APPENDIX XIX

HEAD-QUARTERS OF BRITISH BORNU

When Bornu was occupied in the spring of 1902 by the British force under Colonel Morland, and Shehu Abubakr Garbai invited in from Dikoa to become Head of the greater bulk of the land of his fathers, now stripped of districts apportioned by treaty to Germany and France, it was promised that the Shehu should restore and repopulate ruined Kuka if he could: in the meantime he made his temporary capital at the ancient site and large market village of Mongonu, some seventeen miles southward on the Maiduguri road.

On the appointment a few months later of a Civil Resident, this officer found it expedient to reside himself at Mongonu, leaving the eastern garrison still at Maiduguri, where Colonel Morland had placed it, with a fort. Next year, when the Shehu made his experimental move to Kuka, the Resident decided that the institution of internal caravan tolls, the paucity of the administrative staff and other considerations required his residence at the more central locality of Magumeri, where the Residency continued until the end of 1904, when Kuka became the joint capital of the British and the native administration.

At the end of 1906 it became evident that no efforts of the Shehu could attract a population or trade approaching half of its volume or importance prior to the sack of the city thirteen years previously, and that mere sentiment did not justify the retention and rebuilding of a site unhealthy and depressing, and no longer central or convenient. The Resident and the Shehu accordingly moved then down to Maiduguri, the capital of British Bornu to-day.

The government station of Maiduguri, civil and military, is built upon the sandy rise, some 1,000 feet above mean sea level, on the left bank of the little River Alo, upon which the small village of Maifoni used to stand. This is the place wrongly termed Mabani by Barth, whose map also shows the stream flowing the wrong way. The situation is healthy, commanding, and with a good water supply. Maiduguri, the large market village, is some 3½ miles away; and between this and the government station, upon the sites of the little hamlets of Kalua, is built the Shehu’s quarter, known at first as Yeriwa, but now as Shehuri. For general convenience, the absorbed hamlets of Kalua, the village of Maifoni (now moved into ‘Shehuri’), Shehuri and Maiduguri, themselves—comprising in all a population of some 10,000, together with the government station—are known as Maiduguri, likely soon to develop into a thriving commercial centre, on the highway to the Shari, Darfur, and the Nile.