When the Conquerors Wore Turbans

There’s a quiet truth buried in Nigeria’s story: many rail against British colonialism but ignore a more intimate conquest that changed northern Nigeria forever. It was a colonisation that came not with gunboats but with Qurans, not by men in pith helmets but by scholars in flowing robes. Usman dan Fodio’s jihad of the early 1800s overthrew centuries of Hausa sovereignty and stitched together an empire that would outlast him and echo deep into modern Nigeria.

We know the British story well. Textbooks and street names ensure we remember Lord Lugard, indirect rule, and the Union Jack hoisted over Lagos. But the Sokoto Caliphate, built by Fulani jihadists, has escaped the same condemnation. Even today, its legacy is wrapped in a veneer of holy purpose. What is rarely said plainly is that Usman dan Fodio and his followers did what the British did: conquer, subdue, assimilate.

This silence isn’t an accident. As Max Siollun explains in The Forgotten Era (the book I am currently reading) and Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi’s “Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation” (the book I read last year), most surviving accounts of the Sokoto Caliphate come from the Caliphate’s own scribes. Victors write the history. From Wurno to Sokoto, the chroniclers of the jihad ensured that their version — righteous, inevitable, God-ordained — became the lens through which northern Nigeria’s past is read.

But scratch the surface and contradictions spill out. Before the jihad, Hausaland was hardly a vacuum of Islam. To its northeast lay the ancient Kanem-Borno empire, a civilisation older than the Caliphate and one of Africa’s longest surviving states. By the time Usman dan Fodio preached reform in Gobir, Borno’s rulers had practiced Islam for centuries, built madrassas in Cairo, and sent caravans of pilgrims to Mecca. They minted coins, brokered treaties with Tripoli, and wielded muskets at a time when English armies still used bows and arrows.

Hausa rulers, too, were no strangers to Islam. Many courts fused Islamic law with local governance. But they were imperfect kings, and it was their moral failings — real or perceived — that gave dan Fodio his spark. His call for reform spoke to Fulani herders who felt alienated by the Hausa aristocracy. It was in this brew of religious zeal and local resentment that the jihad found fuel.

Yet once the banners were raised, conquest became its own logic. Dan Fodio’s forces didn’t stop at overthrowing a few corrupt Hausa kings. They dismantled entire kingdoms and installed Fulani rulers loyal to the Caliphate. In time, a vast empire emerged, stretching from Sokoto to Adamawa. Hausa identity became inseparable from Fulani political dominance. A new ruling class, born of the jihad, presided over people who had lost the sovereignty their ancestors once wielded.

For the people of Borno, the jihad’s contradictions came home in blood and letters. When Fulani fighters turned their eyes eastward, Borno’s Muslim rulers were stunned. Why wage jihad on fellow Muslims? Mai Ahmad of Borno demanded answers. His questions to dan Fodio read like desperate pleas for clarity. The Caliphate’s replies, caught between religious justification and political ambition, struggled to explain why a devout Muslim kingdom was a legitimate target.

Into this tangled clash stepped Mohammed al-Kanemi, one of the few figures who could match dan Fodio in scholarship and charisma. Born of Kanembu and Arab parentage, Kanemi was a master of the pen and sword. He posed a question the jihadists could not answer cleanly: if Borno’s rulers prayed, built mosques, and gave alms, how could they be infidels? His challenges, written in measured Arabic, forced the Caliphate’s leaders to defend what had by then become a power grab clothed in holy cloth.

Kanemi’s military resistance and spiritual authority preserved Borno’s independence. He turned back the Fulani tide that had swallowed much of Hausaland. Yet his success came with an irony: in saving Borno, Kanemi laid the foundation for a new ruling dynasty. His descendants replaced the ancient Saifawa line that had governed Borno for eight centuries. A different ruler, but still a conqueror. Even salvation comes at a cost.

Why does this story matter today? Because the echoes of that conquest shape how we see colonialism. Many Nigerians rightly bristle at the British. The Union Jack’s forced taxes, and indirect rule remain symbols of exploitation. But few scrutinise how Usman dan Fodio’s jihad forcibly rearranged borders, dethroned kings, and replaced indigenous rule with an empire run from Sokoto.

The double standard is striking. A fellow even wrote on one of my posts that he liked the Uthman’s jihad because “He brought land reform, literacy, and centralization to a region that hadn’t these.” Interesting rationalization. Many are still unable to see the contradiction. One colonialism is denounced at independence day rallies and taught in classrooms as an injustice. The other is woven into the heritage of a region, spoken of with reverence. The Caliphate’s legacy lives on in traditional councils, emirate structures, and titles that still command respect. Few pause to ask: was this not also conquest?

Some argue that the jihad was different because it spread Islam. Yet the spread of religion has always been a convenient cloak for conquest. The British carried Bibles alongside Maxim guns. The Caliphate wielded the Quran and cavalry. Both knew faith could open gates that armies alone could not.

There is also the logic that Hausaland might have become fully Islamic anyway, under Borno’s gradual influence. For centuries before dan Fodio’s uprising, Borno had shaped the region’s religious life through trade, pilgrimage, and scholarship. A slower, quieter Islamisation might have avoided the violence that the jihad unleashed. Instead, the Fulani movement struck like wildfire, erasing old dynasties and consolidating rule by force.

Max Siollun and the two Fs remind us that this forgotten era matters because history is never dead. Today’s ethnic tensions, local loyalties, and political identities owe much to this buried conflict. Understanding it means confronting uncomfortable truths. It means asking why we excuse one conquest while condemning another.

Perhaps the answer lies in how memory works. The British were foreign, visibly different, easy to cast as outsiders. The Fulani jihadists shared names, skin, prayers, and markets with their conquered subjects. They became local rulers, married into local elites, and rewrote the story as a holy mission. The conquerors became kin.

When we look at Nigeria’s fractured present, we see these old lines. We see how power and faith overlap, how narratives of righteousness can hide ambition. We see how history’s victors hold the pen, shaping whose version is told and whose is drowned in wells along with their books. The British left English courts, and a foreign flag. The Caliphate left a deeper, more intimate legacy. Its structures still frame politics in the north. Its memory still shapes who we admire and who we dismiss.

To revisit this past is not to erase faith or diminish the power of reform. It is to remember that empire comes in many forms, not all of them flying a foreign flag. It is to question why one coloniser is branded an oppressor and another a hero. And it is to remind ourselves that the price of conquest, whether by musket or cavalry, is always paid by those who lose their land, their kings, and their voice.

In telling this story, we do not rewrite history. We unearth it. We name it for what it was. And perhaps, by doing so, we free ourselves to see that colonisation — whether by the Union Jack or the flag of Sokoto — remains a story of power, not purity. One that deserves the same scrutiny, the same question that Kanemi posed when the swords first rose:

“Tell us, therefore, why you are fighting us and enslaving our free people.”

If we ask it often enough, maybe we will find the courage to reckon with all our histories, not only the ones our conquerors wrote for us.