If you walk through Sabon Gari in Kano today, it is easy to see it simply as one of the city's busiest commercial areas. Behind the shops, streets, churches, businesses and endless movement of people, however, is a story that goes back more than a century. It is a story about migration, opportunity and the making of a community and, perhaps surprisingly to many Nigerians today, it is also an important part of the history of the Igbo people in Kano.
During the colonial period, Southern Nigerians began moving north in search of work, trade and business opportunities. Kano, already one of West Africa's great commercial centres, naturally attracted many of them. To accommodate these growing migrant communities, the colonial authorities developed what became known as Sabon Gari “new town” in Hausa.
It is sometimes easy, looking back from today's Nigeria, to assume that Sabon Gari was simply created as an ethnic enclosure. The reality was more nuanced. The colonial administration was deliberately organising different parts of the growing city according to the roles, backgrounds and lifestyles of the people living in them. Sabon Gari was developed largely for migrants from Southern Nigeria who came to Kano for work, trade and other opportunities.
In much the same manner, areas such as Nasarawa GRA were laid out to provide residential environments suited to European colonial officials and the lifestyle they were accustomed to back home in Europe spacious compounds, generous setbacks, gardens and an environment designed around their residential preferences. This is why, even today, one can notice the spacious compounds and garden-filled yards characteristic of some of the older parts of Nasarawa.
So, the story of Sabon Gari should be understood within that larger colonial arrangement. There was certainly an element of colonial segregation in the way Kano was planned, but Sabon Gari was also a response to a very practical reality: people from different parts of colonial Nigeria were increasingly coming to Kano to work, trade and settle. And among those migrants, the Igbo would eventually become one of the largest and most influential communities.
Initially, the Yoruba were more numerous among the Southern migrants in Sabon Gari. But after the Second World War, Igbo migration to Kano increased considerably. By the middle of the 1950s, historical research estimates that about 59 percent of Sabon Gari's population was Igbo, while the Yoruba accounted for about 24 percent.
Think about what that means. A significant part of Kano's story was being written by people whose ancestral homes were thousands of kilometres away. These were not simply visitors passing through Kano. Many came to stay. Some came alone and later brought their families; others were born there. Their children attended school there, grew up there and knew Kano as home.
The popular image is often that the Igbo came to northern cities simply to do business. Business was certainly important, but they were also railway workers, civil servants, employees of companies, artisans, professionals and entrepreneurs. Kano's growing economy provided opportunities, and many Igbo migrants established themselves firmly within the city's commercial and professional life.
Sabon Gari became particularly important to this economic story. By the 1960s, its market had grown into one of Kano's significant commercial centres, and historical research describes it as an important centre of Igbo commercial activity. But perhaps the more interesting part of the story is what happened beyond the marketplace: they began building a community.
The Igbo residents did not simply arrive in Kano and live as isolated individuals. They formed associations to look after one another. The Igbo Union had branches across Nigeria, including Kano, and its presence there became well established by the 1940s. These organisations helped newcomers settle, supported members during difficult times, assisted families during marriages and funerals, provided financial assistance and helped create a sense of community far from their ancestral homes.
The community also invested in education. Before 1966, the Igbo community in Kano had established both a primary and secondary school for its children. This tells us something important about the nature of their settlement. They were not merely temporary traders passing through a northern city, they were putting down roots, raising families and building institutions that suggested they expected to remain part of Kano's future.
Imagine a young Igbo man arriving in Kano several decades ago. He finds his way to Sabon Gari and meets people from his community. Perhaps someone helps him find accommodation or introduces him to a business opportunity. He starts small, maybe by opening a shop, working for the railway or finding employment with a company. Eventually, he brings his family. His children are born in Kano, attend school in Kano and grow up around Hausa neighbours and other Nigerians from different parts of the country. At some point, Kano stops being simply the place where their father came to make a living. It becomes home.
By the 1960s, some of these migrants were already second-generation residents people born and raised in Kano who had never known another home.
Nigeria entered one of the darkest periods in its history. The January 1966 coup, the political crisis that followed, the counter-coup and the growing suspicion between Nigeria's regions created an atmosphere in which ethnicity became increasingly dangerous. The violence that followed in Northern Nigeria affected Igbo communities severely, and Kano was among the places where the violence was particularly devastating.
The attacks reached Sabon Gari. People who had spent decades building businesses, friendships and families in Kano suddenly found themselves running for their lives. Some abandoned their shops, some left their homes, and some never returned. The population of Igbo residents in Sabon Gari fell dramatically in 1966, and during the Civil War many of those who remained were forced into hiding or disguise.
It is one of those moments in Nigerian history that deserves to be remembered not simply through statistics, but through the human beings behind them. Imagine being born in Kano, growing up in Kano and building your entire livelihood in Kano and then being made to feel, by circumstances you did not create, that you were suddenly a stranger.
The war ended, Nigeria remained one country, and gradually Igbo Nigerians began returning to Kano. They reopened businesses, rebuilt their lives and returned to the streets and markets they had once known. Sabon Gari once again became an important centre of Igbo life in Kano.
Over the decades, the community expanded beyond Sabon Gari. Historical research from the 1990s records Igbo residents living in areas such as Brigade, Wudil, Bompai, Nassarawa, Naibawa and Gyadi-Gyadi, among others. The community was no longer confined to one part of the city, it had become part of Kano's wider social and economic landscape.
Today, if you walk through Kano's commercial areas, you will still find Igbo Nigerians doing many of the things generations before them did trading, working, building businesses, raising families and contributing to the economy. You will find people whose parents came from the East, others who were born in Kano, and young Nigerians who may identify strongly with their Igbo heritage while also considering Kano home.
That, perhaps, is the most fascinating part of this history.
It reminds us that long before social media gave us hashtags like #NorthVsSouth, Nigerians were already moving across these geographical boundaries. A man from the East could build a business in Kano, a Yoruba could establish a home in Sabon Gari, a northerner could trade with both. People could speak different languages, worship differently, eat different foods and still participate in the same economy.
Our history has certainly known conflict, but it has also known coexistence, commerce, friendship, migration and shared dreams. Perhaps that is something worth remembering today, because Nigeria was never built by one tribe.
Kano was never built by only Kanawa. Lagos was never built by only Yorubas. Onitsha was never built by only Igbos. Our cities became what they are because Nigerians moved, traded, worked, married, learnt from one another and built together.
Perhaps the Nigeria we need today is not one where everybody becomes the same. Perhaps it is one where an Igbo man can call Kano home, a Hausa man can find opportunity in Enugu, a Yoruba woman can build a life in Maiduguri, and none of them has to prove that they belong before being treated as Nigerian.
We have lived this way before. Maybe we should remember how.
This is Nigeria's history. And it belongs to all of us.
Nworisa Michael is the coordinator of Inter-tribe Community Support Forum and writes from nworisamichael1917@gmail.com
#TheNworisaDoctrine a body of ideas centred on nation-building, civic responsibility, inclusive governance and African self-determination.