The people of the State are predominantly Muslims and Islamic religion provides them with a code of conduct and behavior. Two major festivals namely Eid-el-Fitr and Eid-el-Kabir are celebrated in the State every year. The former marks the end of Ramadan fasting while the latter features the slaughter of rams in commemoration of the act started by Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) peace be unto him thousand years ago.

THE SOKOTO CALIPHATE

The Sokoto Caliphate (Arabic: ٱلْخِلَاْفَة ساكواتو, romanized: al-Khilāfah al-Sākwātu) was a Sunni Muslim caliphate in West Africa. It was founded by Usman dan Fodio in 1804 during the Fulani jihads after defeating the Hausa Kingdoms in the Fulani War. The boundaries of the caliphate make up present-day Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria.^[1][2] It was dissolved when the British and Germans conquered the area in 1903 and annexed it into the newly established Northern Nigeria Protectorate and Kamerun respectively.

The caliphate arose after the Hausa King Yunfa attempted to assassinate Usman dan Fodio in 1802. In order to escape persecution, Usman and his followers migrated towards Gudu in February 1804. Usman’s followers pledged allegiance to Usman as the Commander of the Faithful (Amīr al-Muʾminīn). By 1808, the Sokoto Caliphate had gained control of several Nigerian states. Under the sixth caliph Ahmadu Rufai, the state reached its maximum extent, covering almost the entire West Africa. In 1903, the twelfth and last caliph Attahiru was assassinated by the British forces, which led to the end of the caliphate.

Developed in the context of multiple independent Hausa Kingdoms, at its height, the caliphate linked over 30 different emirates and over 10 million people in the most powerful state in the region and one of the most significant empires in Africa in the nineteenth century. The caliphate was a loose confederation of emirates that recognized the suzerainty of the Amir al-Mu’minin, the Sultan of Sokoto.^[3] The caliphate brought decades of economic growth throughout the region. An estimated 1-2.5 million non-Muslim slaves were captured during the Fulani War.^[4] Slaves worked plantations but may also have been granted freedom conditional on conversion to Islam.^[5]

Although European colonists abolished the political authority of the caliphate, the title of sultan was retained and remains an important religious position for Sunni Muslims in the region to the current day.^[6] Usman dan Fodio’s jihad provided the inspiration for a series of related jihads in other parts of the Sudanian Savanna and the Sahel far beyond the borders of what is now Nigeria that led to the foundation of Islamic states in the regions that would become Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Chad, the Central African Republic, and Sudan.^[3]