Why Northerners don’t call Tinubu “Jagaban” – Farooq Kperogi

Why Northerners don’t call Tinubu “Jagaban” – Farooq Kperogi

Southern Nigerians have asked me two trivial but persistent and important questions about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The first is why most Hausa-speaking northerners don’t call Tinubu “Jagaban” as a standalone title like southerners do. Since I am from Borgu, I’ve also been asked why Tinubu was knighted as the “Jagaban Borgu” or the “Jagaba of Borgu.” And what does the title mean, anyway?

I didn’t think the questions were worth a response, much less a column-length one, because, until now, Tinubu was either just a major, if unofficial, political player in the Buhari regime or a candidate for president. Now that he is president, I think these questions are deserving of a response in the interest of historical and political education.

Hausa-speaking northerners don’t say “jagaban” as a standalone word because it is ungrammatical in their language. The usual word is “jagaba.” When it transforms to “jagaban” it must be followed immediately by a place name because the additional “n” in the word is a preposition that signifies “of.” So, it is either “the Jagaba of Borgu” or “Jagaban Borgu.” If the title is not associated with a place, it’s simply “Jagaba,” not “Jagaban.”

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To say “Jabagan of Borgu” is to commit an ungainly interlingual prepositional tautology since “n” and “of” mean exactly the same thing. Of course, interlingual tautologies are not uncommon. For example, we say Aso Rock even when “aso” means “rock” in the Gbagyi language. We say “Lake Chad” even when “chad” means “lake” in Kanuri. And we say “Sahara Desert” even when “sahara” means “desert” in Arabic.

Since linguistic habits often form and evolve outside notions of correct usage, I won’t be surprised if even Hausa-speaking northerners start to call Tinubu “Jagaban”—or even “Jagaban of Borgu.” Nigeria’s southwest is, after all, the country’s sociolinguistic pacesetter because of the centrality of Lagos as the cultural capital.

So, what does “jagaba” mean? Well, it’s the Hausa word for chief warrior, warlord, frontrunner, or simply a brave man. It’s derived from “ja,” which means pull and “gaba,” which means front in the Hausa language. A jagaba is therefore someone who leads from the front, which is another way of describing a war commander. In other words, “Jagaban Borgu” or the “Jagaba of Borgu” means the Chief Warrior of Borgu.

The title was conferred on President Tinubu in February 2006 by the late Alhaji Haliru Dantoro who was Emir of Borgu in New Bussa from 2002 to 2015. Dantoro and Tinubu struck up an enduring, if unusual, friendship in 1992 when both of them served as senators in IBB’s abortive Third Republic. Dantoro was a senator on the platform of the National Republican Convention (NRC) and Tinubu was elected on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Although they belonged to different political parties, had diametrically opposed ideological temperaments, and Tinubu was much younger than Dantoro, they hit it off and sustained their friendship even after Sani Abacha dissolved the senate.

Why Northerners don’t call Tinubu “Jagaban” – Farooq Kperogi