Unknown Key Things About Zungeru In Nigeria’s Early History—IBB

Unknown Key Things About Zungeru

 

OpenLife Nigeria reports that former military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, rtd, has revealed key things about Zungeru, unknown to many in the early history of Nigeria.

Zungeru is a town in Niger State, Nigeria with an estimated population of 31,407.

Making the revelation in his book “Journey In Service,” IBB stated that Zungeru occupies significant chapters in Nigeria’s early history in whatever form it is written.

Provincial Secondary School, Bida

It was a privilege to have gone to what is today known as Government College, Bida. Although founded by the colonial government in 1912 as a Provincial Middle School, admission to the school, at inception, was problematic.

With its primary focus on areas around what is today’s Niger state, the British colonial government held back entry into the school until it was sure the institution could be fully equipped with teachers and other facilities.

Therefore, the first set of 60 students, who, incidentally, were beneficiaries of one of the best-equipped schools of its time, did not resume until 1914, two years after the British formally founded the school.
There was also something intuitively satisfying for us as young students at Bida to know that we were surrounded by much of early Nigerian history.

For instance, north of Bida was Zungeru, which served as the colonial capital of Northern Nigeria between 1902 and 1916. Many hardly remember that Frederick Lugard amalgamated Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria at Zungeru in 1914 and that Lugard’s office was situated in Zungeru between February and August 1914 before he moved to Kaduna. Zungeru can, therefore, pass as the first capital of Nigeria.

And, as every Nigerian schoolboy knows, Zungeru was the birthplace of the great Nigerian nationalist, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, in 1904. The story, of course, is that his father came to Zungeru as a clerk with the Nigerian Regiment of the West African Frontier Force.

There was a famous folktale associated with Dr Azikiwe’s birth, namely, that because his birth coincided with the appearance of a comet, a soothsayer predicted that the baby’s life would be impactful.

Dr Azikiwe, the Zik of Africa, would serve as the first Governor General of an independent Nigeria.

The other almost-forgotten footnote about Zungeru’s place in early Nigerian history is that the founder of the Nigerian Boy Scout Movement, the Australian Henry James Speed, died in Zungeru and is buried there.