki was not the only city ward where jalala were 
made, all informants agree that the ward was an important centre for this 
type of work. Since the end of the century, however, both palace work 
and jalala making have declined in importance. . In the case of jalala pro-
duction, the most important cause of decline has been the diminished role 
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of the horse in Hausa ceremonial and military life Lt. Today, jalala are still 
produced but much of the work is now done by women who specialise in 
hand embroidery of jalala centre pieces. Male tailors have shifted into 
machine tailoring, some of whom now make jalala by machine although this 
is usually combined with other kinds of tailoring work. 
Hausawa (Hausa Peoplel 
Of the three wards, Hausawa is the oldest. In pre- jihad times it 
contained a population of craftsmen and farmers but it is mainly remembered 
as a centre of Islamic teaching. Abdullahi Suka, one of Kano's most famous 
scholars who is said (Paden, 1973 : 148) to have established the oldest branch 
of the Qadiriyya brotherhood in Hausaland, lived in the ward during the reign 
of Bawa (1660- 1667). 
One popular oral tradition in the ward links the name, Hausawa, to 
the descendants of Suka who supported the jihad and its leader, Usman d'an 
Fodio who is known to have followed the Ahl al-Bayt branch of the 
Qadiriyya which Suka established over 100 years before. Chamberlin argues 
that the new Fulani rulers of Kano referred to the residents of the area 
as Hausawa (Hausa people) as a mark of respect for their adherence to 
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Islamic principles and the ideals of the jihad. This use of the term "Hausawa" 
contrasts with the usual Fulani practice of called indigenous Hausa by the 
condescending term "Hab'e" (Chamberlin, 1975 : 72-74). 
The people of Hausawa enjoyed special favour with successive Fulani 
emirs up until the reign of Aliyu. Thus, a Hausa mosque was built in the 
ward on the instructions of Sultan Mohammed Bello as a reward for their 
support. In addition, the office of Magajin Malam was created and its 
occupants acted as religious advisers to the emir until the time of the Kano 
Civil War (Paden, 1973 : 49). 
Another oral tradition says that the first Magajin Malam, Yusufu, 
who was an Alkali (Islamic judge), took up the duty of answering letters 
from the Sultan of Sokoto to the Emir of Kano. Originally referred to as 
Amsawa (Responders to the Call), this name became, through mispronunciation, 
Hausawa. A similar tradition states that loyal Hausa who answered the 
call to arms became known as Amsawa and, later, Hausawa. 
During the 19th century the ward contained a mixed population of 
farmers, traders, religious teachers, imams and government officials. One 
part of the ward became known as Zango as it acted as resting place for 
immigrants, many of them Kanuri, who came to Kano to trade and to work. 
Farming was of particular importance to many ward residents and it was 
said of Hausawa people that they were very skilled at this work. An area 
of the ward is still known as Hori from Mahorak'ato or "those who train/ 
educa te well." 
Many people pursued craft activities, particularly weaving. One part 
of the ward is still known as Locon Masak'a (Alley of Weavers) where weavers 
used to congregate. However , today no weaving is done in the ward. 
Tailoring was also practised, particularly the production of old-style garments 
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245. 
and cap- making. Capwmaking is said to have been a favourite part- time 
activity of those linked to emirate government. However, unlike a number 
of other city wards, including Soron D'inki and Yalwa, Hausawa was never 
noted for its tailors until the 20th century. 
The Kano Civil War (1993-1894) marked a watershed in the ward's 
history as the Hausawa refused to take sides and were penalised by the 
successful emir , Aliyu, who withdrew patronage from many of the ward's 
residents. The office of Magajin Malam was actually discontinued during 
the civil war and appears to have lost a great deal of its importance from 
that time. Elderly tailors pointed out that this action, combined with later 
British attempts to rationalise administration, forced many people into other 
occupations, a situation not unlike that in Soron D'inki. Tailoring was one 
of these occupations and a number of early machine tailors in Hausawa linked 
their own occupational fates to these developments. For example, one 
moderately prosperous machine tailor is himself the son of a former jakada 
who took up hand sewing of caps when the institution of jakadanci was 
stopped. This tailor is also a descendant, on his mother's side, of the first 
magajin malam in the ward. 
Since the late 1920's and 1930's machine tailoring has become an 
important part of the life of the ward. It has attracted people of diverse 
occupational backgrounds and today Hausawa is one of the main machine 
tailoring wards in the city. 
Yalwa (Space/Abundance) 
Much of Yalwa was unsettled in pre- jihad times and large areas were 
given over to farming. It was during the 19th century that it began to 
attract growing numbers of people. Like its better-known neighbour, 
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246. 
Madigawa 5, the ward became noted for its connection with long-distance 
trading. Settlement occurred partly as a consequence of the decline of 
Katsina as a commercial centre and the movement of long-distance traders, 
o tt. I 
both Hausa and North African, to Kano. In addition, Yalwa established 
itself as a centre for the production of Eastern-style clothing, a development 
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which, in part, is related to the shift in long-distance traders from Katsina 
to Kano. A number of tailors and descendants of long-distance traders in 
the ward trace their family origins to Katsina and even to North Africa, 
particularly Tripoli. Apart from these, the ward also became the settlement 
point for Nupe immigrants and other peoples from the south, many of them 
slaves. 
Some idea of the 19th century development of the ward can be 
discerned from an examination of place names and the oral traditions 
associated with them. For example, one part of the ward, which today is 
the site of an important local food market, is known as K'ul-K'ul. This name 
comes from the leader of a group of Arab and Katsina merchants known as 
Abdullah KutKut who settled on the site during the reign of Dabo after 
leaving Katsina. The Hausa) being unable to pronounce the name correctly, 
referred to him as K'ul-K'ul (Adamu, 1968 : 43). K'ul-K'ul is said to have 
traded between Kano and North Africa bringing horse trappings and embroi-
dered gowns from the north and returning with Hausa saddles and hides and 
skins. The area is also known as Durmin K'ul- K'ul after a tree said to have 
been planted by him. 
Another part of the ward is called Kasuwan Gwari (Market Place of 
the Gwari) which takes its name from the spot where Gwari slaves, possibly 
from Minna, used to sell firewood to householders for use in cooking. Many 
of these slaves belonged to long-distance traders in the ward. 
247. 
Nupe weavers are also known to have lived in the ward in an area 
called Lungun Nupawa (Alley of the Nupe). Some of these Nupe were brought 
as slaves by long-distance traders while others simply migrated to Kano in 
search of work. Oral testimony also suggests that a number of Nupe came 
to Kano because Emir Dabo had once lived in their land and had acquired 
a following because of his abilities as an Islamic teacher. 
Oral traditions describing how Yalwa came to be named vary. For 
example, it is claimed by the descendants of a family said to be the founder 
of Eastern style tailoring in Kano that the establishment of the ward is 
related to their own family history. The grandfather of the oldest living 
member of that family is thought to have come to Kano on his way to Mecca. 
This man was a malam who was born in Katsina and left to teach in Agades 
where he learnt how to sew Eastern style garments through doing repairs 
for North African merchants who traded from there. The Emir of Kano 
at the same time, possibly Dabo, asked the man to stay in Kano and teach, 
giving him a house in Dukurawa ward close to the city market. After some 
time, Malam Mustafa , as the man was called, complained that his house was 
too cramped to accommodate his family and students and he asked the Emir 
for a new compound. The Emir showed him an open area on the north-west 
side of the city and said he should move there because 'La fi yalwa, that 
is, it has more space. From this the ward got its name. Today the descen-
dants of this man still live in the area given to Mustafa, on the north side 
of the K'ul-K'ul market known as Lungun Bulala (Alley of Bulala), named 
after a late 19th century long-distance trader-cum- landlord who provided 
lodgings for Abzinawa traders who brought grain, dates, Asbin and Bilma 
salt to Kano. 
Another tradition relates the naming of the ward to long-distance 
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247. 
Nupe weavers are also known to have lived in the ward in an area 
called Lungun Nupawa (Alley of the Nupe). Some of these Nupe were brought 
as slaves by long-distance traders while others simply migrated to Kano in 
search of work. Oral testimony also suggests that a number of Nupe came 't. 
,', 
. 
to Kano because Emir Dabo had once lived in their land and had acquired 
a following because of his abilities as an Islamic teacher. 
Oral traditions describing how Yalwa came to be named vary. For 
example, it is claimed by the descendants of a family said to be the founder 
of Eastern style tailoring in Kano that the establishment of the ward is 
related to their own family history. The grandfather of the oldest living 
member of that family is thought to have come to Kano on his way to Mecca. 
This man was a malam who was born in Katsina and left to teach in Agades 
where he learnt how to sew Eastern style garments through doing repairs 
for North African merchants who traded from there. The Emir of Kano 
at the same time, possibly Dabo, asked the man to stay in Kano and teach, 
giving him a house in Dukurawa ward close to the city market. After some 
'. I ' • 
time, Malam Mustafa, as the man was called, complained that his house was 
too cramped to accommodate his family and students and he asked the Emir 
for a new compound. The Emir showed him an open area on the north-west 
side of the city and said he should move there because y"'a fi yalwa, that 
is, it has more space. From this the ward got its name. Today the descen- ", 
dants of this man still live in the area given to Mustafa, on the north side 
of the K'ul-K'ul market known as Lungun Bulala (Alley of Bulala), named 
after a late 19th century long-distance trader-cum-Iandlord who provided 
lodgings for Abzinawa traders who brought grain, dates, Asbin and Bilma , '. 
salt to Kano. 
Another tradition relates the naming of the ward to long-distance 
248. 
trading and the slave population of Kano. The Arabs who came to Kano 
during Dabo's time and later and who settled in Jingau and Dandalin Turawa, 
two wards to the east of Yalwa, began to look for other places to settle 
and some moved with their slaves to Yalwa. Familles looking for places 
to settle with their slaves were advised: ku kai shi yalwa - take him to 
the open space. A former ward head of Yalwa gave me a similar story to 
this saying that long-distance traders would buy slaves in Sokoto and other 
towns and bring them back to Kano and settle them in Yalwa. These slaves 
would work for their masters doing domestic tasks such as firewood selling 
and farming. Over the years the slave population of the ward grew and 
the area became known as Yalwar Bayi, "the area abundant with slaves". 
Other place names which link long-distance trading with the ward 
include the two borrow pits of Cin Rak'umi and Cin Jakai. These borrow 
pits, their names meaning "Eating of Camels" and "Eating of Donkeys" 
respectively, were said to have been so deep that animals which went in 
too far to drink were often swallowed up and drowned. 
Besides long-distance trading and tailoring, the ward also contained 
dye pits used by resident and itinerant dyers in the past. For example, one 
part of the ward which lies between K'ul-K'ul market and Lungun Bulala, 
is known as Tsoma~ Ba Ni which means "Dip it and Give Me". Cloth, clothing 
and thread were dyed here and it appears that the main customers for this 
service were local people who wished to have their dyeing done in a hurry. 
All the various places described here, as well as others not considered, 
form part of the present day ward of Yalwa. Today Yalwa is noted as a 
centre of Eastern-style tailoring and also a ward of traders most of whom 
engage in market trade rather than long-distance trade. Much of the 
tailoring output of the ward found its way into long-distance trade in the 
Of· 
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248. 
trading and the slave population of Kano. The Arabs who came to Kano 
during Dabo's time and later and who settled in Jingau and Dandalin Turawa, 
two wards to the east of Yalwa, began to look for other places to settle 
and some moved with their slaves to Yalwa. Families iooking fOi places 
to settle with their slaves were advised: ku kai shi yalwa - take him to 
the open space. A former ward head of Yalwa gave me a similar story to 
this saying that long-distance traders would buy slaves in Sokoto and other 
towns and bring them back to Kano and settle them in Yalwa. These slaves 
would work for their masters doing domestic tasks such as firewood selling 
and farming. Over the years the slave population of the ward grew and 
the area became known as Yalwar Bayi, "the area abundant with slaves". 
Other place names which link long-distance trading with the ward 
include the two borrow pits of Cin Rak'umi and Cin Jakai. These borrow 
pits, their names meaning "Eating of Camels" and "Eating of Donkeys" 
respectively, were said to have been so deep that animals which went in 
too far to drink were often swallowed up and drowned. 
Besides long-distance trading and tailoring, the ward also contained 
dye pits used by resident and itinerant dyers in the past. For example, one 
part of the ward which lies between K'ul-K'ul market and Lungun Bulala, 
is known as ~~Ba Ni which means "Dip it and Give Me". Cloth, clothing 
and thread were dyed here and it appears that the main customers for this 
service were local people who wished to have their dyeing done in a hurry. 
All the various places described here, as well as others not considered, 
form part of the present day ward of Yalwa. Today Yalwa is noted as a 
centre of Eastern-style tailoring and also a ward of traders most of whom 
engage in market trade rather than long-distance trade. Much of the 
tailoring output of the ward found its way into long-distance trade in the 
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249. 
past and also a number of local tailors produced garments for the ruling 
classes of Kano and other emirates. Part of present-day production also 
is traded long distance but increasing amounts are sold through the Kano 
City Market. However, a number of tailors still provide high quality gar-
ments to the rich and to traditional rulers. The majority of Eastern style 
tailors continue to work in Yalwa and the surrounding wards of Madigawa 
and Dogon Nama. 
TAILORS AND TAILORING IN THE THREE WARDS 
In all three wards it is adult males who dominate the production of 
most lines of clothing. Men also control all major outlets in the distribution 
and sale of tailored commodities. Male children and many women participate 
in the prodllctive activities of men, but usually in subsidiary roles. Certain 
lines of clothing, such as the embroidery of caps, are produced by women 
working at home and somewhat independently of male tailors. However, 
for the most part they produce garments which men do not find profitable 
to make. 
Given the dominance of men, I shall concentrate upon male tailors, 
making reference to female labour input where necessary. In examining 
male tailors in the three wards, I shall discuss some of the main character-
istics of the male labour force which will provide a background for the later 
examination of the organisation of production. (See Appendix 3 for inform-
ation on the ward samples upon which the following discussion is based.) 
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250. 
Characteristics of Male Tailors in the Three Wards 
The vast majority of male tailors are Hausa-speaking Muslims who 
operate from publicly accessible workshops and work places scattered 
throughout the three wards. The association with urban living and involve-
ment in urban-type occupations is very strong, often extending to fathers 
and grandfathers. Tailors are also differentiated by age, marital status 
and a host of other factors. 
Ethnically, almost all tailors identify themselves as Hausa, speak 
Hausa as a first language and generally participate in the Hausa way of life. 
Even those for whom Hausa is not their first language, all speak Hausa 
fluently and for the most part have assimilated and acculturated to Hausa 
social and cultural life. 
There are sub-ethnic differences among the Hausa (described by the 
term asali or origin) which arise out of the long-term historical incorporation 
of non-Hausa peoples into the Hausa nationality. Indeed, it is impossible 
to understand the development of Hausaland, particularly the growth of the 
great cities such as Kano and Katsina, without making reference to these 
sub-ethnic differences. For example, many tailors in Soron D'inki trace 
their descent to the Fulani conquest of Kano in the early 19th century and 
regard themselves as the descendants of Fulani immigrants or of other non-
Fulani immigrants and indigenous Hausa peoples who allied themselves with 
the Fulani conquerors. In Yalwa ward one finds tailors (and others) of 
Agalawa and Kamberin BeriBeri origin, that is, people whose ancestors were 
Tuareg or Kanuri and who played central roles in the development of a Hausa 
commercial diaspora, particularly the long-distance kola nut trade (see Lovejoy, 
1980 for an extended discussion of these peoples). However, through inter-
marriage with Hausa and settlement in the Hausa heartlands, they have 
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251. 
become virtually indistinguishable from all other Hausa. 
Others trace their origins to North Africa, regarding themselves as 
descendants of North African merchants who engaged in the trans-Saharan 
caravan trade. Yet others are of mixed Hausa-N upe stock who have lost 
all connection with their Nupe origins. 
However, for most tailors in the three wards such differences are 
of declining importance as they come to regard themselves as Hausawa (Hausa 
people) or Kanawa (Kano people). Table 8.5 summarises the data on present-
day ethnic identification of tailors in the three wards. 
TABLE 8 . 4 Ethnicity by ward. (N=224 ) 
Ethnicity Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa 
No. % No . % No. % Total 
Hausa 22 (73.5) 96 (95) 93 (100) 211 
Fulani 7 (23.5) 4 ( 4) 0 ( 0) 11 
Kanuri 1 ( 3) 1 ( 1) 0 ( 0) 2 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100 ) 224 
Although immigration has played , and continues to play, an important 
role in the development of Kano , most tailors were born in Kano City. Thus, 
81% (182) of all tailors are Kano City-born, the highest proportion being 
found in Soron D'inki (87%), followed by Yalwa (86%) and Hausawa (77%). 
Furthermore, a high proportion of tailors were born in the wards in 
which they now live and work. Thus, 71 % of Yalwa tailors were born in 
Yalwa, 53.5% of those in Soron D'inki were Soron D'inki-born and 46.5% of 
Hausawa tailors were Hausawa-born. The majority of the remaining city-
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TABLE 
, Birth 
252. 
born tailors were born in wards either adjacent to, or close by, the three 
wards. 
Only 19% of tailors were non-Kano City born and of these close to 
30% were born in the many small towns which dot the Kano State landscape. 
A further 40.5% of these non-Kano City born come from rural Kano State. 
The very small number of tailors who were born outside Kano State come 
largely from other northern, predominantly Hausa, states (see Tables 8.5 and 
8.6 for a summary of these data). 
8.5 Respondent's bitth place by ward (A) • (N=224 ) 
Place Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. t No. % No. % 
Kano City 26 (87 ) 78 (77) 78 (84) 182 (81) 
Other 4 (13) 23 (23) 15 (16) 42 (19) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.6 Respondent's birth place by ward (B) • (N=224 ) 
Bi r th Place Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. i No. % NO. i No. % 
Soron D'inki 16 (53.5) 0 0 16 ( 7.0) 
Hausawa 0 47 (46.5) 0 47 (21.0) 
Yalwa 0 0 66 (71.0) 66 (29.5) 
Other Ward 10 (33.5) 31 (30.5) 12 (13.0) 53 (23.5) 
Urban Kano State 1 ( 3.5) 10 (10.0) 1 ( 1. 0) 12 ( 5.5) 
Urban Nigeria 1 ( 3.5) 2 ( 2.0) 8 ( 8.5) 11 ( 5.0) 
Rur al Kano State 2 ( 6.5) 10 (10.0) 5 ( 5.5) 17 ( 7.5) 
Rural Nigeria 0 1 ( 1. 0) 0 1 ( 0.5) 
Outside Nigeria 0 0 1 La) 1 ( 0.5) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
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253. 
A majority of tailors, be they Kano City or non-Kano City born, have 
spent all their lives (71 % of all cases) or over 50% of their lives (85%) in 
Kano. Only 6% (13 cases) have lived for 25% or less of their lives in the 
city. Looking at proportion of working life spent in Kano, 71 % have spent 
100% and 88% have spent over 50% of their working lives in the city (see 
Tables 8.7 and 8.8). 
For most tailors the association with Kano City extends to their 
fathers and paternal grandfathers. Thus, of all city-born tailors, almost 
80% (145 cases) have either a father, a paternal grandfather or both who 
were born in the city. Again, Soron D'inki contains the highest proportion 
of city-born tailors in this category (see Tables 8.10 and 8.11 for a summary 
of place of origin of paternal grandfathers and fathers). 
Taking all tailors into account, that is, both city-born and non-city-
born, two thirds have fathers, paternal grandfathers or both who were Kano 
City born. (Table 8.9 summarises data on generational association with 
Kano). 
Although the fathers and paternal grandfathers show a higher pro-
portion of cases with rural origins, in neither instance does the proportion 
reach 25% of the total. Furthermore, many fathers and paternal grandfathers 
who were born outside Kano have actually lived for much of their lives in 
urban centres, including Kano. 
In summary, Kano tailors are not recent immigrants of predominantly 
rural origin but a highly urbanised group of people whose life and work 
experiences have been greatly, if not totally, shaped by life in urban centres, 
particularly Kano City. In addition, many tailors either own their homes 
(whether purchased or inherited) or live with other kin who are long-established 
urban residents. Indeed, renting of accommodation is rare (see Table 8.12). 
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254. ".~ . 
TABLE 8.7 Proportion of life in Kano City by ward. (N=224) 
Proportion Ward 
of life Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
~ 25% 1 3) 10 (10) 2 2) 13 6) 
26- 50% 1 3) 13 (13) 7 8) 21 9) 
51- 75% 2 ( 7) 2 . ( 2) 3 ( 3) 7 ( 3) 
76 - 99% 3 (10) 9 ( 9) 13 (14) 25 (11) 
100% 23 (77) 67 (66) 68 (73) 158 (71) 
TOTAL 30 (100 ) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.8 Proportion of work life in Kano City by ward. (N=224) 
Proportion Ward 
of work life Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
~ 25% 0 ' 0.0) 6 ( 6.0) 1 1. 0) 7 3.0) 
26 ':"50% 2 6.5) 13 (13.0) 5 5.5) 20 9.0) 
51- 75% 1 ( 3.5) 5 ( 5.0) 5 ( 5.5) 11 ( 5.0) 
76 - 99% 4 (13.5) 10 (10.0) 13 (14.0) 27 (12.0) 
100% 23 (76.5) 67 (66.0) 69 (74.0) 159 (71.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100 ) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.9 Generational association with Kano City by ward. (N=224 ) 
Birth Place Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Paternal Grandfather 
Father & Respondent 17 (56.5) 41 (40 . 5) 44 (47.5) 102 (45.5) 
Kano City Born. 
Father & Respondent 5 (16.5) 18 (18 . 0) 14 (15 . 0) 37 (16.5) Kano City Born. 
Respondent Kano 3 (10.0) 18 (18.0) 16 (17.0) 37 (16.5) City Born. 
Paternal Gr andfather 
& Respondent Kano 1 ( 3.5) 1 ( 1.0) 4 ( 4.5) 6 ( 2.5) 
City Born. 
Other 4 (13.5) 23 (22.5) 15 (16.0) 42 (19.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100 ) 
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TABLE 8.10 Father's place of birth by ward. (N=224) 
Place of Ward 
Bir th Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
sor on D'inki 12 (40.0) 0 ( 0.0) 0 0.0) 12 ( 5.5) 
Hausawa 0 ( 0.0) 36 (35.5) 0 ( 0.0) 36 (16.0) 
Yalwa 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0) 53 (57.0) 53 (23.5) 
Ot her Ward 11 (36.5) 23 (23.0) 9 ( 9.5) 43 (19.0) 
Ur ban Kano State 4 (13.5) 19 (19.0) 1 ( 1.0) 24 (10.5) 
Ur ban Nigeria 1 ( 3.5) 5 ( 5.0) 11 (12.0) 17 ( 7.5) 
Rur al Kano State 2 ( 6.5) 17 (17.0) 17 (18.5) 36 (16.0) 
Rur al Nigeria 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1. 0) 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 0.5) 
ou t side Nigeria 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1. 0) 1 ( 0.5) 
Not Known 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1.0) 1 ( 0.5) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100 ) 93 (100 ) 224 (100 ) 
'TABLE 8.11 Paternal grandfather's place of birth by ward. (N=224 ) 
Place of Ward 
Bir th Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Sor on D'inki 4 (13.5) 0 ( 0.0) 0 0.0) 4 ( 2.0) 
Hausawa 0 ( 0 . 0) 23 (23.0) 0 ( 0.0) 23 (10.5) 
Yalwa 0 ( 0.0) 0 ( 0.0) 43 (46.0) 43 (19.0) 
Ot her Ward 15 (50.0) 19 (19.0) 8 ( 8.5) 42 (18.5) 
Ur ban Kano State 3 (10.0) 20 (20.0) 2 ( 2.0) 25 (11. 0) 
Ur ban Nigeria 2 ( 6.5) 5 ( 5.0) 10 (11. 0) 17 ( 7.5) 
Rur al Kano State 3 (10.0) 19 (19.0) 17 (18.5) 39 (17.5) 
Rural Nigeria 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1. 0) 2 ( 2.0) 3 ( 1. 5) 
Ou t side Nigeria 1 ( 3.5) 2 ( 2.0) 3 ( 3.0) 6 ( 2.5) 
Not Known 2 ( 6.5) 12 (12.0) 8 ( 8.5) 22 (10.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100 ) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.12 Home ownership by ward. (N=224) 
Owner s hip Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Own Home 19 (63.5) 23 (23.0) 20 (21. 5) 62 (17.5) 
Li ves with Family 8 (26.5) 66 (65.5) 70 (75.5) 144 (64 . 5) in Family Home 
Rents 3 (10.0) 6 ( 6.0) 1 1. 0) 10 4.5) 
Borrows 1 ( 1.0) 1 1. 0) 2 1. 0) 
Ot her 5 ( 5.0) 1 1. 0) 6 2.5) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100 ) 
256. 
The great majority of tailors have had little exposure to western 
education 6 , although all have had some traditional Islamic Kuranic schooling 
(with its emphasis on rote learning of passages of the Kuran) and some have 
received (and continue to receive) instruction at the more advanced ~ 
schools. In this regard, the tailors differ little from the majority of northern 
muslims who until recently have been largely deprived of access to (and in 
many instances rejected the importance of) western education (Abernetty, 
1969; AI-Rashid Adamu, 1973; Clarke, 1978). Some 54 per cent of all 
tailors have no western education, about 16 per cent have received a largely 
incomplete primary level of schooling and only 1.5 per cent (3 cases only) 
have any secondary education. However, some 30 per cent have attended 
intermittently adult education classes. If one excludes adult education, 
83 per cent of tailors have no western schooling. There is a small tendency 
for younger tailors to have a greater exposure to such schooling, but even 
among the under 20's, three quarters have none compared with 78.5 per cent 
of those between 20 and 30 years of age and almost 90 per cent of the over 
30's. 
Literacy levels are correspondingly low with 57 per cent being unable 
to read or write in Hausa or, in a few instances, being able to write their 
names only. Some 39 per cent reported that they were able to read and 
write but, as I did not administer a test to measure competence, I do not 
know what ability level they have attained. 
Tailors exhibit a strong association with non-farming occupations both 
in their own work experiences and those of their fathers and grandfathers. 
Taking the latter first, Tables 8.13 and 8.15 - 8.26 summarise the data on 
the primary and secondary occupations of tailors' fathers and paternal grand-
fathers. Among paternal grandfathers, although farming constitutes an 
257. 
important part of their occupational experiences, particularly as a secondary 
occupation, a very high proportion of grandfathers engaged in non-farming 
primary occupations. Across the three wards, over 70% of paternal grand-
fathers were primarily non-farmers. Of the 158 cases for which there are 
data on non-farming primary occupations, the most important area of occup-
ational involvement was commerce (32.5%) followed by tailoring (19%) and 
government (19%). These three occupational categories account for over 70% 
of all non-farming occupations. Of the almost 90% of cases for which there 
are data on primary occupations of paternal grandfathers, less than 20% of 
paternal grandfathers were primarily farmers. Assuming that all paternal 
grandfathers for whom there are no data on primary occupation were farmers 
(which is a generous assumption), this would leave just over 70% who were 
not farmers. 
There are some significant between-ward differences with regard to 
the distribution of tailors' paternal grandfathers among different types of 
primary occupations. Thus, in the case of Soron D'inki, the strong link 
between this ward and emirate government is reflected in the high proportion 
(43.5%) of paternal grandfathers who were government workers. Practically 
everyone of these cases were minor officials, working as jakadu, courtiers 
(fadawa), palace police (dogari) and court musicians, either within the pre- I, 
,I 
colonial emirate administration or within the reformed administration during MI~ , i' 
the early days of colonial rule. The strong link with pre-colonial government 
reflects the higher average age of present-day Soron D'inki tailors compared 
with those in Yalwa and Hausawa. Thus, over 85% of all Soron D'inki tailors 
are 31 years of age or more compared with only 36% and 37.5% in Hausawa 
and Yalwa respectively. Incidentally, this age difference also reflects the 
comparative low level of attractiveness of tailoring in Soron D'inki compared 
with the other two wards. (See Table 8.14 for age differences among tailors 
. in the three wards). 
258. 
TABLE 8.13 Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by ward. (N=224) 
primary Ward 
occupation Soron D'inki Hausawa Ya1wa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Hand Tailor 1 3.5) 3 3.0) 12 (13.0) 16 7.0) 
Machine Tailor 0 0.0) 7 7.0) 1 ( 1.0) 8 3.5) 
Hand and Machine 0 0.0) 3 3.0) 3 ( 3.0) 6 2.5) 
Long Distance 3 (10.0) 3 3.0) 35 (37.5) 41 (18.5) Tr ader 
Mar ket Trader 2 ' ( 6.5) 4 4.0) 2 ( 2.0) 8 ( 3.5) 
Ot her Trade 0 ( 0.0) 2 2.0) 0 ( 0.0) 2 ( 1.0) 
Ot her Craft 0 ( 0.0) 5 ( 5.0) 5 ( 5.5) 10 ( 4.5) 
Malam 5 (16.5) 18 (18.0) 13 (14.0) 36 (16.0) 
Fa rmer 5 (16.5) 25 (25.0) 9 ( 9 . 5) 39 (17.5) 
Fulani Govt. 13 (43.5) 14 (14 . 0) 1 ( 1. 0) 28 (12.5) 
Colonial/Post 0 ( 0.0) 2 ( 2.0) 0 ( 0.0) 2 ( 1.0) Colonial Govt. 
Ot he r · 0 0.0) 1 ( 1. 0) 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 0.5) 
Don't Know 1 3.5) 14 (14.0) 12 (13.0) 27 (12.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (101) 93 (99.$) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.14 Respondent's age by ward. (N=224 ) 
Age Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
~ 15 0 0.0) 6 ( 6.0) 13 (14 . 0) 19 ( 8.5) 
16-20 1 ( 3.5) 19 (19.0) 18 (19.5) 38 (17.0) 
21-30 3 (10.0) 40 (39.5) 27 (29.0) 70 (31.5) 
31-4 0 8 (26.5) 22 (22.0) 19 (20.5) 49 (22.0) 
41- 50 6 (20.0) 10 (10.0) 8 ( 8.5) 24 (10.5) 
51-60 5 (16.5) 3 ( 3.0) 6 ( 6.5) 14 ( 6.5) 
>60 7 (23.5) 1 ( 1. 0) 2 ( 2.0) 10 ( 4.5) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100.5) 93 (100) 224 (100.5) 
259. 
, 
' ::; 1 
TABLE 8.15 Paternal grandfather's secondary occupation by ward. (N=224) 
Secondary Ward 
Occupation Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Hand Tailor 4 (13.5) 5 5.0) 10 (11.0) 19 8.5) 
Machine Tailor 0 ( 0.0) 0 0.0) 0 ( 0.0) 0 0.0) 
Hand and Machine 0 ( 0.0) 1 1. 0) 0 ( 0.0) 1 0.5) 
Long Distance 0 0.0) 2 2.0) 1 1. 0) 3 ( 1.5) Trader 
Market Trader 0 ( 0.0) 4 4.0) 0 0.0) 4 ( 2.0) 
Other Trade 1 ( 3.5) 0 0.0) 0 0.0) 1 ( 0.5) 
Other Craft 0 ( 0.0) 3 3.0) 0 0.0) 3 ( 1.5) 
Ma1am 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1.0) 7 ( 7.5) 8 ( 3.5) 
Farmer 0 ( 0.0) 15 (15.0) 46 (49.5) 61 (27.0) 
Other 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1.0) 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 0.5) 
No Secondary 24 (80.0) 48 (47.5) 15 (16.0) 87 (38.5) Occupation 
Don't Know 1 ( 3.0) 21 (21.0) 14 (15.0) 36 (16.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100.5) 93 (100) 224 (100.5) 
TABLE 8.16 Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Three wards. (N=224 ) 
Secondary Occupation 
Primary Other Don't No 
Occupation Tailoring Conunerce Craft Ma1am Farming Know Secondary Total 
Occupation 
Tailoring 4 4 9 13 30 
Conunerce 5 1 2 29 4 10 51 
Other Craft 1 5 4 10 
Ma1am 7 2 1 12 14 36 
Farming 5 1 1 2 1 5 25 40 
Government 3 1 4 1 21 30 
Don't Know 1 26 27 
TOTAL 20 8 4 8 61 36 87 224 
TABLE 8.17 Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Soron D'inki. (N=30) 
Pr'imary Secondary Occupation No Secondary N.l. Total Occupation Tailoring Commerce Occupation 
Tailoring 1 1 
Commerce 2 1 2 5 
Ma1am 1 4 5 
Farmer 1 4 5 
Government 13 13 
N.!. 1 1 
TOTAL 4 1 24 1 30 
TABLE 8.18 Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by secondary \ , 
occupation: Hausawa. (N=lOl) 
Primary Secondary Occupation 
Occupation Tailoring Commerce Other Ma1am Farmer Don't No Total 
Craft Know Secondary 
Occupation 
Tailoring 3 1 1 8 '" 13 
Commerce 5 2 2 9 
Other Craft 1 1 3 5 
Ma1am 2 2 1 4 9 18 
Farmer 1 1 1 1 4 18 26 
Government 3 1 3 1 8 16 
Don't Know 14 14 
TO'l'AL 6 6 4 1 15 21 48 101 
TABLE 8.19 Paternal grandfather's primary occupation by secondary 
occupation: Ya1wa. (N=93 ) 
Primary Secondary Occupation 
Occupation Tailoring Commerce Malam Farmer Don't No Total 
Know Secondary 
Occupation 
Tailoring 1 3 8 4 16 
Commerce 3 2 24 2 6 37 
Other Craft 4 1 5 
Malam 4 8 1 13 
Farmer 3 2 1 3 9 
Government 1 1 
Don't Know 1 11 12 
TOTAL 10 1 7 46 14 15 93 
... 
TABLE 8.20 Paternal grandfather's occupation by ward (combined 
primary and secondary occupations) • (N=224 ) 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Tailor ing is 
Primary 1 ( 3.5) 13 (13.0) 16 (17 .0) 30 (13.5) 
Occupation 
Tailoring is 
Secondary 4 (13 .5) 6 ( 6.0) 10 (11.0) 20 ( 9.0) 
Occupation 
No Tailoring 24 (80.0) 61 (60.5) 53 (57.0) 138 (61.5) 
Don't Know 1 ( 3.0) 21 (20.5) 14 (15.0) 36 (16.0) 
TO'fAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
'l'ABLE 8.21 Father's primary occupation by ward. (N =22 4 ) 
Primary Ward 
Occupation Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Hand Tailor 7 (23.5) 5 ( 5.0) 17 (18.5) 29 (13 .0) 
Machine Tailor 2 ( 6.5) 15 (15.0) 3 ( 3.0) 20 ( 9.0) 
Hand and Machine 0 ( 0.0) 4 ( 4.0) 8 ( 8.5) 12 ( 5.5) 
Long Distance 1 3.5) 2 ( 2.0) 21 (22.5) 24 (11.0) Trader 
Market Trader 4 (13.5) 28 (27.5) 20 (21. 5) 52 (23.0) 
Other Trade 0 ( 0.0) 1 ( 1.0) 4 ( 4.5) 5 ( 2.0) 
Other Craft 1 ( 3.5) 6 ( 6.0) 3 ( 3.0) 10 ( 4.5) 
Malam 3 (10.0) 15 (15.0) 7 ( 7.5) 25 (11.0) 
. 
Farmer 1 ( 3.5) 16 (16.0) 6 ( fi.5) 23 (10.5) ~" 
Fulani Govt. 6 (20.0) 3 ( 3.0) 0 ( 0.0) 9 ( 4.0) 
Colonial/Post 5 (16.5) 6 6.0) 3 3.0) 14 6.0) Colonial Govt. 
Don't Know 0 ( 0.0) 0 0.0) 1 1. 0) 1 0.5) 
TOTAL 30 (100.5) 101 (100.5) 93 (99.5) 224 (100) 
262. 
.' . 
• 
. 
kl. 
'. 
TABLE S.23 
Primary 
Occupation Tailoring 
Tailoring 
Commerce 19 
Other Craft 3 
Malam 6 
Farmer 6 
Govt. 6 
Don't Know 
TOTAL 40 
TABLE S.24 
Primary 
Occupation Tailoring 
Tailoring 
Commerce 2 
Other Craft 1 
Malam 1 
Farmer 
Govt. 3 
TOTAL 7 
Father's primary occupation by secondary occupation: Three wards. (N=224) 
Secondary Occupation 
Commerce Other Malam Farmer Private Govt. Other No Secondary 
Craft Company Occupation 
6 2 31 1 1 1 19 
1 1 3 32 25 
4 3 
1 1 9 8 
2 3 4 1 7 
4 3 10 
13 7 S SO 1 1 1 72 
Father's primary occupation by secondary occupation: Soron D'inki. (N=30) 
Secondary Occupation 
Commerce Other Malam Farmer Private Govt. Other No Secondary 
Craft Company Occupation 
1 S 
1 2 
2 
1 
2 6 
2 1 1 19 
.p o=' - -: - - .. ~ . · ! t , ; . ~'r ~ -'- : ... ~~_-::-!:. F_. 
Don't 
Know 
1 
1 
Total 
9 
5 
1 
3 
1 
11 
30 
Total 
61 
SI 
10 
25 
23 
23 
1 
~z.24 
N 
(j"\ 
~ 
'fe' ~ • 
1 
l 
TABLE 8.25 Father ' s primary occupation by secondary occupation: Hausawa. (N=101) 
Primary Secondary Occupation 
Occupation Tailoring Corrunerce Other Ma1am Farmer Private Govt. Other No Secondary Total 
Craft Company Occupation 
Tailoring 3 1 8 1 1 10 24 
Corrunerce 5 2 9 15 31 
Other Craft 2 2 2 6 
Malam 3 1 1 4 6 15 
Farmer 5 2 2 2 1 4 16 
Govt. 3 2 4 9 
TOTAL 18 7 4 5 24 1 1 41 101 
TABLE 8.26 Father's primary occupation by secondary occupation: Yalwa. (N=93) 
?rimary Secondary Occupation 
Occupation Tailoring Corrunerce Other Malam Farmer Private Govt. Other No Secondary Don't Total 
Craft Company Occupation Know 
Tailoring 3 1 22 1 1 28 
Corrunerce 12 1 1 23 8 45 
Other Craft 2 1 3 
Malam 2 5 7 
Farmer 1 1 2 2 6 
Govt. 3 3 
Don't Know 1 1 
TOTAL 15 4 2 3 55 1 12 1 93 
N 
0'\ 
f'" 
~; :i ' •• ' - .: f . ~'.~ ; : 
< . ~: - .~ 
. ~ ~ . ~.; 
=" .- ;t-= - :1 ... -.,:...~ - ~ .~ . 
. 
265. 
Very few Soron D'inki paternal grandfathers engaged in farming (16.5%) ,I .. , ~ 
and even less (only 1 case) in tailoring. 
In Hausawa ward, on the other hand, farming was of greater importance 
as a primary occupation, accounting for 25% of cases. Many of these farmers 
were, in fact, residents of the ward who commuted to fields nearby. However, 
even here some 60% of paternal grandfathers pursued non-farming primary 
occupations of which the most important were religious teaching, particularly 
Koranic teaching (18%), government work (16%) and tailoring (13%). 
Among Yalwa tailors, 40% of paternal grandfathers engaged in commerce 
and over 90% of these were long-distance traders. The single most important 
type of long-distance trading was in kola nuts which accounted for almost 
half of aU long-distance traders. Commerce was followed by tailoring (17%, 
of which 75% were hand sewers roughly evenly divided between Eastern-style 
and Old-style tailoring) and religious, mainly Koranic, teaching (14%). Both 
farming (at least as a primary occupation) and government work were of 
minor importance. 
In none of the three wards did the proportion of paternal grandfathers 
whose primary occupation was tailoring exceed 17%. In addition, few tradi-
tional non-tailoring Hausa crafts such as weaving, dyeing and smithing were 
pursued by paternal grandfathers. 
Turning to secondary occupations, 55% of all paternal grandfathers 
(excluding those cases where paternal grandfathers' secondary occupations 
were not known) engaged in another type of work besides their primary occup-
ation. The most frequently mentioned occupation was farming (43.5% of 
all those with a secondary occupation), followed by tailoring (14%) and 
commerce (5.5%). 
Within each ward, some 17% of Soron D'inki paternal grandfathers 
had a secondary occupation and of these 80% were hand tailors, mainly jalala 
265. 
Very few Soron D'inki paternal grandfathers engaged in farming (16.5%) 
and even less (only 1 case) in tailoring. 
In Hausawa ward, on the other hand, farming was of greater importance 
as a primary occupation, accounting for 25% of cases. Many of these farmers 
were, in fact, residents of the ward who commuted to fields nearby. However, 
even here some 60% of paternal grandfathers pursued non-farming primary 
occupations of which the most important were religious teaching, particularly 
Koranic teaching (I8%), government work (16%) and tailoring (13%). 
Among Yalwa tailors, 40% of paternal grandfathers engaged in commerce 
and over 90% of these were long-distance traders. The single most important 
type of long-distance trading was in kola nuts which accounted for almost 
half of all long-distance traders. Commerce was followed by tailoring (17%, 
of which 75% were hand sewers roughly evenly divided between Eastern-style 
and Old-style tailoring) and religious, mainly Koranic, teaching (14%). Both 
farming (at least as a primary occupation) and government work were of 
minor importance. 
In none of the three wards did the proportion of paternal grandfathers 
whose primary occupation was tailoring exceed 17%. In addition, few tradi-
tional non-tailoring Hausa crafts such as weaving, dyeing and smithing were 
pursued by paternal grandfathers. 
Turning to secondary occupations, 55% of all paternal grandfathers 
(excluding those cases where paternal grandfathers' secondary occupations 
were not known) engaged in another type of work besides their primary occup-
ation. The most frequently mentioned occupation was farming (43.5% of 
all those with a secondary occupation), followed by tailoring (14%) and 
commerce (5.5%). 
Within each ward, some 17% of Soron D'inki paternal grandfathers 
had a secondary occupation and of these 80% were hand tailors, mainly jalala 
• I I ~ j I 
266. 
makers. In Hausawa, where 32% of paternal grandfathers had secondary 
occupations, 47% were farmers, 18% did tailoring (of whom over 80% were 
hand sewers); and 18% engaged in commerce (66% of whom were market 
traders). In Yalwa, a very high proportion of the 69% of paternal grand-
fathers with secondary occupations were farmers (72%) while 15.5% were 
hand tailors and 11 % religious teachers. ,'-, 
Combining primary and secondary occupations (and excluding those 
without secondary occupations), the most frequently mentioned combination 
was that of commerce (as primary occupation) with farming (21 % of all cases), 
followed by religious teaching and farming (8.5%), tailoring and farming (6.5%) 
and religious teaching and tailoring (5%). (Tables 8.16 - 8.20 on pp. 259-261 
summarise the data for all three wards and each ward separately). 
In summary, the paternal grandfathers of tailors in the three wards 
practised a range of occupations of which the most important were in 
commerce, farming, government, religious teaching and tailoring. In none 
of the wards did tailoring account for more than 17% of paternal grand-
fathers' primary occupations or 14% of secondary occupations. Many engaged 
in farming, most often as a secondary occupation, except in Soron D'inki 
where farming was of minor importance either as a · primary or secondary 
occupation. Employment in non-tailoring crafts was limited while employment 
in non-Hausa private companies was virtually non-existent. This is partly 
accounted for by age in that many paternal grandfathers lived much of their . :. 
work lives in pre-colonial times. However, some of those in commerce did 
act as agents for foreign companies buying up hides and skins or groundnuts. 
Turning to fathers' primary occupations, a number of changes are 
apparent. First, tailoring begins to take on more importance with 28% of 
fathers, compared with 13% of paternal grandfathers, doing this type of work. 
267. 
The most dramatic change is in Soron D'inki where eight times the number 
of fathers, compared with paternal grandfathers , were tailors. However, 
both Yalwa and Hausawa recorded increases of 84-% and 75% respectively. 
The other occupational category in which increases o.ccurred was 
commerce (from 23% to 35%). All other occupations recorded declines, 
except for non-tailoring crafts which remained static. Both Hausawa and 
Yalwa saw increases in market trade (from 4-% to 27.5% in Hausawa and from 
2% to 20.5% in Yalwa). In Yalwa, the proportion of long-distance traders 
declined from 37.5% to 22.5%. 
With regard to the degree of occupational continuity between fathers 
and paternal grandfathers, only 8% of all tailors had fathers ~ paternal 
grandfathers who were primarily tailors. In addition, 4-0% of fathers whose 
fathers were tailors left tailoring for other jobs, particularly commerce. 
However, this was more than made up for by fathers who had non-tailoring 
fathers taking up tailoring as their primary work. 
Looking at the between-ward differences, of the 30% of Soron D'inki 
tailoring fathers, 4-6% had fathers who were in government. Of the 24-% 
of Hausawa tailoring fathers, one third had tailoring fathers, a quarter had 
fathers who were religious teachers , and the remainder had fathers in 
commerce, farming and government. In Yalwa, of the 30% of tailoring 
fathers, over one third had tailoring fathers, just under a third had fathers 
who were religious teachers and around one fifth were in commerce. The 
rest were farmers. 
Combining primary and secondary occupations of fathers, some 4-5% 
did tailoring which is double the figure for paterna l grandfathers. Again, 
the most frequently mentioned combination of primary and secondary occup-
ations was that of commerce with farming (21% of all cases, excluding those 
without secondary occupations). However, this was closely followed by those 
who combined tailoring (as primary) with farming (20.5%). Commerce and 
tailoring followed this with 12.5%. 
Looking at occupational continuity between fathers and grandfathers 
but from the point of view of both primary and secondary occupations, of 
the 101 fathers who did tailoring as either a primary or secondary occupation, 
over one third had fathers who also did tailoring as either a primary or 
secondary occupation. Of the 122 fathers who did not do tailoring as either 
a primary or secondary occupation, only 10% had fathers who were either 
primarily or secondarily tailors. Thus, tailoring fathers were over three 
times as likely to have fathers who were primarily or secondarily tailors 
compared with fathers who did not do tailoring as either a primary or 
secondary occupation. However, only 17% of all tailors had both a father 
and paternal grandfather who were either primarily or secondarily tailors. 
The data presented here indicate the central importance of non-
tailoring occupations in the occupational backgrounds of tailors in the three 
wards. They also suggest the growing importance of tailoring (particularly 
as a primary occupation) . and commerce (particularly market trading) and 
the decline in the role of farming as a primary activity. However, farming 
still retains considerable importance as a secondary focus of activity in 
Hausawa and Yalwa. 
Another point of importance is that the vast majority of tailors' 
fathers and paternal grandfathers worked (or are working) eitherd n small-
scale, informal-sector type occupations or in the public sector. Direct 
employment in larger-scale foreign -owned or Nigerian private companies has 
been of minor importance although many of those in informal sector occup-
ations are increasingly linked to the wider capitalist system which supplies 
raw materials, equipment and the like. 
· :.1 
.• ~,! ' 
269. 
Turning to the intra-generational occupational experiences of tailors 
in the three wards, two points stand out as requiring special mention. First, 
a very high proportion of all tailors (85%) have worked all of their lives 
within the informal sector (see Table 8.27). That is, they have worked 
either as self employed persons or within enterprises of very small size (no 
more than 10 persons). The types of informal sector occupations pursued 
include tailoring, various non-tailoring crafts such as bicycle repairing, 
building, clothes washing, and leather working, many types of commercial 
activities such as petty trade, market trading and some long-distance trading, 
a range of labouring jobs from porterage to driver's mate, and various kinds 
of farming such as traditional wet season farming, hunting and fishing. 
Furthermore, practically all tailors have worked at some stage in 
their careers, particularly the early stages, for a relative such as a father, 
a father's brother, a mother's brother, or more distant kin. In fact, some 
45% of all tailors have spent over 50% of their work lives either solely as 
family workers or have shifted between family work and work for non-kin 
or on their own account. Close to 30% have been s_elf-employed or employers 
of others for over 50% of their work lives but considerably more have had 
some experience of self-employment (see Table 8.28). In the majority of 
cases, those who have worked for non-kin have worked largely for other 
Hausa people within small-scale enterprises. 
Overall, 97% of all tailors have spent at least 50% of their work lives 
within the informal sector whether they have been employees, apprentices, 
family workers, self-employed, employers or others or some combination of 
all five. 
Only 15% of tailors have had some experience in the formal sector 
and of these almost 70% (23 cases) have worked either solely or mainly in 
the public sector, usually in manual jobs. A very small minority of cases 
270. 
TABLE 8.~7 Formal/informal sector work experience by ward. (N=224 ) 
Experience Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Worked only 
in Informal 20 (67 ) 86 (85 ) 85 (91) 191 (85) 
Sector. 
Mainly worked 
in Informal 4 (13 ) 14 (14) 8 ( 9) 26 (12) 
Sector. 
Mainly worked 
in Formal 3 (10) 0 ( 0) 0 ( 0) 3 ( 1) 
Sector. 
Both Formal 
and Informal 3 (10) 1 ( 1) 0 ( 0) 4 ( 2) 
Sector Experience. 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.28 Respondent's work life employment status by ward. (N=224 ) 
Over 50% of Ward Work Life 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Self- employed 17 (56.5) 11 (11. 0) 23 (24.5) 51 (23.0) 
Employer 4 (13.5) 8 ( 8.0) 3 ( 3.5) 15 ( 6.5) 
Non-Family 8 . (26.5) 33 (32.5) 15 (16.0) 56 (25.0) Employee 
Family Employee 1 ( 3.5) 32 (31.5) 26 (28.0) 59 (26.5) 
Both Non- Family 
and Family 17 (17.0) 26 (28.0) 43 (19.0) 
Employee 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
271. 
(10 in all) have worked either solely or mainly in medium or large-scale 
private companies, again usually in manual jobs such as factory work, 
guarding or driving. These 10 cases represent only 4.5% of the total number 
of tailors in the three wards (see Table 8.29). 
The second important point is the high proportion (60%) of tailors 
who have been tailors for between 75% and 100% of their work lives. At 
least 80% of all tailors have done tailoring for over 50% of their lives. 
Across the three wards, it is among Soron D'inki tailors that one finds the 
highest proportion (77%) who have spent 75% or more of their lives as tailors. 
The corresponding proportions for Hausawa and Yalwa are 65% and 49.5% 
respectively (see Table 8.30). 
Over 40% of tailors have spent over 50% of their tailoring work lives 
as self-employed or employers of others, some 20% have been family workers, 
30% have worked as employees of non-kin and the remaining 8% have been 
both family and non-family employees (Table 8.31). Again, many tailors have 
some experience in self-employment or as family and non-family employees 
whether or not they have spent over 50% of their tailoring work lives in 
anyone of these four categories. There is a high correlation between age 
and tailoring work life employment status. Thus, almost 80% of those 30 
years of age or under have spent over 50% of their tailoring work lives as 
either family or non-family employees/workers compared with only 31% of 
those over 30 (Table 8.32). 
There is also a high correlation between tailors' current employment 
status and their past employment status. Thus, of the 58% (129 cases) of 
tailors who are currently self-employed, 69% have been self-employed tailors 
for over 50% of their work lives. Of the 42% of tailors who are currently 
employees of others, less than 5% have been self-employed for over 50% of 
r ' 
- - - --- -- ---- ----,- ------------------------- -
272. 
TABLE 8~29 Type of formal sector work experience by ward. (N=33 ) 
Type of Ward 
Experience Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
Always in Government 6 10 5 21 (63.5) 
Mainly Government 2 0 0 2 ( 6.0) 
Always Private Sector 2 4 3 9 (27.5) 
Mainly Private Sector 0 1 0 1 ( 3.0) 
TOTAL 10 15 8 33 (100.0) 
TABLE 8.30 Proportion of respondent's work life as tailor by ward. (N=224) 
Proportion of Ward 
Work Life Soron D'inki H'ausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
~25% 2 6.5) 3 ( 3.0) 7 ( 7.5) 12 ( 5.0) 
26-50% 2 ( 6.5) 14 (14.0) 16 (17.0) 32 (14.0) 
51- 75% 3 (10.0) 19 (19.0) 24 (26.0) 46 (21.0) 
76-99% 7 (23.5) 26 (26.0) 21 (22.5) 54 (24.0) 
100% 16 (53.5) 39 (39.0) 25 (27.0) 80 (36.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (101) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
TABLE 8.31 Respondent's tailoring work life employment status by wa rd. 
(N=224 ) 
Over 50% of Ward 
Tailoring Work Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total Life No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Self - Employed 22 (73.5) 17 (17.0) 36 (38.5) 75 (33.5) 
Employer 4 (13.5) 11 (11. 0) 3 ( 3.5) 18 ( 8.0) 
Non-Family 3 (10.0) 45 (44.5) 19 (20.5) 67 (30.0) Employee 
Family Employee 1 ( 3.5) 23 (23.0) 22 (23.5) 46 (20.5) 
Both Family 
& Non- Family 5 ( 5.0) 13 (14.0) 18 ( 8 . 0) 
Employee 
TOTAL 30 (100) 100 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100 ) 
273. 
TABLE 8.32 Respondent's age by tailoring work life employment 
status. (N=224) 
>50% of Tailoring Work Life 
Age Self-employed Employee Total 
No. % No. % No. % 
~ 30 26 (20.5) 101 (79.5) 127 (100.0) 
> 30 67 (69.0) 30 (31.0) 97 (100.0) 
TOTAL 93 (41.5) 131 (58.5) 224 (100.0) 
TABLE 8.33 Respondent's tailoring work life employment status by 
current employment status: Three wards. (N=223) 
Over 50% of Current Employment Status 
Tailoring Self-employed Employee/ Work Life Dependent Worker Total 
No. % No. % No. % 
Self-employed 89 (69.0) 4 4.5) 93 (41.5) 
Employee/ 
Dependent 40 (31.0) 90 (95.5) 130 (58.5) 
Worker 
TOTAL 129 (100) 94 . (100) 223 (100) 
their work lives (Table 8.33). Again, the older the tailor the more likely he is 
to be self-employed. Thus, two thirds of the under 30's are currently either 
employees of others or in some way dependent upon other tailors for work compared 
with only 11.5% of those over 30 (Table 8.34). This is most apparent in Hausawa and 
Yalwa where the bulk of the under 30's are concentrated. 
In summary, most tailors have spent the greater part of their work lives in 
informal sector occupations and of these occupations tailoring figures greatly in 
their work histories. Furthermore , even though many tailors have had non-tailoring 
274. 
TABLE 8.34 Respondent's age by current employment status: Three 
wards. (N=223) 
Current Employment Status 
Age Self-employed Employed Total 
No. % No. % No. % 
~ 30 
> 30 
43 
86 
(34.0) 
(88 .5 ) 
83 
11 
(66.0) 
(11. 5) 
126 
97 
(100.0) 
(100.0) 
TOTAL 129 (58.0) 94 (42.0) 223 (100.0) 
jobs these have often been combined with tailoring. Thus, a man may have 
worked as a night guard in a private company but during the day engaged 
in tailoring. A petty trader might have sewn caps or worked as an employee 
of another when business was slack. Day-time employees in government 
such as messengers and road labourers returned to tailoring after a day's 
work, some to hand sew jalala, others to help out in the tailoring workshop of 
a neighbour who had a rush order to fill. 
These, and other examples; constantly crop up in the work life histories 
of tailors in the three wards. Looking at current tailoring work, about 19% 
of tailors have other occupations besides tailoring (see Table 8.35). Of these 
42 cases, half regard their non-tailoring work as secondary while the rest view 
TABLE 8.35 Respondent's primary occupation by ward. (N=224 ) 
Occupation Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Only Tailors 17 (56.5) 78 (77.0) 83 (89.0) 178 (79 .0 ) 
Tailoring is 
Primary 3 (10.0) 14 (14 .0) 4 ( 4.5) 21 ( 9.5) 
Occupation 
Tailor ing is 
Secondary 7 (23.5) 9 9.0) 5 5.5) 21 9.5) 
Occupation 
Retired (Part- 3 (10.0) 0.0) 1 1.0) 4 2.0) time Tailoring) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100 ) 224 (100 ) 
. 275. 
such work as primary. (A list of these occupations by ward is provided 
in Table 8.36). Over 45% of such occupations are in commerce and trading 
and pursued on an own-account basis. Most of the remainder are salaried 
or wage employees, particularly in the public sector. 
TABLE 8.36 Respondent's non-tailoring occupations by ward. (N=224 ) 
Occupation Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
Only Tailors 17 78 83 179 
Long-distance Trader 1 1 
Market Trader 2 3 3 8 
Clothes Seller 1 1 
Grain Dealer 1 1 
Thread Dealer 1 1 2 
. Petty Trader 1 4 5 
Broker 1 1 
Malam 1 1 2 
Government Messenger/ 2 4 6 Labourer 
Labourer 3 1 4 
Painter 1 1 
Sewing-Machine Repairer 1 1 
Design Stamper 1 1 
Farmer 4 4 
Manager 1 1 
Student 3 3 
Retired 3 1 4 
TOTAL 30 101 93 224 
NB: The farmers referred to are those who consider farming their 
primary occupation. The actual number who engage in farming 
is much greater than the one given in the table. 
Excluded from consideration are the wide-range of ad hoc 
income-generating activities in which tailors engage. 
The design stamper refers to one elderly man who stamps 
embroidery designs on garments .for local tailors. These 
designs provide an outline or guide to embroiderers. Originally, 
this man had pieces of metal cut out to resemble particular motifs 
around which he drew by hand. However, in order to reduce the 
work involved and remove error he had stamps made according to 
his own specifications. 
276. 
By pursuing these occupations some t a ilors are able to supplement 
their tailoring incomes with money earned elsewhere. Apart from these 
examples, a number of other tailors pursue a variety of income-generating 
activities which, although not regular sources of income, do help to increase 
overall personal income. Thus, a tailor may receive some stolen property 
which he is asked to fence. Another may act as a broker in the sale of 
a second-hand motor cycle, a roll of cloth or a few worn-out tyres. 
All those who engage in such activities are adult males. In addition, 
many of the younger tailors in Hausawa and Yalwa wards combine tailoring 
with a variety of petty trading and service activities. Thus, in Yalwa a 
number of boys collect bottles and tin cans around the ward which they sell 
to dealers in the market. Some invest small amounts of money in fruit and 
other food stuffs which they hawk around the ward. In Hausawa there are 
examples of boys going from one tailoring workshop to another in order to 
collect bits of cloth from workshop floors which they then sell to others 
for use as padding in cushions and pillows. Sometimes these boys may be 
employed by secluded kinswomen, particularly those dealing in foodstuffs. 
Others work on their own account. 
Another important supplement to tailoring incomes comes from farming. 
Thus, about 40% of all tailors in the three wa rds engage in some kind of 
farming work. The vast ma jority of such cases are found in Hausawa and 
Yalwa (99% of all those who farm). For most of these tailors, the farms 
a re owned either by themselves or jointly with other family members. About 
57% of all those who do farming actually work the farms themselves and 
either consume the food crops produced within the households from which 
they come or sell part of the product locally. £Just over 30% employ farm 
labourers to work their land, visiting the farms solely to pick up produce 
,I • 
. I 
. I I!" r. 
I • . 
10 I . 
. . 
277. 
and pay the workers most of whom are local farmers with their own farms. 
In a few cases, tailors rent out farms, engage in share-cropping, do farm 
labouring themselves or rent a piece of land from others (see Table 8.37 for 
data on farming by ward). 
TABLE 8.37 Respondent's farming by ward. (N=224 ) 
Farming Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No • . % No. % No. % No. % 
Farms own farm 1 3.5) 5 5.0) 5 5.5) 11 5.0) 
Farms family 18 (18.0) 22 (23.5) 40 (18.0) farm 
Does farm 2 2.0) 2 1.0) labouring 
Rents a farm 1 1.0) 2 2.0) 3 1.5) 
Share- cropping 1 1.0) 1 0.5) 
'Rents out 3 3.0) 3 1. 5) 
Employs farm 7 7.0) 22 (23.5) 29 (13.0) labourers 
Relatives farm 3 ( 3.0) 2 ( 2.0) 5 ( 2.0) 
No farming 29 (96 .5) 62 (6J..5) 39 (42.0) 130 (58.0) 
TOTAL 30 (100) 101 (100) 93 (100) 224 (100) 
Although these examples indicate ways in which some tailors supplement 
their tailoring incomes, in the majority of cases it is tailoring which provides 
their main means of support from which they derive all or most of their 
personal incomes. With this in mind, I shall turn to an examination of the 
organization of production of tailoring in the three wards. 
278. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 
1. These data were provided by Dr. Alan Frishman. See Frishman's 1977 doctoral 
thesis for further information on the historical demography and present - day 
(c. 1975) population characteristics of the city . 
2. It is possible that D'an Doki Kariya was a titled subordinate of Shamaki (Keeper 
of the Stables), one of the most important palace slaves during the 19th century. 
The Shamaki's office had existed since the time of Sarkin Kano Kutumbi 
(1623 - 48 A.D.). On Shamaki and other palace slaves in Kano Emirate, see 
Fika (1973: 46; 1978: 11, 19 ). 
3. Jalala were also made in Kurawa ward to the east of Soron D'inki. Although 
the demand for jalala and horse trappings grew during the 19th century, it is 
likely that some local people engaged in their production prior to the jihad. 
This point is suggested by Bashir (1972 : 67). 
4. For a general discussion of the decline of the horse in West Africa, including 
Hausaland, see Law (1980 : Ch. 8). Law notes that during the 1960's and 
1970's there was an increased demand for horse meat among the Ibo of south 
- eastern Nigeria which accelerated the decline in the number of horses in the 
north of the country. 
5. Madigawa means "the people of the madugu, or caravan leader." The ward 
got its name during the mid - 19th century when members of the Kambarin 
BeriBeri asali, under their senior caravan leader, Madugu Sule, settled there 
(Lovejoy, 1973 : 644- 45). 
6. This was in 1976. During that year the Universal Primary Education Scheme 
was launched aimed at enrolling all six- year old children over a five year 
period. In 1975/76 the enrolment ratio in Kano State was less than ten per 
cent. By 1977/78 it had reached thirty three per cent. 
The lack of access to, and the cultural downgrading of, western education 
has in the past clearly limited the mobility of Hausa people, particularly those 
of talakawa origin, into non- manual positions in larger private companies and 
the public sector. For example, until the 1960's, if Hausas obtained jobs in 
private commercial and industrial firms (dominated by expatriate interests), 
it was usually as unskilled labour (Paden, 1973 : 323). Southern Nigerians, 
especially Ibos, dominated clerical and semi - skilled jobs in the postal service, 
banks, the Electricity Corporation, and the railways (Zukerman, 1970 : 45- 46). 
In the regional government ministries and public corporations of the time , 
members of the Hausa - Fulani elite monopolised senior positions and Ibos held 
many of the junior grades. 
Hausa people in general increased their representation in both non - manual 
and skilled jobs from 1960 on as a consequence of northernization policies, 
the mass exodus of the Ibo in 1966, and the provision of more educational 
facilities. However, the rate of expansion of modern sector jobs is far out -
paced by the growth of the city population and the bulk of Hausa are unlikely 
in the foreseeable future to obtain employment as factory workers, let alone 
clerks and the like. Indeed, the provision of universal primary edication will 
intensify the competition for employment (Bray, 1982). Also , restrictive 
practices at the shop - floor level in factories are likely to keep many Hausa 
out, as they have done in the past (Lubeck , 1981 : 50) . 
CHAPTER IX 
ORGANISA TION OF PRODUCTION AND MARKETS 
: ARTISANAL PRODUCTION 
279. 
Production of tailored commodities must be viewed as a social process 
the essential features of which cannot be understood by a concentration on 
individual occupational roles alone. In some cases, the actual production 
unit or enterprise may be coterminous with the activities of a single individual 
but beyond that many enterprises coordinate the labour-power of many persons. 
Thus, the following discussion will take the enterprise as the basis unit of 
analysis. By "enterprise" is meant, in the words of Scott, If •••• the instit-
utional framework for the union of capital with labour in the labour process" 
(Scott, in Bromley and Gerry, 1979 : 120). 
Most tailoring enterprises are housed in publicly accessible workshops 
and work places 1. These include entrance rooms to private homes (sorayei 
sing: soro), special-purpose workshops (shagunai sing: shago), which may 
be free-standing or attached to domestic premises, and open spaces along 
streets and alleyways. The vast majority of tailors (92%), whatever their 
specific role in production, operate from entrance rooms and special-purpose 
workshops. A minority (some 6%) use either an open space or have no fixed 
place of work (which often amounts to the same thing). 
ln general, all machine-based enterprises are found in enclosed premises 
of the ~ or shago type and many enterprises which combine machine and 
hand production operate from similar locations. However, in so far as hand 
sewers do not require any fixed equipment, it is not necessary that they 
actually work from a particular workshop even though they may be working 
for a particular workshop head. 
This latter comment suggests that there is no one-to-one relationship 
between enterprise structure and the physical location of workshops. Thus, 
in Hausawa and Yalwa a number of workshop heads put-out work to others 
such as secluded women, young male hand sewers, and machinists. In Hausawa 
one common type of putting-out is where the workshop head pays secluded 
women to do button-holing (using razor blades) on machine-made garments 
or cap-shape cutting (using scissors) prior to making-up within the central 
workshop_ In Yalwa many secluded women and teenage boys specialise in 
inside seam sewing (sab'iya) as well as specialised types of embroidery work 
such as zibi and hak'ori. Operating from inside the home (in the case of 
women) or along streets and alleys (in the case of teenage boys), much of 
this work is put-out by workshop heads. Some machine and hand sewers 
in Yalwa also work on their own account but combine this work with 
embroidery and making-up supplied by other tailors. 
In Soron D'inki putting-out arrangements between tailors are less 
common although some horse tackle traders put-out hand jalala embroidery 
to both secluded women and male hand and machine tailors. Some merchant 
financing of tailoring operations is found in Yalwa while in Hausawa such 
arrangements are uncommon. 
In addition to putting-out arrangements, some enterprise heads 
operate from more than one workshop. However, only 7 cases (out of about 
128 enterprise heads) use more than one workshop and all of these are 
located in Yalwa and Hausawa. 
In summary, the existence of putting- out and multiple workshop owner-
ship means that many enterprises are, in fact, larger than particular work-
shops. 
On the other hand, enterprises expand and contract with the agricul-
tural seasons and changes in the yearly business cycle. Thus, from about 
281. 
November to February business is buoyant and most enterprises reach their 
maximum size. However, at other times of the year workers are laid off 
which reduces the size of enterprise units. Also, some tailors share work 
premises even though they do not belong to the same enterprise. They may, 
of course, cooperate in production in an ad hoc fashion but on a relatively 
equal basis. 
These qualifications do not alter the fact that of the three wards it 
is Soron D'inki which has the largest proportion of workshops which are 
single-person and where employment of extra labour (either as employees 
or domestic workers) is at a minimum. Table 9.1 summarises the data on 
workshop size in the three wards. There are some 133 separate workshops 
and work places in which about 300 tailors work. The average size of 
workshop is 2.25 persons with the average varying from a low 1.3 in Soron 
D'inki to a high of 2.6 in Hausawa. However, given the existence of putting-
out arrangements, these figures for average size of workshop tend to under-
estimate the true size of production units. 
Soron D'inki has the highest proportion of single-person workshops 
(at least 80% of all workshops in that ward), followed by Yalwa (43.5%) and 
Hausawa (41.5%). The largest workshops are in Hausawa and Yalwa where, 
depending on the time of year, workshops with 10 employees or dependent 
workers can be found. If one includes putting-out arrangements then in 
some instances the actual enterprise can reach a size of 20 persons. 
All enterprises produce clothing for sale. Some tailors do make 
garments for their families and such clothing does not enter the market. 
However, the raison d'etre of all enterprises is to make clothing which has 
a market value and production for domestic or household consumption is 
subordinated to thi~ 
TABLE 9.1 Tailors and tailoring workshops: Sorbn D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa: 1975/76. 
Ward Size of Workshop 
1 person 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ~10 
Soron D'inki 20 (80.0) 3 (12.0) 2 ( 8.0) 
Hausawa 20 (41.5) 9 (19.0) 7 (14.5) 5 (10.5) 3 6.5) 1 (2.0) 1 (2.0) 1 (2.0) 1 (2.0) 
Yalwa 26 (43.5) 11 (18.5) 9 (15.0) 6 (10.0) 6 (10.0) 2 (3.5) 
Total Workshops 66 (49.5) 23 (17.5) 18 (13.5) 11 ( 8.5) 9 ( 7.0) 3 (2.0) 1 (0.5) 1 (0.5) 1 (0.5) 
Total no. of 66 (22.0) 46 (15.5) 54 (18.0) 44 (14.5) 45 (15.0) 18 (6.0) 8 (2.5) 9 (3.0) 10 (3.5) Workers 
NB: Figures in parentheses refer to per centages to be read across table rows. 
Average number of persons per workshop for all workshops 2.25 
" " " " " " " Soron D'inki 1.3 
" " " " " " " Hausawa 2.6 
" " " " " " " Yalwa 2.3 
, -
Total 
Workshops 
25 
48 
60 
133 
Total 
Workers 
32 
127 
141 
300 
N 
00 
tv 
283. 
Broadly speaking, two main types of tailoring workshop can be 
distinguished according to the type of market they serve. First, there are 
those which produce garments for personal clients on a custom- made basis. 
Such workshops I shall refer to as artisanal. Second, many workshops 
produce for a wider market than that of personal clients. These I shall 
call market-oriented. The remainder of this chapter will examine artisanal 
production. Market-oriented producers will be discussed in the following 
chapter 2 . 
Artisanal enterprises receive orders from personal clients who are 
usually the ultimate customers of products made. Under this arrangement, 
clients visit the tailor's workshop or , in some instances, the tailor may call 
on his client. They discuss the type of garment to be made, the amount 
and kind of cloth to be used, the kind of embroidery, if any, required , and 
a number of othe r matters related to the designing and making of the 
garment specifically to fit the personal clothing needs of the customer. 
Of the 128 tailoring enterprises for which there are data (see 
Appendix 3 on sampling), some 46 (36%) can be said to be artisanal in that 
they draw most or all of their business from personal clients , these latter 
generally referred to as masu sawa (the ones who wear/put on). Soron 
D'inki has the highest proportion of such enterprises (53.5% of all enterprises 
in the ward) , followed by Yalwa (39.5%) and Hausawa (18%). 
Artisanal enterprises vary in size but are usually small. Thus, over 
three quarters of all artisanal enterprises are single-person in which a 
single tailor either works alone or occasionally draws on extra labour. 
Again, Soron D'inki has the highest proportion of single-person artisanal 
enterprises (46.5%), followed by Yalwa (28%) and Hausawa (15.5%). As a 
proportion of all artisanal enterprises in each of the wards , single- person 
284. 
artisanal enterprises account for 86.5% of those in Soron O'inki, 85.5% of 
those in Hausawa and 71% of those in Yalwa. 
Artisanal tailors engage directly in physical production and the amount 
of capital invested in production is limited, consisting of little more than a 
sewing machine, sewing thread, scissors, tape measure and work bench. Work 
premises are either owned by the artisans themselves or borrowed from kin, 
friends and other tailors. Renting of premises is rare. The reason for the 
high degree of workshop ownership and workshop borrowing lies in the long-
established relationship of artisans to the wards in which they reside. Having 
been born in the wards in which they work or having been long-term resi-
dents, they are able to use entrance rooms to their own (or their family's) 
homes or draw on friendship and kinship ties with others in gaining access 
,to a place of work 3. Those who rent are usually recent immigrants (of 
which there are few) who have no previous connections, either through kin 
or friends, with the ward in question. 
The single most important item of capital investment is the sewing 
machine. Machine tailoring artisans account for 70% of all artisans in the 
three wards. The majority of these (80%) possess one machine which they 
either own or rent. In the three wards, of those artisans who use a sewing 
machine, over 85% own their own sewing machines which have usually been 
purchased through savings and/or through cash or gifts provided by parents 
and kinsmen. 
Artisan hand sewers require no major items of capital equipment, 
their major investment being the time involved in acquiring the skills 
necessary to sew a range of tailored garments. Few artisan enterprises, 
be they machine or hand-based, carry stocks of cloth as customers are 
expected to provide their own cloth when they place an order with the 
tailor. 
285. 
The market for artisan- made clothing is largely local with artisan 
enterprises supplying customers drawn from the neighbourhoods and wards 
in which they live and work , from other parts of the city and people from 
the rural areas who come into the city to purchase various items of domestic 
consumption, including garments. 
Artisan tailors depend upon building up a good local reputation with 
a network of clients. Such a reputation is based on producing garments 
of good quality at prices competitive with garments sold "off-the-peg". 
They must also be able to make garments relatively quickly so as not to 
tax the patience of clients who may need them in a hurry. For some artisans, 
know ledge of changing fashions is import ant as they may be able to secure 
orders for new styles before other tailors have had time to copy them • 
. However., this is not always the case as some artisans concentrate on pro-
ducing long-established styles. Among the Hausa , although clothing styles 
do change, there is a strong commitment to traditional designs which pro-
vides the artisan with some measure of certainty about what his customers 
expect from him Lt • 
One of the most common types of artisanal enterprises found in the 
three wards is that of the neighbourhood all -purpose tailor who makes a 
wide variety of garments by machine and who does alterations and repairs. 
Artisans of this type usually work with single stitch sewing machines which 
allow the tailor to perform a variety of tailoring tasks. Smaller numbers 
of hand and machine embroiderers provide a more specialised embroidering 
service which ranges from the embroidery of elaborate designs on gowns , 
smocks and trousers to more modest pieces of work such as the kwad'o da 
linzami (frog and bridle) motif found on the necks of most old-style gowns. 
In Soron D'inki and Hausawa wards, the majority of artisanal work-
shops concentrate on machine assembly , with a f ew ha nd a nd machine 
- . -- - . - --------- -
286. 
embroiderers of old-style gowns for men, blouses for women, children's 
clothing, embroidered trousers and saddle covers. 
In Yalwa, apart from a few all-purpose artisan workshops, many hand 
and machine tailors do the specialised Eastern-style embroidery work which 
consists of stitching cord-like thread into motifs on the body of garments. 
This unique kind of embroidery is very popular among middle and upper-income 
consumers and in recent years particular kinds of Eastern-style garments have 
become very fashionable. It is this demand which sustains many of the 
embroiderers in Yalwa. Of declining significance in the ward is the pro-
duction of hand embroidered old-style garments which are largely produced 
by a few elderly men. There are no more than half a dozen old-style hand 
embroiderers left in the ward. Of these, two are religious teachers and 
one a former !:!1aiungwa (ward head). Formerly, there were more tailors 
of this type, but they have either died or shifted into other kinds of work, 
including Eastern-style embroidery. 
Strategies of Competition Used bX Artisanal Enterprises 
Artisanal enterprises, in so far as they rely upon providing a per-
sonalised service to clients, operate in an environment which places limits 
upon their ability to expand their productive activities while still remaining 
artisan al. Dependence upon a local market, a high proportion of which 
consists of low-income earners whose demand for clothing is irregular, and 
competition from other artisans and from market-oriented producers (to be 
discussed later) who are able to reach a wider market pressures artisanal 
enterprises into adopting a number of strategies by which means they attempt 
to ensure for themselves a certain share of the market. 
First, some artisans make themselves visible to customers by working 
287. 
in the central city market where they can catch trade from visitors to the 
market, especially farmers who come to Kano to purchase various commodities 
for domestic consumption. In the central market there is a special tailor's 
section in which one finds many artisans drawn from all over the city and 
who make-up clothing "while-you-wait". These artisans are drawn from 
all over the city but very few of the artisans in the three study wards work 
there. Although I noted earlier that part of the ideology of artisanal pro-
duction consists of an emphasis upon supplying good-quality garments, among 
those artisans working in the city market greater emphasis is placed upon 
supplying cheaply-made, albeit personalised, clothing. Indeed, ward-based 
artisans, such as those in Soron D'inki and Hausawa, look down on city market 
tailors who they consider to produce poor-quality clothing for unsophisticated 
. rural people. These ward-based artisans rely more heavily upon attracting 
clients from their immediate neighbourhoods and from other parts of the 
city. By becoming known to their customers over many years of contact 
they hope to establish reputations for reliability and good-quality work. 
Another way of attracting customers is for artisanal enterprises to 
enter into informal cooperative relations with other artisans specialising 
in different aspects of garment production. For example, in Soron D'inki 
one artisan, whose own work consists of the machine assembly of a wide 
range of garments, often refers clients wanting embroidery to a hand 
embroiderer in Yalwa and a machine embroiderer in Satatima. All three 
tailors are small operators. The machine assembler in question works alone 
with occasional help from his son (a secondary school student), the hand 
embroiderer in Yalwa possesses no sewing machine nor has any machine 
sewing skills and must rely on others to do the making-up, while the Sata"tima 
machinist operates a small family firm specialising in zig-zag embroidery. 
288. 
The point of such a referral system is to build up a larger body of clients 
than would be possible through simply sitting in the workshop waiting for 
customers to come. 
Each of these three artisans operate independently of the others 
and none rely for the bulk of their work on referrals. It should also be 
noted that this arrangement works best where the tailors involved provide 
specialised and non-competing types of services. In so far as each tailor 
wishes to maintain their independent artisanal status, it is in their interests 
not to become too reliant on each other for business. 
A further means of attracting customers is for artisanal enterprises 
to be able to produce a wide variety of garments in order to respond to 
the differing tastes of consumers and thereby reduce the risks inherent in 
specialisation. This option works best for machine assemblers whose services 
are required on all artisanally-produced garments. However, some machine 
embroiderers can seek to reduce the specialisation imposed on them by the 
limited versatility of the embroidery machine by learning a wide range of 
embroidery styles not only for men's clothes but also for those of women. 
On the other hand, the artisan must balance the advantages to be 
gained from being able to switch from one style to another aga inst the 
advantage to be derived from gaining a reputation for expertise in a limited 
number of styles. In Soron D'inki, for example, some elderly tailors who 
had spent most of their tailoring lives producing a limited range of garments 
were unable to adapt quickly enough in recent times to new styles. Younger 
tailors, more attuned to changes in fashion, had stepped in and siphoned off 
business. 
Another strategy is that of price-cutting. However, many artisans, 
especially machine assemblers, regard this as undesirable. They argue that 
because of the high degree of competition among them, their prices are 
289. 
already so low that they can just about meet their costs. In addition, any 
price-cutting simply attracts others into doing the same thing, leaving every-
body worse off. 
Some younger artisans just starting their tailoring careers (and perhaps 
unmarried and still living at home) do charge less than the going-rate in 
order to build up their businesses. Also; some artisans charge poorer cust-
omers less than wealthier ones for the same garment. However, in this 
latter case, special care is taken with garments for the better-off to ensure 
that these customers continue to patronise them. 
In general, bargaining over price is a recurrent feature of the artisan-
client relationship but the range of variation between the asking and accepted 
price is limited, perhaps no more than 5 to 10 per cent. Final prices of a 
range of sewing on assembled garments do show some variation but the 
differences are not that great. Table 9.2 below provides information on 
commission rates charged by three artisa.n machine assemblers in the three 
wards. 
TABLE 9.2 Selected Artisan Commission rates: Soron D'inki, Hausawa 
and Yalwa. 
commission rate Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa 
Tsala (trousers) 80K >H1 Ni N2 50K N2 Trousers N2 50K 
N2 N2 N2 Gare gown 
N2 to N2 25K N2 to N2 50K N2 Sace gown Nl Nl Buje trousers Nl 
Shirt 70K to Nl Nl tU 50K 50K to Jumpa smock 50K to 75K 
N3 N2 Aganiya smock N2 50K 
25K 
80K 
50K 
290. 
The above prices are those which the three tailors regularly charged. 
However, each pointed out that they were willing to go below the stated 
price depending upon how much they valued the customer's business, and how 
busy they were. These tailors, like all artisans, rarely, if ever, refuse 
business. . If they are very busy or if they cannot do the style required, 
they will either refer to another tailor or arrange for the work to be done. 
The advantage of the former method is, as already noted, the expectation 
that they will have customers referred to them in the future. The advantage 
of the latter lies in the small amount of commission they can skim off the 
top by arranging for the work to be done by another. However, the latter 
method can backfire as when a tailor agrees to have work done for a certain 
price but then cannot get another tailor to do the work for less. For 
example, in one instance an assembly machinist took on a number of orders 
from a local man for two large gowns and two small gowns to be worn by 
the customer's children. The customer wanted embroidery work on the necks 
of all four gowns. The tailor took the work to a hand embroiderer in another 
ward after having told the customer that he would get the work done at the 
agreed price. However, the hand embroiderer refused to carry out the 
embroidery at the price suggested by the tailor who then brought the price 
down. The embroiderer still refused, saying that he charged the same for 
children's embroidery as he did for adults. The tailor protested but to no 
avail. He came away having earned almost no commission at all and com-
plained that the whole exchange had been a waste of time. He also pointed 
out that he should have checked on commission rates before accepting the 
order but was anxious to get the man's business. 
It was noted earlier that some tailors charge more for work done for 
wealthy persons than for those less well-off. Another strategy of coping 
P 
I 
", I 
291. 
with competition and attracting business is to concentrate upon supplying 
custom-made garments to wealthier members of the community. However, 
by the very nature of the market, few tailors can hope to rely upon it for 
the bulk of their business. 
The best examples of elite market-oriented artisans I came across 
were highly skilled hand embroiderers with known reputations based upon 
years of training under a master craftsmen from whom they were able to 
obtain the right kinds of customer connections. For example, two hand 
embroiderers living in Yalwa and Dogon Nama wards were trained by two 
members of one of the oldest Eastern-style tailoring families in the area. 
Through their association with these master craftsmen they had built up 
a clientele consisting of former politicians, wealthy merchants, civil servants 
and other government officials, and members of various royal and aristocratic 
families in the e'!lirates of Kano, Katsina, Hadejia and Daura. One of the 
two tailors had, in fact, "inherited" the informal position of tailor to the 
Emir of Kano and obtained large amounts of work through this connection. 
In many respects this man had ceased to be an artisan because as his business 
grew he put-out more and more work to specially selected expert hand embroi-
derers he knew, thereby becoming a regular employer of tailoring labour. 
However, to this day he continues to embroider garments himself in the 
entrance room to his home. 
These two men represent success stories and it should be noted that 
both of them had established such reputations that they attracted business 
from outside Kano City. Their clientele consisted of men who travelled 
a great deal and through their official and unofficial networks of relation-
ships with others like themselves were in a position to request work from 
the tailors in question. In some instances, these tailors travelled themselves 
292. 
to the homes of potential clients, sometimes staying with them until their 
work was finished. 
On the other hand, a number of other embroiderers taught by the 
same family fared less well. They, like most artisans, are unable to rely 
on supplying an elite market and must draw most of their custom from middle 
and low-income earners. 
Enterprise Cost-Reducing Strategies 
Not only is the market for artisans' services local, it is also periodic 
and seasonal. Thus, there are busy times of the year, such as the harvest 
season; during religious festivals (especially Ramadan) when families purchase 
new wardrobes, and when pilgrims return from Mecca bringing with them 
cloth purchased there. Marriages and other family events also provide tailors 
with business. However, there are periods of little activity and to cope 
with this periodic demand, artisans adopt a number of cost-reducing strategies. 
First, the artisan exploits to the full his one major asset, personal 
labour-power, by working long hours at an intensive pace during busy times, 
thereby reducing his need to employ extra labour. During Ramadan, for 
example, many artisan enterprises operate for 15 to 20 hours a day in order 
to meet orders before the end of the fasting period. Personal health can 
suffer under such circumstances as tailors are prohibited from eating and 
drinking during daylight hours. Some tailors may even take drugs to keep 
themselves awake, although such a practice is frowned upon. 
However, artisans do need extra labour at certain times, and they 
usually draw upon family members, unrelated workers who are apprenticed 
to them, and other tailors who are finding it difficult to attract customers. 
Family members utilised include" wives,the artisan's own children and those 
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293. 
of kinsmen and relatives. Unrelated apprentices are usually unmarried boys 
who are the children of friends, neighbours and other local people known 
personally to the artisans. Apprentices are usually unpaid , receiving instead 
food, some clothing, and occasional pocket or food money known as ~ 
abinci or kud'in batarwa. Unrelated apprentices sometimes live with their 
master but most do not as they are drawn from the local neighbourhood and 
return home at the end of each day 5 . 
Hausa apprenticeship is a relatively casual and informal system of 
instruction. Most apprentices do not pay to be taught nor are there any 
official ceremonies which mark the entry of a boy into the occupation or 
his successful completion of an apprenticeship. They act as menial labour 
performing household tasks, running errands j sweeping out the workshop and 
other odd jobs. Sewing tasks are given at the discretion of the master. 
The length of an apprenticeship depends, in part , upon the type of 
tailoring which the apprentice is learning. Thus, an apprentice to a highly 
skilled artisan hand embroiderer may take 5 to 10 years to master the craft 
whereas an apprentice to a machine assembler may be proficient after a 
year or two. When an apprentice starts to receive payment for work done 
depends upon his own ability, how keen the master is to instruct his appren-
tice, and how prosperous the master's business is • . In the case of machine 
artisans, masters may restrict access to the use of a machine and, unless 
the apprentice is able to purchase or borrow a machine, this practice can 
forestall the day when an apprentice is able to set up on his own. 
Not all artisans can either obtain or retain apprentices. For example, 
those in types of sewing which are in decline find it very difficult to attract 
people to work under them. The old-style hand embroiderers of Yalwa and 
the hand sewers of jalala in Soron D'inki are good examples of this. 
294. 
Even artisans whose product is still in demand have difficulties in 
retaining the services of an apprentice. Thus, in Yalwa ward, some Eastern-
style hand embroiderers complained about the lack of shame (kunl::a) and 
respect (ladabi) of young boys of today who wanted to learn a few skills 
quickly and be paid for what they produced. Older hand embroiderers pointed 
out that in the old days apprentices worked for nothing and were happy 
to receive the occasional "gift" of a few pence or shillings. Apprentices 
were sometimes placed with tailors by parents and kin who paid, in cash or 
kind, for the boy to be taught. However, this was not always the case. 
For example, a number of elderly tailors who started their tailoring careers 
as cap makers said that they simply sat with groups of older tailors and 
. copied from them. Cap-making required relatively little in the way of 
capital investment which meant that prospective tailors were not dependent 
upon their "teachers" for access to the means of production. This practice 
among capmakers continues to the present day. 
Even among tailors specialising in more expensive types of garments 
requiring the use of large amounts of cloth, payment for instruction was not, 
and is not, usually required. The only clear-cut case of an apprenticeship 
fee I came across was that of a Fulani tailor who paid his Y oruba master 
to be taught. Within the Hausa system of apprenticeship, where Hausa 
masters train Hausa apprentices, such fees were rare in the past and, at 
least among tailors in the 3 wards studied, are still unusual today. 
The difficulties which many hand embroiderers have in retaining 
apprentices also applies to some artisan machinists. One major reason for 
this is the existence of workshops, many large in size, where workshop heads 
who produce garments in bulk are willing to pay young boys for performing 
relatively simple tailoring tasks after a short period of training. The 
295. 
machine-made cap workshops of Hausawa are good examples of this where 
young boys work at preparing caps for the machine or machine assemble 
cheap caps after a few days training. Often it is not the workshop head 
who provides the training but either another young boy or an older employee 
of the workshop owner. These types of workshops attract young boys away 
from artisans who may provide them with some training only to see them 
leave if they do not receive payment. 
In many cases, boys acquire their tailoring skills by sitting with other 
teenagers in a ward and watching what they do, thus removing the need 
for them to be apprenticed at aU. For example, in Yalwa many boys speci-
alise in inside seam sewing which they learn from other boys. Work is 
obtained by going from workshop to workshop and contracting to complete 
a piece of sew ing. 
The young boys of Hausawa and Yalwa who operate in the manner 
described see no reason to submit themselves to years of training when 
quicker monetary returns are available elsewhere. 
In Soron D'inki artisan tailors place greater reliance upon family 
helpers. They cannot attract, and sometimes do not want, unrelated 
apprentices because their business prospects are so poor. Furthermore, 
a number of artisans taught their children not because they expected them 
to become full-time tailors but in order to provide them with a skill which 
they could faU back on if no other, more lucrative, kinds of employment 
were available. 
Thus, although apprenticeship is often regarded as a means of 
obtaining cheap labour, in the case of some artisan enterprises it is not 
always available nor is it always wanted. Those in the best position to 
attract apprentices (if, indeed, one can describe those types of dependent 
labour which are based upon the performance of relatively unskilled detail 
296. 
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work as apprenticeship) are the more successful workshops which are often 
organised along non-artisanal lines. 
In a few cases, artisan enterprises put-out excess work they obtain 
to other artisans who have fallen on hard times, the putting-out tailor paying 
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the artisan a piece-rate less than he himself would receive for the same 
work. The advantage of this arrangement to the putter-out is that he has 
no obligation to continue providing the poorer tailor with work after a 
specific order is completed. Neither does he have to spend time training 
the tailor, nor , in the case of machine tailoring, provide the tailor with a 
sewing machine. Again , however, this type of arrangement is more common 
among tailors producing for a wider market. 
Another way of reducing costs is for artisans to share work premises • 
. If rent is paid for a workshop , the co~operating tailor pays less rent than 
he would if he worked alone. However, in the three wards joint-renting 
of premises is unusual, it being more common for tailors to work rent-free 
either in the entrance rooms to their homes, in the entrance rooms of 
friends and relatives and neighbours, and at the workshops of non-artisan 
tailors who are not fully using their premises. To give one example; in 
Soron D'inki three artisan tailors share one workshop owned by the half-
brother of one of the tailors. Formerly, this workshop was used by its 
owner for tailoring and as a store room for sewing machines in which the 
man traded. Although still a sewing machine trader , he has ceased to 
work as a machine tailoring workshop head. At present, his tailoring 
activities consist of arranging for the hand embroidery of expensive garments 
in Jajira outside Kano City and the actual making-up of garments is put-out 
to his half-brother and others. However, for most of the time his half-
brother works on his own account, as do the other two tailors. 
297. 
Another example is taken from Yalwa. Here 4- tailors - 2 machine 
assemblers and 2 hand embroiderers - share the premises of a former tailor 
who is now a manager in a local, Hausa-owned, furniture factory. Occasion-
ally, these tailors do work for the owner, being supplied with both assembly 
and embroidery work through the owner's half-brother, another tailor who 
sometimes works from the workshop. However, as in the case of the Soron 
D'inki tailors described above, these tailors do not rely entirely upon the 
workshop owner for work and are free to take orders from where ever they 
can. 
Sharing of tools also provides a means of reducing costs, but this is 
usually an ad hoc arrangement and often consists of little more than sharing 
of tape measures and scissors. Joint purchase of raw materials is rare as 
most artisans are too poor to be able to raise enough money to invest in 
expensive items such as cloth. Indeed, the majority of artisans expect their 
customers to provide their own cloth which is, in fact, one way of reducing 
costs of production and the risks involved in carrying stocks of raw materials. 
Artisans point out that even if they did have a small stock of cloth on hand, 
they could not provide the variety which is available to the customer at 
the many retail cloth outlets in the city. Nor could they provide cloth 
at competitive prices unless they purchased in bulk which they are not in 
a position to do. 
The forms of cooperation described above usually take place among 
small groups of friends or relatives. Larger-scale cooperation among 
strangers is much more rare. Artisans do see the advantages of such co-
operation not only in the bulk purchase of cloth, but in the sharing of 
customers, agreements to set prices at a higher level, training in new styles, 
and in the marketing of finished products. But there is great scepticism 
298. 
about the possibilities of such forms of co-operation succeeding. Among the 
reasons given by artisans for such scepticism are the following. 
First, artisans are widely dispersed across the city, are differentiated 
according to the types of products they make, the instruments of production 
they use, and the kinds of customers upon which they rely for their work. 
Thus, skilled hand embroiderers; like the ones described earlier who specialise 
in producing high-quality gowns for wealthy customers, see no affinity between 
their work situation and that of machine assemblers in Soron D'inki and Hausawa 
who produce custom- made, but low-quality garments for neighbourhood cust-
omers of limited means. 
Second, as most artisans have little capital, they are fearful of 
handing over what they have to an organisation which may become remote 
. from them and misuse funds. 
Third, given the limited means of most artisans, funds to establish a 
co-operative must come from other sources. If they come from wealthier 
tailors, who in the majority of cases are not artisans, or from other persons 
such as cloth dealers, there is a general fear that these better-off persons 
will simply use the funds to finance their own activities or those of their 
friends. A number of artisans, some of whom had been members of an 
association in the early 1960's ; point ed to attempts in the past to organise 
both city-wide and northern Nigerian-wide associations of tailors which 
failed, so it is said, because of corruption and mis-management at the top 
by the association's leaders who built-up relations with cloth suppliers and 
government officials only to use them to their own advantage. 
Most artisans prefer co-operative arrangements to be on a small-
scale and consider the government to be in the best position to assist. 
However, none of the artisans interviewed had ever approached the 
299. 
government on this matter nor had they heard of attempts by government to 
institute such a scheme. In fact, during the field work period there was 
established a govern!1lent scheme to assist craft workers, including tailors, 
but only two groups of tailors, one from Yakasai and one from Gyadi-Gyadi 
outside the city, had approached the government officer in charge. 
Officials interviewed reinforced the views expressed by artisans by 
pointing out that few tailors were willing to commit any resources to a co-
operative, a requirement set by the scheme's organisers. This is not sur-
prising in view of the fact that the mir,imum financial requirements were 
higher than the tailors could afford, even if they pooled their resources. 
In the case of the Yakasai tailors information about the scheme was acquired 
by accident when a hand embroiderer visited the local government office in 
search of a non-tailoring job and was approached by a local government 
officer who suggested he might get together with other tailors and apply 
for funds. An application was made in which the tailors asked for about 
N6,OOO, far more than the scheme was willing to provide. The local govern-
ment officer became suspicious about how the tailors had managed to obtain 
their contribution so quickly and upon further investigation learned that a 
local merchant had supplied the cash in the hope of receiv ing a large govern-
ment grant on easy terms. In fact, the tailor's application was a front for 
this man who would, in effect, have become the tailors' employer. They, in 
turn, would have become quasi-employees of the financier, thus defeating 
the object of the co-operative. Accordingly, their application was rejected. 
The other main scheme in operation to supply finance to small-scale 
industries was equally out of the reach of most artisan tailors. Under the 
conditions of the loan scheme - known officially as the Small Scale Industries 
Credit Scheme - the applicant was required to contribute at least 25% of 
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government on this matter nor had they heard of attempts by government to 
institute such a scheme. In fact, during the field work period there was 
established a govern!TIent scheme to assist craft workers, including tailors, 
but only two groups of tailors, one from Yakasai and one from Gyadi- Gyadi 
outside the city, had approached the government officer in charge. 
Officials interviewed reinforced the views expressed by artisans by 
pointing out that few tailors were willing to commit any resources to a co-
operative, a requirement set by the scheme's organisers. This is not sur-
prising in view of the fact that the mir,imum financial requirements were 
higher than the tailors could afford, even if they pooled their resources. 
In the case of the Yakasai tailors information about the scheme was acquired 
by accident when a hand embroiderer visited the local government office in 
search of a non- tailoring job and was approached by a local government 
officer who suggested he might get together with other tailors and apply 
for funds. An application was made in which the tailors asked for about 
-N6,OOO, far more than the scheme was willing to provide. The local govern-
ment officer became suspicious about how the tailors had managed to obtain 
their contribution so quickly and upon further investigation lea rned that a 
local merchant had supplied the cash in the hope of receiv ing a large govern-
ment grant on easy ter ms. In fact, the tailor's application was a front for 
this man who would, in effect, have become the tailors' employer. They, in 
turn, would have become quasi-employees of the financier, thus defeating 
the object of the co-operative. Accordingly , their application was rejected. 
The other main scheme in operation to supply finance to small-scale 
industries was equally out of the reach of most artisan tailors. Under the 
conditions of the loan scheme - known officially as the Small Scale Industries 
Credit Scheme - the applicant was required to contribute at least 25% of 
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299. 
government on this matter nor had they heard of attempts by government to 
institute such a scheme. In fact, during the field work period there was 
established a govern!Tlent scheme to assist craft workers, including tailors, 
but only two groups of tailors, one from Yakasai and one from Gyadi-Gyadi 
outside the city, had approached the government officer in charge. 
Officials interviewed reinforced the views expressed by artisans by 
pointing out that few tailors were willing to commit any resources to a co-
operative, a requirement set by the scheme's organisers. This is not sur-
prising in view of the fact that the mir,imum financial requirements were 
higher than the tailors could afford, even if they pooled their resources. 
In the case of the Yakasai tailors information about the scheme was acquired 
by accident when a hand embroiderer visited the local government office in 
search of a non-tailoring job and was approached by a local government 
officer who suggested he might get together with other tailors and apply 
for funds. An application was made in which the tailors asked for about 
N6,OOO, far more than the scheme was willing to provide. The local govern-
ment officer became suspicious about how the tailors had managed to obtain 
their contribution so quickly and upon further investigation learned that a 
local merchant had supplied the cash in the hope of receiving a large govern-
ment grant on easy terms, In fact, the tailor's application was a front for 
this man who would, in effect, have become the tailors' employer. They, in 
turn, would have become quasi-employees of the financier, thus defeating 
the object of the co-operative. Accordingly, their application was rejected. 
The other main scheme in operation to supply finance to small-scale 
industries was equally out of the reach of most artisan tailors. Under the 
conditions of the loan scheme - known officially as the Small Scale Industries 
Credit Scheme - the applicant was required to contribute at least 25% of 
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300. 
the capital requirements, to mortgage equipment and landed property such 
as a house, and to begin repayments after 3 months at a 5% p.a. interest 
rate. Also, the applicant must have' lived in Kano State for at least 5 years. 
Out of 73 loans granted only 5 went to tailors and all 5 engaged 
in non-artisanal production. Loans provided to these tailors ranged from 
#3,360 to N20,000. Between 1969 and 1976 more than 1200 applications 
for loans had been received and of these only 73 approved with 200 still 
being considered 6 • The head of the scheme stated that any person in pro-
cessing, manufacturing or servicing could apply for any amount up to a 
maximum of ~20,000. However, when asked what he thought the prospects 
for small artisan tailors would be his response was that they would have 
to show that there was an unmet demand for what they produced and that 
they looked as though they could be trusted to meet the loans conditions. 
When pressed on this, he stated that those who had already shown some 'degree 
of success in their business enterprises were more likely to be considered. 
Taking the above considerations into account, it is unlikely that any artisans 
who applied for loans of this type would be successful and, given the large 
numbers of artisans in the three wards and the city as a whole, any loans 
granted would cover such a small proportion of all artisans, let alone other 
types of tailors, that they would do no more than scratch the surface. 
Another way of coping with the uncertainties of the market for 
artisan-made clothing is to combine tailoring with another occupation or 
some other income-generating activity. Thus, across the three wards, about 
20 per cent have a second occupation (excluding farming). In Soron D'inki 
about 30 per cent of artisans have a second occupation. Most of these 
artisans work as government labourers and messengers, gatekeepers and 
guards for private companies. These jobs provide artisans with a regular 
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301 . 
income and tailoring is carried out after work. To take one example, a 
machine embroiderer works as a guard at a private pharmaceutical company 
during the night. After returning home in the morning he sleeps for a few 
hours and then goes to a workshop which he shares with two other machine 
tailors. The wage-paying job provided him with the means to purchase his 
embroidery machine which he had been buying on a hire purchase basis from 
a local man. He was able to payoff the outstanding instalments after 
receiving back pay arising out of the Udoji awards to public sector workers 
in 1974. He hoped that he would be able to keep his guarding job as this 
gave him more security than tailoring although the latter provided an 
important boost to his more regular earnings. 
A number of artisans in Hausawa (25 per cent) and Yalwa (13.5 per 
cent) also pursued other occupations besides tailoring including work for 
various government agencies and market trading. One man supplemented 
his tailoring earnings by doing repairs on sewing machines. He spent part 
of his day visiting other workshops looking for repair jobs. 
In Hausawa and Yalwa another supplement to tailoring earnings is 
farming. Half of the artisans in Hausawa and close to 40% of those in 
Yalwa either own small plots of land, work land owned by their families, 
or, in a few cases, hire themselves out as farm labourers during the wet 
season when business is slack. Crops grown are used for both domestic 
consumption and sale although the latter involves only small amounts of 
produce. 
Besides farming and secondary occupations, many artisans attempt 
to add to their incomes by engaging in a variety of informal income-gener-
ating activities such as fencing stolen goods such as radios and cloth, acting 
as brokers in the disposal of hand-made caps and other consumer items and 
any other activity which can earn them a return , however small. 
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302. 
For many artisans another source of income comes from work done by 
wives who make caps, jalala and other tailored commodities, prepare and 
sell foodstuffs, and engage in petty trading. In fact, in practically every 
case where the artisan is married, his wife (or wives) does some kind of 
tailoring. Money earned in these ways, although usually controlled by the 
women themselves, does relieve the artisans of the necessity of meeting 
certain household expenses. 
In spite of the various factors described above which help artisans to 
spead their risks and alleviate their dependence upon artisimal tailoring as 
the sole source of income, most artisans find it difficult to earn more than 
just enough to subsist. The high degree of competition among artisan tailors, 
their reliance on a local and irregular market of personal clients and the 
generally low incomes of most of those who employ their services place limits 
on their ability to expand their productive activities; Some leave tailoring 
altogether and for every tailor who continues in such work there are probably 
two or three who have tried their hand at tailoring fora while and then left 
it for something else. Others combine artisanal work in tailoring with 
employment in wage-paying jobs outside tailoring or move into various kinds 
of petty and market trading. 
Many artisans find themselves pushed into quasi-employee relation-
ships with bigger tailors, traders and o.ther intermediaries who have access 
to sources of work and outlets for garments not available to the artisan. 
Apart from the artisanal enterprises described here, between 20 and 25 per 
cent of all tailoring enterprises in the three wards combine some artisanal 
work with work put out to them by others. Of the three wards, it is Yalwa 
and, to a lesser degree, Soron D'inki where this type of arrangement is most 
commonly found (the situation of Hausawa producers will be dealt with in 
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303. 
the next chapter). I am not speaking here of those many tailors in the three 
wards who work for a single employer as either employees or apprentices 
and who do not own, rent or borrow their main instruments of production 
or produce any garments on their own account. Rather, I am referring to 
an intermediary category between true wage employment and true self-
management where nominally self-employed tailors find themselves subject 
to control exercised by others who they do not consider to be their employers 
but who nevertheless act in that capacity. 
The most common form which this intermediary category takes is 
that of outworking 7. The outworker is usually a very small producer, often 
working at home, who undertakes small amounts of work supplied by a larger 
producer or trader. Typically, the latter supply working capital in the form 
of raw materials while the outworker provides his (or her) own tools and 
work premises. In Yalwa ward, for example, many hand embroiderers, some 
of them highly skilled, obtain orders from bigger tailors and some traders 
who supply the cloth and thread. They are paid by the piece and upon 
completion of the work return it to the putter-out. A few are asked to 
embroider whole garments and so are able to exercise their skills in full 
but many specialise in detail work by embroidering only a specific motif on 
the arms or shoulders of what will eventually become a complete garment. 
By specialising in this manner they can work quickly to meet the order dead-
line of their "employer". 
These embroiderers vary in their degree of dependence upon putters-
out. However, none are totally dependent upon a single supplier but combine 
such work with artisanal production. On the other hand, some are greatly 
dependent upon a single source of work. . For example, one man, a middle-
aged hand embroiderer, gets almost all his work from · the Emir's tailor 
I. 
304. 
described earlier. Although he describes himself as self-employed and carries 
out all his tailoring activities from the entrance to his home, his ability to 
earn a regular income is intimately tied to the fortunes of his patron who 
has far greater access to customers than he does. His dependence has been 
increased as he suffered from a hernia which seriously reduced his mobility 
and his ability to meet potential customers. 
Another embroiderer living close by combines artisanal work with 
work put-out to him by one of the ward's largest machine-shop tailors and 
also gets orders from a local merchant who trades in jewelry and other luxury 
items as well as expensively embroidered Eastern-Style garments. In the 
latter case, the trader normally supplies the cloth although he may buy up 
whatever the embroiderer has available in his workshop (which is usually 
not very much as he is a poor man who does not w ish to take too many risks). 
In the same ward a number of assembly machinists take on work put-
out to them by bigger tailors who supply them with pieces of cloth which 
they are required to make-up into a whole garment. These men alternate 
between work for personal clients and filling orders supplied by other tailors. 
The suppliers put-out the work according to a fixed scale of commission 
which the tailors find difficult to refuse as the putters-out are free to take 
their work elsewhere. 
In Soron D'inki a similar situation characterises a number of hand 
embroiderers of jalala who take on work supplied to them by horse tackle 
traders in the market. The traders supply the centre pieces of the jalala 
plus thread and specify what is to be embroidered. Upon completion the 
centre-piece (known as the doro) is returned to the trader who then arranges 
for the edging to be machine-sewn onto the centre- piece. At times, a few 
assembly machinists may be given a whole batch of centre pieces and the 
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305. 
cloth needed to finish off the edging. Throughout all of these various stages 
it is the trader who controls the supply of raw materials and also has respon-
sibility for selling the completed garments. Women hand jalala embroiderers 
also work under similar conditions to those describ~d for men. 
Both hand and machine tailors who do this kind of work can, if they 
have the capital, buy cloth and thread to produce their own jalala which 
they sell directly to the market traders in horse tackle. However, many 
do not have the capital nor are they willing to take the risk of producing 
such items knowing that they must sell them to the same market traders who 
put-out such work. These latter can refuse to buy on the grounds that 
there is no market or because the price is not right or because the wrong 
styles have been made. Under these circumstances it is often simpler for 
the tailor to wait upon traders to bring work to them. 
Piece-rates paid on jalala are quite low but this is not always the 
case with other types of tailoring. Some tailors actively seek sub-contracts, 
especially when the amount of work provided is substantial. For example, 
two machine artisans in Soron D'inki obtained an order for 400 school uniforms 
from a local government contractor who lives in the ward and is personally 
t · 
known to them. The contractor was paid 70 kobo for each uniform and 
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he paid the tailors 45 kobo to do the sewing on cloth supplied by him. The 
two tailors divided the order between them and decided that they would 
only do part of the tailoring, putting-out the rest to tailors, (referred to as 
k'ananan mad'inka or small tailors), that they knew. The two tailors paid 
20 kobo per uniform to those to whom they put out the work, thus clearing 
25 kobo profit on each garment. Altogether, these two tailors made a total 
profit of about N50 each for which they had to do no actual physical work 
at all other than that involved in visiting the tailors and getting them to 
306. '. 
agree to the work. As it was the middle of the rainy season and business 
was extremely slack, they had ho difficulty in obtaining agreement. 
This experience convinced one of the two tailors that the best way 
to make real money was in contracting but this required some capital base 
which he did not possess at the time. There are tailors in the city who 
seek out contract work from government and competition for such work is 
quite intense. However, the availability of such work is limited, given the 
large numbers of tailors in the city and in waje. The example given above 
is unusual in that very few tailors in the three wards had ever received 
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such sub-contracting work and in this case it was largely a matter of luck 
that the two tailors were able to obtain this one contract. In general, there 
is no wholescale subordination of tailors in the three wards to sub-contracting 
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putting-out system descr'ibed earlier is much more common and usually involves , ~ 
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small batches of orders only. 
In this chapter I have discussed artisans and the difficulties they 
encounter in trying to earn a living. Mention was made of the ways in which 
they attempt to cope with a highly competitive environment which, in some 
instances, pressures artisans into an increasing, but as yet partial, reliance 
upon other tailors and traders. For the most part, the tailors who put-out 
work are larger workshop owners who do not produce for personal clients 
but orient their production to a mass market of impersonal customers with 
whom the producers have no direct contact. Indeed, some artisans aspire 
to become larger operators with their own stock of sewing machines and a 
number of employees to work for them. However, even the larger pro-
ducers' scale of operations is not that great and there are many who are 
no larger or more successful than artisans. In fact, the situation of some 
307. 
is just as precarious as that of many artisans. With these remarks in mind, 
the next chapter will examine market producers and the conditions under 
which they work. 
I. 
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308. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER IX. 
1. This applies to male tailors. Female sewers are predominantly secluded women 
who work from the privacy of their homes. However, in non - muslim parts of 
Kano, women are freer to work "on the street". For reasons of space, I cannot 
deal in detail with women tailors. However, in summary, the position of Kano 
City women tailors is as follows: 
a) Women tailors are found in every ward of the city and produce a wide range 
of clothing, particularly embroidered caps, horse caparisons, and embroidered 
bed covers. They also crochet caps, children's headgear, and tea service 
covers. 
b) Most are hand sewers with a few utilising sewing machines to make up 
women's wrappers and blouses. 
c) Women work either on a putting - out basis for male tailors (both kin and 
non - kin) and traders or sell their own - account work to market traders and 
private customers. 
d) There is some ward specialisation among women tailors which reflects and 
supports the ward-based male division of labour. For example, in Soron 
D'inki, one finds many female hand jalala embroiderers and some embro -
iderers of trouser cuffs • . In Yalwa women hand embroider parts of eastern-
style garments and sew the inside seams of gowns (sab'iya). Hausa wa 
women cut cloth shapes for caps, make button - holes and hand weave 
linzami which are sewn into necks of gowns. 
e) Women work intermittently at sewing and moneys earned are used to fulfil 
various female social obligations, particularly the purchase of household 
goods for female children which the latter take with them when they marry. 
f) Capital investment is low (small amounts of cloth, thread and sewing needles) 
and any profits or commission belongs to the women. 
g) Sewing is but one of a wide range of female economic activities which 
are largely hidden from the public eye. Others include table trading in 
petty items and the preparation and sale of cooked foods. 
On urban Hausa women's economic activities, see Bashir (1972), Schildkrout 
(1978,1979, 1981), Benson and Duffield (1979), and Remy Weeks (1973). 
2. The distinction between artisan and market producers is dra wn from Lenin 
(1960 : 331 - 337) and Lebrun and Gerry (1975). 
3. These long - standing connections with particular wards give such tailors a 
certain cost advantage over some immigrant tailors in that they do not have 
to put aside part of their earnings to pay for premises. However, there are 
immigrant tailors who have city - based kinsmen and relatives and who draw 
upon them to obtain a place of work. Hand sewers, be they city - resident 
or immigrant, are the least constrained by this factor as they can operate from 
"free" sites along streets and alleys. Except in the various market places, 
there is no licensing of tailors which might act as a constraint on trade. 
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4. Some writers see fashion changes as a form of planned obsolescence in a 
capitalist economy (Lamphere, 1979 : 258 - 259). However, in Kano there 
309. 
is no fashion industry controlled by capitalist enterprises. - Also, "fashion 
consciousness" was common in pre - colonial times although the rate of change 
in fashion was much less than one finds in today's advanced capitalist economies. 
On the other hand, younger men in Kano society who are increasingly responding 
to international changes in fashion can be said to be peripheral recipients of the 
planned obsolescence common in the west. Those local tailors who produce 
such styles can, therefore, be regarded as to some degree subordinate to the 
cultural dictates of the capitalist mode of production within apparel manufacture. 
5. Among artisans in the three wards, 35. 5 percent were taught by kin, 26 per 
cent by kin and non - kin, and 37 per cent by non-kin. One man was self-
taught. Some 47 per cent were taught by more than one person of whom 
20.5 per cent were taught entirely by kinsmen (and kinswomen), 55 per cent 
by both kin and non - kin, and 24 per cent by non - kin only. Of all artisans, 
only one paid to be taught tailoring. Furthermore, of the forty five artisans 
who had taught others to tailor, only two were paid for doing so. 
6. This was in 1976. By 1982 the number of projects assisted by the state small -
scale industries scheme had reached 101. The total amount given in loans 
since the scheme's inception in 1969 was N2,022,325 of which N107,725 (5.5 
per cent) went to textile manufacturing (#102,000) and tailoring services (N5,725). 
Altogether, eight garment manufacturers and tailors had been assisted. From 
the information available it would appear that the loans scheme favoured the 
more sophisticated garment manufacturing of socks, stockings and Singlets 
rather than tailors producing the types of garments examined in this study. 
The recipients of the loans up to 1976 were: 
a) A Fagge manufacturer of blouses for women who received 'fl44,000 in 1974 
to purchase industrial sewing machines and ra w materials. 
b) A city tailor in Kwarim Mabuga ward who got =N3,360 in 1970 to do trad -
itional - type tailoring. In interviews with this man it was clear that part 
of the money obtained went to other tailors who provided him with financial 
support when he first applied for the loan and that some of the money was 
used not for tailoring but for trading in cloth, some of it smuggled. 
c) A Bakin Zuwo tailor who received N4,000 in 1971. 
d) A K'ok'i tailor who received N2,000 in 1971. I visited this man's workshop 
and found only one tailor and two sewing machines. The workshop head 
was said to be away trading. 
e) A Sabon Gari producer of vests and underpants. He got #20 ,000 in 1971 
to purchase weaving equipment to weave cloth for making - up clothes 
when supplies of factory cloth became difficult to obtain during the civil 
war. 
7. out - working is a form of sub - contracting where, as Bythell (1978 : 14) puts 
it, " •••• the individual outworker is the smallest of sub - contractors, and 'outwork' 
and 'subcontract' are merely points on a continuum. " 
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310. 
8. Both 'Gerry (in Bromley and Gerry, 1979 : 242) and Middleton (1981) report a 
similar lack of subordination to large- scale commercial and industrial capital 
among tailors in Dakar (Senegal) and Quito (Ecuador) . In both instances the 
bulk of production is artisanal and the proportion of workshops engaged in sale 
for the market is much lower than in the three wards studied. However, if 
one takes into account all tailors in Kano city , it is likely that the gap is less. 
Kennedy (1981 : 579) also found little subordination of a range of petty pro -
ducers (not including tailors) in Accra to either local or foreign merchant 
capital. In Yaounde , Demol and Nihan (1982 : 83- 84) suggest a high degree 
of dependence of petty producers (including tailors) on personal clients, perhaps 
as high as ninety five per cent. 
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311. 
CHAPTER X 
MARKET -ORIENTED PRODUCTION 
One of the major difficulties encountered by artisans is the reliance 
on a local clientele and the necessity to produce garments only at the specific 
request of such clients. However, many tailors have broken entirely with 
this kind of production and devote their productive activities to making gar-
ments in bulk in anticipation of being able to sell them to a widely scattered 
market of urban and, in particular, rural and/or non- I).ano City customers. 
Thus, these tailors not only enter the market as purchasers of the main means 
of production, like artisans, but have become subordinated to the market for 
the sale and disposal of what they produce. 
It was noted earlier that Kano is the main commercial centre of 
northern Nigeria and exhibits many of the characteristics of a primate city. 
As a regional cen-tre it supplies many of the rural and urban parts of the 
north with a wide variety of consumer goods among which are included 
tailored commodities. Many of these tailored commodities are produced in 
the Kano urban area, including Kano City and the waje district 1. Just as 
there are artisans in every ward, there are also market-oriented producers. 
However, whereas artisans are widely scattered across the city, market-
oriented producers tend to be concentrated in particular wards. According 
to city clothes retailers (who I shall discuss presently) the major sources 
of clothing for market sale are the wards of D'andago, Hausawa, Sudawa, 
Gyaranya, Makwalla and Madabo although other wards, such as Ayagi, Yakasai 
and Bakin Zuwo, also have their share of market-oriented producers. My 
own work in the three wards confirm these observations. Thus, Hausawa 
ward contains the highest proportion of market-oriented enterprises. Out 
of a sample of 39 enterprises in that ward, 32 (82%) are market-oriented. 
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This compares with 28.5% (8 cases) in Soron D'inki and 11.5% (7 cases) in 
Yalwa. 
Clothing destined for the market is sold through groups of middlemen 
who purchase garments from ma rket-oriented enterprises and then sell these 
garments to visiting traders who travel to various parts of the region to dispose 
of what they buy. As far as the three wards are concerned, Hausawa in 
particular, the most important group of middlemen are the many petty clothes 
retailers-cum-wholesalers who operate from the various market places in the 
city. Of these market places, the central city market is the major outlet. 
My own survey of city market sellers revealed 3 ma in groups of middle-
men. The first two consist of those who dea l in clothing largely for male 
adornment. They are divided into those dealing in gowns, shirts, smocks 
a nd trousers (loosely referred to as masu saida riguna or gown sellers), and 
those selling caps (masu sa id a hula or cap sellers). The survey, undertaken 
in July , 1976 , showed a total of 188 stalls of which 89 dealt in gowns, shirts , 
smocks and trousers while 99 sold caps. This total rises to over 200 during 
the busy season. Most of these clothes sellers a re located inside t he city 
market at a central loca tion known as Laraban Kana wa. A very high pro-
portion of the clothing sold by masu saida riguna is machine-made and almost 
all of it is bought from tailors in the old city 2. Masu sa ida hula deal in 
both machine and hand-made caps with some concentra ting upon selling hand-
made caps a nd others selling machine- made varieties. Again, many cap sellers 
buy their goods from within the old city. 
The third , and least important in terms of numbers, type of garment 
seller in the city market is the horse caparison dealer or ~ai saida kayan 
doki (the one who sells horse trappings). Some 19 traders operating from 
23 stalls (rumfuna) are of this type. Masu saida kayan doki deal in a wide 
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313. 
variety of horse trappings among which are included many types of saddle 
covers and under- blankets, saddles, stirrups, saddle girths, pommel covers, 
bridles and headstalls 3 . Soron D'inki is the most important of the three 
wards in terms of its links to these horse trappings dealers supplying as it 
does different types of jalala. Indeed, four of the market dealers are them-
selves Soron D'inki residents. 
Before examining the market-oriented producers in the three wards, 
let me make a few observations on the two groups of clothes sellers mentioned 
above. 
The vast majority of clothes sellers operate from stalls made of wood 
and corrugated iron (rumfar kwano) often no more than four or five feet 
wide and six to seven feet deep. Lesser numbers have only a lean-to with 
a table or trade in the open while sitting on the ground or on a small stool. 
These latter types of premises are most common among cap sellers. A very 
few wealthier traders have cement block stalls with relatively secure lock-
up facilities. Of the 188 stalls counted, a 23% sample (43 stall holders) was 
selected for further interview. 
For the most part there is little vertical integration of market-oriented 
enterprises with petty clothes retailers. That is, few tailors run their own 
retail outlets and few clothes sellers invest in production, concentrating largely 
upon commodity circulation. None of the gown sellers currently engage in 
any kind of tailoring and over 75% have never been tailors. On the other 
hand, over 90% of cap sellers have done cap-making at one time or another 
but less than 30% engage in cap- making at present. Most of these do it 
as a part- time activity. 
Few gown sellers come from families with any primary involvement in 
tailoring. Only two respondents had fathers who were tailors and both of 
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314. 
these were hand sewers. One man's father did machine tailoring but as a 
secondary occupation, his main work being garment selling. The majority 
of gown sellers' fathers (57%) engaged in various kinds of trading of which 
market trading was the most important. Furthermore, over 50% of paternal 
grandfathers were either traders or farmers. 
Cap sellers also come largely from non- tailoring backgrounds a lthough 
many have done cap- making of one sort or another. Again, most cap sellers 
(68%) report their father's occupation as trading. Another quarter of fathers 
were farmers. About 'half of the cap sellers' paternal grandfathers were 
also traders and a further quarter were farmers. In only one case was the 
father a full - time tailor although some 28% report that hand cap sewing was 
pursued as a secondary occupation by their fathers. (See Ta ble 10.1 for 
data on fathers' primary occupations). 
TABLE 10.1 Primary occupations of the fathers of Central City 
market gown and cap sellers. 
Father's Occupation Gown Sellers Cap Sellers 
Market Trading 
Kola nuts 
Garments 
Thread 
Long Distance Trading 
Other Trade 
Brokerage 
Farming 
Religious Teaching 
Weaving 
Machine Tailoring 
Hand Tailoring 
Doesn't Know 
TOTAL 
2 
2 
1 57% 3 
2 
2 
2 
2 
1 
2 
2 
21 
3 
3 
1 
8 
6 
1 
22 
68% 
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Over one half (11 out of 21 cases) of gown sellers and over two thirds 
of cap sellers (15 out of 22 cases) were Kano City-born and all of the rest 
were born in Kano State. Among gown sellers less than 25% were three 
generation Kano City-born but about 44% were at least second generation 
Kano City-born. 
Among cap sellers almost 50% were third ge neration Kano City-born 
with fewer than 25% being third generation non-Kano City-born. 60% were 
at least second generation Kano City- born. 
, ' 
All clothes sellers identify themselves as Hausa and all live in the 
city. Table 10.2 provides detailed information on current ward of residence. 
The majority live in either Fuskar Yamma (44%) or Fuskar Gabas (28%). Few 
(7%) reside in Fuskar Kudu. These data support the view that city traders 
tend to be drawn from traditional Hausa wards in the north, east and west 
of the city, particularly wards close to the city market. However, in contrast , 
many horse trappings dealers are drawn from Fuskar Kudu (42%) as well as a 
number of wards in Fuskar GAbbas all of which are located close to the 
market. Many of these dealers live in wards associated with Fulani settlement 
or close to such wards. As the traditional Fulani emirate government was a 
major customer of horse trappings dealers, this is not surprising. 
Clothes sellers purchase their stocks from tailors both in the city and 
in rural Kano. Few confine their buying to one or two suppliers. Indeed, 
over half the gown sellers and over three quarters of cap dealers were unable 
to specify the numbers of people who sold them garments. Most said there 
was no particular number or that they dealt with many sellers. 
However , sellers were able to say from which parts of the city many 
of their garments came. In the case of gown sellers, 14 out of 21 said that 
they bought garments from tailors in 15 city wards. Of these, the wards 
TABLE 10.2 Wards of residence of Central City market clothes sellers 
and horse caparison dealers. 
ward of Residence Gown Sellers Cap Sellers Horse Caparison 
Dealers 
Fuskar Yamma 
Hausawa 2 
D'andago 2 
Mandawari I 
Jingau I 
Kabuga I 
Manladan I 
Ayagi 1 
Dausayi 4 
Diso I 
Magashi 2 
Locon Mak'era 2 
Gwale I 
Sub-total 8 11 
Fuskar Arewa 
Daurawa I 
Adakawa I 2 
Madabo I I 
Gwammaja 2 
Dukurawa 1 
Sub-total 5 4 
Fuskar Gabas 
D'anbazau 1 
K'ofar Wambai I 1 
Kududdufawa I 
Takalmawa I 
Bakin Zuwo 2 
K'ok'i I I 
Darma I 
Kurna 1 
Sharifai I 
Cediyar Kud'a 3 
Sharfad'i 1 
Kwarim Mabuga 2 
'Yan Doya 3 
'Yan Muruci I 
Durmin Arbabi I 
SUb- total 7 5 11 
Fuskar Kudu 
Yakasai 1 
Gwangwazo 1 
Marmara I 
Soron D'inki 4 
Kabara 4 
Sub-total 1 2 8 
Grand Total 21 22 19 
NB: Figures for clothes sellers are a sample of all clothes sellers. 
Figures for horse caparison dealers based on total population 
of dealers in the city market. 
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mentioned most frequently were D'andago, Hausawa, Mandawari, Akwa, Sudawa, 
Gyaranya and Madungurun, all of which are in Fuskar Yamma , Makwalla and 
Madabo in Fuskar Arewa, and Yakasai in Fuskar Kudu. All of these wards 
supplied machine-made garments. In addition, a number of gown sellers 
dealt in hand-embroidered garments purchased from tailors and traders from 
outside Kano City of which the village of 'Yan-katsare, the village area of 
Jajira, and the towns of Wudil and D'anbatta were the most important sources. 
Among cap sellers, 17 out of 22 bought machine-made caps from tailors 
in the D'andago/Hausawa area and the wards of Makwalla and Madabo. In 
addition, many cap sellers purchased hand-embroidered caps, the Zanna Bukar 
in particular, from female cap sewers. However, as such caps are produced 
by secluded women from all over the city and usually sold to cap dealers 
' through male and elderly female intermediaries, cap sellers were unable to 
specify from which wards they came. Various types of caps, such as the 
'Yar Tofa and Mu Had'u a Banki as well as the Zanna Bukar, were obtained 
from outside the city the most important sources being Wudil, Shuwari (on 
the Kano/Borno border), Dawakin Kudu, Gaya, D'anbatta and Tofa. 
With one exception, all clothes sellers bought garments which were 
already made-up and embroidered at the time of purchase. The exception 
was a stall holder who, besides dealing in ready-made clothing, also put-out 
cloth to a number of city tailors. As far as city machine- made garments 
are concerned, most dealers bought goods from tailors who brought them to 
the market. Only one man said he used the services of a broker (dillali) 
for this. 
In the main, the market clothes dealers have few affinal or consan-
guineal kinship ties with producers. Thus, only three gown sellers said they 
purchased from kin while none of the cap sellers did so. 
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Under market-oriented conditions of production, workshop heads pro-
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duce whole garments for sale to middlemen such as those described above 
who then re-sell them to third parties. Thus, unlike artisans; market-oriented 
producers have no direct contact with final consumers. Emphasis is upon 
bulk sales rather than personal service. Quality is of less importance than 
quantity, although such producers do vary in terms of the quality of the 
garments they make. '1 
In market-oriented workshops, the workshop head usually owns his .· ·.c" . 
· ,I . 
'" instruments of production, that is, sewing machines, with a few either renting 
or borrowing. Raw materials such as cloth and thread are obtained through 
direct purchase or on credit from textile retailers and wholesalers located 
mainly in the central market or in Kantin Kwari. The workshop head is 
responsible for obtaining cloth and thread supplies, deciding what shall be 
· I 
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produced, the organisation of actual production, and the disposal of finished ,,'I ' 
· · I . '0' . 
commodities. He may be a direct producer himself, either working alone or 
alongside his workers, and in some instances may be in a position to withdraw 
from production (apart from cloth cutting) and concentrate upon purely 
managerial tasks. 
111 ,4 • 
Market-oriented producers differ from those working under sub-con-
tracting arrangements in that the latter, while often owning their instruments 
of production, rely upon larger producers to supply them with orders and 
raw materials. Market-oriented producers are not subordinate to other pro-
ducers but deal directly with commercial capital outlets for the disposal of 
what they produce. Within the limits of the general market for tailored 
commodities and the particular skills and resources of the producers, these 
latter enjoy a greater freedom to decide what and how products are to be 
made. They produce in anticipation of being able to sell and so must be 
319. 
knowledgeable about what the market at anyone time will bear. 
The extent to which Kano tailors engage in market-oriented production 
is not precisely known. Frishman, using a sample of tailors from the 1972 
survey of Kano's small- scale industries, estimates that only five per cent 
of all tailoring establishments produce garments for sale through both re-
tailing and wholesaling outlets , the rest being artisans (Frishman, personal 
communication). However , my own data derived from the three wards 
intensively studied suggest that market-oriented production is more developed 
than this. For example, of the 128 tailoring establishments sampled, about 
thirty six per cent are wholly or largely market-oriented. Furthermore, 
qualitative observations in other Kano City wards, particularly Dandago, 
Sudawa, Gyaranya, Karofin Kangiwa, Madabo, Makwalla , Kwarim Mabuga 
' and Zaitawa, indicate that market production is well established in many 
parts of the old city. In Makwalla ward alone I counted eight workshops 
containing a total of forty sewing machines and producing caps, gowns and 
smocks largely for sale through the central city market. In addition, many 
tailors combine both artisanal and market production or receive work put-out 
to them which is ultimately destined to be sold through commercial middlemen 
networks. Although those who work on a putting-out basis are not strictly 
speaking market-oriented producers, they are often working for producers of 
this type. In the three wards studied, Yalwa has many tailors who receive 
work put-out to them by larger producers who sell through the market. 
Looking at the incidence of market-oriented production in Yalwa, 
Soron D'inki and Hausawa, although such production takes place in all three 
wards , it is most common in Hausawa. Thus, eighty two per cent (32 cases) 
of all workshops in that ward produce whoUy or mainly for the market. 
This compares with twenty eight per cent (8 cases) and eleven per cent 
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(7 cases) of all workshops in Soron D'inki and Yalwa respectively (see Table 
10.3). Given the import ance of market produc tion in Hausa wa, I shall 
concentrat e la rgely upon it in the following pages. 
TABLE 10.3 Types of markets for which tailoring workshops produce 
by ward. (N=128) 
Ward Type of 
Market Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
No. % No. % No. % No. % 
Mainly 
Artisanal 
Mainly Market-
Oriented 
Combined 
15 
8 
Artisanal &/or 
Market-Oriented 5 
production with 
work put-out 
Depends, largely 
on work put-
out 
TOTAL 28 
(53.5) 7 
(28.5) 32 
(18 . 0) 
(100) 39 
(18.0) 24 (39.5) 46 
(82.0) 7 (11. 5) 47 
28 (45.5) 33 
2 ( 3.5) 2 
(100 ) 61 (100) 128 
All market-oriented workshops in Hausawa produce garments by 
machine. The main categories of commodity produced are caps, gowns, 
smocks and trousers. Of these , cap- making is the single most important 
(36.0) 
(36.5) 
(26.0) 
( 1. 5) 
(100) 
activity. Thus , some sixty two per cent (20 cases) of all market workshops 
specialise in cap-making. The remainder concentrate on the production of 
two or more lines of garments of which the most important a re , besides 
caps, pla in a nd embroidered gowns and ' smocks. This contrasts with the 
situation of artisans in the ward where production is much less special!sed, 
six out of the seven artisanal workshops regularly producing three or more 
different lines of clothing. 
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The tendency to produce specialisation among market producers is 
made possible by the existence of a network of commercial intermediaries 
operating within the city from various market places who act as centra l 
links in a chain of buying and selling which extends into the rura l a reas of 
Kano State and beyond. The bulk of garments made in Hausawa are disposed 
of through the central city market with lesser amounts being sold in Sabon 
Gari and Kantin K wari. 
Market workshops exhibit greater variation in size than those of 
artisans. Thus. whereas six out of the seven artisanal workshops in the 
wa rd rarely employ extra labour, at least twenty five of the thirty two 
market producers do so. Of these twenty five, seventeen employ three 
or less workers while eight employ more than three (see Table 10.4) for 
size of Hausawa artisanal and market-orie nted workshops). The largest 
TABLE 10 . 4 Artisana1 and market- oriented workshops by size: 
Hausawa ward. (N=39 ) 
Type of Number of Employees 
Workshop 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total 
Artisana1 6 1 7 
Market- 7 2 13 2 4 2 1 1 32 Oriented 
TOTAL 13 3 13 2 4 2 1 1 39 
market workshop a t the t ime of the f ield work contained eleven persons, ten 
of whom were employees of a single workshop head (maigida). Overall , the 
mean size of such workshops is 2.9 persons. This figure is a pproximate 
in so far as workshop size varies according to the yearly business cycle 
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and even during busy times. During slack periods many workshops layoff 
workers , thus reducing their mean size. However, market workshops account 
for at least ninety five per cent of tailoring employees in the ward. 
Although there is some variation in workshop size among Hausawa 
market producers and these producers employ the bulk of workers in the 
ward , the vast majority are small-scale operators who possess little capital 
and produce garments largely ona day- to-day basis. The average number 
of sewing machines owned per workshop is three with over fifty per cent 
owning two or less. Furthermore, some seventy five per cent employ three 
or fewer workers. Only a small minority (less than thirteen per cent or 
four cases) own five or more machines. 
In establishing themselves as self- employed tailors, Hausawa market 
producers have, almost without exception, received no financial or other 
assistance from any governmental or official agency. The starting capital 
necessary to purchase a sewing machine and other inputs has come largely 
from personal savings supplemented by help from kin (see Table 10.5). 
TABLE 10.5 Sources of starting capital for Hausawa market producers. 
(N:;:::30) 
Source of Capital 
Personal savings 
Kin 
Both 
TOTAL 
No. 
16 
6 
8 
30 
% 
53.5 
20.0 
26.5 
100.0 
NB Two market producers either rent or borrow their 
sewing machines 
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For those who have been able to expand their operations beyond one 
machine, all obtained the necessary finance through retained earnings. In 
only one case did a market producer receive funds for a sewing machine from 
an official source. Even here, the funding was of doubtful legality in that 
the money was siphoned off from a local government agency which made loans 
for farming purposes. The man in question was able to get the money because 
of his family's earlier involvement in emirate government. 
The workers referred to a bove are regular employees in that all have 
been working at their present work places for at least six months. Thirty one 
per cent (19 cases) have been employed for between six months and one year, 
fifty per cent (31 cases) have been employed for between one and three years, 
and the rest have worked in their present workshops for more than three 
years It • 
In addition to such workers, one finds a number of young boys who 
attach themselves to particular workshops for short periods or move from one 
shop to another seeking casual work which does not involve any actual tail-
oring. In fact, this is one of the ways in which some tailors obtain their 
first exposure to tailoring. 
This kind of work is most commonly provided in cap-making workshops. 
Tasks performed include the cutting of cloth into cap shapes, stacking of 
cloth pieces ready for sewing, the placing of tissue and other types of paper 
inside partly sewn caps to give them body, and the turning of caps inside out 
to facilitate particular kinds of sewing. 
These boys are not , strictly speaking , apprentices in so far as they 
do not consider themselves attached to anyone workshop nor have the work-
shop heads agreed to take them on to learn actual machine t a iloring skills. 
However , they may become apprentices after a while if the workshop head 
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can make use of them. They may, in fact, gain access to a sewing machine 
through a workshop employee who is willing to show them how to operate 
it. This is particularly the case in the la rger workshops where the workshop 
head may never give any instructions to new tailors, leaving it to other 
employees. 
It is impossible to say how many young boys in the ward engage in 
such work as it is so irregular and many do not progress beyond this stage. 
Payment for performing the preparatory tasks described above is very low, 
a few kobo for dozens of caps and the odd free meal. The existence of 
this pool of labour does indicate, however, that there are more people in-
volved in tailoring , however minimally, than my own data on the numbers of 
regular employees suggest. 
Regular employees who actually operate sewing machines recognise 
themselves as a distinct category of producer by the use of the term direba 
(from the English word "driver") which distinguishes them from employers 
and own-account workers. Another term used to describe themselves is 
l,ara (boys) which is used regardless of the age of the employee. It desig-
nates their sub-ordinate and dependent role in production. I shall have more 
to say about this later. 
All market producers who work in Hausawa also reside there. Indeed, 
the majority (75% or 24 cases) were born in the ward or surrounding wards. 
In addition, they recruit practically all of their workers from the local area. 
Most employees are young (under thirty) and unmarried. Thus, of the sixty 
one workers employed in market workshops, sixty two percent (38 cases) 
fall into this category. In fact, of these thirty eight workers , eighty five 
per cent are under twenty five and close to sixty per cent are under twenty. 
Only one unmarried worker is over thirty and he is a divorcee (g,waur£). 
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325. 
All the rest are never-married bachelors (tuzurai). Of the remaining thirty 
eight per cent of workers who are married, over sixty per cent are under 
thirty, most in their upper twenties. Very few (nine in all or fifteen per 
cent) are above thirty. 
This contrasts with the situation among workshop heads (both artisanal 
and market-oriented), the majority of whom (24- out of 39 cases or about 
sixty two per cent) are married and over thirty years of age. A further 
four are over thirty and, although not married now, have been. There are 
also eight cases (twenty per cent) who are married and in their upper twenties. 
Of all workshop heads, only three are less than thirty and unmarried and 
one of these was about to marry at the time of the field work. No work-
shop heads are below twenty years of age. 
Part of the reason for this contrast lies in the expectation among 
Hausa people that as one gets older one must be able to stand on one's own 
feet and , at least among tailors, this involves becoming self-employed (~ 
kai). Certainly most tailoring employees would prefer to be self-employed 
although this preference must not be confused with tailors' wishes as to 
what type of work they would like to do in the future. In fact, as will be 
shown later, few tailoring employees envisage a life in tailoring either as 
employees or self-employed. 
As noted above, workshop employees are drawn largely from within 
Hausawa and surrounding wards and all live within a short walking distance 
of their places of work. This localised pattern of recruitment is found in 
many other parts of the city. Workshop heads rely upon informal and 
personal networks to obtain tailoring labour and none use official agencies, 
such as employment exchanges, in recruitment. The three main types of 
networks relied upon are those based upon kinship , friendship ties and 
common residence. 
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About a third of all employees are kinsmen of those for whom they 
work. However, only seven out of twenty five workshops (twenty eight per 
cent of the sampled market-oriented workshops) employ any kin and only two 
of these are entirely kin-based. The bulk of these workshops draw on junior 
kinsmen, including sons and, more importantly, the children of brothers and 
sisters, cross cousins (d'an mace da d'an na m ijl) , parallel cousins (d'an wa 
da d'an k'ane), and more distantly related kin. Where non-kin are employed, 
a few are personal friends (aminai) of the workshop head but most are the 
children of friends and neighbours in the area or older men who are known to 
workshop heads through common residence in Hausawa and adjacent wards 5 • 
Employees drawn from further afield (a minority of all cases) are 
normally recommended by other workshop heads known to the employer in 
question or by tailors in the workshop head's employ. It is rare to find 
workshop heads in Hausawa taking on people who are complete strangers. 
Workshop heads argue that they prefer to employ people who are 
trustworthy and reliable. By drawing on kin, friends and local people they 
are best able to achieve this aim. None admit to the practice of excluding 
outsiders, but the recruitment of workers along personal lines tends to 
restrict the size of the labour pool from which potential workers are drawn. 
One important condition ensuring the success of such practices is the avail-
ability of enough locals to make other recruitment procedures unnecessary. 
In many conversations with tailoring employees in the ward it became 
clear that discrimination in employment does occur within the city which 
tends to result in a fragmented labour market structure. An example will 
help to show how such discrimination operates. 
A Hausawa resident who at the time of the field work was an 
employee of one of the larger workshop heads in the ward described how 
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he sought work in a workshop some distance from Hausawa. He had heard 
through other tailors that work was available and visited the workshop where 
the workshop head agreed to employ him. During negotiations for the work 
there was no suggestion that he would be employed for a limited time only. 
On the other hand, he, like all other employees , was aware that no employer 
can guarantee employment indefinitely. 
After working for two days he found himself without any tailoring 
to do even though his work mates, all local residents of the ward in question, 
were fully occupied. He was convinced that the other workers operated 
their own system of task allocation through which they obtained the lion's 
share of the available work. He was never explicitly told by either the 
workshop head or the other workers that his services were no longer needed, 
. but after a couple of days of hanging around the workshop he decided to 
leave. 
This example, and others not examined here, suggests that the ability 
to obtain and retain employment depends upon the fortunes of particular 
workshops such that when a workshop head needs to produce a larger number 
of garments in a limited period of time, he takes on extra labour some of 
which may be drawn from outside the immediate area. However, once the 
work is done workers find themselves under- employed. In order to sustain 
their earning capacity, the under-employed workers may seek to restrict 
access to any remaining work by discriminating against those who they do 
not regard as having any established claim to be treated as an equal. In 
the case described above, the tailor in question was regarded as an out-
sider, a man with no previously established ties with the other workers, 
which made it easier for them to discriminate against him. Of course, if 
the worker has a skill not possessed by others, then his position may be 
327. 
he sought work in a workshop some distance from Hausawa. He had heard 
through other tailors that work was available and visited the workshop where 
the workshop head agreed to employ him. During negotiations for the work 
there was no suggestion that he would be employed for a limited time only. 
On the other hand, he, like all other employees , was aware that no employer 
can guarantee employment indefinitely. 
After working for two days he found himself without any tailoring 
to do even though his work mates, all local residents of the ward in question, 
were fully occupied. He was convinced that the other workers operated 
their own system of task allocation through which they obtained the lion's 
share of the available work. He was never explicitly told by either the 
workshop head or the other workers that his services were no longer needed, 
but after a couple of days of hanging around the workshop he decided to 
leave. 
This example, and others not examined here, suggests that the ability 
to obtain and retain employment depends upon the fortunes of particular 
workshops such that when a workshop head needs to produce a larger number 
of garments in a limited period of time, he takes on extra labour some of 
which may be drawn from outside the immediate area. However, once the 
work is done workers find themselves under-employed. In order to sustain 
their earning capacity, the under-employed workers may seek to restrict 
access to any remaining work by discriminating against those who they do 
not regard as having any established claim to be treated as an equal. In 
the case described above, the tailor in question was regarded as an out-
sider, a man with no previously established ties with the other workers, 
which made it easier for them to discriminate against him. Of course, if 
the worker has a skill not possessed by others, then his position may be 
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more secure. However, few tailoring skills are so rare that any particular 
tailor is in a position to monopolise their use. 
All workshop heads, no matter what they produce or how large they 
are, pay their workers by the piece. The advantages of the piece- rate 
system to workshop heads are the following. First, as they operate in an 
environment of uncertain and irregular demand , workshop heads are not in 
a position to guarantee a continuous supply of work to employees for more 
than a few days or weeks at a time. Even during busy periods there are 
days when business is slack and sewing machines idle. Thus, paying by 
the piece ensures that workers are paid only for the work done. Second, 
this system throws greater responsibility onto employees who know that if 
they do not produce when work is available they run the risk of earning 
. little or nothing. In other words, they are forced to regulate their own 
effort. Where production involves the co-ordination of the labour input 
of two or more workers, not only are they pressured into regulating their 
own individual effort but also that of those with whom they work. Third, 
by placing responsibility upon workers, workshop heads are freed from the 
need to constantly supervise their employees and so can concentrate upon 
other tasks, particularly the sale of garments in the market. Most producers 
possess little working capital and so depend upon quick cash sa les in order 
to earn enough to pay workers and buy raw materials to begin the production 
cycle again. Delays in selling garments can cause delays in production 
schedules but, under the piece-work arrangement, workshop heads know 
that they will not be faced with a wages bill which must be met regardless 
of whether or not their employees are working. 
This system has few , if any, advantages for employees. Of course, 
it does provide a certain measure of freedom to workers in that they are 
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329. 
not required to remain on the employers' premises throughout the day for 
five or six days a week. However, many would prefer to be given regular 
work and be certain of some security in earnings. Some have adjusted their 
work activities to the irregularity of employment by finding other work. 
For example, four combine work for their employers with private work 
utilising their own machines. One, in fact, employs two young boys to make 
garments while he is working elsewhere. As he put it to me, it is better 
to spread one's risks (raba kora) than rely upon a single source of income. 
A further six employees pursue other, non-tailoring, occupations. 
One is a sewing machine repairer who travels around Hausawa and other 
wards looking for minor repair jobs, two are labourers and three engage in 
petty trade. Besides these six , two employees are training to be teachers 
at local U.P.E. colleges and a third is attending the School for Arabic Studies 
and expects to take up a teaching job after graduation. 
Many employees farm during the wet season. Some thirty six per 
cent (21 cases) of all employees are in this position, including three of the 
six tailors mentioned above. Most (19 cases) work their own farms or those 
belonging to households in which they are junior members. The remaining 
two do farm labouring work. 
Overall, some fifty four per cent (33 cases) of all employees engage 
in some kind of work other than that which they perform for market-oriented 
workshop heads. However, of these only thirteen (or twenty per cent of 
all workshop employees) obtain any direct cash benefit from such work and 
even fewer j about five cases in all, consider they earn more from this work 
than from working for market-oriented tailors. For the rest, extra-market 
tailoring is a supplement to their main earnings in tailoring. For those 
who do farming (with the exception of the two farm labourers) , food crops 
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grown are used largely to support the subsistence needs of the households 
of which they are members. 
For younger, unmarried workers the piece-rate system is somewhat 
less onerous than for older , married workers as they are less dependent 
upon tailoring to meet their costs of subsistence, part of the latter being 
provided by senior kinsmen within households where they are junior members. 
The majority of younger workers are paid for any work they do at standard 
rates prevailing in the various workshops. A minority (ten cases) regard 
themselves as apprentices or learners of the trade. All are under twenty 
and for the work they do they get the occasional "dash" of money, free 
meals or are paid at rates fifty to seventy five per cent lower than more 
experienced workers, depending upon their degree of proficiency. 
The impact of the piece-rate system on older workers with greater 
familial and other responsibilities is ameliorated to some degree by various 
paternalistic strategies pursued by workshop heads. 
First, some employers allow workers private access to their sewing 
machines so that they can carry out own-account work when other work is 
unavailable. However, this is not a right but a privilege that must be 
earned by dedicated service. Workers expect that after a time they will 
be allowed to use workshop facilities for their own work and workshop heads 
who refuse to do so run the risk of losing reliable employees. Second, some III .L I ..... ' 
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workshop heads may favour particular workers by pushing more of the 
available work their way which helps to provide those workers with a certain 
degree of continuity of employment. Third, workshop heads will generally 
give first preference in rehiring to former employees or will attempt to 
place redundant workers in other workshops. Fourth, another way of 
ensuring loyalty is by helping workers financially in times of crisis or when 
331. 
family obligations have to be met. In addition, small gifts of cash, cloth 
or food are given out on Islamic festival days. Finally, in a few instances 
observed in Hausawa and other wards, workshop heads who take on dry 
season immigrant tailors provide sleeping space and some meals to these 
temporary workers. 
To some extent acts of paternalism on the part of workshop heads 
are not viewed as specific to tailoring but form part of a more general Hausa 
and Islamic system of social obligation whereby the more established, older 
and respected members of the community seek to enhance their status in 
the eyes of others. Thus, when asked if they help out their employees 
with gifts and loans and the like, some workshop heads responded that they 
do but added that is what is expected of them as good Muslims, men of 
character (mutanen kirki) or 'yan halak (people who are respectable , honest 
and reliable). 
Gifts and loans are usually small, a Naira or two at a naming ceremony 
or pieces of meat at ~, and not all workshop heads are equally generous. 
However, in these small ways they build up diffuse bonds between themselves 
and others, including employees, which makes the work relationship something 
more than a purely contractual one. 
Needless to say, this is a two-way process and dependent workers are 
judged in a similar fashion. Erratic workers are sometimes referred to as 
'ran mura-mura (small children), workers who behave like children by not 
completing a task or coming to work late. This applies particularly to 
young boys who sometimes do not show up to work when needed. Some 
workshop heads complain that younger men are less reliable than older 
tailors with families and other responsibilities. However, few young tailors 
wish to be labelled as irresponsible as this reflects not only upon themselves 
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but senior members of their families as well. It may also affect their 
chances of being employed when they do need or want to work. In one 
instance that I observed, a teenage employee who was the son of a local 
trader and friend of the boy's employer's father suffered a sort of nervous 
breakdown after taking drugs. He left the workshop and did not return for 
days. However, the workshop head visited the father and told him of the 
incident, asking if there was anything he could do. He also told two of 
his other workers to take care of the boy and see to it that he did not do 
himself any harm. The workshop head was not unduly affected by the 
incident as he swiftly took on another boy to do the work. I asked him 
if he would re-hire the boy to which he replied that he would as long as he 
could be assured that such an incident did not occur again. 
The boy felt intense shame at his behaviour which had become common 
knowledge among tailors and others in the ward. The workshop head showed 
a certain degree of responsibility for the boy's behaviour although he was 
not directly responsible for causing him to act in the way he did. The 
boy did not return to the workshop but, after a week, began to work for a 
neighbour whose workshop was situated directly across the street from the 
workshop of his original employer. 
This incident illustrates the point that some workshop heads are 
regarded by others, and regard themselves , as local "big men" or community 
leaders who are expected to play a role in maintaining community standards 
with regard to personal conduct. Not wishing to be associated with trouble-
some elements ('yan iska, or "sons of the wind") and feeling some sense of 
responsibility towards one of his employees , he acted according to standards 
beyond that involved in the typical employer-employee relationship. 
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The youngest workers are concentrated in cap-making workshops 
where profit margins and rates of pay are low. Older workers are not 
attracted to cap- making and they tend to regard it as children's or teenager's 
work. The work is extremely tedious and repetitive and the amount of 
skill needed to become proficient is less than that required for other garments. 
Most workers can pick up the necessary skills in a few weeks. Each cap uses 
up a small amount of cloth and thread, and mistakes are less costly to rectify 
than in the case of smocks or gowns. Embroidery work is done on some 
styles but it is usually of very poor quality and minimal in amount. For these 
reasons, cap- making workshop heads rely greatly upon younger workers as 
they are willing to work for little, can be trained quickly and are not required 
to be too much concerned about quality. 
Many older workers start off their tailoring careers in cap-making, 
but expect to shift into other kinds of garment production where they can 
acquire a greater range of skills and so protect themselves to some degree 
from becoming too narrowly specialised. In this way they hope to make 
themselves more employable. This is particularly important for embroidery 
employees whose skills earn greater returns in gown and smock-making. 
However, it should be noted that in other wards some types of cap-making 
involve greater skill in embroidery. For example, those who make machine 
imitations of the hand-sewn Zanna Bukar caps earn higher returns than 
Hausawa cap embroiderers. 
Rates of pay for machine-made caps average about thirty kobo per 
dozen caps. During the busy season some cap employees can produce about 
six dozen caps per day from which they can expect to earn around #1 80 
kobo, a rate of pay fractionally above the starting wage of the lowest indus-
trial worker (in late 1975). It is possible to earn more than this if , assuming 
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his employer can supply the work, the employee is willing to work longer 
hours at a rapid pace, perhaps with the help of drugs to keep him awake. 
However , higher earnings are possible during busy times only and when busi-
ness is slack the tailor may be laid off or given one or two dozen to do. 
Tailors sometimes refer to caps made under such conditions as ~ 
ya sha k'waya (the tailor took drugs). The low pay and drudgery in cap-
making are the subject of a poem or verse which refers to one particular 
type of cap known as doguwar hula (high/tall cap). The verse , told to me 
by a young cap maker, goes roughly as follows: 
Long mother of work , here is the thread and here is 
the takwala [a kind of thread] , you disturb the heart 
of the tailor , you pagan/scoundrel, rotating a thousand 
times for a penny. 
In general, earnings from gown, smock and trouser assembly and 
embroidery are higher than in cap-making. Below are given rates of pay 
for assembly and embroidery work in selected Hausawa workshops: 
TABLE 10 . 6 Rates of pay among Hausawa employees . 
Type of Garment 
Caps 
Short Smocks 
Trousers 
Large gowns 
Rates of Pay 
Assembly 
24 to 36 kobo 
per dozen 
10 to 20 kobo 
per garment 
20 kobo per 
garment 
40 to 50 kobo 
per garment 
Embroidery 
No special rates 
40 to 60 kobo 
per garment 
No embroidery 
80 kobo to ~l 50 kobo 
per garment 
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335. 
The simplest types of smock assembly bring rates of pay at least 
three times that of caps. Of course. the labour- time required to assemble 
a smock (or any other larger garment) is greater than than required to produce 
a single cap. However, over the course of a day a smock assembler can 
expect to earn at least twenty five per cent more than a cap-maker operating 
at full speed. Smock and gown embroiderers earn even higher rates of pay; 
anywhere from fifty to one hundred per cent higher than other producers, 
depending upon the time of year and the amount of work a workshop head 
is able to supply. 
Note that the embroidery rates given here refer to what might be 
called standard embroidery where the amount of sewing is limited and without 
great elaboration. If a tailor is able to obtain orders for highly elaborate 
'gowns such as the Aska Biyu and Malum-Malum, then earnings per garment 
embroidered can go higher. However; it is unusual for market-oriented 
workshops to produce such elaborate 'garments, being more concerned with 
more rapid turnover of cheaply-made, simply embroidered smocks and gowns 
whose price is within the means of the mass of consumers. Higher rates 
are likely to be charged by artisan embroiderers or market-oriented employees 
who either have private access to an employer's embroidery machine or a 
machine of their own. In Hausawa, only two embroidery machinists working 
for a market tailor did own,..account work using their personal machines and 
neither of them owned an embroidery machine. Rather they worked in private 
on the assembly of garments for private customers. Much the preferred 
method is to arrange for private access to an employer's machine in order 
to carry out embroidery contracts with personal clients. Employers vary 
according to how much access they will allow their employees to workshop 
machines. Some refuse while others are more approachable. However, in 
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all instances the right to use a workshop head's machine for personal orders 
must be earned through dedicated service over a period of time. 
The comments made here about the tailors of Hausawa also apply to 
market producers and their employees in Soron D'inki and Yalwa. However, 
there are some differences worth noting. 
First, in Soron D'inki there are fewer market producers and most 
operate as own-account workers or take on little extra labour. Second, in 
Yalwa in particular the situation is complicated by the existence of a pool 
of hand embroiderers and other hand sewers who are not as directly tied 
to the fortunes of anyone market producer's workshop as they do not require 
access to a sewing machine in order to obtain work. Putting-out arrangements 
are much more common. Third, again in Yalwa a smaller proportion of the 
total output of the ward is disposed of through the central market. Artisanal-
type work is more developed there as is work for private customers that is 
mediated by local merchants and traders who deal in very small quantities 
of higher-priced Eastern-Style garments which are usually part- machine and 
part- hand-made. 
However, all types of hand-work in both wards are suffering from 
competition from machine tailors, some of them market producers. In Soron 
D'inki, for example, there are a few machinists who produce large quantities 
of cheap saddle covers and sell them to horse tackle dealers in the city 
market. Some purchase all their raw material requirements and operate 
much as market producers in Hausawa except that extra labour is rarely 
used which reflects, in part, the low demand for horse caparisons. Others 
combine artisanal work with work put-out to them by horse tackle dealers. 
In Yalwa, machine embroidery of Eastern-Style garments is gradually taking 
over production formerly done by hand sewers but as yet there are few 
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market producers of these types of garments who rely entirely on machines. 
However, in other wards close by, producing machine-made Eastern-style 
garments, particularly Dala and Dogon Nama, there are a number of work-
shops which operate much along the same lines as those in Hausawa. 
In general, the main features of the workshop situation of the majority 
of market producers in Hausawa (and the other two wards) can be summarised 
in the following ways: 
1. Workshop size is very small with three quarters of workshops employing 
three or fewer workers. 
2. Most workshop heads are themselves producers either working alone 
or alongside their workers. 
3. Workers are paid on an irregular and piece- rate basis. 
4. Capital investment is low, ranging from NIOO to N'200 per worker with 
the main item of investment being sewing machines. The capital/labour 
ratio is even lower where workshop heads, as in Yalwa, put- out work 
to both machinists and hand sewers. 
5. Labour is recruited largely from the local area and consists of kin, friends , 
and other persons residing in and around the neighbourhood. In addition, 
many workshop heads, especially cap-makers but other types of producers 
as well , utilise young, unmarried boys as workshop helpers partly becaus~ 
of their greater willingness to work for low rates of pay. Secluded 
women who perform finishing and other tasks on a putting-out basis 
are employed for the same reason. 
6. The workshop division of labour is relatively undifferentiated largely 
because of the smaU scale of most operating units and the simple nature 
of the technology used. The most important division in workshop tasks 
is between assemblers and embroiderers. 
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338. 
7. In all cases the workshop head reserves for himself the functions of 
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8. Production takes place on a short-term, day- to-day basis, and is oriented 
to the rapid sale of small batches of garments to a known traditional 
market. 
From the previous discussion it can be seen that the heads of the work. 
shops described above play an important role in the local economy. They 
organise the productive activities of many workers who might otherwise have 
no work to do, act as customers for traders, clothes dealers, sewing machine 
sellers and the like, and supply low-cost clothing to the public at large. 
However, the great majority are unlikely to be able to expand their operations 
much beyond the level they have now reached. My reasons for coming to 
this conclusion are as follows. 
First, market production is oriented to supplying the clothing needs 
of predominantly low-income rural consumers who are widely scattered 
throughout the region and whose demand for garments is highly seasonal, 
dependent as they are on seasonally. specific sales of agricultural crops. 
The irregularity of this demand, compounded in recent years by a stagnation 
in rural real incomes and growing inequality between rural and urban incomes 
(I.L.O., 1981 : 221), means that few producers can expect to be guaranteed 
a year-round market for the goods they produce. This, in turn, provides 
most producers with a disincentive to expand their operations beyond a 
certain point. 
Second, market producers have no direct access to rural (and many 
other) markets as distributive networks are controlled by large numbers of 
largely small-scale trading middlemen. As far as the bulk of market 
339. 
producers in the three wards are concerned, the two most important cate-
gories of middlemen are itinerant traders who visit workshops directly and 
fixed-site clothes dealers operating from urban Kanols various market places. 
Apart from drawing off part of the profits that might otherwise go to pro-
ducers, these middlemen tend to buy up garments in small quantities thereby 
placing pressures on producers not to over-produce and run the risk of being 
left with unsold stocks. Some producers do supply clothing to intermediaries 
on credit in the hope of future sale but this can be a risky business as there 
is no guarantee that goods will be sold at the price agreed, within a reason-
able time span, or even sold at all. Cash transactions are much preferred 
as most producers cannot sustain themselves for long periods, especially 
if they must meet a wages bill. 
By-passing such commercial intermediaries, although considered by 
many producers as desirable, is also regarded as fraught with difficulties. 
The three main ways suggested by tailors through which they might reduce 
their dependence on middlemen are (0 setting up their own retail-cum-whole-
sale outlets, (2) becoming itinerant traders themselves, and (3) acting coll-
ectively to either sell in bulk through a centralised marketing agency or 
confronting the traders and clothes dealers as an organised body. 
With regard to establishing themselves as market clothes dealers, 
the main difficulty seen by tailors is the lack of sufficient capital to invest 
in a clothing stock, rent premises and , perhaps, pay someone to act as a 
selling agent. Most simply do not possess the financial means to take such 
a step, at least not in the near future. In addition, some tailors point out 
that if they sold their sewing machines to finance such an operation, they 
would cease to be tailors. Although an attractive prospect to many, it 
is a risk most are unwilling to take. 
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Becoming an itinerant trader while continuing to run a tailoring 
workshop is regarded as very difficult to realise and practically none of 
the tailors see themselves as ever likely to do such a thing. Apart from 
the capital costs involved in buying up other tailors' output, there is the 
competition from already established traders, whose knowledge of rural and 
other trading conditions is much greater than the tailors' own, and the time 
lost in production while engaged in marketing and trading expeditions outside 
Kano 6. Also , if a tailor were to sell only those garments he produced in 
his own workshop , the quantities involved would be so small as to make it 
unprofitable. Furthermore, as most workshop heads are themselves direct 
producers, they would have to incur extra costs in hiring another worker 
(or workers) to make up for that part of production which would otherwise 
be lost through their absence from the workshop 7 . Finally, as one tailor 
put it to me, what would be the use of continuing as a tailor if one were 
lucky enough to be successful in trading. 
The third option is seen by many tailors , particularly Hausawa cap 
makers, as highly desirable but, again, very difficult to bring about 8 . Like 
the artisans discussed earlier in this study, they point to earlier attempts 
to organise producers' cooperatives which failed. In the case of cap makers, 
the collapse of a recent work stoppage aimed at wresting price increases out 
of market cap dealers was used to justify their pessimism (see Alhaji M.D.'s 
case study for further details on this action). 
Overall , despite the merits which tailors see in attempting to reduce 
their dependence on commercial intermediaries through any of the three 
methods described , each involves its own peculiar difficulties. For most 
producers, selling through already established channels represents a con-
venient, if not altogether favourable, adaptation on their part to prevailing 
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341. 
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Third, market producers are squeezed further by their dependence on I ~ , 
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inputs which are sold to them by wholesalers and retailers. The prices paid 
and quantities obtained are not subject to manipulation by the mass of petty 
producers which makes them vulnerable to market fluctuations, particularly 
inflationary pressures emanating from the wider economy. The majority 
of tailors do not possess the means to integrate production with supply through 
acting as middlemen themselves, often find it difficult to obtain materials on 
credit at favourable terms, and do not belong to producers' associations which 
might act as bargaining agents with suppliers. Under these circumstances, 
'each tailor must face the latter as a single producer. Given the tailor's 
miniscule financial resources, this limits his ability to purchase in bulk and 
so accumulate stock to take advantage of price changes a t the point of sale. 
Fourth, market producers enter (or already operate within) an economic 
environment in which there exists large numbers of other producers who 
utilise the same technology and are organised along similar lines to them-
selves. These other producers are both potential and actual competitors 
for a share of the market. Furthermore, producers unwittingly contribute 
to this state of affairs by training tailors who in the future can and do 
compete with them. 
Competition is not totally unrestricted or atomistic as product special-
isation , the capital costs of entry into the sector , and longstanding credit , 
selling and other arrangements which a few tailors have with commercial 
intermediaries provide some insulation from market forces. However, in my 
342. 
view these do not constitute formidable barriers to entry into (and continued 
operation within) the sector and , if anything , I would argue that tailoring 
attracts an oversupply of producers, especially when demand is buoyant. 
This applies particularly to those tailors, many of whom are found in Hausawa, 
who produce low-cost and poorly-made garments such as caps and smocks. 
Fifth, market producers have no privileged access to governmental 
and other official sources of assistance in the form of technical services 
and loan facilities. Banks are extremely loathe to lend funds to petty 
producers and the state-sponsored small industry credit scheme helps only 
a tiny minority. Also, many producers are ignorant of the existence of 
official sources of funding and those who do know of them are reluctant 
to apply as they believe, quite realistically in my view, that they cannot 
meet the minimum requirements set by lending agencies. As noted earlier , 
most have financed themselves through their own efforts with some help 
from kin. The amounts involved have generally been very small, certainly 
not large enough to invest in, say, more sophisticated garment technology 
which might give them an edge over their competitors. 
The combined effect of the above-mentioned factors makes it diffi-
cult for most producers to do anything more than reproduce their conditions 
of existence (Gerry, 1977 : 16). Let me now illustrate the general points 
made through an examination of a few cases of market producers who are 
locked into this cycle of simple reproduction. The two examples I have 
chosen for more detailed consideration are drawn from Soron D'inki and 
Hausawa wards. In what follows I shall pay particular attention to their 
present tailoring operations, the market situation in which they work , how 
they have come to be where they are , and their own assessments of the 
difficulties they face as tailors and how those difficulties may be resolved. 
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343. 
Malam Y. and Malam M.S. : Saddle Cover Makers (jalala) in Soron D'inki 
In an earlier chapter it was noted that the production of embroidered 
saddle covers is a speciality of tailors in Soron D'inki ward. Formerly 
produced entirely by hand, since the 1930's an increasing proportion of the 
total output of this commodity has been taken over by machine tailors. 
At present, saddle cloth production is divided among the following types 
of producer: 
1. A small, and declining , number of full and part- time male hand embroi-
derers who combine own-account work either for personal customers 
or for sale in the central city market with work put-out to them by 
horse tackle dealers (some of whom are themselves jalala makers), 
these latter usually supplying the cloth pieces upon which the embroidery 
work is done. 
2. A few horsetaclde dealers who occasionally engage in the direct pro-
duction of saddle cloths but more frequently organise the productive 
activities of others through putting-out to hand and machine embroiderers 
and to machine assemblers who do the finishing off. 
3. Non-specialised machine assemblers who produce a wide range of gar-
ments, particularly male clothing, and who occasionally receive putting-
out orders from horse tackle dealers or, more rarely , other machine 
tailors. 
4. Secluded married women who hand embroider the centre pieces of jalala 
which the women produce either on their own account using their own 
independently purchased raw materials or on a putting-out basis for 
horse tackle dealers who distribute the cloth to the women through the 
women's husbands or other intermediaries drawn from the women's house-
holds. In addition, most horse tackle dealers have wives who are them-
selves saddle cloth embroiderers. 
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5. Machine tailors who concentrate exclusively on producing whole saddle 
cloths using their own financial resources to buy all necessary raw 
materials and who then sell their output to central city market horse 
tackle dealers some of whom are resident in the ward. There are only 
two workshops in the ward which fall into this category and it is with 
one of these that I am concerned in this discussion. 
The workshop in question is run by two men who are close personal 
• _'I 
friends of each other. Malam M.S. is in his early to mid-30's and Malam Y. ", 
is close to forty. Both are unmarried , Y. being a divorcee and M.S.'s wife 
having died some years ago. Neither have any children. They have no 
" 
western schooling although both received the customary Koranic education 
when children and are semi- literate in Hausa. 
Malam Y. lives with his elder brother in their family home in Sheshe 
ward which shares a common border with Soron D'inki. His paternal grand- , " 
father was a farmer in Minjibir as was his father who left Minjibir to travel 
to Kano to study the Koran. He eventually became a Koranic teacher and 
settled in Sheshe. As far as Malam Y. can remember, none of these kinsmen 
ever d.i,d any tailoring. 
As a young boy Y. took up hand sewing of caps with a friend in Sheshe. 
, . 
In his mid-teens he began to do machine tailoring for his elder brother who 
was at that time a self-employed cap maker. After five years he moved 
to the workshop of a machine tailor of jalala in Soron D'inki where he worked 
for about four years. During this time he saved enough to buy a cheap, ,-
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second-hand assembly sewing machine and set himself up as a jalala assembler. ~' ~. ... 
At first he worked on a putting-out basis for horse tackle dealers in the 
market but later began to buy cloth and thread himself. He was assisted 
in his work by Malam M.S. whom he taught to assemble jalala and to sew 
345. 
bits of cloth onto the centre piece (doro). This type of saddle cover, known 
as jalala ta manne, was (and is) the cheapest made in the ward as the materials 
used are of the poorest quality and involve no embroidery. 
His current place of work is the entrance room of a house owned by a 
friend of Malam M.S.'s family. Both Y. and M.S. pay no rent for the use 
of the premises. Rather, they are expected by the house owner, a local 
trader, to feed his sheep and goats with bran (dusa) which the house owner 
supplies. 
Malam M.S. was born in Tudun Wazirci ward, like Sheshe located close 
to Soron D'inki, and is the grandson of farm slaves attached to the home of 
a local aristocrat. His father also did farming in his early years but later 
took up hand cap-making. M.S.'s first job was as a hand cap sewer for his 
father. When his father died, he moved to the home of his father's elder 
sister in Soron D'inki where he lived until she died and he then moved again 
to another aunt's home. 
While living with his second aunt, he began to work for her son as a 
jalala maker. After a time his cousin arranged for him to work for a friend, 
another jalala maker, and M.S. stayed with his new employer until his late 
teens. From here he shifted to the workshop of a machine tailor and was 
taught how to machine tailor horse saddle covers. Some time later he met 
Malam Y. who asked him to work for him. They have worked together ever 
since, a period of about ten years. At first, M.S. rented a sewing machine 
from a woman he knew in Tudun Wazirci who had inherited some money which 
she invested in sewing machines. Later, after saving up enough money, 
he purchased his own. 
A t present, the two men work side by side producing cheap jalala. 
Malam Y. does much of the cloth-cutting and assembly while Malam M.S. does 
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346. 
the applique. In addition, M.S. continues to hand embroider jalala both on 
a putting-out basis and, when he can get the work, for personal clients. 
The bulk of their combined output is sold through city market horse tackle 
dealers. They earn little money from this work, between twenty and thirty 
kobo per item, and they must work long hours if they are to be able to seU 
enough to break even. However, paying no rent helps reduce their overall 
costs and, being single men, they have few family obligations. 
During busy times when demand for jalala is high, they sometimes deal 
through brokers who arrange to sell what they produce to visiting traders 
and to market dealers. These latter also act as brokers as well as buying-
up part of what they produce. 
They make two types of jalala: large and small. The costs of production 
for each, largely in the form of cloth and thread with some putting-out to 
secluded women who do various types of finishing work such as sewing on 
the tinsel-like thread (geza) to the edge of the jalala, are about NI 75 kobo 
and NI 40 kobo respectively. They sell at corresponding prices of N2 and 
NI 60 kobo, thus realising a profit per item of between 20 and 25 kobo. 
Working flat out they can produce about fifty in one day which means that 
in good times their joint earnings can reach between oN 1 0 and N 12 50 kobo. 
However, at other times earnings can go as low as two or three Naira a day. 
The market situation in which these two men operate is a precarious 
one. First, they are highly specialised producers of a single commodity 
the local demand for which is not sufficient to sustain them in their oper-
ations. In order to make a living they are forced to depend on city market 
horse tackle dealers who buy up what they produce and re-sell it to visiting 
traders from Katsina, Niger Republic and Borno. Second, given the low 
value of each specific saddle cloth they produce, they must seU in bulk to 
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347. 
earn enough to meet their everyday costs of subsistence. However, their 
ability to do so is limited by the relatively unsophisticated nature of the 
technology they use, which does not allow of much in the way of economies 
of scale and makes production increases dependent largely on the intensive 
application of their own labour- power , and by the seasonali ty of demand 
which not only affects how much they can produce but also the price at 
which they can sell. Third, they must compete with low- paid secluded 
female saddle cloth embroiderers, other male hand embroiderers, and machine 
tailors for whom jalala production constitutes only one part of their total 
productive effort. 
Under these circumstances it is no surprise that both men see little 
future in their present line of work. On the other hand , they entertain only 
vague hopes that they might be able to leave tailoring altogether and pursue 
some other activity such as trading. When asked what steps might be taken 
to improve their current situation, they were uncertain. A producers' 
association, although desirable, was regarded as unlikely to succeed given 
the small numbers of producers like themselves and the fact that some of 
those who made saddle cloths were also traders whose interests diverged 
from , even conflicted with , those of producers, Rather, the best they could 
hope for was the development of some arrangement whereby the better-placed 
producers-cum-dealers would agree to distribute the available work to poorer 
tailors like themselves. In effect, they suggested the extension of the sub-
contracting principle at the expense of purely market production. When I 
pointed out that this might put them at the mercy of a few horse tackle 
traders, they replied that this would be better than the present arrangement 
under which the better-off were already advantaged but had no obligation 
to assist anyone. In any case, they added, such an arrangement would not 
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348. 
prevent them from doing their own independent work. 
Of all the market producers examined in this study, those like Y. and .... 
M.S. who specialise in the production of saddle covers are probably in the 
worst position. More than any others they are faced with a market situation 
characterised by a long-term secular decline in demand. The fact that so 
few male tailors specialise in such work and the increasingly important role 
played by women, who are regarded as social and economic minors in Hausa 
society, are only the most obvious symptoms of this trend. As such, Malam Y. 
and Malam M.S. are unlikely to survive for much longer under their present 
circumstances. 
Alhaji M.U. : Cap Maker in Hausawa 
Alhaji M.U. is one of the many cap-producing workshop heads in Hausawa 
ward. Born in the ward in 1946, he comes from a family with some previous 
involvement in tailoring. His paternal grandfather, also born in Hausawa, 
was an !!!!!. teacher who, as far as M.U. can remember, did no tailoring. It 
was M.U.'s father who first took up tailoring as a machine artisan of gowns 
and smocks and it was from him that my informant had his first exposure 
to tailoring. 
He began to tailor in the early 1950's and remained at his father's work-
shop (the entrance room to his natal home) for about three years. He then 
left his father's workshop to work for a market producer in the ward. His 
reason for doing so was that he wished to learn embroidery sewing and 
thought that this would be more profitable than artisanal single-stitch work. 
He was employed along with two other boys and remained there until the 
early 1960's. 
In 1964 M.U. shifted to the workshop of a cross-cousin (his mother'S 
349. 
brother's son) who employed him to machine embroider gowns. After five 
years he had saved enough to purchase his own single-stitch sewing machine 
and set up business in the entrance room to his natal home, specialising in 
the production of plain caps which he sold through the central city market. 
Over the years he managed to buy two second-hand embroidery machines 
from savings and took on two assistants, neither of whom were relatives 
but who lived locally. His own workshop being too small to accommodate 
the extra machines and workers, he borrowed his neighbour's entrance room 
and this is where they now work. 
He has one younger brother who is also a machine tailor in the ward and, 
like Alhaji M.U., runs a small workshop producing caps. 
Alhaji M.U. is quite well-educated by local standards. He has done 
six years of primary school and also took adult education classes at a school 
set up in the city by a wealthy local businessman. Through his adult 
education he obtained a post- literacy certificate in the early 1970's after 
having taken courses in English, arithmetic, history , geography and general 
knowledge. He is literate in Hausa, Arabic and , to some extent, English. 
In fact, he currently teaches Arabic part- time at a local primary school 
in the city. 
His income comes from teaching and tailoring and, being a small pro-
ducer, he continues to work alongside his employees. He is articulate, 
ambitious and , through his exposure when younger to the populist and egal-
itarian ideals expressed in the political platform of the Northern Elements 
Progressive Union (NEPU) 9, has developed a strong commitment to the 
interests of the smaller tailors who lack much political and economic 
influence in the wider society. 
This commitment came to the fore in 1974 when he was instrumental, 
350. 
along with another tailor in the ward , in forming a cap producers' association. 
The general aims of this association were to bring together as many city 
cap producers as possible into one organisation in order to purchase supplies 
of raw materials from a limited number of traders and to pressure cap 
dealers in the market to accept higher selling prices for the products made. 
A subsidiary aim, at least in Alha ji M.U.'s view, was to act as a social welfare 
agency for those tailors who had fallen on hard times. 
The issue which sparked the formation of the association was the public 
sector wage rises (known as the Udoji awards) lOin late 1974 which led 
to a general inflation in the costs of many commodities, including textiles 
and other raw materials used by tailors. At the same time, because of the 
lack of any collective organisation among cap producers, there was no general 
increase in the selling price of caps which had the effect of squeezing the 
already small profits of most cap makers. 
Alhaji M.U. called a general meeting in Hausawa of cap makers in the 
city and many wards sent representatives. The bulk of those who attended 
came from Hausawa but other wards represented included Ayagi, Bak'in Ruwa, 
D'andago, Yakasai, Indabawa, Dala and Kan Karofi. Estimates of how many 
tailors actually attended vary between fifty and over one hundred. According 
to Alhaji M.U., it was agreed at the meeting that there should be a work 
stoppage until the cap dealers raised their buying prices by fifty per cent. 
However, the work stoppage was only partially successful in that many 
tailors failed to stop producing. After about a week only a few continued 
to hold out and eventually all went back to work. Disappointed by the 
result , Alhaji M.U. went back to his teaching and tailoring. 
From accounts provided by a number of tailors who either attended the 
meeting or who were the associates and friends of tailors who did, a number 
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351. 
of reasons can be given for the failure of the industria! action. First, not 
all tailors at the meeting actually wanted to go along with the stoppage 
and, in fact, did not participate. Second; many cap makers did not attend 
the meeting and also refused to participate. Third, many tailors saw the 
opportunity to make a quick killing and stepped up production to fill in the 
gap left by the strikers. Those who it was thought had agreed to take 
action but who did not were referred to, rather disparagingly, by my infor-
mants as ~an Jabu, the counterfeit ones. Fourth, some tailors who attended 
the meeting wanted any association to be solely concerned with social matters 
such as providing financial assistance at times of family crisis or giving gifts 
at weddings and naming ceremonies. Fifth, one informant stated that there 
was some animosity between a few tailors arising out of their, or their 
families, earlier associations with the two main northern political parties, 
the Northern Peoples' Congress and the Northern Elements Progressive Union. 
In particular, my informant asserted that two tailors from Ayagi ward who 
had been supporters of the N.P.C., the party most closely associated with 
the traditional ruling classes of Hausaland prior to the establishment of 
military rule in Nigeria in 1966, did not agree with what they saw as the 
N.E.P.U. ideas of some of the association's main supporters. Finally, it was 
claimed that the meeting had been called too quickly and there was little 
time to organise the action properly. Thus; no strike fund was organised 
and so no financial support was forthcoming to help those in need. 
The case of Alhaji M.U. and his attempts to organise tailors illustrates 
the plIght of many of the small garment producers in Hausawa and other 
parts of the city. Possessing little capital, fragmented into many workshops 
and struggling to make ends meet through producing small quantities of gar-
ments in a highly competitive environment, they are extremely susceptible 
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352. 
to changes in market conditions such as the rise in raw material input prices 
discussed earlier. For some, like M.U., organised action represents the best 
way of coping with this situation. Although he was disappointed at the 
failure of the work stoppage, he was also optimistic that in time cap makers 
would realise the value of working together. In his view , without a united 
front the small producers like himself were doomed to making minimal incomes 
and a dog-eat-dog existence of needless inter- workshop competition. Indeed, 
at the end of the field work period, he was attempting to organise the cap 
makers again through visiting workshops in Hausawa and other wards and 
laying plans for another large meeting. 
However, as I have shown , considerable difficulties face people like 
Alhaji M.U. in getting others to cooperate. Mistrust , ideological differences, 
diverging views on the efficacy of individualistic versus collectivist strategies 
in promoting tailors' interests and the organisational problems involved in 
sustaining group action over the long term in order to minimise the dangers 
inherent in a purely ad hoc response to immediate crises all contribute to a 
weakening of the tailors' position. Furthermore , the failure of the work 
stoppage described above reinforced this weakness by convincing some tailors 
of the futility of joint action. In fact, one of the two leaders of the action 
taken later sold up his sewing machines and used the money to become a 
thread dealer. Even Alhaji M.U. himself, although continuing to support the 
idea of a cap makers' association, was not entirely dependent on tailoring 
for a living as he also teaches locally. Thus, not only was he better able 
to support himself and his family throughout the work stoppage when compared 
with many other tailors , it is possible that he may at some future date decide 
to leave tailoring altogether and concentrate upon his teaching. If this 
were to happen, the t a ilors would lose a valuable leader whose educa tion, 
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353. 
knowledge of prevailing political and economic conditions and commitment 
to egalitarian ideals were of help in sustaining him in his work on their 
behalf. 
The three men whose work situations I have described are fairly typical 
of the majority of market producers in the three wards. However, there are 
some workshop heads who have become sufficiently well-established to actually 
withdraw from direct production. They constitute a minority of all market 
producers and are generally regarded by others as having achieved, at least 
within the context of tailoring, a measure of success in their work lives. 
I would now like to examine the work histories and current tailoring operations 
of three such tailors and follow this with a discussion of the kind of success 
they have achieved and the factors which appear to have been important in 
contr ibuting to their success. 
Alha ji H. of Hausawa Ward; 
Alhaji H., a workshop head whose productive activities are devoted 
almost exclusively to the making of low-priced caps, is in his mid-50's, having 
been born at the beginning of the reign of Sarkin Kano Usman (1919- 1926). 
He has no western education and cannot read or write in Hausa although he 
did Koranic studies as a boy and today receives some ilm education from a 
local malam. 
Born in Hausawa, he was one of the first in his family to do tailoring 
as a full - time occupation. His paternal grandfather was a farmer and Koranic 
student who came to Kano during the 19th century from the Sudan. His 
maternal grandfather was a jakada and was born in Ha usawa. His father , 
born in the same house where Alhaji H. now lives and works , was a Koranic 
teacher and farmer. 
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354. 
As a young boy, Alhaji H.'s first work experience was helping his father 
to farm. The first tailoring he ever did was the hand sewing of Marafiya 
caps, a skill he learned from his elder sister's husband. In addition, he tried 
his hand at leather shoe-making but remained at his job for a short time 
only as there was no money in it. His cap-making was initially financed 
from selling ciyawa (grass) collected from the family farm and other farms 
around the city. 
He began to do machine tailoring in his early teens as an apprentice 
for one of his four senior brothers, all of whom were machine tailors. 
Through savings and help from the family he purchased a second-hand sewing 
machine sometime in the 1930's and began to make garments on his own 
account. He remembers that as a young man his senior kinsmen built a 
stall in the central market from which they sold their own, and other tailors' 
output. This stall has remained in his family's hands ever since and now 
belongs to him, all h.i.s brothers having died. From this stall he sells all 
types of caps. 
Apart from dealing in caps, he has done no other adult work besides 
tailoring and over the years has managed to buy four single-stitch sewing 
machines at prices ranging from sixteen to forty Nigerian pounds. His last 
purchase was made in the early 1960's. All of these machines were purchased 
new from savings. 
His current place of work is the entrance room to his home which he 
has used for the past forty years. He specialises in the making of plain 
caps, concentrating upon three styles. Although he has three male children, 
only two are old enough to do tailoring. Both these children have been 
taught to tailor but he has placed them in school, one attending primary, 
the other secondary. He does not expect or wish them to become tailors, 
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355. 
but instead, employs four young boys who are the children of neighbours. 
He divides his time between organising production in his workshop and 
selling caps at his market stall. In the early morning he cuts up cloth into 
pieces ready for assembly and distributes the work to his employees. He 
then leaves for the market where he sits for much of the day selling caps 
to visiting petty traders from rural Kano. Besides his own output, he sells 
that of other petty producers in the city and from time to time visits a number 
of villages and small towns close to the city buying up caps made by secluded 
women and a few male tailor-farmers. 
For most of his working life, apart from the time spent working for his 
brother, he has worked alone and expects to continue in this way. He has 
never been a member of any producers' association and sees no reason for 
doing so. He refused to join in the 1974- work stoppage described earlier 
largely on the grounds that such an action would have compromised his ability 
to dispose of the caps he sells in the market. Although he could see the 
advantage to producers of higher selling prices, he was fearful that any 
precipitate action would lose him customers to other cap dealers who could 
under-price him. Rather than take that risk, he preferred to negotiate any 
price increases through personal bargaining with visiting buyers. In this 
respect, his trading interests took precedence over his interests as a pro-
ducer. 
Although Alhaji H. is somewhat better-off than many cap producers 
in that he has been able to integrate his productive activities with trading 
from which he obtains a relatively secure, if modest, income, he is not a 
wealthy man. Apart from the small income he derives from cap dealing, 
and the limited advantage he has over smaller producers through his ability 
to produce greater quantities of garments, he is in most other respects little 
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356. 
different from the broad mass of market tailors. He owns his home and 
also farms a small family farm with the help of hired rural labourers, trading 
in some of the produce grown but using most of it for household consumption. 
However, many other tailors and non-tailors also own their homes and farm. 
To attain the limited degree of success that he has achieved has taken 
practically all of his life, a life based on hard work, personal effort and, 
during his early years, the help of kin. Now an elderly man, he does not 
wish to jeopardise his limited gains either by leaving tailoring or attempting 
to expand his tailoring operations further. Indeed, he believes that, even 
if he wished to take either of these two courses of action, his age and 
limited financial resources would prevent him. 
Alhaji H. harbours no illusions about the value of tailoring as a route 
to wealth. He can point to a few men who have become wealthy partly 
through tailoring but they have typically used their tailoring operations as 
a base from which to move into something else, particularly trading, con-
tracting, real estate and landlordism. Apart from these, in Alhaji H.'s view, 
those who remain as tailors can expect a lifetime of hard work and limited 
returns. As for himself, his own move into cap dealing arose partly out 
of the fact that his family were already involved in this work when he was 
a young man and also because he saw the advantage of diversifying his 
activities in order to spread his risks. In this regard, he was simply imitating, 
but on a much smaller scale, those better-off than himself. As for his own 
children, Alhaji H. does not wish them to become tailors. Although he grew 
up at a time when people had little access to, and did not value, western 
education and when personal mobility did not depend upon the acquisition of 
such education, he recognises that for his own children opportunities for 
secure employment will increasingly require attendance at western schools. 
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Alhaji A. of Hausawa Ward 
Alhaji A. runs a cap, gown and smock- producing workshop directly 
opposite that of Alhaji H. and is one of the leading market producers in 
357. 
the ward. He is well-respected by the local community because of his 
tailoring activities, his religious piety and his family's many generations of 
continuous residence in the area. In pre-colonial times, his ancestors were 
associated with the administration of emirate government. His paternal 
grandfather was a court jakada born in Galadanci ward, 19th century home 
of the Galadiman Kano who, according to Paden, " •••• was second in 
importance only to the emir" (Paden, 1973 : 51ft. 23). Galadanci shares 
a common border with Hausawa. Alhaji A.'s maternal grandfather was also 
a jakada, born in Hausawa, and a grandchild of the first magajin malam in 
the ward. Neither of these two grandparents did any tailoring and it was 
only during Alhaji A.'s father's generation that members of his family took 
up tailoring work. His father, born in Galadanci, spent much of his adult 
life as a jakada until the Kano Civil War at the end of the 19th century. 
At that time his father lost his position for not taking sides in the conflict. 
In order to earn a living, he turned to the hand sewing of caps. 
It is possible that Alhaji A. might have become a jakada himself but 
with his father's loss of office, the later British conquest of Kano and the 
subsequent abolition of the jakadanci system, his family's involvement in 
traditional emirate government was terminated. Instead, Alhaji A. took up 
tailoring, an occupation with which he has been associated for practically 
all of his working life. 
Born in Hausawa ward in 192'+, his first work experience was as a 
hand sewer of women's tops for an old machine tailor in the ward. Common 
among children and youths of the day , the work involved the hand- tacking 
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358. 
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{lallabtu} of pieces of cloth, a skill which he picked up by observing other 
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young tailors in the ward. 
During the 1930's his father sent him to work for the latter's half-
brother's son as a machine tailor of caps. After a few years, his boss 
packed up his business to go to Gwarzo but arranged forAlhaji A. to work 
for another tailor, a non- relative who also engaged in the machine production 
of caps. Two years later this man's business failed and Alhaji A. found .: '.' . 
work in another cap maker's workshop in D'iso, a ward close to Hausawa. 
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• This man subsequently became a good friend of Alhaji A. 
Some time before the second world war Alhaji A. began to branch 
... ' 
out on his own with money supplied to him by his mother who house- traded 
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in cloth. He bought a small roll of cloth which he had made up into plain ''' ,. 
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smocks by local machine tailors and which he then sold in the city market. .', 
Initially , Alhaji A. had no machine of his own but after a time he set up 
his own workshop and rented a sewing machine. 
Either during or just after the war he purchased from savings a second-
hand Singer machine for eleven Nigerian pounds from a city market tailor who 
was leaving tailoring to do another job. He worked alone for about two 
years by which time he felt able to marry. However, he sold his machine 
in order to buy wood to build a roof on his wife's room. For a year he 
",. 
struggled to get business and was helped considerably by his old employer- ",\ " 
friend in D'iso who allowed him to use his machine at no cost, save for the 
occasional gift of kola nuts. In time he was able to buy another second-hand 
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assembly machine and set up shop on the premises of a local tailor related "',. . .. .... 
to him through his grandmother. When his father died in 1951, Alhaji A. '-.. " " 
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inherited the home and built an entrance room (soro) onto the house which t '" ... I ~ 
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he began to use as a workshop. This is where he currently works. 
359. 
By the early 1950's he had purchased four single- stitch sewing machines 
and produced caps and gowns for sale in the market. At the end of the 
reign of the Emir of Kano, Abdullahi Bayero, in 1954 he moved into the 
machine embroidery market by purchasing a second-hand Bernina for eighty 
five Nigerian pounds, a large sum of money in those days. From that time 
to the present he has specialised in market production. His main period of 
business expansion was between the early 1950's and the late 1960's by which 
time he owned nine sewing machines and employed nine tailors. However, 
he then sold four of the machines at various times when business was poor 
and today owns only five, two embroidery and three assembly machines. 
A t present he employs five tailors who produce both plain and embroi-
dered smocks and gowns. All output is sold through the city market and 
' his main workshop tasks consist of organising production and the buying and 
selling of raw materials and finished commodities. Alhaji A. no longer 
tailors himself but he does cut all cloth for his workers, a job which he 
performs in a small room to the side of the main workshop. 
Two of his employees are relatives, one the son of his mother's younger 
brother, the other a son of a relative related to him through his grandparents. 
A third employee is a non- relative who works full - time while the remaining 
two hold down full - time jobs outside tailoring, working for Alhaji A. when 
demand is high. During the time that I knew him (a period of over eighteen 
months), Alhaji A. employed a number of workers besides those mentioned 
above. One left him after obtaining work at the local university as a mess-
enger, another left to work in a neighbour's workshop, and a third left to 
return to his natal home at Kura. The worker with the most continuous 
period of employment was the non-relative mentioned earlier. This man, 
originally from Tofa to the west of Kano, had come to Kano some fourteen 
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360. 
years earlier in search of tailoring work and after being employed at two 
other workshops obtained employment with Alhaji A. upon the recommendation 
of a gown seller who bought garments from him. Having no machine of his 
own, he is Alhaji A.'s most trusted worker who looks after the workshop when 
his employer is out on business. Besides his employer's work, he is allowed 
to use his sewing machine for private contracts. Although in his early 40's, 
he considers Alhaji A. more of a father than an employer. 
In addition to these workers, Alhaji A. allows his sister's son to use 
part of the workshop for his own business. He owns three machines and 
employs three young boys to make caps for him. 
Alhaji A. works for himself and has never entered into any sort of 
partnership with other tailors. However, he has long-standing commercial 
relations with both cloth and clothes dealers in the city market. Trans-
actions with these dealers involve cash and credit purchases and sales. 
As a self-made man, Alhaji A. has never been a member of a tailoring 
association and sees no use for one. He has been approached by -other 
tailors and trading friends to move out of tailoring into general contracting 
but has declined these invitations partly on the grounds of limited capital 
but largely, he says, because he does not wish to involve himself in the 
political and other entanglements (rigima) which such work entails. 
In the ward there are , besides his sister's son, three other market 
producers who are related to him through common grandparents. These 
three men are full brothers to each other and are all well-established tailors. 
Their father's mother and Alhaji A.'s father's mother were sisters, both 
daughters of a former Liman in the ward. 
He is married with four wives and eleven children, three of whom 
(all boys) are attending either primary or secondary school. The other boys 
t' .. 
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361. 
are too young for school but he expects to send them when old enough. 
His six female children are all under ten and not expected to receive any 
western education. Although Alhaji A. is considered to be one of the 
biggest tailors in the ward , a self- made man with years of experience as a 
tailor, he regards tailoring as an occupation with limited prospects and does ", " . 
not wish his children to follow in his footsteps. Rather , he hopes they will . , .. 
be able to obtain white-collar jobs in government. 
Although more prosperous than Alhaji H., he has seen better times. 
However, he continues to produce a fairly substantial quantity of garments 
on a regular basis. He does not specialise as narrowly as his neighbour 
" 
and is quick to adapt to changes in market demand. Thus, at anyone time 
his workers may be producing embroidered gowns, dozens of caps, plain work 
''' .. 
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, smocks and the more fashionable Hausa shirts known as D'an Barasoso. 
He is somewhat advantaged over other smaller producers in that he has 
built up good trading relations with suppliers and buyers and, through these 
relations, can often plan production on a longer- term basis than his compe-
titors. One particular tactic that he has used in the past is that of hiring 
labour at lower rates of pay just prior to the busy season, stocking the 
garments produced, and then selling them off, sometimes at a discount, when 
trade picks up. He is not the only one to do this, but such a practice has 
given him some advantage over the many smaller producers operating with 
one or two machines. Also, as he has practically withdrawn from production, 
he has much more time available to devote to buying materials and selling 
stock. Some of the smaller tailors sometimes complain that workshops such 
as those of Alhaji A. tend to attract the best tailors, particularly embroiderers, 
as they can offer a longer period of secure employment. Left with the less 
skilled machinists who are usually aware of the better conditions prevailing 
362. 
at the larger workshops, these smaller operators may be forced to offer 
higher rates of pay in order to obtain and retain labour or fall back upon 
less profitable cap-making. 
'.-.. :. 
Alhaji A. appears to have reached the limits of his ambition and does 
" ' 
not want to take any risks at this stage in his life by shifting into other 
types of work. With four wives and many children he has considerable 
expenses in maintaining his household and much of his income goes on this. 
However, three of his four wives do hand sewing of their own besides 
assisting their husband with subsidiary workshop tasks such as button-holing 
of smocks. 
He has some savings but does not have, and never has had, a bank 
account. He does, however, own a large compound and other assets in the 
form of sewing machines which he estimates to be worth over 1,000 Naira. 
He does no farming although he obtains some grain from two of his brothers 
who live close by. His main source of income remains tailoring and he 
devotes most of his time to obtaining orders from a network of garment 
dealers and marketing clothes in the market. 
Malam S. of Yalwa Ward: 
Of all the tailors in the three wards studied, Malam S. is one of the 
most successful. Aged about 40 in 1976, he is the son of Alhaji Rabi'u and 
nephew of Alhaji Babba, these two tailors being descendants of the putative 
founder of Eastern-Style tailoring in the ward. 
S. is one of six brothers all of whom are (or were) tailors. Two of 
S's brothers are dead, one dying in a motor accident while engaging in long-
distance trading in eastern-style clothing between Kano and Jos. Of the 
three other brothers, all are tailors with two specialising in hand sewing 
and one, S's younger brother, combining machine and hand tailoring. The 
363. 
whole family reside in Yalwa and Dogon Nama wards where they have lived 
for most of · their lives. 
S. has no western education but, like most Hausa, has had some 
Koranic schooling. He understands some Arabic but cannot write Hausa 
in Roman script and his reading ability is extremely rudimentary. 
S's work career has been largely in tailoring and he had his first 
tailoring experiences working for his father. Around the time of the second 
world war when S. was about six or seven years of age, his first work was 
as a thread spinner in his father's workshop 11. From here he progressed 
to the hand sewing of garments when about twelve years old. The first 
garments that he sewed were the Hausa waistcoats known as Falmaran which 
were very popular at that time. According to S., novice tailors were usually 
. given small amounts of sewing to do on garments which required little 
material. Thus, if a mistake was made it was not too serious and the 
poorly-made article could always be sold at a lower price. From the 
Falmaran he moved onto more difficult work on the Jabba, the Jauha and, 
finally, the Alkyabba. Then as now, S's family and kin produced better-
quality garments for the traditional aristocracy, politicians and wealthy 
merchants. 
During the late 1940's and early 1950's S. worked for both his father 
and his father's elder brother. His uncle, who was the more successful of 
the two brothers, taught him how to sell garments at the central city market. 
His father, who was getting older and wished to devolve more responsibility 
onto his son, taught him machine tailoring. S. moved his centre of operations 
from his kinsmens' workshops to that of a friend , although he continued to 
tailor for both his father and uncle. In about 1954, his uncle died and S. 
took the opportunity to leave Kano and travel to Ghana where he hoped 
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364. 
to be able to save some money and set himself up later on his own 1 2 . 
On his way to Ghana he worked in various jobs. Thus, in Awadi 
in Western State he spent some time buying up kola nuts in the rural areas 
and selling them in the market. He later moved to Abeokuta where he acted 
as an assistant to a Hausa cattle broker and then he lived in Ibadan ekeing 
out a living sorting out good kola nuts from bad for a local Hausa kola 
dealer 13. From Ibadan he travelled to Accra and lived with a close friend 
of his family. Employed as a hand tailor he spent one year there until his 
employer's business failed and then he got a job machine tailoring for a 
Lebanese tailor. This lasted a few months and eventually the Lebanese 
closed his business. 
He decided to return to Kano at the request of his father and began 
hand tailoring again. He also bought a sewing machine from his dead uncle'S 
son. However , for much of the 1960's he combined his own tailoring work 
with that of a local merchant. This merchant, a friend of his family's, used 
S. in a variety of ways. Besides hand tailoring of expensive garments which 
the merchant sold to local people, S. was sent to Lokoja to buy up what 
appears to have been barbiturates. He described what he bought as yellow 
pills which kept people awake (maganin barci or "medicine of sleep"). He 
also acted as his patron's agent in the smuggling trade between Niger 
Republic and Nigeria during the Nigerian Civil War (1967- 1970). From 
Maradi he brought lace and printed cloth (atamE~) back to Kano. Finally, 
he travelled to Borno selling garments for his merchant- patron. 
With money earned in this way he was able to establish himself more 
securely as a tailor in Yalwa. Thus, in addition to the one machine he 
already owned, he purchased a second-hand Singer in 1968 for about 50 
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365. 
Nigerian pounds. He also purchased a site for building his own workshop 
from his father. The site was bought sometime in the early 1960's and in 
1966 he built a workshop onto his home, the latter having been given to 
him by his father. 
From the late 1960's until the present S. has devoted most of his 
energies to his tailoring business, purchasing a further ten assembly sewing 
machines at a total cost of between 1,000 and 1,500 Naira. 
His present business is housed in an extremely neat shago-type work-
shop which contains seven single-stitch sewing machines of which five are 
in regular use. In addition to these, he rents out five machines to tailors 
in Fagge. There are five tailors working for him at the workshop all of 
whom, with the exception of one, are under twenty years of age. Their 
main functions are the assembly of gowns, the sewing- in of pockets a nd 
stitching of the distinctive Eastern-Style cord. like threads along the main 
seams of garments. All are allowed to use the machines for any work they 
can get on their own account as long as S's orders are filled first. 
Four of the five are relatives of the workshop head. Two are the 
sons of S's deaf-mute elder brother (a hand tailor working two doors away 
in the entrance room of his home), one is S's younger brother and the fourth 
is the son of one of S's two deceased brothers. The fifth employee is the 
son of a hand tailoring friend of S's father. In addition to these regular 
workers, others help out on occasion. For example, one son of S's parallel 
cousin (a former hand tailor but now a market trader in foodstuffs), who 
is waiting to enter the Government Arabic Teacher's College, is sometimes 
called on to assist in machine tailoring. Another occasional machine tailor 
is the son of S's parallel cousin's sister, a fifteen year old boy who lives 
in Madigawa ward. 
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366. 
S. also employs the services of many hand tailors in the ward. He 
estimates that they number over twenty and include mainly young boys and 
secluded married women. Some of the women rely on S. to provide them 
with inside seam sewing (sab'iya) but none of the other male hand sewers 
are employed exclusively by him. A few of these young boys are the 
children of kinsmen but most arenoib. Rather ; they are the children of 
neighbours in the three wards of Yalwa, Dogon Nama and Madigawa who 
circulate around the district looking for inside-seam sewing jobs and more 
sophisticated hand embroidery work such as zibi (foundation embroidery 
stitching), hak'ori ("teeth" embroidery along the necks of gowns) and dagi 
(knot-motif embroidery stitching found on the shoulders and sleeves of 'Van 
Marocco and 'Van Misra gowns). 
S's main role in the workshop is to obtain orders, purchase cloth and 
other raw materials, cut up cloth into the required pieces ready for assembly, 
the distribution of work among the many tailors who work for him, and the 
sale of completed garments. He obtains his business in a number of ways. 
First, he makes custom garments for personal clients who visit his workshop. 
These clients tend to be middle and upper-income consumers who can afford 
higher pr ices charged for Eastern-Sty le embroidered clothing. In particular, 
there is a heavy concentration upon 'Yar Marocco and 'Yar Misra garments. 
A number of customers come from traditional aristocratic families, wealthy 
merchant family circles and from among former politicians. The ability to 
attract such customers derives, in part, from the reputation S. has for good 
quality work. However, to some extent S. has been favoured by the fact 
that all of his senior kinsmen were engaged in production of garments for 
better-off clients for many years before he became an established tailor. 
This involvement goes back to the 19th century but the family has benefitted 
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367. 
greatly in recent times from being a supplier of garments to notables in 
the former northern regional government dominated by the Northern People's 
Congress. Both his father and uncle were once staunch supporters of the 
N.P.C. During the field work, there were no political parties and govern-
ment was run by the military. However, S. still obtained orders from former 
politicians and traditional aristocrats partly on the strength of these former 
relations. 
In addition to the wealthy and well-connected, S. supplies clothing 
to civil servants and to clerical and administrative workers in the public 
sector. Through such customers S. is able to ensure for himself a regular 
supply of artisanal work spread out over the year as those who buy from 
him earn salaries and are not subject to the same seasonal variations in 
income as are found among other categories of consumers. 
Another way in which business is obtained is by selling garments 
through his former patron who owns a wholesale textile business in Kantin 
Kwari 14. This man displays some of S's garments in his shop and also sells 
through his own networks of clients and friends. S. often buys batches of 
cloth from this shop which saves him money as he does not have to rely 
upon retail cloth traders who generally charge higher prices. He also 
disposes of some garments through another merchant with a variety of 
businesses in Kantin Kwari, Sabon Gari and Kurmi market. This merchant 
is a former tailor who in the past put-out work to S. and also helped him 
to obtain supplies of thread direct from the factory. S, for sound business 
reasons, maintains these connections. 
Part of S's garment output is sold through long-distance trading net-
works with Borno. One or two local traders who travel regularly to Borno 
are provided with garments from S's workshop which they sell in the Borno 
... 
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368. 
markets. Taking twenty or thirty gowns at a time , these men are given 
garments on credit or pay S. in part before leaving. In this way S. is able 
D, ' 
to extend his business far beyond the purely local and state- wide markets 
in the Hausa heartlands. 
Garments are also sold in Kurmi market where S. deals with a local 
market trader. Again credit is supplied to this man although Sule prefers 
., , 
to be paid in cash for any transactions. He supplies finished garments only '.' 
to the trader as he is apprehensive about entering into putting-out arrange-
ments with commercial intermediaries. His apprehension is based upon a 
previous experience with another market trader, a distant relative of S's 
" 
, " 
on his mother's side, who supplied him with cloth which S made up into . . ,:
garments which were then sold by the same trader. S. suspected that the 
" 
man was cheating him as he was constantly being told that the market was ,. 
: . 
bad and so profits were low. S. checked on market prices and came to the 
..... : .. .... 
conclusion that his relative was selling at high prices while telling him that 
, " 
he could only sell at lower prices. This arrangement lasted for about six 
to eight months when S. terminated it. 
This experience taught S. never to rely purely on a single source 
for the disposal of garments but to diversify his commercial outlets. This 
he has been able to do quite successfully. 
Finally, S. obtains part of his business from other tailors in the ward 
who come to him with garments which they require to be made-up. He 
is not alone in providing this kind of service but he is recognised as an honest 
man with a reputation for completing work on time. Customers of this type 
are usually hand embroiderers who do not possess a sewing machine and who 
must seek out a machine tailor to do the assembly work. 
S's business has prospered considerably since the end of the civil 
,,",' .'. : ~' ... 
369. 
war and he is considered to be one of the leading tailors in the ward. 
However, he is by no means a wealthy man although much better off than 
most tailors. His ambition is to leave tailoring and become a wholesale 
textile merchant like his former patron. This he expects to achieve with 
the help of his former employer and the other tailor mentioned earlier who 
now runs a successful merchandising business. Through them he hopes to 
secure a shop in Kantin Kwari which he will stock with cloth purchased 
with his own savings. He would not tell me how much money he had saved 
but said he had not reached the required amount to allow him to take this 
step. Married with one wife he expressed the view that he would not seek 
to marry a second wife until he was more secure financially. He commented . , " 
that some men waste their assets by conspicuous consumption, including 
", , 
having more wives than they can afford. His view was that a second or 
third wife would constitute a drain on his resources and so prevent him from 
accumulating enough capital to make the breakthrough into merchandising. 
S's relative success as a tailor is based on a number of factors. 
Coming from a well- respected tailoring family with important business links 
with the better-off, he has been able to use those links to his own advantage. 
He has certainly been more successful than two of his other brothers of 
roughly comparable age. Thus, one elder brother remains a hand tailor who 
owns no sewing machines and relies upon artisanal work mixed with a little 
market production and some tailoring supplied on a putting-out basis by, 
.," 
among others, his younger brother S. This man was helped by his father 
11'- ,' to set up on his own but appears to have failed to expand his operations 
c~: .. , 
beyond that of hand sewing. He envies S. and wants to be like him but ·-of • 
. ' , 
-.. l~ I 
cites as the reason for not being able to do so the absence of enough 
capital. The difference between this man and S. is obvious from my 
,_ I 
370. 
observation of their behaviour in the ward. Whereas S. is constantly busy 
organising production in his workshop, visiting the various markets , arranging 
deals with visiting traders and the like, the elder brother spends much of 
his time sitting around the ward sewing the odd garment. 
S's other elder brother is a different case. Although S. and other 
local tailors consider this man to be a superior hand sewer to most, he is 
handicapped by being a deaf- mute which makes it difficult for him to communi-
cate and organise the activities of others who, under different circumstances, 
would be able to work for him. He has been a deaf-mute since birth and 
I suspect that his family have not expected him to achieve the same kind 
of success as S. Rather, he has concentrated upon becoming an expert 
hand embroiderer, a goal which he has been clearly able to achieve. His 
main work consists of embroidering expensive garments for wealthy clients 
and from this he earns a good income. He has also trained a number of 
tailors in the ward some of whom continue to work for him. In addition, 
he receives work from S. He spends most of his time embroidering in the 
entrance room to his home where he also teaches one of his sons. 
The undoubted assistance that S. has received from his family in 
obtaining business is only one of the important influences that have shaped 
his success. His travels outside Hausaland provided him with some useful 
business experience and although he did not acquire as much cash as he had 
expected , he did come back with enough to set himself up in a small way. 
However, what had the most effect upon him was his experiences working 
for the merchant-patron. Apart from the money he earned in this way, 
he began to see the possibility of becoming a merchant himself. By culti-
vating this relationship and, to a lesser extent, his relationship with the 
former tailor, he feels he is now in a better position to begin the break 
.' 
", 
371. 
. . ..i ... 
" .-
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with tailoring. Although tailoring has been good to him, S. considers that 
merchandising offers far more opportunity to earn a higher income and 
consolidate his position. Furthermore, by becoming a merchant he can still 
keep one foot in tailoring if he so wishes through the integration of his pro-
ductive activities with those of commerce, although he is hopeful that success 
in commerce will allow him to abandon tailoring altogether. 
The kind of success these three men have achieved in their tailoring 
work lives can be summarised as follows. First, in contrast with most petty 
producers, they have built up their businesses to the point where they no 
longer need to work as direct physical producers. Rather, they are able 
to devote their time and energy to predominantly managerial functions. 
In their own eyes and in the eyes of other tailors this represents a form of 
upward social mobility. They have freed themselves from the drudgery of " 
physical labour, realised a degree of autonomy in their work activities, and " . , 
can command the labour-power of others. Second, their workshop activities 
"",,:., .. ". 
, " 
allow them to secure greater personal incomes than those which accrue to 
tailoring employees and own-account workers. Just how much greater these 
incomes are is difficult to say as they do not keep records , other than in 
their heads, of earnings. However, they estimate that they earn at least 
two to three times as much as other tailors in the local area 15. Furthermore, ," 
their capital assets, largely in the form of sewing machines, are greater than 
those of other tailors. FinaUy, their greater capital resources and higher 
personal incomes provide them with a more secure financial base from which 
to move into other, more lucrative, types of work such as trading. However, 
as I shall suggest below, their ability to make this kind of move should not 
by exaggerated. 
.~ j • 4 
'\ '-' 
In accounting for these producers' comparatively greater degree of 
372. 
success, a number of factors can be suggested. First , in the case of the 
two Hausawa tailors, sheer perseverance and persistence over many years 
have played some part in allowing them to reach the positions they now 
enjoy. Indeed, of all the larger producers sampled, some eighty per cent 
have spent a minimum of fifteen years as market producers; some, Alhaji A. 
and Alhaji H. included, as long as twenty five to thirty years. Second, all 
three have built up strong commercial relations with many trading inter-
mediaries and have become intimately acquainted with the workings of the 
market. Third , Alhaji A. and Alhaji H., along with other long-established 
producers, benefitted from the post-war expansion in demand for clothing 
during which time demand outstripped supply. Malam S.'s business received 
a boost in the 1970's when, as a consequence of the rising incomes and growth 
. in numbers of predominantly urban middle and upper- income consumers 
stimulated by the massive injections of oil money into the economy, the 
demand grew for the higher-priced and better-quality Eastern-Style garments 
for which he, and his family, were noted. Fourth, Malam S. also gained 
some advantage from the fact that he comes from a family having long 
historical links with tailoring and who, by the time S. reached manhood, had 
secured an extensive network of customers in Kano and elsewhere. Malam S. 
certainly drew upon these networks in building up his own business. Fifth, 
Malam S. and Alhaji A. have tended to specialise in the production of a wide 
range of often higher-priced embroidered garments rather than concentrating 
entirely upon one particular line of cheaply-made clothing such as caps. 
This has given them a degree of flexibility in their production strategies, 
allowing them to switch production from one line to another as the occasion 
demands. As a consequence of this, they have been able to maintain a more 
regular turnover in production when compared with the smaller and more 
I ' 11' 
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373. 
narrow ly specialised producers. Sixth, Malam S.'s success derives in part 
from his ability to diversify the outlets through which he sells his commodities. 
Thus, he makes some cheaper garments for sale to the city market, fills 
orders from personal clients, many of them wealthy men, draws on his cloth 
merchant patron to dispose of some portion of his output, and supplies quan-
tities of clothing to long-distance traders who can reach markets far beyond 
the confines of Kano State. Seventh, once having established themselves 
as larger and well-known producers able to produce large quantities of 
garments at anyone time when compared with smaller operators, Malam 5., 
Alhaji A., and, to a lesser extent, Alhaji H., have been able to offer batches 
of clothing for sale at a discount to buyers and, in this way, under-priced 
some of their competitors. Also, given the seasonality of demand, they 
-. 
have been better able than many others to mobilise their greater productive 
resources to produce large quantities of garments for dealers at times of 
increased market activity. Finally, savings in unit costs have been realised 
through the splitting up of work tasks between assemblers and embroiderers 
and within assembly and embroidery. Malam S.'s operations would appear 
to be the most sophisticated in this regard through his extensive use of 
putting-out arrangements with male and female embroiderers specialising 
in various aspects of embroidery as detail workers. Savings have also been 
made through bulk purchases of cloth from wholesalers. 
I have discussed the factors which have been of some advantage to 
these producers in their tailoring work. In concluding this discussion it 
should be pointed out that, despite their greater scale of operations and 
the higher incomes they enjoy; all three consider tailoring to be a risky 
business from which only a modest living can be obtained, a view shared 
by most tailors in the three wards. In making this judgement, they point 
373. 
narrowly specialised producers. Sixth, Malam S.'s success derives in part 
from his ability to diversify the outlets through which he sells his commodities. 
Thus, he makes some cheaper garments for sale to the city market, fills 
orders from personal clients, ma ny of them wealthy men, draws on his cloth 
merchant patron to dispose of some portion of his output, and supplies quan-
tities of clothing to long- distance traders who · can reach markets far beyond 
the confines of Kano State. Seventh, once having established themselves 
as larger and well-known producers able to produce large quantities of 
garments at anyone time when compared with smaller operators, Malam S., 
Alhaji A., and, to a lesser extent, Alhaji H., have been able to offer batches 
of clothing for sale at a discount to buyers and, in this way, under-priced 
some of their competitors. Also , given the seasonality of demand, they 
have been better able than many others to mobilise their greater productive 
resources to produce large quantities of ga rments for dealers at times of 
increased market activity. Finally, savings in unit costs have been realised 
through the splitting up of work tasks between assemblers and embr:oiderers 
and within assembly and embroidery. Malam S.'s operations would appear 
to be the most sophisticated in this regard through his extensive use of 
putting-out arrangements with male and female embroiderers specia lising 
in various aspects of embroidery as detail workers. Savings have also been 
made through bulk purchases of cloth from wholesalers. 
I have discussed the factors which have been of some advantage to 
these producers in their tailoring work. In concluding this discussion it 
should be pointed out that, despite their greater scale of operations and 
the higher incomes they enjoy, all three consider tailoring to be a risky 
business from which only a modest living can be obtained, a view shared 
by most tailors in the three wards. In making this judgement, they point 
. . ,1 
" 
. . " 
.' . 
374. 
to many of the reasons mentioned earlier, namely, uncertain markets, fierce 
competition, lack of access to secure financing , an indifferent government 
and so on. In contrast, they argue that real wealth comes not from tailoring 
but from large-scale commerce, contracting, real estate investment, landlordism, 
and employment in the higher reaches of government and the public service, 
the latter being included not so much because of the salary one can earn 
(although that is substantial) but rather because of the privileged access 
government service gives one to contracts, trading opportunities and the 
like. As they do not possess the education, experience or connections 
necessary to obtain good government jobs nor sufficient income to invest in 
land and real estate, it is in the commercial sector that they see the greatest 
opportunities for people like themselves. However, Alhaji A. refused to 
. utilise his resources to diversify beyond tailoring into contracting when the 
opportunity arose partly, I suspect, because he feared the risks such a move 
entailed. Alhaji H., despite over thirty years as a tailor, has only been 
able to establish himself as a small-scale cap dealer which suggests that 
his earnings have not been sufficiently large or secure enough to allow him 
to expand his trading business. In addition, the competitive pressures from 
large numbers of cap dealers has surely limited his own prospects for advance-
ment. In my view, neither men have become sufficiently prosperous through 
" . 
tailoring to contemplate a complete break with garment production. Nor, 
given their age, are they likely to in the future. 
,~ 
Only Malam S. appears to be on the way to becoming a cloth merchant 
and in order to do this he requires not only a considerable amount of money .• ' 'I .... 
but also the assistance of established merchants to help him out. In the 
short term, he is likely to become a trading client of his former employer 
and patron rather than an autonomous merchant. Given his merchant 
374. 
to many of the reasons mentioned earlier, namely, uncertain markets, fierce 
competition, lack of access to secure financing , an indifferent government 
and so on. In contrast, they argue that real wealth comes not from tailoring 
but from large-scale commerce, contracting, real estate investment, landlordism, 
and employment in the higher reaches of government and the public service, 
the latter being included not so much because of the salary one can earn 
(although that is substantial) but rather because of the privileged access 
government service gives one to contracts, trading opportunities and the 
like. As they do not possess the education, experience or connections 
necessary to obtain good government jobs nor sufficient income to invest in 
land and real estate, it is in the commercial sector that they see the greatest 
opportunities for people like themselves. However, Alhaji A. refused to 
utilise his resources to diversify beyond t ailoring into contracting when the 
opportunity a rose partly, I suspect , because he feared the risks such a move 
entailed. Alhaji H., despite over thirty years as a tailor, has only been 
able to establish himself as a small-scale cap dealer which suggests that 
his earnings have not been sufficiently large or secure enough to allow him 
to expand his trading business. In addition, the competitive pressures from 
large numbers of cap dealers has surely limited his own prospects for advance-
ment. In my view, neither men have become sufficiently prosperous through 
tailoring to contemplate a complete break with garment production. Nor, 
given their age , are they likely to in the future. 
Only Malam S. appears to be on the way to becoming a cloth merchant 
and in order to do this he requires not only a considerable amount of money 
but also the assistance of established merchants to help him out. In the 
short term , he is likely to become a trading client of his fo rmer employer 
and patron rather than an autonomous merchant. Given his merchant 
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connections, his relative youth, and the much greater confidence ' he has 
in his commercial ability, he is the only one of the three who can be 
expected to make the break with tailoring at some future date. 
WORKER CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG HAUSAWA EMPLOYEES 
375. 
As noted earlier, market-oriented producers, such as the ones described 
in the case studies, account for the bulk of extra labour employed in tailoring 
workshops across the three wards. Furthermore, of the three wards, it is in 
Hausawa that one finds the clearest development of a workshop division of 
labour between workshop heads and dependent workers. This division is 
recognised by many Hausawa employees and apprentices who describe them-
selves as direbobi (drivers) and in so doing distinguish themselves as a separate 
category of producer from employers and own-account workers 16 • 
In using this term, Hausawa workers have two features of their work 
situation in mind. First, the term is used in a literal sense in that workers 
see themselves as driving the sewing machines. It also implies that they do 
most of the hard physical labour involved in sewing. Second, they regard 
themselves as occupying a subordinate position in production, being subject 
to the authority of those for whom they work. This subordination takes a 
number of forms. As most possess no means of production of their own, 
they cannot independently decide what they are to produce but must wait 
upon instructions from their employer. Nor can they determine when they 
are to work as it is the employers' responsibility to find work for them to 
do. Thus, their earnings depend greatly upbn the employers' managerial 
and entrepreneurial skills in obtaining supplies of raw materials and disposing 
of completed garments. 
Many subordinate workers are dissatisified with their current work 
." 
." 
376. 
situation and the dissatisfaction revolves around two main issues. The first, 
and most important, issue concerns earnings. Thus, some sixty one per cent 
of all workshop employees mention pay as the problem which gives them 
most trouble in their work. The majority of these consider that they are 
not paid enough for the work they do. In addition, many complain that 
they are not paid regularly enough or are not paid on time, having to wait 
until their employers have found a market for the garments they produce. 
Second, a further twenty three per cent of all workers express dissatisfaction 
with the fact that they are unable to branch out on their own as tailors. 
The two issues are linked to some degree in that many workers offer as 
an explanation for their inability to become self-employed the low and 
irregular earnings they receive which makes it difficult for them to save 
and invest in a sewing machine. Thus, about eighty four percent of all 
workshop employees are in some respect dissatisfied with their current work. 
Only sixteen per cent express no dissatisfaction. It should also be noted 
that about ninety per cent of workers, regardless of whether or not they 
are dissatisfied with their present jobs, state that they would prefer, if they 
had the choice, to be self-employed tailors rather than workshop employees. 
Although the majority of workers are dissatisfied with their current 
jobs, and some articulate their dissatisfaction as a specific grievance against 
particular employers, there are a number of factors which inhibit the 
emergence of a common trans-workshop worker identity based on a genera-
lised opposition to employers as a whole. 
First, workers are employed in many small- scale workshops each of 
which is run by a single workshop head. This fragmentation of production 
units, together with the fact that workshops are to a certain extent in 
competition with each other for a share of the market, encourages workers 
'PI " . , 
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. 
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377. 
to identify with the fortunes of their particular employers rather than with 
workers in other workshops 17. Workshop heads tend to be ranked along 
a broad good-bad continuum on the basis of which some employers come 
off better than others. This tendency to make judgements about particular 
workshops militates against the development of any overriding categorical 
judgement about workshops as a whole. Thus, one employer might be seen 
as offering more regular work than another, allowing greater private access 
to a sewing machine or being more generous with small loans at times of 
need or gifts on festive occasions. 
Workers in Hausawa also draw a broad distinction between cap- making 
workshops and those which engage in the production of other garments. 
As noted earlier, older workers prefer to work in the latter because pay 
rates are better, work is less mechanical, and a wider range of skills are 
acquired. This division isolates ~ to some degree, older workers from younger 
ones and allows the possibility of some mobility into superior workshops. 
Second, identification with particular employers is reinforced by the 
fact that a significant minority of workshop employees (about one third) are 
kinsmen of those for whom they work. These kin ties help to lessen the 
extent to which employees see themselves as bound solely to their employers 
by purely contractual and impersonal bonds. Indeed, as most are junior 
kinsmen who have obtained their present positions through direct father- to-
son inheritance or through the efforts of senior relatives, they are bound by 
Hausa cultural norms which stress obedience to elders and respect for one's 
kin. Under these circumstances, any workshop conflict translates itself 
into a family matter rather than an industrial issue. The resolution of con-
flicts defined in this way precludes appeals to workmates or other tailor-
employees in the ward. Even in other workshops where non-kin are employed, 
01' 
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378. 
most workers are known personally to those for whom they work as friends, 
friends of kinsmen, neighbours and children of kin and neighbours. These 
diffuse ties encourage a loyalty to particular workshop heads, especially 
when reinforced by paternalistic acts on the part of employers. 
Third, many workshop heads are themselves workers in that they work 
alongside their employees and perform many of the same tasks. Thus, 
employees tend to see such tailors as not much better off than themselves, 
being forced out of necessity to engage in physical labour , rather than remote 
figures enjoying a leisurely life at their, the workers', expense. Indeed, 
this can have the paradoxical effect of increasing worker identification with 
their employers. A striking example of this occurred when Hausawa cap-
makers attempted a stop-work action against cap dealers in the market. 
It will be recalled from an earlier discussion that this action was instigated 
by a number of workshop heads in the ward whose profitability was jeopar-
dised by a combination of rising cloth prices and stagnant selling prices of 
caps produced. Although the action was initially taken to maintain profit-
ability and so might be viewed as working solely in the interest of workshop 
owners, many cap-making employees supported their bosses' actions. In my 
discussions with employees it became clear that they identified their main 
enemy as those commercial interests who controlled the supplies of raw 
materials and outlets for finished goods. These employees saw that their 
own survival depended to a considerable extent on producers being able to 
wrest concessions from the commercial sector. Of course, they were not 
happy at the prospect of losing pay and , among some at least, there was 
a degree of ambivalence about the whole matter. However, even the most 
sceptical could see that their own ea rnings depended upon the prices at 
which the products of their labour were sold. 
. ' .. ' 
. . 
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379. 
Fourth j practically all workers reject the idea that they might be 
forced, because of a lack of opportunities, to remain tailoring employees 
for the rest of their work lives. Most are sufficiently optimistic about the 
possibilities which exist for some degree of individual upward mobility that 
they do not consider that they are permanently locked into a position of 
subordination as tailors 1 8. This generally held perception weakens the 
development of a common belief among tailors that it is only through 
collective solidarity and action as employees that they are likely to improve 
their general economic standing. 
The vast majority of employees (over ninety per cent) aspire to jobs 
outside tailoring, with a significant proportion wanting to become traders. 
Furthermore, some eighty per cent of those with aspirations expect to be 
able to realise them. Overall, more than seventy five per cent both aspire 
to , and expect to obtain, other jobs (see Table 10.7 for a full list of tailors' 
aspirations) 19 • 
Just how realistic they are in their aspirations is difficult to say. 
Certainly, some of the older workers who have spent many years as tailoring 
employees privately express doubts about, for example, their ability to save 
enough money to become self-employed traders, pointing out that the capital 
costs of starting up on their own are much greater today ' than in the past. 
Also, many young workers who are just beginning to make the transition 
to adulthood and with limited work experience have not, as yet, attempted 
to actually realise their ambitions. 
On the other hand, there are some grounds for believing that their 
aspirations are not totally unrealistic and that, even if they do not obtain 
the specific jobs they desire, there are other possibilities open to them 
besides that of an indefinite future as tailoring employees. Thus, a few 
h • - • 
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380. 
. I ~'" 
TABLE 10.7 Hausawa tailoring employees' job aspirations and 
expectations. (N=61) 
", . 
Aspiration Expects to Doesn't expect to Realise aspiration r ealise aspiration 
Type No. No. No. 
None 3 
Self- employed 5 5 tailor 
Cloth/clothing 13 10 3 trader 
Sewing machine 2 2 trader 
Soap trader 1 1 
Smuggler 1 1 
Any trade 14 12 2 
Driver 2 1 1 
Government 8 5 3 
wage job 
Private company 
or government 4 4 
'1age job 
Trader or govern- 1 1 
ment wage job 
Malam/teacher 3 3 
General labourer 2 2 
Doesn't know 2 
TOTAL 61 47 9 
employees , albeit a minority, already alternate between tailoring and other 
kinds of work, including own-account tailoring. These local examples 
provide tailors with some evidence that, at the very least, one can supple-
ment one's tailoring income with earnings from other sources, perhaps even 
leave tailoring altogether. Also , many t ailoring employees point to innumer-
." 
able examples of local people, including friends, neighbours and relatives , .,-
who started out as tailoring employees and eventually worked their way up 
, "', 
to become workshop heads, self -employed traders , government labourers and 
the like. Indeed, about forty three per cent of workers already have (or 
381. 
have had) either a father or other kinsmen with jobs similar to those to which 
the tailors aspire (see Table 10.8). Over half of these expect some financial 
or other help from such kinsmen in realising their own ambitions while the 
remainder argue that if their kinsmen can do it, so can they. Furthermore, 
another eleven per cent of workers have, during their own work careers , 
done one or more jobs similar to their present job aspirations 2 0 • 
TABLE 10.8 Tailor's aspirations by kin and/or self-involvement in 
types of job aspired to: Hausawa employees. (N;56) 
Aspiration 
Father Only 
Cloth/clothing 
trader 
Sewing machine 
trader 
Soap trader 
Smuggler 
General trading 
Trading or government 
wage labourer 
Private company or 
government wage 
labourer 
Government wage 
labourer 
Driver 
Malam/teacher 
Self-employed tailor 
General labourer 
TOTAL 
2 
2 
3 
1 
1 
1 
10 
Kin/Self Involvement 
Other Kin 
Only 
5 
1 
3 
9 
Both 
3 
2 
1 
6 
Neither 
7 
1 
1 
5 
4 
6 
2 
2 
1 
2 
31 
4 
4 
1 
1 
3 
2 
1 
NB. Table excludes "don't knows" and those with no aspirations, 
a total of 5 cases. 
1 The total for those with previous work experiences in jobs 
similar to those to which they aspire is greater than the 
eleven per cent- figure given in the text. This is because 
it includes tailors with own previous experience only plus 
those with own previous experience and who have relatives 
with jobs similar to those aspired to. 
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382. 
It should also be noted that, although few tailors express as a first 
choice a desire to become self-employed tailors or workshop heads employing 
others , most (sixty four per cent) have one or more kinsmen or affines in 
Hausawa, other parts of the city, or elsewhere who are self -employed tailors. 
Thus, as many made it clear to me, if all else fails they can always set them-
selves up in their own workshops just as many of their kinsmen have done. 
Finally, tailoring employees do not constitute an occupational community, 
the development of which has been suggested by one commentator on African 
affairs as a possible factor contributing to the formation of a worker cons-
ciousness (Sandbrook, 1981). The essential point made by Sandbrook, and 
by other writers (Salaman, 1974-; Bulmer, 1975), is that people who see 
themselves as members of occupational communities build their whole lives 
around their work such that it permeates their leisure-time activities, friend-
ship networks , values and interests. The implication of this for worker 
consciousness is that t as Sandbrook puts it : 
way: 
••• • interaction and communication both on and off the 
job can reinforce common views of the world and the 
legitimacy of shared grievances. (Sandbrook, 1981 : 25). 
In more general terms, Salaman defines the concept in the following 
An occupational community means that people who are 
members of the same occupation or who work together 
have some sort of common life together and are , to 
some extent, separate from the rest of society. The 
most important element of this separation, and the one 
that has been employed most often as the defining 
characteristic of an occupational community, is 'the 
convergence of informal friendship patterns and 
colleague relations' • •.• (Salaman, 1974- : 19., ft. 4-) 
H. 
.. 
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" 
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, "'. 
383. 
Similarly, Sandbrook speaks of occupational communities as being 
characterised by: 
• • • • the tendency of people who work together, or who 
at least share a common occupation and economic activity , 
to spend their leisure time together • • •• these communities 
tend to be self-enclosed, that is, to act as reference groups 
for those who belong in matters of behaviour and opinion. 
(Sandbrook, 1981 : 25). 
Sandbrook selects three factors as of special importance in structuring 
the development of occupational communities: shiftwork , physical isolation, 
and common residence. With regard to shift work, tailoring employees are 
not particularly distinguishable from other workers in terms of the times at 
which they work. Most work "normal" hours, usually from early morning to 
late evening, during which time they are able to meet with a wide variety 
of people. "Abnormal" hours, for example, throughout the night, are worked 
only when there are rush orders such as during parts of the dry season, at 
Ramadan and at other feast days. Even at these times tailors are not 
" .••• out of phase with the rest of their social world •• • • " (Blakelock, as 
quoted in Salaman, 1974 : 35) as many other people in the ward are either 
working themselves or going about their business at all hours. 
Neither are tailoring employees physically isolated from other members 
of the community through either common residence in workers' estates or 
residential concentration within more heterogeneous residential areas. Most 
tailors live close to their places of work and workplaces are scattered 
throughout a ward or wards, these latter being mixed-class communities of 
traders, clerks, labourers, merchants , aristocrats , government officials and, 
it should be emphasised, workshop heads who employ tailors. 
.,. 
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" . 
'.' 
384. 
Although Hausawa employees are drawn from a relatively narrow 
residential zone, there is no exclusive concentration of such workers in 
identifiable neighbourhoods within such a zone. Nor do they constitute 
anything like a working class sub-culture as they belong to households in 
which other kinsmen pursue a wide range of occupations such as petty trading, 
labouring, market trading , own-account tailoring and the like. 
Sand brook also mentions ethnic homogeneity as a factor which can 
reinforce a sense of occupational community. However, tailoring employees 
(as well as practically all other types of tailors in Hausawa and the other 
wards) are indistinguishable on ethnic grounds from the broad mass of the 
Kano city population. There is, thus, no ethnic division between tailors 
and non-tailors or between tailoring employees and those for whom they 
work which might, under other circumstances, contribute to a heightening 
of their sense of isolation from , and possible antagonism towards, the 
broader community. 
In the absence of anything like an occupational community among 
tailoring employees, the latter are not encapsulated by their work roles 
to such a degree that the occupation acts as a reference group for them. 
They show no particular preference for other tailors as friends with whom 
they socialise outside working hours and their work activities do not pervade 
their non- work lives. Indeed , workers make a clear distinction between 
work and non-work and as soon as they are able to put down their tools 
and engage in other pursuits, they do so. 
The comments made so far on the factors which inhibit the growth 
of an employee-based oppositional consciousness are based on observations 
in Hausawa ward. My comments apply a fortiori to the other two wards 
intensively studied where the division between workshop heads and employees 
n, 
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385. 
(direbobi) is even less developed. Wit h regard to the city as a whole, I 
would suggest that many, if not all , of the conditions pertaining in Hausawa 
ward are replicated to a greater or lesser extent in other wards where there 
exist concentrations of tailoring workshops. Given the lack of any well-
developed sense of oppositional consciousness among Hausawa employees, 
and assuming a similar sta te of affairs exists in other pa rts of the city, the 
likelihood of any trans-city tailoring employee movement emerging seems 
remote. The few attempts that have been made in the past to organise 
t ailors into an official tailoring associa tion have not been employee- inspired. 
Rather, the inspiration has come from tailoring employers and own-account 
market and artisanal market producers whose aims have been different from, 
although not necessarily detrimental to, what one might expect to be the 
central concerns of a purely employee or worker-oriented organisation. 
I should point out, however, that many workers in Hausawa do see 
the advantage of forming , or belonging to, an organisation dedicated in some 
way to improving their economic position and I would like to conclude this 
discussion by making a few observations on tailoring employees' views on 
this subject. 
Most Hausawa employees (eighty four per cent or 51 cases) consider 
a tailors' organisation to be a good idea. However, there is a diversity 
of opinion, and a certain degree of vagueness on the part of many, as to 
what functions such an organisation should serve (see Table 10.9). 
From the table it can be seen that a minority of tailors (less than 
twenty five per cent) regard the main function of an organisation to be the 
improvement of workers' pay. Over twenty per cent specify functions which 
a re not exclusively employee-oriented, for example, buying materials in bulk, 
fixing sale prices of garments and controlling outlets of finished products. 
" If 
... .... 
386. 
TABLE 10.9 Hausawa tailoring employees' views on the main function 
of a tailors' association. 
Main Function 
Train tailors in popular styles 
Buy raw materials in bulk 
Provide outlets for finished products 
Fix prices of finished products 
Improve rates of pay 
Organise tailors 
Sees no use in an organisation 
Doesn't know 
TOTAL 
No. 
1 
2 
3 
7 
14 
23 
8 
3 
61 
% 
1.5 
3.5 
5.0 
11.5 
23.0 
37.5 
13.0 
5.0 
100.0 
Although it can be argued that some of these aims , if realised, would indirectly 
benefit employees , the responsibility for achieving them would appear to 
be vested in the hands of workshop heads rather than employees themselves. 
A considerable proportion of all workers (over one third) are unable 
to specify exactly what they think an organisation should do. Typically, 
these tailors give such general answers as helping tailors to work together, 
improving the progress of the occupation, and helping each other out at 
times of need , answers which I classify under the general rubric of "organising 
tailors". 
What is perhaps more interesting is that less than one third of all 
workers (consisting of all those who see an organisation as concerned with 
improving rates of pay and five of those who regard it as helping to organise 
tailors) think that membership should be Hmi ted to employees and apprentices, 
and some of these hesitate to exclude all workshop heads , especially those 
workshop heads with the smallest workshops. The rest (excluding the don't 
knows and those who see no use in an organisation) feel membership should 
be open to all tailors. 
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387. 
1/_ ' • 
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From these few data it can be concluded that there is no overwhelming 
feeling among tailoring employees that a tailor's organisation ought to be 
predominantly or exclusively employee-based and concerned with largely 
employee-centred issues such as rates of pay. 
Unfortunately, I did not quantify to what extent employees consider 
any organisation would be successful in getting off the ground. However, 
from many conversations with tailors a number of observations can be made. 
First, the attempt by some workshop heads to organise a boycott 
of the market is fresh in the mind of many tailors who, because of the boy-
cott's limited success, are pessimistic about the prospects of any future 0' 
" " ,I 
organisation's chances. 
Second , two of the most vociferous proponents of a purely employee-
based organisation are equally pessimistic about the chances of such an organ- ... ' .... 
isation getting established. Among the reasons they give for their pessimism 
are: the lack of staying power or patience of most tailors, the sheer diffi- ': .. ' . 
culty of getting everyone to agree on a set of common aims , the poor 
•. . ~ . 
financial resourCes of the majority of prospective members to sustain them- ; ',It 1 
selves during a protracted dispute, and the ability of some workshop heads '0 • I~ ,: • : 
', .J, 
to play off one worker against another through threats not to re-employ 
them and give any outstanding work to other tailors or financial bribes in 
the form of promises to push more of the work their way. 
These two men are also uncertain as to whether any organisation 
should be ward or city-based. They both feel that the best chance for any 
;'r .' 
....... 
.. 
• :! .. 
organisation rests on drawing workers together from all over the city but 
, .. ,' , 
are at a loss to provide any clear guidelines as to how this might be achieved. 
Third , none of the workers have themselves been members of tailoring 
employee organisations in the past (although most supported the earlier 
, ~ .;J'·t!i 
•• 0 
388. , . . 
. .. 
.,-, ' 
boycott) and none know of any that had been, or are being, formed; In 
addition, practically none of the workshop employees in Hausawa have any 
experience working in large-scale enterprises where trade unions are most . , :j)l~" 
typically found. Furthermore, only two men have ever participated in a 
workers' strike and both lost their jobs as a consequence. This lack of 
industrial organising and organisational experience, especially when combined 
with the other factors mentioned, is likely to constitute an obstacle in the 
way of any future attempts at establishing a broad-based employees' union. 
389. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER X 
1. The small size of my sample of market tailors precludes me from saying what 
proportion of the market for clothing in the region is supplied by urban Kano 
market producers. To determine this would require an examination of total 
clothing consumption in the north and the amounts supplied by imports and 
by northern producers (both artisanal and market - oriented) in the region's 
many towns, villages and cities, a task which this study was not designed to 
carry out . 
2. City market dealers also buy from tailors in Fagge , Gyadi - Gyadi and other 
quarters located around the eastern and southern edges of the old city. Sabon 
Gari, Gwagwarwa and Tudun Wada tailors usually sell in Sabon Gari market, 
other local markets and directly to personal customers in waje. 
3. The saddle cover known as rigar sirdi is produced by leather workers and 
tailors in the city. Some of these tailors are women in Ced'iyar Kud' a ward 
close to Soron D'inki who do the embroidery work. Under- blankets such as 
sha jibi and suka dubu are produced in rural Kano, particularly in the villages 
of Guringawa and Rimin Gado which are situated close to the city . The saddle 
blanket called labbati is made by tailors in Kabara ward to the south of Soron 
D' inki. Saddles come from rural Kano, the best quality being made in Dunbulum. 
4. However, as will be shown, the use of the term "regular employee" is somewhat 
misleading in that few workshops can guarantee full - time work throughout 
the year. The workers referred to in the text have been attached to particular 
workshops for the periods shown without being "fully employed" in the convent -
ional western sense. 
5. Many of these workers have been (or are being) trained by kin or by a mixture 
of kin and non - kin , although not necessarily by those for whom they are now 
working. Thus, some nineteen per cent (twelve cases) were taught by kin 
only and another twenty two per cent (fourteen cases) by kin and non - kin . 
A similar pattern is reflected in the work histories of present workshop heads. 
For example , fifty six per cent (eighteen cases) of market producers received 
training either partly or solely by kin. The remainder were taught by non - kin 
of largely local origin. As for payment of fees to be taught , none admitted 
to having paid anything. This contrasts with the situation among Zaria machine 
tailors studied by Alien (1982 : 128- 129) where only forty five per cent of his 
sample paid no fees. However, Alien's data do not distinguish between Hausa 
and non - Hausa tailors or to what extent Hausa tailors were taught by non - Hausa. 
It is likely that the proportion of non - fee- paying Hausa apprentices taught 
by other Hausa is higher than his data suggest. Of course, I may have been 
misinformed by workshop heads to avoid accusations of exploitation. However, 
this is unlikely given my long association with most of the tailors studied and 
the fact that a high proportion of the sample consists of workshop employees 
who would have nothing to fear on this score. 
6. Such expeditions, if they w ere to extend beyond the immediate environs of 
Kano, would also require quick transport such as a car. Very few tailors have 
the financial means for such an investment. 
" H 
,.t> ' 
390. 
7. The alternatives to this would be either for the workshop head to work longer 
hours himself or to get his existing workers to work harder. In the latter case, 
production costs would also rise. 
8. Of the thirty nine Hausawa workshop heads (including artisan producers), twenty 
seven (69 per cent) consider a tailors' association to be a good idea. Of these, 
over half (sixteen cases) see an association's main role as a pressure group 
to stabilise and raise prices of finished commodities. The remainder gave the 
following responses: three wanted an association to provide training in new 
styles, two thought it should help finance tailors in their operations, one wanted 
it to act to find new outlets for garments made , one saw it as a bulk - buying 
agency and four regarded it as a means to organise producers without specifying 
what it should do. Although the numbers are small , it was the largest producers 
who saw little value in an association. Thus, three of the five workshop heads 
who had withdrawn from direct production responded in this way compared 
with only seven (20 per cent) of the remaining thirty four workshop heads. 
Two self - employed artisans working alone did not know whether or not an 
association would be of any value. 
9. During the 1950's until the demise of the first republic in 1966, NEPU was the 
main opposition party in the north. Its aim was to wrest political control from 
the party of the traditional ruling classes, the NPC, and provide greater oppor-
tunities for the talakawa , particularly the poorer farmers, traders and petty 
commodity producers. Although it had some success in certain areas, the 
NPC was able to reduce its appeal through a combination of force , political 
bribery and the controls which the NPC exercised through its domination of 
local government structures. Pressures were often placed on families to bring 
NEPU- Ieaning kinsmen into line. For example, during the early 1960's, one 
of my informants in Soron D'inki, a traditional NPC ward , attempted to open 
a branch of NEPU but was persuaded by his father and other local supporters 
of the NPC to desist after being approached by senior members of the city 
Native Authority. Both father and son were tailors but during the 19th century 
the family had supplied low level functionaries (jakadu) to the emirate admini -
stration. My informant's father 's tailoring work depended to a considerable 
degree upon supplying clothing to members of the local traditional elite. 
Since 1979, with the return to civilian rule, the NEPU has re - emerged as the 
People's Redemption Party. For detailed examinations of NEPU during the 
late colonial period and the first republic , see Sklar (1963) , Dudley (1968) and 
Whitaker (1970). 
10. The report of the Public Service Review CommisSion, set up in 1972 under 
the chairmanship of Chief J.O. Udoji, recommended wage and salary increases 
for the public service of between thirty and one hundred per cent. The govern -
ment accepted the recommendations and made them retroactive by nine months. 
The special treatment given to the public sector led to strikes and other actions 
in private industry and eventually wage and salary increases were granted 
there. During 1975 and 1976, prices almost doubled. According to tailoring 
informants, cloth prices increased anywhere from forty to seventy five per 
cent . For further information on the Udoji awards and their aftermath , see 
. Joseph (1978), Panter- Brick (1978) , Fashoyin (1980) , Bienen and Diejomaoh 
(1981) and I.L.O. (1981). 
I,. '. 
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...... . 
" 
... 
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391. 
11 . At that time , Yalwa tailors did their own thread spinning , the spun threads being 
used for embroidery work. This kind of spinning is different from traditional 
spinning in that the thread is purchased from dealers or direct from the factory 
and different thread strands are combined until the required thickness is attained. 
The mechanics of the process involve tying single strands to nails in the ground, 
attaching them to a spindle, rotating the spindle across the side of the leg (which 
causes weals) until the threads are spun , and then repeating the process with 
new thread. With the expansion in demand for Eastern - style garments, much 
of this work has been taken over by a number of thread dealers who hire young 
men and boys to perform the spinning on vacant sites and on the edge of the 
ward where there is open country. 
12. Ghana was a common destination for many Hausa tailors in the 1950's and 
1960's. The tailors were attracted by the opportunities for work available 
there serving Hausa, and other, communities. 
13. The Hausa kola and cattle trade with Ibadan is well described in Cohen (1969). 
14. The man in question is related by marriage to the late Premier of Northern 
Nigeria. He estimates his monthly turnover to be over 100,000 Naira. While 
at his shop I witnessed a purchase he made of cloth worth 4, 180 Naira. At 
the same time he sold 720 yards of cloth to a Yoruba man. An argument 
ensued between these two men with the merchant accusing the Yoruba man 
of being unreliable as a cheque the latter had paid to him for 932 Naira had 
bounced. He insisted that in future all transactions with him would be in cash. 
The merchant also has a canteen at the city market where he sells cloth through 
a distant relative. Besides selling large quantit ies of textiles, he deals with 
small traders who come on bicycles and buy three or four bundles of cloth 
at a time which they then re - sell. Customers come from all over the north. 
He owns a large house in the city and drives a new Mercedes. 
15. In the case of Malam S. , I suspect earnings are much greater than this. 
16. Of the three wards studied, it was in Hausawa only that tailors spontaneously 
brought up this term during discussion. It was not used in either Yalwa or 
Soron D'inki. There, more traditional terms such as yara (boys) were used. 
17. In her review of the literature on the urban poor as a political class, Nelson 
(1979 : 145- 146) makes a similar pOint. She writes: "Workers in very small 
manufacturing , retail or service firms are also difficult to organise. They are 
scattered among an immense number of very small enterprises. " A number 
of her other comments are roughly in line with the conclUSions I draw in this 
section. 
18. The perSistence of this petty bourgeois consciousness among workers in third 
world cities is remarked upon by many writers • . See , for example, Nelson, 
1979; Sandbrook , 1981; Lubeck , 1981; Lloyd , 1982. 
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392. 
19. The relatively small number of tailors aspiring to private sector wage - paying 
jobs is not surprising in view of the limited development of large- scale manu-
facturing in Kano. In addition, as Lubeck points out in his examination of 
Kano factory workers, factory work has low status within the community as 
it is insecure and involves physically demanding activity. Lubeck (1981 : 50) 
writes: "Workers fear that once they are old or middle- aged, younger and 
cheaper workers will be recruited to replace them. " He also comments that 
the unskilled and uneducated cannot expect to be upwardly mobile into 
supervisory posts • . "In contrast, the petty trading occupations are perceived 
as open, for despite the odds, traders may receive good fortune from Allah 
or from other mortals and eventually achieve a much higher social pOSition 
than factory workers." 
20. The per cent figure given refers to tailors who have no kin who have engaged 
in types of work Similar to the tailors' aspirations. In fact, a further seventeen 
per cent of workers have not only done work in the past similar to their current 
aspirations, but also have kin who have engaged in such work. 
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393. 
CHAPTER XI 
CONCLUSION 
This study has concerned itself with the role of craft production 
among the Hausa-speaking peoples of northern Nigeria through an examination 
of garment manufacturing among selected groups of Hausa tailors in the 
ancient city of Kano. Tailoring was chosen for specific attention for two 
main reasons. First, it was argued that craft production has been a rela-
tively neglected area of inquiry in Hausa studies despite its importance in 
the pre- and post-colonial economic development of Hausaland. More 
particularly, until the present study, tailoring had not received any detailed 
sociological treatment. In the introduction, a number of observations were 
made to account for this neglect. Second, it was pointed out that, unlike 
many other Hausa crafts, tailoring has been relatively successful in adapting 
to many of the changes which Hausa society and economy have undergone 
during the 20th century when Hausaland was incorporated, via the Nigerian 
state, into the world capitalist system. Much of the study was taken up 
with accounting for the resilience of indigenous tailoring and in describing 
its present-day organisation in various districts of Kano City, the ancient .. " t, 
core settlement area of Hausa peoples which today forms part of Metro-
ot i. 
politan Kano, northern Nigeria's premier commercial and industrial centre. 
The first part of the study looked at the economic and political 
context in which Hausa tailoring developed. It was argued that from the 
first Millenium A.D. on a distinctive Hausa identity emerged, one major 
component of which was (and continues to be) the wearing of Hausa-style '~' . ." " .. 
clothing. In its early stages the animist and clan-based communities of 
"". ' ,,-
Hausa-speaking peoples were gradually incorporated into a number of 
politically and economically stratified states organised on a territorial basis 
" . 394. ' .' ~ . 
and ruled over by a dominant class of chiefs or kings and aristocratic office-
holders of both indigenous and exotic origin. Of particular importance in 
the consolidation of the power of the ruling classes in the various Hausa ,I.lt" , , 
states was the role played by ethnically diverse , predominantly Muslim, 
immigrants such as the Wangarawa and Fulani. These immigrants introduced 
new craft products, commercial practices, and administrative and political 
ideas into the region. Supported by the immigrant communities which grew 
up in town and country, various rulers attempted to control the largely 
rural and animist populations of farmer-craftsmen and their spiritual-cum-
political representatives through force, tribute, political bribery and appeals 
to the presumed spiritual and other advantages associated with Islam. 
The tensions generated by the often conflicting demands made upon 
the state by muslims and animists alike and the variable commitment of 
successive Hausa rulers to Islam resulted in a Fulani- Ied holy war in the 
late 18th century out of which emerged a loose confederation of largely 
Fulani-dominated states or emirates under the general spiritual guidance t . ", 
of the Caliph at Sokoto. 
It was pointed out that, despite the instability and lack of unity 
among the autonomous ruling classes of the various Hausa states in the 
pre- jihad period, there nevertheless developed a regional Hausa economy 
based on food , livestock and craft production and the growth of extensive 
and inter-locking trading networks which linked producers, traders and 
," 
merchants within the region and beyond. 
After the jihad, the Sokoto Caliphate built upon the growing pros-
perity of the Hausa heartlands by extending its hegemony beyond Hausaland's 
" . 
borders. However, the core Hausa emirates, especially Kano, constituted 
the main craft-producing and commercial elements of the new pre-industrial 
395. 
empire. The political and economic structure of the Caliphate was described, 
using Kano as an exemplar. Attention was drawn to the fact that central 
to Hausaland's ability in exercising the great influence that it did over the 
region was the highly developed state of its economy based on a zonal 
specialisation in productive and commercial activities and the key role 
played by Muslim Hausa merchants, long-distance traders and caravan leaders. 
Chapter III concentrated upon the paramount role played by Kano 
Emirate in the economic affairs of the expanding Sokoto Empire. Consider-
ation was given to why Kano became the workshop of the Hausa world 
during the 19th century. This was followed by a more detailed description 
of the emirate's economic structure. Three main types of productive organ-
isation were identified: ruling class rural estates, private estates owned by 
merchants, religious clerics and wealthier craftsmen, and gandu-farms on 
which the mass of the rural population depended to meet their subsistence 
needs. Of these three, private estates and gandu-farms were given special 
attention. 
In this discussion it was suggested that the bulk of the emirate's 
craft production was carried out in the rural areas by gandu-based farmers 
who produced a wide range of craft goods for domestic use, local exchange 
and for regional and inter- regional trade. Merchant capital penetrated 
the Kano countryside either directly through the creation and extension of 
private estat(j::s worked by free and servile food and craft-producing farmers 
or indirectly through merchant financing of local craftsmen, putting-out 
arrangements, and the purchase, sale and distribution of craftsmen-farmers' 
independently-produced output. Many of these products, particularly cloth 
and clothing, were traded over long distances and were used to purchase 
exotic commodities such as kola nuts, ivory and expensive North African 
garments. 
. ; 
.~ 
... 
". . .. 
-. . " 
,', 
396. 
During this period, Hausa craft production, including tailoring , utilised 
a pre-industrial technology based on hand-fashioned and hand-powered tools 
and a diverse range of raw materials which were largely locally derived. 
The main branches of the craft social division of labour and the kinds of 
materials used were described. 
Some attention was given to the export trade in dyed and undyed 
cloth, textiles being the main export industry in the emirate as well as 
that branch of craft manufacturing which accounted for the highest pro-
portion of all craft workers. It was suggested that craft producers had 
little incentive to make technological innovations in production and that, 
apart from the introduction of new types of dye pits in the cloth-dyeing 
industry, the level of craft technology remained relatively unchanged through-
out the century. 
.,. '-rJ. 
The chapter concluded with an examination of the role of Kano City 
in the economic life of the emirate. It was argued that Kano was primarily '. 
a commercial and political centre and only secondarily a centre of craft 
production. The City's commercial and political functions were briefly 
described. However, Kano did possess a large number of craft workers 
who produced practically every kind of craft good. Goods were made for 
members of the ruling class, most of whom lived in the city, for other city 
residents and also for export. There was craft specialisation by ward or 
district within the city and a number of examples of the association of 
particular crafts with specific wards were given. It was also pointed out 
that Kano City contained a particularly large concentration of tailors and 
a number of reasons for this concentration were adduced. 
Chapter IV dealt with the methods of recruitment into craft occu-
pations and the question of the degree to which any, or all , crafts were 
397. 
guild-organised was examined. With respect to the issue of craft recruitment, 
it was argued that, although many craft workers were trained by senior kin, 
there were a number of other, non-hereditary, ways in which craft skills 
were acquired and transmitted. Apart from the training of slaves by freemen 
and by other slaves, many free men acquired their craft skills through dry 
season migration to centres of craft production, through attaching themselves 
to religious clerics as disciples and through ties to unrelated neighbourhood 
craftsmen. Tailoring in particular was considered to be an open occupation 
and many Kano City tailors attested to the fact that training was not 
restricted to kinsmen. 
A number of factors influencing the degree to which a particular 
craft occupation would be hereditary or open were examined. These included 
the degree of skill and length of training involved, the costs of setting one-
self up as a craftsman, the extent of cooperation required in the production 
process, and the degree to which craft producers were producing for a static 
or expanding market. 
The assumption that hereditary occupations enjoyed the highest pres-
tige in Hausa society was questioned. For example, although butchers and 
certain types of musician were regarded as acquiring their positions by hered-
itary means, they were often accorded low status. The reasons for this low 
status were discussed. '11' 
With regard to the question of Hausa guilds, it was argued that there 
is little evidence to support the view that guilds were common in 19th century 
,. , 
.. .~ 
Hasualand. Attention was paid to the different meanings attached to the 
,0: •• • • 
word "guild" and it was concluded that in the few instances where something 
like a guild structure could be found , they took the form of state-controlled 
' . .... 
instruments for tax collection rather than private associations of craftsmen 
~. 1 
397. 
guild-organised was examined. With respect to the issue of craft recruitment, 
it was argued that, although many craft workers were trained by senior kin, 
there were a number of other, non-hereditary, ways in which craft skills 
were acquired and transmitted. Apart from the training of slaves by freemen 
and by other slaves, many free men acquired their craft skills through dry 
season migration to centres of craft production, through attaching themselves 
to religious clerics as disciples and through ties to unrelated neighbourhood 
craftsmen. Tailoring in particular was considered to be an open occupation 
and many Kano City tailors attested to the fact that training was not 
restricted to kinsmen. 
A number of factors influencing the degree to which a particular 
craft occupation would be hereditary or open were examined. These included 
the degree of skill and length of training involved, the costs of setting one-
self up as a craftsman, the extent of cooperation required in the production 
process, and the degree to which craft producers were producing for a static 
or expanding market. 
The assumption that hereditary occupations enjoyed the highest pres-
tige in Hausa society was questioned. For example, although butchers and 
certain types of musician were regarded as acquiring their positions by hered-
itary means, they were often accorded low status. The reasons for this low 
status were discussed. 
With regard to the question of Hausa guilds, it was argued that there 
is little evidence to support the view that guilds were common in 19th century 
Hasualand. Attention was paid to the different meanings attached to the 
word "guild" and it was concluded that in the few instances where something 
like a guild structure could be found , they took the form of state-controlled 
instruments for tax collection rather than private associations of craftsmen 
'1 
1,, 1 
397. 
guild-organised was examined. With respect to the issue of craft recruitment, 
it was argued that, although many craft workers were trained by senior kin, 
there were a number of other, non-hereditary, ways in which craft skills 
were acquired and transmitted. Apart from the training of slaves by freemen 
and by other slaves, many free men acquired their craft skills through dry 
season migration to centres of craft production, through attaching themselves 
to religious clerics as disciples and through ties to unrelated neighbourhood 
craftsmen. Tailoring in particular was considered to be an open occupation 
and many Kano City tailors attested to the fact that training was not 
restricted to kinsmen. 
A number of factors influencing the degree to which a particular 
craft occupation would be hereditary or open were examined. These included 
the degree of skill and length of training involved, the costs of setting one-
self up as a craftsman, the extent of cooperation required in the production 
process, and the degree to which craft producers were producing for a static 
or expanding market. 
The assumption that hereditary occupations enjoyed the highest pres-
tige in Hausa society was questioned. For example, although butchers and 
certain types of musician were regarded as acquiring their positions by hered-
itary means, they were often accorded low status. The reasons for this low 
status were discussed. 
With regard to the question of Hausa guilds, it was argued that there 
is little evidence to support the view that guilds were common in 19th century 
Hasualand. Attention was paid to the different meanings attached to the 
word "guild" and it was concluded that in the few instances where something 
like a guild structure could be found , they took the form of state-controlled 
instruments for tax collection rather than private associations of craftsmen 
398. 
banding together to protect and further their economic interests. 
The success of the Sokoto Caliphate in becoming the dominant economic 
and political force in the Central Sudan during the 19th century rested to a 
considerable degree upon the region's relative isolation from the burgeoning 
world capitalist system and those expanding European industrial states whiCh 
were its early economic, political and military representatives. It is true that 
western industrial commodities and European mercantile interests began to 
appear in and around Hausaland in increasing numbers during the latter part 
of the 19th century, but their impact on Hausa society in general, and on 
local craft producers in particular, was slight. However, all this changed 
after the British conquest of the Caliphate. 
British rule meant the end of the Caliph ate and Hausaland lost its 
position as the core region of the previously autonomous Sokoto Empire, 
becoming instead a peripheral region of the world capitalist economy. As 
a consequence of British colonial policy, aided and abetted after early 
resistance by the traditional ruling classes of the various Hausa emirates 
who wished to hang on to some of their political prerogatives, Hausaland 
and Kano became raw-materials exporting zones centred around groundnut 
production. For the first time, Kano craft producers had to compete with 
growing imports of British and other European-manufactured commodities. 
Chapter V assessed the impact upon indigenous craft production in 
Kano Emirate of the opening up of Hausaland to foreign manufactures and 
other economic influences. The main conclusion reached was that, although 
all local crafts suffered a decline in some respects, most were not eliminated. 
In particular, it was argued that there was an uneven impact on different 
crafts with some, such as blacksmithing and tailoring, faring much better 
than others, notably weaving and dyeing. Existing evidence on the fate 
. '. 
399. 
of these four crafts during the colonial and early post- colonial periods was 
reviewed and extended treatment was given to tailoring. 
With regard to tailoring, it was shown that tailors continue to play 
a major role in supplying many of the basic clothing requirements of the 
Hausa population and that tailoring provides employment for large numbers 
of people. Discussion centred on the factors which have contributed to 
the survival of indigenous tailoring. The most important mentioned were 
as follows: the continued strong commitment of Hausa people to traditional 
styles of dress; the lack of imported substitutes for most types of Hausa 
clothing; the ability of local tailors to respond to changing demands in the 
clothing market through the adoption of stylistic and other innovations; 
large increases in the Hausa population and rising per capita incomes which 
have led to a growing demand for garments; the failure of larger , more 
capital-intensive, producers {both foreign and domestic} to move into the 
market for Hausa clothing; and the growing availability and use of moderately-
priced sewing machines which penetrated all branches of garment manufacture 
and which have led to reductions in the unit costs of production. It was 
suggested that many of the structural changes brought about by colonial and 
post-colonial economic policies were at the expense of rural Kano and rural 
... 
craft producers and, as a consequence, it is urban tailors , particularly those 
in urban Kano, who have benefitted most during the present century. The 
remainder of the study examined the organisation of tailoring in Kano City, 
concentrating upon three city wards each of which is {or was} noted for its 
tailoring. 
1" •• 
.. :. 
The commercial and industrial structure of modern Kano was described 
in Chapter VI. Although Kano is the primate city of the region, large-scale 
industrial development is limited and a high proportion of the work force is 
", 
400. 
employed in small-scale enterprises which supply a wide range of manufactured 
goods, commercial and personal services. Among these enterprises; tailoring 
workshops were noted to be particularly prominent. 
Chapter VII dealt with various aspects of tailoring in the old city. 
Detailed treatment was given to the many products made, traditions of Hausa 
tailoring, the main instruments of production and raw materials used in the 
production process, and the spatial distribution of tailors. It was argued 
that men dominate in the production of most lines of clothing and that 
machine tailors greatly outnumber their hand sewing counterparts having 
taken over many of the tailoring functions previously performed exclusively 
by the latter. Attention was drawn to the wide distribution of tailors 
throughout the city, with concentrations of particular types of tailors and 
tailoring in certain wards, the spatial, economic and, to a degree; ethnic 
separation of many city tailors from those working in other parts of the urban 
area, and the tendency for city tailors to produce garments for city residents, 
visiting Hausa farmers from around Kano, and a mass market of predominantly 
poor Hausa consumers in Kano State and adjoining states. 
Chapter VIII provided an introduction to the three city wards chosen 
for intensive study. The origins and development of the wards, and the 
historical and contemporary association of tailoring with each of them, were 
examined. It was shown that two of the wards, Soron D'inki and Yalwa, 
became noted as centres of tailoring during the 19th century whereas 
Hausawa's reputation for tailoring was established from the 1930's on. Each 
of the three wards specialise in particular types of tailoring: Soron D'inki 
in embroidered horse saddle covers, Yalwa in Eastern-Style garments, and 
1". , 
" . 
Hausawa in machine-made caps and gowns. In recent years, Soron D'inki 
has suffered greatly as a tailoring centre because of the declining demand 
'H 
l+00. 
· , . 
employed in small-scale enterprises which supply a wide range of manufactured 
goods, commercial and personal services. Among these enterprises, tailoring 
workshops were noted to be particularly prominent. 
Chapter VII dealt with various aspects of tailoring in the old city.-
... ;-
Detailed treatment was given to the many products made, traditions of Hausa .... "" 
'" 
tailoring, the main instruments of production and raw materials used in the 
production process, and the spatial distribution of tailors. It was argued 
that men dominate in the production of most lines of clothing and that 
machine tailors greatly outnumber their hand sewing counterparts having 
taken over many of the tailoring functions previously performed exclusively 
by the latter. Attention was drawn to the wide distribution of tailors 
throughout the city, with concentrations of particular types of tailors and 
tailoring in certain wards, the spatial, economic and, to a degree, ethnic 
separation of many city tailors from those working in other parts of the urban 
area, and the tendency for city tailors to produce garments for city residents, 
visiting Hausa farmers from around Kano, and a mass market of predominantly 
poor Hausa consumers in Kano State and adjoining states. 
Chapter VIII provided an introduction to the three city wards chosen 
for intensive study. The origins and development of the wards, and the 
historical and contemporary association of tailoring with each of them, were 
examined. It was shown that two of the wards, Soron D'inki and Yalwa, 
became noted as centres of tailoring during the 19th century whereas 
Hausawa's reputation for tailoring was established from the 1930's on. Each 
of the three wards specialise in particular types of tailoring: Soron D'inki .. ~ .. 
in embroidered horse saddle covers, Yalwa in Eastern-Style garments, and ",. 
Hausawa in machine-made caps and gowns. In recent years, Soron D'inki 
has suffered greatly as a tailoring centre because of the declining demand 
", 
. , 
401. 
for horse caparisons. On the other hand , Yalwa and Hausawa have fared 
much better. Thus. Yalwa tailors continue to supply moderately and 
expensively priced hand and machine-made Eastern Style garments to city, 
state and inter-state customers while the bulk of Hausawa's output consists " 
. : 
of cheaply-made caps, smocks and gowns which are sold largely through the 
city market for distribution to the mass of Hausa consumers in the country-
side. 
The chapter also examined the ethnic, geographical, residential and 
. , 
occupational origins of the tailors in the three wards. Tailors were shown 
to be overwhelmingly Hausa-speaking and most identified themselves as Hausa, 
even though some come off mixed Hausa and non-Hausa stock. All were 
Muslim in religious affiliation and most have received some Islamic schooling. 
However, exposure to western education was limited, apart from irregular 
attendance at adult education classes. The strong association of tailors 
with urban life was demonstrated, the vast majority having been born in Kano 
City and many in the wards in which they presently live and work. These 
links with the city (and urban living in general) were shown to extend to 
their fathers' and grandfathers' generations. 
The occupational origins of tailors were traced through an examination 
of fathers' and paternal grandfathers' primary and secondary occupations. 
Coming from diverse occupational backgrounds, with a majority having 
paternal grandfathers who pursued predominantly non-farming occupations, 
particularly in commerce, government and, to some extent, tailoring, the 
latter occupation was shown to take on increased importance in the fathers' 
., ' 
generation. Ward differences in occupational origins were also noted. An 
important point to emerge from this discussion was the limited amount of 
experience most tailors' parent s and grandparents have had in formal sector-
402. 
type employment. especially in large-scale private companies. ~. 
The intra-generational occupational experiences of tailors was 
considered and it was pointed out that the majority of all tailors have spent 
most of their work lives in the so-called informal sector. Like their fore-
bears, few tailors have any experience in medium or large-scale private 
companies. The vast majority have spent at least half of their work lives 
as tailors and the positive correlation between age and self-employment in 
tailoring was noted. Few tailors were seen to pursue secondary occupations 
outside tailoring (apart from family farming), although irregular involvement 
in various income-generating activities was fairly common; 
Chapters IX and X looked at the organisation of production and the 
main markets for tailored commodities in the three wards. After noting the 
relatively small size of most tailoring workshops, with the largest production 
units being found in Hausawa ward, two main types of tailoring enterprise 
were identified: artisanal workshops producing for personal clients and 
market-oriented workshops which produced for a wider market of customers 
with whom producers had no direct contact. Each was then examined in 
some detail. 
Artisanal workshops were shown to account for just over a third of ... 
all workshops. In these workshops, tailors tend to work alone, with the 
.ri· 
occasional help of kin and/or unrelated apprentices, and engage directly 
in the production of custom-made garments. Although differing in the 
types of garments made and the kinds of clientele served, it was argued that 
dependence on a local and irregular market for custom-made clothing and 
the competition from other similarly organised workshops put most artisans 
in a precarious economic position; The ways in which artisans attempt to 
cope with these constraints were examined. Their strategies of survival 
" 
403. 
included the following: making oneself visible to potential customers, 
establishing a reputation for good quality and reliable service so as to build 
up a steady clientele , entering into informal and reciprocal referral arrange-
ments with tailors engaged in different , but complementary, types of garment 
production, becoming proficient in the production of a wide range of styles 
in order to reduce the risks inherent in specialisation, price-cutting (an 
unpopular strategy), orienting production to the needs of weal their customers 
(open only to a minority of tailors), intensive exploitation of one's own labour 
power, the labour power of family members and of apprentices so as to reduce 
production costs, occasional sub-contracting, and the sharing of work premises 
and , less frequently , tools. 
It was argued that in spite of the advantages that many artisans see 
in larger-scale forms of cooperation, a number of factors work against their 
successful realisation, particularly the fear of being cheated and manipulated 
by the artisans' representatives. Government-organised cooperative schemes 
were shown to be few and far between and most tailors are either ignorant 
of their existence or have made no efforts to use them. It was also noted 
that government loans schemes are totally inadequate to meet the needs of 
most artisans as they are directed towards a small minority of producers 
most of whom are not artisans. 
Other ways in which artisans attempt to meet their costs of subsis-
tence included the combining of tailoring with other types of work and, in 
the case of married tailors , the expectation that wives would meet certain 
expenses through engaging in various kinds of home-centred work. 
The discussion of artisanal tailoring closed with an examination of 
out-working. It was argued that many artisans, in trying to earn a living, 
have been pushed into a greater or lesser degree of dependence upon bigger 
I .. 
." 
.f, 
.. ' 
403. I . ~ .. ~ 
" ' 
included the following: making oneself visible to potential customers, 
establishing a reputation for good quality and reliable service so as to build 
up a steady clientele, entering into informal and reciprocal referral arrange-
ments with tailors engaged in different , but complementary, types of garment 
production, becoming proficient in the production of a wide range of styles 
in order to reduce the risks inherent in specialisation, price-cutting (an 
unpopular strategy), orienting production to the needs of weal their customers 
(open only to a minority of tailors), intensive exploitation of one's own labour 
,'''. 
power, the labour power of family members and of apprentices so as to reduce 
production costs, occasional sub-contracting, and the sharing of work premises 
and, less frequently, tools. 
, ' , l 
It was argued that in spite of the advantages that many artisans see 
in larger-scale forms of cooperation, a number of factors work against their 
successful realisation, particularly the fear of being cheated and manipulated 
by the artisans' representatives. Government-organised cooperative schemes 
were shown to be few and far between and most tailors are either ignorant 
of their existence or have made no efforts to use them. It was also noted 
that government loans schemes are totally inadequate to meet the needs of 
most artisans as they are directed towards a small minority of producers ... ' 
most of whom are not artisans. 
Other ways in which artisans attempt to meet their costs of subsis-
tence included the combining of tailoring with other types of work and, in 
the case of married tailors, the expectation that wives would meet certain 
expenses through engaging in various kinds of home-centred work. 
I!· •••• 
The discussion of artisanal tailoring closed with an examination of 
out-working. It was argued that many artisans, in trying to earn a living, 
have been pushed into a greater or lesser degree of dependence upon bigger 
404. 
tailors, merchants, contractors and va rious intermediaries who are better 
placed to supply them with work. Although remaining nominally independent 
as self-employed producers who own their means of production, they have 
in fact lost control of key elements of their productive activity such as the 
ability to determine what and for whom they produce and the prices they 
charge. Various examples of out-working were given. 
Chapter X dealt with those workshop heads who have ceased to be, 
or have never been, artisans and who are largely or wholly subordinated to 
production for a wider market of consumers. The majority of market 
producers were shown to depend on large numbers of predominantly petty 
trading intermediaries such as visiting traders and fixed-site clothes dealers 
who buy up the bulk of market producers' independently produced output 
for ultimate sale outside Kano. Attention was focused ma inly on Hausawa 
ward where, of the three wards studied, the largest concentration of market-
oriented workshops are found. 
The main points made in this chapter were as follows. First, when 
compared with the workshops of artisans, those of market producers vary 
more in size, are more product- specific and employ more wage labour. 
However , even among market producers, the average scale of operations 
is quite small, larger producers employing more than four or five extra 
workers being a small minority. Second, like artisans , market producers 
operate in an uncertain economic environment characterised by irregular 
and seasonal demand which, when combined with the low capital resources 
of most producers, the large number of competitors, the widely scattered 
markets which they serve, difficulties producers face in tapping these 
markets , their lack of access to credit and loan facilities with which to 
upgrade their technology, expand production and make long- term pla ns , and 
.. 
". 
. ~ 
405. 
~, 
their general subordination to commercial wholesalers and retailers who supply 
essential inputs, makes it difficult , if not impossible, to engage in anything 
other than simple commodity produ<!:tion. Third, as a consequence of these 
constraints, production takes place on a largely day- to-day basis with work-
shop labour being paid by the piece, a system which works to the advantage 
of employers rather than employees. Third, workshop heads draw most of " ".( 
their work force from the local area using kinship, friendship and neighbour-
hood ties to recruit labour. It was argued that in this way workshop heads 
hope to ensure for themselves a reliable and trustworthy work force. Loyalty 
to the workshop head is also promoted by the latter acting in various paternal-
istic ways towards employees by which means the impact of irregular working '. , I 
and earnings upon employees is softened. Fourth, in cap- making workshops 
where profit margins and rates of pay are low, workshop heads rely greatly 
upon young, unmarried boys to keep themselves in business. Older workers 
were shown to shun this type of work, preferring gown and smock- making 
establishments where rates of pay are better and where a wider range of 
tailoring skills can be acquired. Fifth, it was noted that a few tailors do 
manage to expand their productive activities beyond that of the average 
workshop and are able to attain a moderate degree of prosperity. Case •• 
studies of a number of better-off tailors were examined and the factors 
If, j 
contributing to their success were discussed. These included years of hard '11' , 
work, capitalising on periods of expansion in demand, flexible production 
strategies, cultivation of diverse outlets for goods produced, the establish-
ment of good commercial relations with suppliers of raw materials and garment 
buyers-up, and some bulk purchasing of raw materials. However, it was 
I •.••• 
concluded that, despite the ability of a few producers such as those described 
:' 
to achieve some upward mobility within their tailoring careers, such mobility 
406. 
was limited and most tailors regarded tailoring as an occupation with few 
prospects when compared with other kinds of work, notably in commerce. 
Yet, the case studies examined suggested that any move into, say, commercial 
occupations was likely to be into the less profitable areas of small-scale 
trading unless one had substantial capital and established merchant patronage. 
Finally, the question of worker consciousness was examined. I t was 
argued that a number of factors militated against the growth among tailoring 
employees of an opposi tional consciousness directed against employers as 
a whole. These included the fragmentation and small-size of production 
units, kin ties between workers and workshop heads., the poverty of many 
workshop owners, the view held by many workers that their employee status 
was transitory, the lack of any well-developed occupational communities 
among employees, and their general lack of experience in, and exposure to, 
worker organisations. 
.0"1 
' 1" . 
,,' 
.. . ~ , 
APPENDICES 
1. Tailors in Kano urban area 1926, 1946 
and 1972. 
2. Examples of Hausa embroidery designs with 
a non-human or inanimate referent. 
3. Note on sampling. 
407. 
I': . 
~. 
". 
. , 
,. 
f . 
. ,
APPENDIX 1 Tailors in Kano urban area: 1926, 1946 and 1972. 
District Year 
City 
Fage 
Waje 
1926 
3450 
n.a. 
% total 
population 
5.0 
1946 
2274 
72 
101 
% total 
population 
3.0 
1.5 
1.0 
1972 
1098 
354 
1539 
TOTAL 3450 5.0 2447 2.5 2991 
These figures show the following: 
1. Both an absolute and relative decline in the total number of tailors 
over the period 1926 to 1972 although there appears to have been an 
absolute increase between 1946 and 1972. 
2. The greatest decline occurred within Kano City. All other districts 
show an increase in total numbers and, in the case of Waje, a relative 
increase. 
3. Kano City provided a declining proportion of all tailors over the period. 
A number of considerations must be taken into account when examining these 
figures: 
1. For 1926 and 1946 the figures refer to adult male taxpayers only while 
the 1972 figures include apprentices many of whom are unlikely to have 
been tax payers. If this is taken into account, the decline is likely 
to have been greater than the table suggests. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
On the other hand, as I have noted elsewhere in this study, the 1972 
figures underestimate by an unknown amount the true number of tailors, 
taxpayers or not. Nevertheless, if c:>ne assumes tha.t the included 
apprentices compensate for the adult male taxpaying tailors not counted 
in 1972, there was still a decline in absolute and relative numbers. over 
the period. Unfortunately for the researcher, recent tax records are 
extremely inaccurate in their recording of oCGupation and for that 
reason were not used in computing the 1972 statistics. 
The data do not include female tailors or people who did tailoring as 
a secondary occupation. Their inclusion would raise the totals for 
each of the three years. However, without quantitative estimates no 
useful conclusion can be drawn on changes in total numbers over the 
period in question. 
It is worth re-iterating the point that even if there has been a decline 
in total numbers, such a decline does not necessarily mean a decline in 
total output produced by Kano tailors. In 1926 practically all .tailors 
were hand sewers whereas in 1972 the great majority worked with machines. 
Although I do not have comparable data on output per head for each of the 
three years, there is no question that today's tailors are far more 
productive than those in 1926. This becomes even clearer when it is 
realised that close to 70 per cent of tailors in 1926 were cap makers 
whereas today much cap-making is done by machine and cap machinists are 
perhaps six to eight times more productive than their hand-sewing 
counterparts. 
, ; 
,. 
. ~. 
409. 
APPENDIX 2 Examples of Hausa embroidery designs with a non-human or 
inanimate referent. 
Hausa Name English Name 
Bayan Kunkuru Tortoise shell 
Kan Tsaka Gecko's head 
Kwad'o Frog 0 
Wutsiyar Hawainiya Chameleon's tail (( ~ 
Takon Giwa Elephant's foot 
Fitsarim Bij imi Bull's urine ~ ~ 
Halshen Damo Monitor lizard's ~ 
tongue 
Linzami Bridle, 'hi t ~ 
Baka Bow 
Dagi Knot/Feline paw 
Kibiya Arrow r6~ 
Aska Knife W 
Gatari Axe f@Y 
Gidan Biyar Five houses ~ 
. .:! 
-
i 
-: 
· . 
#. 
-'j 
~ 
· ' 
· . 
· . 
P •• 
". ... 
. . 
,ri,' 
t 
. ;..:~ , 
.~. " , 
..•. 
. '",,' 
410. 
APPENDIX 3 Note on sampling. 
During December, 1975 and January, 1976 a census of tailoring workshops 
in Soron D'inki, Hausawa and Yalwa was undertaken by myself and two assistants, 
one from Hausawa and the other from Soron D'inki. The assistants counted the 
workshops in the wards in which they lived and I counted those in Yalwa. A 
total of 133 separate workshops and workplaces containing 300 tailors were 
enumerated. (See Table 9.1 for details on distribution and size of workshops). 
The final workshop sample used in this study consisted of 128 workshops, 
124 of the originally counted 133 and an extra 4 which were not counted earlier. 
The total number of tailors covered equalled 224, including all heads of the 
sampled workshops. See below. 
Total and SamE led WorkshoEs and Tailors by Ward 
Ward 
Soron D'inki Hausawa Yalwa Total 
WorkshoI2s 
(a) Total 25 48 60 133 
(b) Sample 25 39 60 124 
(c) (b) as % of (a) 100 81 100 93 
Workers including 
workshoI2 heads) 
(a ) Total 32 127 141 300 
(b) Sample 27 101 93 2211 
(c) (b) as % of (a) 84.5 79.5 66 73.5 
1Final sample included three extra workshops and workers 
in Soron D'inki. 
Comments on Sample Used: 
1. 
2. 
9 workshops in Hausawa were not covered in the final interviewing. 
These included one of the largest workshops whose head refused to 
cooperate, two which had ceased to operate, and six single-person work-
shops which were excluded because of lack of time and resources. 26 
workers were not interviewed of whom nine were the workshop heads pre-
viously mentioned and the others were workshop employees, some of whom 
were no longer working. 
In Yalwa some 48 tailors were excluded in final interviewing because 
half were young boys doing sab'iya sewing and were not attached to any 
particular workshop (although I did interview about 12 of these at 
another time on other matters) and, of the rest, about eight to ten 
were no longer working and some 15 could not be traced. 
3. Overall, close to 75 per cent of all tailors originally counted were 
4. 
5. 
covered in the final interviewing. 
It should also be noted that, besides those tailors and workshops 
contained in the three ward sample, I interviewed many tailors in work-
shops in other wards. Information obtained from these tailors was 
used to supplement the sample. 
Final interviewing of 
four local assistants 
Bayero University and 
Unive rsity in Zaria. 
sampled tailors was carried out by myself and 
of whom three were 1st year sociology students 
one was an economics student at Ahmadu Bello 
All four lived in Kano City. 
at 
i 
. 
' ,' 
I' 
, 
" , 
,"'" 
, ·h 
I~' 
. ..... 
411. 
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~. 
.r' i· 
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:1 ' ' 
, ' 
,., 
" I 
, j 
• 
413. 
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in conjunction with the Federal Dept. of Antiquities, Nigeria. 
CLARKE, P.B. (1982): West Africa and Islam, London, Edward Arnold. 
COHEN, A. (1969) : Custom and Politics in Urban Africa, London, 
Routledge and Kegan Paul. 
DALZIEL, J.M. (1916): A Hausa Botanical Vocabulary , London, T. Fisher 
Unwin. 
DUDLEY, B.J. (1968): Parties & Politics in Northern Nigeria , London, 
Frank Cass. 
DUFFIELD, M. (1981): Maiurno : Capitalism & Rural Life in Sudan" 
London, Ithaca Pres~ 
EISENSTADT, s. (1966): Modernisation: Protest and Change, 
Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall. 
EKUNDARE, R.O. (1973): An Economic History of Nigeria: 1860- 1960, 
London, Methuen. 
FAPOHUNDA, O.J. & LUBELL, H. (1978): Lagos: Urban Development 
and Employment, Geneva, I.L.O. 
FASHOYIN, T. (1980) Industrial Relations in Nigeria, London, Longman. 
FIKA, A. (1978): The Kano Civil War & British Over- Rule: 1882-1940, 
Ibadan, Oxford University Press. 
FINLEY, M.I. (1973): l'he Ancient Economy , London, Cha tto and Windus. 
FORDE, D. & SCOTT, R. (1946): The Native Economies of Nigeria, 
London, Faber and Faber. 1st Part of a Study of the Economics 
of a Tropical Dependency; (ed.) : M. Perham. 
FRANK, A.G. (1971): Sociology of Develoe,ment and the Underdevelopment 
of Sociology, London, Pluto Press. 
,.. 
.. 
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414. 
BOOKS (continued) 
FRASER, D. & COLE, H.M. (eds.): (1972) : African Art and Leadership, 
Madison, University of Wisconsin Press. 
FREUND, B. (1981): Capital and Labour in the Nigerian Tin Mines, 
Harlow, Longman. 
If 
FROBEL, F., HEINRICHS, J. & KREYE , O. (1979): The New International 
Divison of Labour: Structural Unemployment in Industrialized Countries 
and Industrialization in Developing Countries , Cambridge, Cambridge 
University Press. 
GALADANCI, K. (1976): (\n Introduction to Hausa Grammar) Longman, 
Nigeria. 
GANN, L.H. & DUIGNAN, P. (eds.) : (1975) : Colonialism in Africa, 1870-
1960, Vol. 4, The Economics of Colonialism , London, Cambridge 
University Press. 
GREENBERG, J.H. (1946): The Influence of Islam on a Sudanese Religion , 
Seattle & London, University of Washington Press. 
GREENBERG, J.H. (1963): The Languages of Africa, Paris & The Hague, 
Mouton. 
GREENHILL, C.J. (ed.): 1972 : Kurmi Market Study: The Final Report 
of the Kurmi Market Study Team on the Future of Kurmi Market, 
Kano City, Metropolitan Kano Planning and Development Board. 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1976): The Arts of the Hausa, World of Islam Festival 
Publishing Co. Ltd. 
HELLEINER, G.K. (1966): Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economis 
Growth in Nigeria, Homewood, Ill., Richard D. Irwin, Inc. 
HEYER, J., ROBERTS, P. & WILLIAMS, G. (eds.): (1981) : ~ 
Development in Tropical Africa , London, Macmillan. 
HILL, P. (1972): Rural Hausa : A Village and a Setting. London, 
Cambridge University Press. 
HILL, P. (1977): Population, Prosperity and Poverty: Rural Kano, 1900 
and 1970. London, Cambridge U niversi ty Press. 
.' 
.'. 
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~15. 
BOOKS (continued) 
HISKETT, M. (1973): The Sword of Truth, New York, Oxford University 
Press. 
HOGBEN, S.J. & A.H.M. KIRK-GREENE. (1966): The Emirates of Northern 
Nigeria, London, Oxford University Press. 
HOGENDORN, J .S. (1978): Nigerian Groundnut Exports: Origins and 
Early Development, Zaria & Ibadan, A.B.U. Press & Oxford University 
Press. 
HOOG VEL T, A. (1978): The Sociology of Developing Societi~s, London, 
Macmillan, 2nd Edition. 
HOPKINS, A.G. (1973): An Economic History of West Africa, London, 
Longman. 
HOSELITZ, B., & MOORE, W. (ed.) : (1963) : Industrialisation and SocieW, 
The Hague, Mouton. 
INTERNATIONAL BANK FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT 
(IBRD), (195~) : The Economic Development of Nigeria. Lagos, 
Federal Government Printer. 
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (1972): Employment, Incomes and 
Equality: A Strategy for Increasing Productive Employment in Kenya, 
Geneva, I.L.O. 
INTERNA TIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (197~): Calcutta: Its Urban 
Development and Employment Prospects, Geneva, I.L.O. 
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (1975a): Urbanization and Employment 
in Jakarta, Geneva, I.L.O. 
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (1975b): Urban Development and 
Employment in Abidjan, Geneva, I.L.O. 
INTERNA TIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (1976): Urban Development and 
Employment in Sao Paulo, Geneva, I.L.O. 
INTERNA TIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (1979): World Employment 
Programme: Research in Retrospect and Prospect, Geneva, I.L.O. 
~ . 
. ~. 
.,~ 
, •. . , I 
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" ':;!I~ 
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4-16. 
BOOKS (continued) 
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE (1981): First Things First: Meeting 
the Basic Needs of the People of Nigeria , Addis Ababa, I.L.O. 
IWUJI, E.C. & A.E. OKOR AFOR (eds.) : (1975) : Small-Scale Industries 
South Eastern and Benue Plateau States of Nigeria , Dept. of 
Economics, University of Nigeria , Nsukka. 
JAWOREK, R. (1980): The Development of Small-Scale Industry in Kaduna 
State, Zaria, Centre for Social and Economic Research , Ahmadu 
-- '. 
Bello University. 
JOHNSTON, H.A.S. (1967): The Fulani Empire of Sokoto, London, 
Oxford University Press. 
KILBY, P. (1969): Industrialization in an Open Economy: Nigeria, 194-5-
1966, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 
KIRK-GREENE, A.H.M. (ed.) : (1972) : Gazetteers of the Northern Provinces 
of Nigeria: Vol. I, The Hausa Emirates, London, Frank Cass. 
KIRK-GREENE, A.H.M. & ALIYU, Y. (1967) : A Modern Hausa Reader , 
London, University of London Press. 
KIRK-GREENE, A.H.M. & RIMMER , D. (1981): Nigeria Since 1970 : A 
Political and Economic Outline, London, Hodder and Stoughton. 
LAMB , v. (1975): West African Weaving , London, Duckworth. 
LAMB, V. & HOLMES, J. (1980): Nigerian Weaving, Herefordbury (U.K.), 
Roxford Books. 
LAST, M. (1967): The Sokoto Caliphate, London, Longman. 
LA W, R. (1977): The Oyo Empire : A West African Imperialism in the 
Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Oxford , Oxford University Press. 
LAW, R. (1980): The Horse in West African Histor¥, Oxford , Oxford 
University Press. 
LENIN, V.I. (1960): Collected Works, Vol. 3 : The Development of 
Capitalism in Russia, Moscow, Progress Publishers. 
"I 
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417. 
BOOKS (continued) 
LLOYD, P.C. (1982): A Third World Proletariat? London, George AlIen 
& Unwin. 
LLOYD, P.C., MABOGUNJE, A.L. & AWE, B. (eds.) : (1967) : The City 
of. Ibadan, London, Cambridge University Press in association with 
the Institute of African Studies, University of. Ibadan. 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (1980): Caravans of Kola. The Hausa Kola Trade, 1700-, 
1900. Zaria and Oxford , Ahmadu Bello University Press and Oxford 
University Press. 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (ed.): (1981) : The Ideology of Slavery in Africa , 
London and Beverly Hills , Sage Publications. 
LOW, V. (1972): Three Nigerian Emirates: A. Study in Oral Historx., 
Evanston, Northwestern University Press. 
MADABO, M.H. (1979) : Ciniki Da Sana'o'i a K'asar Hausa. Thomas 
Nelson (Nigeria). 
MARX, K. (1974) : Capital, Vol. I, London, Lawrence & Wishart. 
MEEK , C.K. (1925): The Northern Tribes of Nigeria, Vol. I, Oxford , 
Oxford U niversi ty Press. 
MENZEL, B. (1973-4): Textilien Aus West Afrika j 3 Vols., Berlin, 
I1 It 
Museum fur Volkerkunde. 
\ 
MONTEIL, P.L. (1894): De Saint-Louis A Tripoli par le lac Tch~ 
Paris, Ancienne Librairie Germer Bailliere. 
MOODY, H.L.B. (1969): The Walls and Gates of Kano City, Federal 
Republic of Nigeria, Dept. of Antiquities. 
MOORE, W., & FELDMAN, A. (1960): Labor Commitment and Social 
Change in Developing Areas, New York, Social Science Research 
Council. 
, . 
MOREL, E.D. (1912) Nigeria: Its Peoples and its Problems, 2nd Ed., 
London, Smith, Elder & Co. 
MORTIMORE, M.J. & WILSON, J. (1965): Land and People in the Kano 
Close-Settleci Zone, Dept . of Geography Occasional Paper No. 1, 
Zaria, Ahmadu Bello University. 
"I 
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• ,I 
, , 
BOOKS (continued) 
NADEL, S.F. (1942): A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in 
Nigeria, London, Oxford University Press, 1st edition. 
418. 
NELSON, J.M. (1979): Access to Power: Politics and the Urban Poor 
in Developing Nations, Princeton, Princeton University Press. 
NICOLAS, G. (1975) : Dynamique Sociale et Apprehension du Monde 
au sein d'une societe Hausa; Paris , Institut D'Ethnologie, Musee 
De L'Homme. 
NIGERIA YEAR BOOK, 1975, Apapa, Lagos, Times Press. 
NNOLI, O. (ed.): (1981) : Path to Nigerian Development, London, 
Zed Press. 
NORE, P. & TURNER, T. (eds.): (1980) : Oil and Class Struggk, 
London, Zed Press. 
PADEN, J.N. (1973): Religion and Political Culture in Kano; Berkeley 
and Los Angeles, University of California Press. 
PALMER, H.R. (1967) Sudanese Memoirs , London, Frank Cass. 
PANTER- BRICK, S.K. (1970): Nigerian Politics and Military Rule: 
Prelude to Civil War, London, Athlone Press. 
PANTER-BRICK, S.J. (1978): Soldiers and Oil : The Political 
Transformation of Nigeria, London, Frank Cass. 
PEARSON, S.R. (1971): Petroleum a nd the Nigerian Economy , Stanford, 
Stanford University Press. 
PICTON, J., & MACK, J . (1979) African Textiles , London, British 
Museum Publications. 
POLAKOFF, C. (1982): African Textiles and Dyeing Techniques, 
London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 
POSTAN, M.M. (1975): The Medieval Economy and Society , 
Harmondsworth , Penguin. 
ROBERTS, B. (1978): Cities of Peasants: The Political Economy of 
Urbanization in the Third World , London, Edward Arnold. 
,.. 
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.,. 
419. 
BOOKS (continued) 
ROBINSON, C.H. (1897): Hausaland, London , Sampson, Low , Marston 
and Co. 
SALAMAN, G. (1974): Community and Occupat ion: Exploration of 
Work/Leisure Relationships , Cambridge, Cambridge University P ress. 
11 
SCHATZL, L.H. (1969): Petroleum in Nigeria , Ibadan, Oxford University 
Press. 
SCHILDKROUT, E. (1978): People of the Zongo : The Transformation 
of Ethnic Identities in Ghana, London, Cambridge University Press. 
SETHURAMAN, S.V. (ed.): (1981) : The Urban Informal Sector in 
Developing Countries, Geneva, I.L.O. 
SHAW, T. (1978): Nigeria: Its Archaeology and Early History , London, 
Oxford University Press. 
SIMPSON, R.L. & SIMPSON, I.H. (eds.): (1981) : Resea rch in the Sociology. 
of Work: A Research Annual , Vol. I, Greenwich, Conn., J .A.I. Press, 
Inc. 
SKINNER, N. (1968): Hausa Readings: Selections from Edgar1s 
Tatsuniyoyi, Madison & London, University of Wisconsin Press. 
SKINNER, N. (1977a): An Anthology of Hausa Literature in Translation, 
Occasional Paper, No. 7, Madison, African Studies Program, 
University of Wisconsin. 
SKINNER, N. (1977b): Alhaji Mahmudu K1ok'i : Kano Malam, Zaria, 
Ahmadu Bello University Press. 
SKLAR, R.L. (1963): Nigerian Political Parties : Power in an Emergent 
African Nation, Princeton, Princeton University Press. 
SMALDONE , J.P. (1977): Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate , Cambridge, 
Cambridge U niversi ty Press. 
SMITH, M.G. (1955): The Economy of Hausa Communities of Zaria, 
London, H.M.S.O., for Colonial Office. 
SMITH, M.G. (1960) : Government in Zazzal.!., London, Oxford University 
Press. 
420. 
BOOKS (continued) 
SMITH, M.G. (1978): The Affairs of Daura : History and Change in a 
Hausa State, 1800~1958, Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of 
California Press. 
SMITH, M.F. (1964): Baba of Karo : A Woman of the Moslem Haus~, 
New York, Frederick A. Praeger. 
TAYLOR, F.W. & WEBB, A.G.G. (1932): Labarun AI'adun Hausawa da 
Zantatukansu, London, Oxford University Press. 
TIFFEN, M. (1976): The Enterprising Peasant: Economic Development 
in Gombe Emirate, N.E. State, Nigeria, 1900~ 1968, Ministry of 
Overseas Development, Overseas Research Publication, No. 21, 
London, H.M.S.O. 
TODARO, M. (1981): Economic Development in the Third World, New 
York, Longman Inc., 2nd ed. 
TREVALLION, B.A.W. (1966): Metropolitan Kano : Report of the Twenty 
Year Development Plan, 1963- 1983, Greater Kano Planning Authority, 
Newman Neame Ltd. 
URQUHART, A.W. (1977): Planned Urban Landscapes of Northern Nigeria, 
Zaria, Ahmadu Bello University Press. 
USMAN, Y.B. (ed.) : (1979) : Studies in the History of the Sokoto Caliphate, 
Zaria, Dept. of History, Ahmadu Bello University for the Sokoto 
State History Bureau. 
VAN DEN BERGHE, P.L. (1981): The Ethnic Phenomenon, New York 
and Oxford, Elsevier. 
WEBER, M. (1968): Economy and Society; 3 Vol~., edited by Roth , G. 
& W ittich, C., New York, Bedminster Press. 
WILLIAMS, G. (ed.): (1976) : Nigeria: Economy and Society, London, 
Rex Collings. 
WORKS Jr., J.A. (1976) Pilgrims in a Strange Land: Hausa Communities 
in Chad , New York, Columbia University Press. 
,., 
'. , 
421. 
BOOKS (continued) 
WHITAKER Jr., C.S. (1970): The Politics of Tradition: Continuity, 
and Change in Northern Nigeria, 1946-1966J Princeton, Princeton 
University Press. 
YAHAYA, I. (1971): Tatsuniyoyi Da Wasanni. Nos. 1-3, Ibadan and 
Zaria. Oxford U niversi ty Press. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS 
ADAMU, M.U. (1968b): "Some Notes on the Influence of North African 
Traders in Kano", Kano Studies, 1, 4. 
ADAMU, M. (1976) : "A Survey of the External Commerce of the Hausa 
People from about 1500 A.D. to Date", Paper for the Kano Seminar, 
January, 1976 held at Bayero University, Kano. 
ADAMU, M. (1979): "Distribution of Trading Centres in the Central 
Sudan in the 18th and 19th Centuries", In Usman (1979). 
AL-HAJJ, M. (1968): "A Seventeenth Century Chronicle on the Origins 
and Missionary Activities of the Wangarawa", Kano StudieE, 1, 4. 
AL-HAKIM & ADENIYI, E.O. (1972): "History of the Commercial Structure 
of Kano after 1904", In Greenhill (1972). 
ALLEN, R. (1982): "Capitalist Development and the Educational Role 
of Nigerian Apprenticeship", Comparative Education, 18, 2. 
AMES, D.W. (1968): "Professionals and Amateurs: The Musicians of 
Zaria and Ibimo", African Arts, 1, 2, Winter. 
AMES, D.W. (1973) "A Socio-Cultural View of Hausa Musical Activity", 
in D'Azevedo, W. (ed.) : The Traditional Artist in African Society , 
Indiana, Indiana University Press: 
BALFOUR, H. (1934): "The Tandu Industry in Northern Nigeria and 
its Affinities Elsewhere", in Evans-Pritchard , E.E. et. al. (eds.) : 
!.=-ssays Presented to C.G. Seligman , London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 
Trubner. 
:' I 
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If.22. 
ARTICLES AND ESSA YS (continued~ 
BARKOW, J. (1973): "Muslims and Maguzawa in North Centra l State, 
Nigeria : An Ethnogra phic Comparison", Canadia n Journal of African 
Studies, 59 •. 
BARKOW, J.H. (1978) : "The Ha usa", in Weekes, R.V., (ed.) : Muslim 
Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey, Westport , Conn., Greenwood 
Press. 
BEATON, W.G. (1933): "Tanning and Dyeing of Goat Skins: Native 
Method, Kano, Northern Nigeria" , Bulletin of the Imperial Institute , 
31 , 1. 
BENSON, S. & DUFFIELD, M. (1979): "Women's Work and Economic 
Change: The Hausa in Sudan and in Nigeria", I.D.S. Bulletin, 10, 
If. , June. 
BIRTWISTLE, C.A. (1907-8): "Cotton Growing in Nigeria", 
Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, XXXIX. 
BRAY, J .M. (1976): "The Tim-Tim Makers of Oyo", Savanna, 5, 2, (Dec.). 
BROMLEY, R. (1978): "Introduction - The Urban Informal Sector : Why 
is it Worth Discussing?", in World Development , 6, 9/10. 
BULMER, M.I.A. (1975): "Sociological Models of t he Mining Communit y", 
Sociologica l Review , XXIII, 1. 
CALLA WA Y, A. (1963): "From Traditional Crafts to Modern Industries" , 
in Lloyd , et al. (1967). 
CHARLE Jr., E.G. (1967): "English Colonial Policy a nd the Economy 
of Nigeria", American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 26. 
CLARKE, P.B. (1978) : "Islam, Education and the D~velopmental Process 
in Nigeria", Comparative Educa tion , 1lf. , 2, June. 
CLOUGH, P. (1981) : "Farmers and Traders in Hausaland", Development 
and Change , 12. 
COLLINS, P. (1977): "Public Policy and the Development of Indigenous 
Capitalism : The Nigerian Experience", Journal of Commonwealt h 
and Comparative Poli tics, 15, 2, (July). 
~. 
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423. 
AR TICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
COWLEY, E.J. (1966): "The Development of the Cotton Growing Industry 
in Nigeria , with Special Reference to the Work of the British Cotton 
Growing Associa tion" , Empire Cotton Growing Review, 43. 
CROWDER, M. (1956): "The Decorative Architecture of Northern Nigeria 
: Indigenous Culture Expressed in Hausa Craftsmanship" , African 
World, Feb. 
DANIEL, F. (1932): "The Regalia of Katsina, Northern Provinces, 
Nigeria", Journal of the African Society, 21 , 122, Jan. 
DEMOL, E. & NIHAN, G. (1982): "The Modern Informal Sector in 
Yaounde", International Labour Review) 121 , 1, Jan-Feb. 
EL GUINDI, F. (1981): "Veiling Infitah With Muslim Ethic: Egypt's 
Contempora ry Islamic Movement", Social Problems, 28 , 4, April. 
ELLIOTT, H.P. (1940): "Mud Building in Kano", Nigeria Magazine, 20. 
FIKA, A. & MAHMUD , Z. (n.d.): "Kano City Notes" , unpublished MS., 
Dept. of History , Bayero University, Kano. 
FORBES, D.K. (1981): "Production, Reproduction, and Underdevelopment 
: Petty Commodity Production in Ujung Pandang , Indonesia", 
Environment & Planning, 13. 
FUGLESTAD , F. (1978): "A Reconsideration of Ha usa History Before 
the Jihad", Journal of Africa n History, XIX , 3. 
GERR Y, c. (1977): "Petty Production and Capitalist Production in 
Daka r : The Crisis of the Self-Employed" , Pa per delivered at 
Institute of British Geographers Conference, London, (1977). 
Reprinted in World Development, 6, 9/10, Sept-Oct. 
GERRY , C., & BIRKBECK, C. (1981) : "The P etty Commodity Producer 
in Third World Cities : Petit Bourgeois or 'Disguised' P roletarian?", 
in Bechhofer, F. & Elliott, B. (eds.) : The Petit e Bourgeoisie: 
Comparat ive Studies of the Uneasy Stra tum , London, Macmilla n. 
GOWERS , W.F. (1921): "Kano Gazetteer", in Kirk-Greene (1972). 
.1 
!"', 
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" . ", 
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"filI"I 
,.· .. 1 
,,~ . 
. " , 
424. 
AR TICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
HART, K. (1973): "Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment 
in Ghana", Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 0). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1972a): "Hausa Embroidered Dress", African Art~, 
V, 2 (Winter). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1972b) "A Hausa Embroiderer of Katsina', 
The Nigerian Field, XXXVII, 3 (Sept.). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1972c): "Some Hausa Lizard Designs", Embroidery, 
XXXIII, 4 (Winter). 
HEATH COTE, D.H. (1972d): "Insight into a Creative Process: A Rare 
Collection of Embroidery Drawings from Kano", Savanna, I, 2 (Dec.). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1973): "Hausa Women's Dress in the light of Two 
Recent Finds", Savanna, 11, 2 (Dec.). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1974a): "Aspects of Style in Hausa Embroidery", 
Savanna, III, 1, (June). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1974b): "Hausa Embroidery Stitches", The N,igerian 
Field, XXXIX, 4, (Dec.). 
HEATHCOTE, D.H. (1975): "Hausa Hand-Embroidered Caps", The 
Nigerian Field, XL, 2 (June). 
HILL, P. (1976): "From Slavery to Freedom: The Case of Farm-slavery 
in Nigerian Hausaland", Comp?rative Studies in Society and History, 
18. 
HISKETT, M. (1964-65): "The Song of Bagauda", Bulletin of the School 
of Oriental and African Studies, Part I, XXVII, 3; Part 2, XXVIII, 1; 
Part 3, XXVIII, 2. 
HISKETT, M. (1966): "Materials Relating to the Cowry Currency of 
the Western Sudan", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African 
Studies, XXIX, parts X and XI. 
HOGENDORN, J. (1977): "The Economics of Slave Use on Two 
Plantations in the Zaria Emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate", 
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 11. 
.. , 
425. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
HOOGVELT, A. (1979) : "Indigenisation and Foreign Capital: 
Industrialisation in Nigeria" , Review of African Political EconomY) 
14, Jan-A pril. 
HOOGVELT, A. (1980): "Indigenization and Technological Dependency", 
Development and Change, 11. 
INSTITUTE OF BRITISH GEOGRAPHERS (1977): "The Urban Informal 
Sector in the Third World", One-day conference held at School of 
Oriental and African Studies, University of London, [viarch, 1977. 
JAGGAR, P.J. (1973a): "Kano City Blacksmiths: Precolonial Distribution, 
Structure and Organization", Savanna, 11, 1, June. 
JAGGAR, P.J . (1973b): "A Kano Blacksmith's Vocabulary", Kano 
Studies, New Series, 1, 1. 
JEFFRIES, W.F. (1938): "Leatherwork in Northern Nigeria" , ~eria 
Magazine, 14. 
JEFFRIES, W.F. (1938): "Mud-Building in Northern Nigeria", Nigeria 
Magazine, 14. 
JOHNSON, M. (1970): "The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa", 
Journal of African History , XI, 1. 
JOHNSON, M. (1974): "Cotton Imperialism in West Africa", African 
Affairs, 73 , 291, April. 
JOHNSON, M. (1976): "Calico Caravans: The Tripoli- Kano Trade After 
1880", Journal of African History, XVII, 1. 
JOSEPH, R.A. (1978): "Affluence and Underdevelopment : The Nigerian 
Experience", Journal of Modern African Studies , XVI, 2. 
KANGIWA, SHEHU, M. & MATTADEN, A.K. (1962) : "Leatherwork in Northern 
Nigeria", Nigeria Magazine, 74. 
KAWAR, W.K. (1980): "The Traditional Palestinia n Costume", Journal 
of Palestinian Studies, X, 1, Autumn. 
KENNEDY, P. (1981): "The Role and Position of Petty Producers in 
a West African City", Journal of Modern African Studies, 19, 4. 
426. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
KING, ROGER (1981) : "Cooperative Policy and Village Development 
in Northern Nigeria", in Heyer et. al. (1981). 
KIRK-GREENE, A.H.M. (1961): "Decorated Houses in Zaria", Nigeria 
Magazine, 68. 
LAMPHERE, L. (1979) : "Fighting the Piece-Rate System: New Dimensions 
of an old Struggle in the Apparel Industry", in Zimbalist, A. (ed.) 
: Case Studies in the Labor Process, New York and London, Monthly 
Review Press. 
LAST, D.M. (1979): "Some Economic Aspects of Conversion in Hausaland", 
in Levtzion, N. (ed.) : Conversion to Islam , New York , Holmes and 
Meier. 
LEBRUN, O. & GERRY, C. (1975): "Petty Producers and Capitalism", 
Review of African Political Economy , 3. 
LEWIS, A.O. (1974): "The Development of Small-Scale Industries in 
Nigeria's North-East State: Prospects, Problems and Policies", 
Savanna, 3, 2 (Dec.). 
LONG, N. & RICHARDSON, P~ (1978) : "Infor~al Sector, Petty Commodity 
Production, and the Social Relations of Small-Scale Enterprise", 
in Clam mer , J. (ed.) : The New Economic Anthropology, London, 
Macmillan. 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (1973b): "The Kambarin BeriBeri: The Formation of 
a Specialized Group of Hausa Kola Traders in the 19th Century", 
Journal of African History, XIV, 4. 
LOVEJOY , P.E. (1974): "Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial 
Trade of Nigeria", Journal of African History" XV, 4. 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (1978): "The Role of the Wangara in the Economic 
Transformation of the Central Sudan in the 15th and 16th Centuries", 
Journal of African History, XIX, 2. 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (1978): "Plantations in the Economy of the Sokoto 
Caliphate", Journal of African History , 19. 
". 
427. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (1979): "The Characteristics of Plantations in the 19th 
Century Sokoto Caliphate (Islamic West Africa)", American Historical 
Review, 84, 5, December. 
LOVEJOY, P.E. (1981): 'Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate", in Lovejoy (ed.), 
(1981). 
LOVEJOY, P.E. & BAlER, S. (1975): "The Desert-Side Economy of the 
Central Sudan", International Journal of African Historical Studies, 
VIII, 4. 
LUBECK, P. (1975b): "Unions, Workers and Consciousness in Kano, 
Nigeria", in Sandbrook, R. & Cohen, R. (eds.), The Development 
of an African Working Class , London, Longmans. 
LUBECK, P. (1975c): "Islam and Resistance in Northern Nigeria", in 
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" ' 
, ~I 
11 
' .. I 
428. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
MATLON, P. (1981): "The Structure of Production and Rural Incomes 
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ManJ 29. 
. ,... ~ 
NICOLAS, G., DOUMESCHE, H. & DAN MOUCHE , M. (1968): "Etude 
,... 
Socio-Economique de Deux Villages Hausa", Etudes Nigeriennes, 22. 
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429. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
PIRENNE, H. (1932): "European Guilds", in Encyclopaedia of the Social 
Sciences, Vol. VII, Seligman, E.R.A. & Johnson, A. (eds.), New York, 
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REMY, D., & WEEKS, J. (1973): "Employment, Occupation, and Inequality 
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ROGERSON, C.M., & BEAVON, K.S.O. (1982): "Getting by in the 'Informal 
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SCHILDKROUT, E. (1979): "Women's Work and Children's Work: Variations 
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SCHILDKROUT, E. (1981): "The Employment of Children in Kano 
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SCOTT, P.N. (1979): "Nigeria - Ghana", The Textile Country Reeorter , 
2/1979, International Textile Manufacturers Federation. 
429. 
AR TICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
PIRENNE, H. (1932): "European Guilds", in Encyclopaedia of the Social 
- - .. 
Sciences, Vol. VII, Seligma n, E.R.A. & Johnson, A. (eds.), New York , 
Macmillan. 
PRUSSIN, L. (1976): "Fulani- Hausa Architecture", African Art~, X, 
1, Oct. 
QUARTERLY ECONOMIC REVIEW OF NIGERIA , 4th Qua rter (1981) : 
Economist's Intelligence U ni t . 
REMY, D., & WEEKS, J . (1973): "Employment, Occupation , and Inequality 
in a Non- Industrial City", in Wohlmuth, K. (ed.), Employment Creation 
in Developing Societies , New York, Praeger. 
ROGERSON, C.M., & BEAVON, K.S.O. (1982): "Getting by in the 'Informal 
Sector' of Soweto", Ti jdschrift Voor Econ. En Soc. Geogra fie, 73, 4. 
SANDBROOK, R. (1981): "Worker Consciousness and Populist Protest 
in Tropica l Africa" , in Simpson & Simpson (eds.) : (1981). 
SAULA WA , I. (1946) : "Thread- Making and Wea ving in Katsina Province", 
Nigeria Magazine , 23. 
SCHILDKROUT, E. (1978) :"Age a nd Gender in Hausa Society : Socio-
Economic Roles of Children in Urban Kano", in La Fontaine, J .S. 
(ed.), Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation, A.S.A. 
Monograph, 17, London, Academic Press. 
SCHILDKROUT, E. (1979): "Women's Work and Children's Work : Variat ions 
among Moslems in Kano", in Wallman, S. (ed.), ~ocial Anthropology. 
of Work, A.S.A. Monograph, 19, London, Academic Press. 
SCHILDKROUT, E. (1981): "The Employment of Children in Kano 
(Nigeria)", in Rodgers, G. & Sta nley, G. (eds.), Child Work , Poverty 
and Underdevelopment, Geneva, I.L.O. 
SCHWERDTFEGER, F. (1971): "Housing in Zaria" , in Oliver , P. (ed.), 
Shelter in Africa, London, Barrie a nd Jenkins. 
SCOTT, P.N. (1979): "Nigeria - Ghana" , The Textile Country Reporter , 
2/1979 , International Textile Manufacturers F edera tion. 
"""[ 
430. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
SHEA, P.J. (1976): "Black Cloth: An Export Oriented Industry in Kano", 
Paper for the Seminar on Economic History of the Central Savanna 
of West Africa, Kano, January 1976. 
SHENTON, B., & FREUND, B. (1978): "The Incorporation of Northern 
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SMITH, M.G. (1959): "The Hausa System of Social Status", Africa, XXIX, 3. 
STAMBOULI, F. & ZGHAL, A. (1976): "Urban Life in Pre-colonial North 
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STOKES, s. (1978): "A Comparative Study of Rural Population Structures 
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SUTTON, J.E.G. (1979): "Towards a Less Orthodox History of Hausaland", 
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TAMBO, D. (1976): "The Sokoto Caliphate Slave Trade in the 19th 
Century", International Journal of African Historical Studies, 9. 
THRUPP, S. (1965): "The Gilds", in Postan, M.M., Rich, E.E. & Miller, E. 
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TIPPS, D.C. (1973): "Modernization and the Comparative Study of 
Societies", Comparative Studies in Society and Histor.Y" 15. 
TREAMEARNE, A.J.N. (1910a): "Hausa Houses", Man, 10. 
TREAMEARNE, A.J.N. (1910b): "Pottery in Northern Nigeria", Man, 10. 
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS (continued) 
USMAN, Y.B. (1972): "Some Aspects of the External Relations of 
Katsina Before 1804", Savanna, 1, 2. 
WALDMAN, M.R. (1965): "The Fulani Jihad : A Reassessment", 
Journal of African History, Ill. 
431. 
WALLACE, C.C. (1978): "The Concept of Gandu : How Useful is it in 
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7, 2. 
WALLACE, T. (1980): IIAgricultural Projects and Land in Northern 
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WALLACE, T. (1981a): lIThe Kano River Project Nigeria: The Impact 
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WALLACE, T. (1981b), lIThe Challenge of Food: Nigerials Approach 
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WARDLE, W.A. (1980): "The British Cotton Growing Association and 
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WATERMAN, P. (1975): "The Jihad in Hausaland as an Episode in African 
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WEEKS, J. (1971): IIAn Exploration into the Nature of the Problem of 
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of Sussex, September, 1971. 
WOLGIN, J .M. (1978): "Manufacturing Industry in Nigerials Third 
Development Plan", Journal of Modern African Studi~ 16, 4. 
WORLD DEVELOPMENT (1978) : Special issue on "The Urban Informal 
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ZUKERMAN, M. (1970): "Crisis in Nigeria: The Economic Impact on 
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432. 
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, .. 
,I 
433. 
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"I 
'11 
,. 
,! 
'i 
GOVERNMENT AND OFFICIAL SOURCES (continued) 
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ANJORIN, A.O. (1966): The British Occupation and Development of 
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BASHIR, M.K. (1972): The Economic Activities of Secluded Married 
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CHAMBERLIN, J . (1975): The Development of Islamic Education in Kano 
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DRY, D.P.L. (1953): The Place of Islam in Hausa Society. Unpublished 
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- 'I I ~ 
·,1 
~I 
436. 
DISSERTA TIONS AND THESE~ (continued) 
FAULKINGHAM, R.H. (1970): Political Support in a Hausa Village. 
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HULL, R. (1968): The Development of Administration in Katsina Emirate, 
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IBRAHIM, D.U. (1974): Taxation and General Administration in Kano 
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JAGGAR, P.J. (1978) : The Blacksmiths of Kano City: A Study in 
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LOVE JOY, P.E. (1973a): The Hausa Kola Trade (1700- 1900) : A Commercial 
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LUBECK, P. (1975): Early Industrialization and Social Class Formation 
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MASON, M. (1970): The Nupe Kingdom in the 19th Century: A Political 
History. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham. 
MAL TON, P. (1977): The Size Distribution, Structure, and Determinants 
of Personal Income Among Farmers in the North of Nigeria. Unpublished 
Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University. 
437. 
DISSER TA TIONS AND THESES (continued) 
MOHAMMED, A. (1978): A Hausa Scholar- Trader and his Library Collection 
: The Case Study of Umar Falke of Kano , Nigeria. Unpublished 
Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University. 
OKEDIJI, F.A. (1972) : An Economic History of the Hausa- Fulani Emirates 
of Northern Nigeria: 1900- 1939. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Indiana 
University. 
OLOFSON, H. (1976): Funtua : Patterns of Migration to a New Hausa 
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MIRCHAULUM, P.T. (1974): Cotton Production in Northern Nigeria; 
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REMY WEEKS, D.C. (1973): Adaptive Strategies of Men and Women 
in Zaria, Nigeria ~ Industrial Workers and their Wives. Unpublished 
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SHEA, P.J. (1975) : The Development of an Export-Oriented Dyed Cloth 
Industry in Kano Emirate in the 19th Century. Unpublished Ph.D. 
thesis, University of Wisconsin. 
TAHIR, I. (1975) : Scholars, Sufis, Saints and Ca pita lists in Ka no, 
1904-74 : The Pattern of a Bourgeois Revolution in an Islamic Society. 
Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge U niversi ty. 
USMAN, Y.B. (1974): The Transformation of Katsina , c 1796- 1903. 
Unpublished Ph.D. thesis , Ahmadu Bello University. 
WATTS, M.J. (1980): A Silent Revolution: The Nature of Famine and 
the Changing Character of Food Production in Northern Nigeria. 
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438.