Hausa by phylum, is the largest Afro-Asiatic language group, second to Arabic. It is a trade language and not an ethnicity. Hausas like African Americans are made up of different indigenous African ethnic groups that lost their cultural identity to Abrahamic civilizational imperialism and speak pidgin English and Pidgin Arabic, a mix of African and Asiatic languages. Hausas on the average have about 75% Indigneous African DNA like African Americans.
Hausaland is the world’s poverty capital, while African Americans have the highest per capita income of any Black group, which reflects the state of economy of their exploiters. Hausaland and the Sahel was a prosperous international trade route and middlemen of gold and other riches of indigeous African civilization for several millennia until world trade shifted from caravans to Transatlantic shipping routes about five hundred years ago. The question is how will the huge Hausa population ever prosper again without the Trans Sahara trade economics?
Different ethnic regimes lead a civilization around every 250 year cycles tied to economics. The Judeo-Roman civilization has witnessed the Romans, Portuguese/Spanish, Dutch, French, English and the now waning American 250yrs of global exceptionalism. The Afroasiatic civilization based on Arabism has also witnessed different ethnic regimes in their different regional schools tied to trade. The African regional regimes were based on controlling the Trans-Sahara Trade Route, either on the North Africa coastal ports or the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel where the indigenous African groups traded with Afroasians. The Almoravid Empire is the only empire to span both sides of the desert into Europe.
Trade post Empires and civilizational leadership moved westward along the Northern African coast from Egypt to Carthage to Morocco, which inspired the creation of geographically opposite European empires of Greece, Rome and Spain on the European Mediterranean. This also corresponded with Sahel empires that moved from Lake Chad to Hausaland to Mali to Senegambia, being the shortest distance between the Sahel collection points and North African coastal ports. The North African coastal empires were ruled by lighter skinned Afroasians, while Sahel empires were ruled by the darker skin Afro-Arabians like in Mali and the infamous Mansa Musa. Regardless of the skin tone, like with every other civilization, the economics and philosophy were tied to the civilizational source and center.
The 1412 European capture of Ceuta Port in Morocco led to migration of Afroasiatic groups away from Morocco towards Northern Nigeria, being the most populous Afroasiatic center, situated just above the indigenous African Civilizational economic and cultural center of Yorubaland. Especially as Europeans diverted trade from the Trans-Saharan route to Transatlantic shipping routes. With the European takeover of North African ports, the lighter skinned Afroasians took over leadership of the dark skinned Sahel kingdoms. The migration away from the Morocco-Senegambia subregion was led by the Fulani, being the genetic closest to Mecca with less than 50% Indigneous African DNA. From the 1412 loss of the Moroccan port, Afroasians moved into Hausaland and by 1430s the lighter skinned Afroasians in Kano and Daura took over the mosques and leadership.
Hausas were vital to the economic foundation and sustenance of the Afroasiatic civilization due to gold bought from indigenous African miners, yet were at lowest rung of the Afroasiatic civilizational economics, being the most distant genetically to light skinned Arabs. Indigenous Africans groups had interacted and mingled with Asiatics of the Middleast long before the advent of Islam, resulting in slight linguistics changes. However with the advent of Islam as a tool of Arabic civilizational imperialism, the linguistic and genetic changes became more pronounced as traditional institutions and conventions were usurped and outlawed. Hausa history was rewritten to distance them from their Original African civilization, who were labelled Banzas.
With the collapse of Islamic empires and ascendancy of European global economic hegemony, Hausas and other Afro-Arabic peoples have not been able to recover their previous indigenous African prosperity since they were culturally and economic wired to the Afroasiatic civilization. Just before British colonization, the Fulani subjugated and enslaved the Hausas, taking over their citystate power centers, and used their population as a leverage to control the Nigerian state created by the British. Moreso, the British administratively subjugated the northern indigenous African peoples under the Fulani led Northern Protectorate. The Afro-Arabic civilizational economics turned from Trans-Saharan trade to joint exploitation with European colonists of indigenous African resources. The Fulani-British exploitation left nothing for the masses, so Hausas sunk deep into poverty.
As the world moves from a bipolar to multi-polar world order based on civilizational regional population centers, the question is which civilizational economics can uplift the Hausas from poverty? Having lost their indigenous African civilizational identities and economics, Hausas are stuck in a civilizational abyss. In the new world order, based on meritocratic civilizationism, the Chinese and Indians Buddhist civilizations, the world’s two largest populations will have the largest economies. USA will still be a leading ethnic regime of the Western civilization due to migration that refreshes its population growth and economic prosperity.
In the Afroasiatic civilization, meritocratic civilizationism projects Iran to be the leader of Islamic civilization as Sunni monarchical dynasties fall. As recently witnessed in the Sahel, the darker skinned Afro-Arabians have rose against the Fulani and lighter skinned hegemony. Nigerian Hausas are likely to revolt and replace the Fulani monarchial dynasty with Shite meritocratic civilizational governance practiced by Iran. Nevertheless, with or without the Fulani, the Hausa or any other Black Afroasiatic group will continue the status quo Fulani quest to ‘dip the Koran in the Southern Atlantic Ocean’, in order to be in control of the rich southern resources that would promote them in the global Afroasiatic civilizational hierarchy. To be in control will be to be democratically and militarily in control of Nigeria, against the larger populated indigenous African civilization agitating for restructuring and devolution of power from the center, or outright secession.
Eurocentric Pan Tribalistic Southern Nigerian scholars and politicians wrongly focus on Fulani the leading Afro-Arabic regime, with some naivety hoping to free the Hausa from the Fulani. However they are mistaken and will merely achieve aiding the Hausa to takeover the Afro-Arabic civilizational regime from Fulani, but with the same imperialistic inclinations of the Afroasiatic civilization. Some indigenous African scholars wrongly believe in the creation of separate European nationstates, ignorant of the fact that civilizational imperialism can’t be stopped by mere geographical boundaries, due to trade and belief systems. Nation-states are Western civilizational territorial classifications, like Caliphates/Emirates are Arabic civilizational territorial classifications, so indigenous African civilization units can’t be truly free in nation-states/caliphates essentially tied to the sociopolitical and economic values of other civilizations. So indigenous African separatists will only create closer neocolonial Prebendalist ties to one of the regimes of other colonial civilizations.
Since Hausas can neither dominate Nigeria nor return to being the middlemen between indigenous African and Afroasiatic civilizations for prosperity, a new civilizational economics must be developed for them to prosper. Without direct control of the coast, they can’t be at the forefront of European Transatlantic economic triangle of Europe and the Americans. Therefore they must align with the indigenous African civilization economically, using their comparative advanges of solar energies, precious metals and agriculture.
Global Black Renaissance relies on the unity of the two most populous and prosperous indigenous African civilizational groups, Yoruba and Igbo, that can fund and engineer the reestablishment of their civilizational economics, to replace their dependence on European colonial export and import economics. The dependence on neocolonial trade centered around Lagos and Port Harcourt has made the South significantly more prosperous than the North, resulting in heavy migration of migrant workers and herdsmen from the North, which currently threatens the sustainability of the neocolonial economic prosperity of the South.
For Hausas to realign their economics with the indigenous African civilization, their civilizational philosophy has to change. Indigenous African civilizational philosophy is based on Binary Complementarity that is more inclusive and egalitarian while Afroasiatic civilizations are based on Binary Opposition that sees alliances, compromises and hybridity as weakening and unacceptable, which makes them tend towards extremism and imperialism. The Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa Original African civilization must ensure that its civilizational philosophies of Binary Complementarity, egalitarianism and religious and cultural freedoms is paramount, otherwise it would fall to the Hausa led Afro-Arabic civilizational imperialism.
Unfortunately, the indigenous African groups suffer from divisive colonially inspired Pan Tribalistic perspectives instead of a civilizational perspective to counter united Western and Afro-Arabic Civilizational imperialism. It will require the political, economic and cultural civilizational unity of the indigenous African groups of South and Middlebelt like SMBLF to wrestle power from the Fulani and British imperialists. For the tenets of Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa to be the uniting and guiding philosophies, coloniality of knowledge must be addressed by making Yoruba, Igbo and other indigenous African groups teach and do business in their own languages. The Bo’ori indigenous African traditionalists currently barred to the outskirts of Northern cities have to be engaged and empowered from the Ife source of the indigenous African civilization.
For prosperity and industrialization, Nigeria needs to build at least 10 kilometers of railway and 10,000 houses every day for at least four years to stimulate both comsumer and producer markets. For political sustainability, there must be Justice, Equity and Freedoms which can only be brought about by political restructuring towards devolution of power to ethnic nationalities. Only then can the Black Race move towards global racial and civilizational parity in the new multi-polar world order.
Prince Justice Faloye, President ASHE Foundation think tank.