Maiduguri

Maiduguri is a young capital for a very old state. Its people are the heirs of Kanem-Bornu, an empire that ruled the country around Lake Chad for roughly a thousand years, whose capital moved from Kanem east of the lake to Ngazargamu in what is now Yobe. After the Fulani jihad of the early nineteenth century the scholar Muhammad al-Kanemi rallied the defence of Bornu, and his descendants became its rulers with the title of Shehu.

The city itself dates from 1907, when the British, having taken the western part of Bornu after the defeat of the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr, established an outpost here; in the same year Shehu Abubakar Garbai founded Yerwa to the west as his capital, and the twin towns grew together as Maiduguri. The railway from Port Harcourt was extended to the city in 1964, and it became the commercial gateway for trade with Niger, Chad and Cameroon and the seat of Borno State when that was created in 1976. The University of Maiduguri opened in 1975.

The city's recent history is dominated by the movement known as Boko Haram, which formed in Maiduguri in the 2000s. Its uprising in 2009 was crushed and its founder died in police custody; the insurgency that followed drove more than two million people from their homes across the northeast, and Maiduguri's population swelled with the displaced. In 2024 the collapse of the Alau Dam to the south flooded much of the city and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Maiduguri is the cultural capital of the Kanuri, one of West Africa's oldest Muslim peoples, and Kanuri is heard everywhere alongside Hausa, with Shuwa Arabic, Fulfulde and Babur among the other languages of the city. Islam is woven through daily life: the call to prayer sets the hours, Qur'anic and Islamic schools are found in every quarter, and Borno's tradition of religious scholarship is old and proud.

The Shehu of Borno remains the ceremonial and moral head of that tradition. At the two Eids, horsemen and drummers assemble before the palace for the durbar, and the Kanuri court dress — turbans wound in distinctive shapes, embroidered gowns — is at its most visible. Kanuri music with the drum and the one-string fiddle, praise singing and long formal greetings are all part of the local manner, which is courteous and indirect.

The conflict has marked cultural life deeply. Schools, markets and mosques were damaged, whole communities from Bama, Gwoza and the Lake Chad shore live in the city rather than at home, and a generation has grown up under checkpoints and curfews. Against that, Maiduguri has a reputation for stubborn ordinariness: the university has kept teaching, the market was rebuilt after fire, weddings and naming ceremonies continue, and local poets, radio stations and football keep the city's own voice going.

Maiduguri is the largest city in the northeast, its metropolitan population estimated at around two million in 2022 — greatly increased by those who fled the countryside during the insurgency, some in formal camps and many more lodged with relatives and host families in crowded outer districts.

Trade is the backbone of the economy: the Monday Market draws goods and buyers from across Borno and from Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and grain, livestock, hides, dried fish and peppers move through it. Farming and herding around the city have been disrupted for years by insecurity, which has cut many families off from their fields. Government, the university and the teaching hospital are the big formal employers, and the humanitarian sector — United Nations agencies and international and Nigerian aid organisations — is a substantial presence with its own offices, vehicles and compounds.

Days begin early and end early. Markets and offices open at first light, the middle of the day is emptied by heat, and the streets fill again in the late afternoon until curfew hours shorten the evening. Power and water supplies are unreliable and generators are everywhere. Youth unemployment is high, many children have missed years of school, and the flood of 2024 set back households that had only just rebuilt after displacement.

The food of Maiduguri is the grain-and-meat cooking of the Sahel. Tuwo, a stiff porridge of millet, sorghum or maize, is the staple, eaten with soups poured over it: miyan kuka, dark and faintly sour, made from powdered dried baobab leaves; groundnut and pumpkin soups; and miyan yakuwa, made from sorrel leaves. Rice with a tomato and pepper stew is the standard restaurant plate.

Meat and fish carry the local reputation. Suya, thin beef skewers rubbed with the peppery groundnut spice yaji, is grilled at roadside stands after dark; kilishi, beef sliced paper-thin, spiced and dried in the sun, keeps for weeks and travels; and dambu nama, shredded spiced and fried beef, is another old way of preserving it. Dried and smoked fish from Lake Chad has been traded here for centuries and flavours many soups, though the lake's shrinking and the conflict have made supply irregular.

Stalls handle breakfast and snacks: masa, small fermented rice cakes cooked in a dimpled iron pan, kosai, fried bean fritters, and dan wake, bean-flour dumplings with oil and pepper. Fura da nono, millet dough balls in fermented milk, is both drink and meal. Kunu from millet, hibiscus zobo and very sweet tea, often drunk at night around a kettle, are the everyday drinks; alcohol plays no public part in city life.