The Hausawa Tsantsa Movement has rejected claims by a professor at Bayero University, Kano, Tijjani Naniya, on the historical account of the Hausa people.
According to the group, the account of Naniya on the relationship between the Hausa and Fulani is distorted.
The group was reacting to comments reportedly made by Naniya during an interview on Arise Television on 29 June 2026, where he spoke on the history of the Hausa and Fulani people, the spread of Islam in Northern Nigeria and the evolution of the “Hausa/Fulani” identity.
In a statement issued on Thursday by Hajiya Kaltume Alumbe Jitami of the Hausawa Tsantsa Movement, titled “An Academic Rejoinder to Professor Tijjani Naniya’s Distortions of Hausa History: A Call for Historical and Theological Truth,” the group dismissed the professor’s position as historically inaccurate.
The movement argued that Naniya’s claim that the Fulani had lived in Hausa land for between 600 and 700 years was inconsistent with historical records.
According to the group, available accounts, including those linked to the family of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, indicate that the Fulani arrived in the Hausa kingdoms as migrants, nomadic herders and clerics, rather than as indigenous inhabitants.
It also disputed Naniya’s assertion that Fulani scholars introduced Islam to the Hausa states, insisting that Islam reached the region through Wangarawa traders and scholars from the Mali Empire during the reign of Sarkin Kano Ali Yaji.
The statement maintained that Hausa land already had established Islamic institutions and indigenous scholars before the arrival of Fulani clerics.
“The claim that Fulani intellectuals introduced Islam to the Hausa states in the fourteenth century is a historical falsehood that undermines the deeply rooted Islamic heritage of the Hausa people,” the statement said.
The movement further alleged that the military campaigns led by Usman Dan Fodio disrupted existing Hausa educational institutions instead of establishing new ones.
It claimed that several indigenous scholars who opposed the jihad were killed while centres of learning were destroyed during the nineteenth-century conflicts.
The group also challenged the description of the 1804 campaign as a purely religious jihad, arguing that many of the Hausa rulers deposed during the conflict were already practising Muslims.
It cited the killing of the King of Kano, Alwali, and attacks on Muslim rulers during the period as evidence that the conflict was driven more by political conquest than religious conversion.
Quoting the Qur’an, the movement argued that coercion in matters of religion contradicts Islamic teachings.
It stated, “There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, the Right Path has become distinct from the wrong path.”
The group also rejected the continued use of the expression “Hausa/Fulani”, describing it as an artificial political construct that erases the distinct identities of both ethnic groups.
It maintained that Hausa and Fulani are distinct peoples with different historical, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds and should not be merged into a single socio-political identity.
“The public discourse must reflect the reality that Hausa is Hausa, and Fulani is Fulani, two entirely separate entities by virtue of history, law, and divine creation,” the statement added.
The movement called on Naniya to revisit what it described as authentic historical records. It urged academics to uphold historical accuracy rather than promote narratives that could distort the history of the Hausa people.
