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Shehu Usman bin Fodiye

By Umaru Yusufu

Usuman dan Fodio (1754-1817), West African Fulani chief, scholar, and teacher, who founded

the Sokoto sultanate in present-day northern Nigeria. Born in Maratta in the Hausa kingdom ofGobir, the son of a Muslim scholar, he was thoroughly imbued with Islamic culture, and by the

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age of 20 began to teach, travel, and preach. Gathering fame and followers, he won important

concessions from the sultan of Gobir, but these were later rescinded when the sultan feared

Usuman was becoming too powerful. The final break came in 1804, when Usuman, electedimam (leader) by his followers, declared a jihad, or holy war.

The immediate cause of this jihad was that one day; he saw some of his students in chains

among a group of slaves about to be sold to slave dealers, when he demand to know why, he wasonly told that it was the kings orders. It was said that he reacted by freeing them saying that aMuslim could not enslaved a fellow Muslim but when the King hard what he did he ordered his

immediate arrest. Someone however alerted him and so he run together with a handful of his

followers. It was while they were running that some of his students named him an Imam anddemanded that choose commanders to lead a jihad.

He agreed and chooses his son Muhammad Bello and one of his students Umarun Dallaje

Korau, to be the commaders. (Umarun Dallaje Korau was later to be the Flag bearer that entered

Katsina and subsequently the ancestor of Dallajawa ruling house of Katsina royalty in the presentday Katsina town in Nigeria.)

Within a few years, aided by his son Muhammad Bello, Usuman was in charge of most of

Hausaland; the capital of Gobir fell in 1808 and the sultan was killed. Usuman's forces turnedeast toward the Kanem-Bornu Empire, which, however, effectively checked their advances by

1812.

Usuman dan Fodio chose Sokoto as the capital of his caliphate and a base for the spread

of Islam and the expansion of the Fulani Empire. In the holy war known as the Fulani Jihad,lasting from 1804 to 1830, Usuman and his followers took control of most of present day

northern Nigeria and adjacent parts of Cameroon and Niger.

Usuman then withdrew from active government and devoted his last five years toscholarship, leaving a prodigious body of writings. Muhammad Bello, also a brilliant scholar,

expanded his father's empire southward into Yoruba country. It was still intact in the early 20th

century, when the British occupied it. His name is also spelled Usman dan Fodio and Uthman

dan Fodio.

Reference:

"Usuman dan Fodio." Microsoft Encarta 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft

Corporation, 2008.