Custom · 1818 to present; festival since 2006 · Mixed
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The Tangale say their ancestors walked for 350 years before they settled in the hills of Gombe. Their new year falls in a month called Kavrang. To get their children home from the cities, they moved its feast to the last Saturday of December, and then the feast itself went quiet.
The Tangale people live in the south of Gombe State, in Kaltungo, Shongom and Billiri local government areas. An elder who carries the title Danmalikin Tangale, Mr Jibrin Dawa, told Weekend Trust that the Tangale of all three places are one people. They share the same history, the same ancestors and the same language.
How they got there is a story the elders tell as their tradition. They believe their forefathers came from Yemen, in the south-western corner of Arabia. They travelled together with the Bolewa and other peoples who left the Kanem-Bornu empire, and along the way they stopped and settled in many places. Mr Dawa said it is hard now to name all those stopping places. But the whole journey, it is believed, took about 350 years before they finally settled down. Some Tangale groups, he added, do not keep every ritual that others keep, but they have much more in common than not.
When they did settle, each clan made its home among its own cluster of hills. There are seven clans: Tangaltong, Tal, Kalmai, Todi, Banganje, Nathe and Billiri, and Billiri is seen as the most important. Every settlement has its own head, but above them all sits the Mai Tangale, whose seat is in Billiri. He is the paramount ruler. He settles the big quarrels between the seven clans, such as fights over boundaries, and cases involving deaths. He is also the keeper of Tangale culture.
Records count the line of Mai Tangale from Mai Giu, who reigned from 1818 to 1834 as the first paramount ruler. Fifteen princes have held the title, and the present Mai Tangale, Malam Danladi Sanusi Maiyamba, is counted as the sixteenth.
When the British came into Tangale land in 1906, the people followed their traditional religion. They did not give in quietly. After a long resistance and hard fighting, they were brought under colonial rule in 1907, in the time of Mai Wanah, the eleventh Mai Tangale. Later many Tangale became Christians or Muslims, yet they still keep some of their old rites.
The best known of those rites today is Pissi Tangale, which simply means Tangale Day. It is, as the name suggests, the people's day to show who they are.
It is not as old as the clans. It was started in 2006 by the fifteenth Mai Tangale, the late Dr Abdu Buba Maisheru II, as a way to keep Tangale customs alive and to pull the people together. Mr Dawa said the aim was to strengthen a unity among the Tangale settlements that existed long before the colonial masters came. "We still observe the day because western culture is overshadowing our culture," he said.
On the day, farmers lay out their produce, a reminder that farming is still what feeds the Tangale. Old artefacts come out, along with traditional food, traditional dress and dances. Heads of districts and villages and title holders from all seven clans come to pay homage to the Mai Tangale, and other traditional rulers come as guests from inside Gombe and beyond.
The secretary of the Tangale Elders Forum, Mr Telle K Elsa, said the day is about showing the world their identity. They show off their farming and livestock, he said, and the skill their forefathers had long before the colonialists, such as the beauty of the way they built. He pointed to an attraction at Kuma Tangale, a statue of a Mai Tangale seated on his stool, and to certain trees the people have tended, and to cloths that carry Tangale identity. He was sorry, he told the reporter, that he was not wearing one so he could show it.
There is a clever piece of planning hidden inside the date. Mr Elsa explained that, by Tangale reckoning, the people's year turns in their tenth month, a month they call Kavrang. The ceremony is meant to mark that beginning of the new year.
But times have changed. Many Tangale now live far away, in other parts of Nigeria and abroad, and the time they mostly come home is Christmas. So the elders decided to hold Pissi Tangale when the most people would be there to see it. That is why it now falls on the last Saturday of December, just before the year ends. "We want this ceremony to be attended by all and sundry," Mr Elsa said, so that the Tangale can learn more about their own culture and how things are done. Each year a committee is set up to run it, led by the Dan Masanin Tangale, Mr Ankalel Yalyel.
When it happens, it is full of colour and ceremony. Tangale sons and daughters and others who love culture crowd into the community, important guests travel in from near and far, and those who live away get to stand beside the kinsmen they left behind.
Yet the festival has had trouble. Mr Dawa said the biggest problem is money. The people love the day so much that they record it on video for those who cannot come, but they depend on government sponsorship, and without a friendly government it struggles. They had also hoped to link it to the national tourism board so the world could see Tangale culture, an effort begun under an earlier title holder, Dr Daniel Madok, but it never came through.
When Weekend Trust reported, Pissi Tangale had not held for four years. The last one was in December 2019, in the reign of the man who began it. Since the new Mai Tangale came to the throne in 2021, the day in December had not come round again.
