The Nikyob of Kaninkon Chiefdom: One of Nigeria’s Invisible Ethnic Group and Their Paramount Ruler

Helen Musa

Book Title: A Life of Service: From the Civil Service to Paramount Ruler of Kaninkon Chiefdom
Author: Tanko Tete
Publishers: Aboki Publishers, Makurdi
Year: 2019
ISBN: 978-978-8546-03-0
Pages: 315

The book is an autobiography that chronicles the life of His Royal Highness Tanko Tete the Sarkin Kaninkon (Tum Nikyob) and the history of his people the Nikyob of Kaninkon Chiefdom of Kaduna State. The work presents his family genealogy and discusses the socio-cultural organization and history of the precolonial Kaninkon society such as their traditional child naming ceremony, their masquerades, and the circumcision ceremony among others.

The autobiography evaluates the colonial Kaninkon society and its contact with Europeans leading to the emergence and adoption of Christianity as a religion. Another impact of the advent of the colonialists in the area was the introduction of Western education which paved the way for learning, reading and writing by the Nikyob, who are also known as the Kaninkon. HRH Tanko Tete identifies Gbed Bodo Kyangma as one of the pioneer converts to Christianity in the area in the early 1930s. The author recounts his early foray into western education and progression from primary school to the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) Teachers College, Kagoro from 1962 to 1966.

In his journey of life, Tanko Tete evaluates his teaching career where he started as a volunteer teacher with Bakin Kogi Primary School, Kaninkon and thereafter furthered his scholarship to Advanced Teachers College (now Federal College of Education), Zaria. After the completion of his studies he taught at St. Louis Women Teachers College, Zonkwa and thereafter transferred to the Sudan Interior Mission (S.I.M.) School, Kagoro in 1971. From the Kagoro school, he would depart to enroll into Ahmadu Bello University, (A.B.U.), Zaria in 1971 where upon graduation with a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration he would proceed to his National Youth Service in Lagos in 1975.

In the course of service to his fatherland he served as a teacher in Badagry Grammar School. The completion of his national service paved the way for Tete to join the Civil Service of Kaduna State where he started as an assistant secretary with the Kaduna Capital Development Board in July 1975. While in service, HRH Tanko Tete would secure a scholarship for further studies overseas in the United Kingdom in 1981 at Cambridge University to obtain a Post-Graduate Diploma in Development Studies.

The book from chapter twelve to chapter twenty-one chronicles and recounts His Highness service to Kaduna State upon his return from the United Kingdom. From 1981 to 2006 when he became the first paramount ruler of the newly created Kaninkon Chiefdom, he would commit himself fully as a career civil servant serving the state government and people of Kaduna in different capacities. These included working in the Cabinet Office and the State House of Kaduna state in capacities such as the Principal Private Secretary to Military Administrators/Governors and as a Secretary to the State Executive Council. He also served as the chairman of Kachia Local Government Council (1986), and heading the Kaduna State Urban Planning and Development Agency Board (1987). In the core civil service he served in the Ministries of Education; and also Agriculture; and in the State Civil Service Commission and the Ministry of Information, Sports and Culture where he rose to the pinnacle of the civil service as Director-General/Permanent Secretary and retired to become the Tum Nikyob, an appointment that was made by the state administration of Alhaji Ahmad Muhammed Makarfi, the then governor of Kaduna State in 2006.

The author in the concluding chapters (twenty-two and twenty-three) addresses his ascension to the newly established chieftaincy institution of his people, the challenges faced, and the achievements realized. Paramount among these was the creation of more districts with their heads. A succinct evaluation and comparison of the hitherto nature of the co-existing relationship that was in place by the colonial period and beyond between the Kaninkon and other groups is addressed. Special attention is given to the relationship between them and the Fulani which affirmed that the past relationship was more symbiotic than the present situation with its tensions.

Summarily, the book represents a reflection of a typical pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Nigerian society in the area of human relations especially in the sphere of socio-cultural, economic, and political development as illustrated in the life of the author, Tanko Tete the Sarkin Kaninkon-Tum Nikyob.

Helen Musa is a lecturer in the Department of History, Kaduna State University, Kaduna, Nigeria.