Dikwa

Dikwa, town and traditional emirate, Borno state, Nigeria. The town lies near the Yedseram River, which flows into Lake Chad, and has road connections to Maiduguri, Bama, Ngala, and Kukawa. Precisely when the town was founded and when its walls (30 feet [9 metres] thick) were built is unknown; but it had certainly become a major centre of the Bornu kingdom (see Kanem-Bornu) of the Kanuri people by the 1850s.

In 1893, after the Sudanese warrior Rābiḥ az-Zubayr (Rabah Zubayr) conquered almost all of Bornu, Dikwa was selected by Rābiḥ to be the new Bornu capital and seat of the shehu (sheikh). Although Rābiḥ was killed by the French in 1900 and the immediate region came under French control, Dikwa remained the shehu’s seat until 1902. Dikwa was occupied by the British during World War I, and in 1922 Dikwa emirate became part of the League of Nations mandate of British Cameroons. In 1942 the emirate headquarters was moved from Dikwa town to Bama, 40 miles (64 km) south-southwest.

Although administered by Nigeria’s Bornu province during British rule, the emirate became part of the United Nations trust territory of Northern Cameroons in 1946. After rejecting union with Nigeria in 1959, its peoples, mostly Kanuri and Shuwa Arab peoples, voted to join a new (later Sardauna) province in Northern Nigeria in the 1961 plebiscite. A year later, however, they were able to secede from Sardauna and unite with their kinsmen in Bornu province. Dikwa was part of North-Eastern state from 1967 to 1976.

Most of the area’s population is engaged in herding (especially cattle) and in farming (chiefly cotton, peanuts [groundnuts], millet, sorghum, corn [maize], and indigo). Fishing is important, both along the shores of Lake Chad and the Yedseram. Cotton weaving and dyeing are significant local activities, as is the tanning of leather. The Shuwa also use their cattle—a practice unusual in Nigeria—to transport goods and people.

Dikwa town has a government health office and a dispensary; but Bama, besides being the seat of the emirate, is larger, has more medical and educational facilities, and is a trade centre. Pop. (2006) local government area, 51,020.