Lost history · 1893-1900; monument since 1959 · Mixed
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For seven years a feared invader ruled Borno from a fort outside Dikwa. Guides say he kept 999 wives, 999 horses and three birds that ran his errands. The fort outlived him, then very nearly did not outlive Boko Haram.
Borno is a place with a very long memory. The old Kanem-Borno empire, at its height, stretched over a huge piece of the land south of the Sahara, and for a thousand years it had what Borno people still speak of as a golden age. Over time its seat of government moved. It was run from Kukawa, and at certain points from Dikwa, before the headquarters finally settled in what is now Maiduguri.
Into that long story walked a man the Daily Trust calls the most infamous warlord in the empire's history. His name was Rabeh. People across the region held him in deep awe; the mention of his name alone was enough to frighten. The present Shehu of Dikwa, Alhaji Ibrahim Ibn Umar Ibrahim El-Kanemi, did not soften it when he spoke to the paper. Rabeh, he said, was an invader. He ruled from 1893 to 1900, and those seven years were a horror, until he was killed in 1900.
Rabeh did not rule from the old royal town. He built his own fort on the outskirts of Dikwa, in what is now Dikwa Local Government Area, and from there he made his presence felt across the empire.
The man is long gone. His fort is still there. Its site manager, Daniel Ishaya Manda, says it is one of about 60 historical sites in Nigeria with international recognition, and that for over 120 years it has been the only fort of its kind in the whole region we now call the North East. It was declared a national monument in 1959, a year before Nigeria became independent. Close by stands a residence from the German colonial period, which is part of why visitors came.
Walk inside and the ruins tell you what kind of household this was. There are the remains of an upstairs palace, an armoury, and an aviary. And the aviary has the strangest story of all, because it is said to have held three mysterious birds that Rabeh sent out on errands, like messengers.
Every great figure gathers legends, and Rabeh's legend has a number attached to it. A tour guide at the fort put it simply to the Daily Trust. At the top of his power, the guide said, everything about Rabeh was 999. He had 999 wives. He had 999 soldiers, 999 horses, 999 cows and 999 sheep. The guide was honest enough to add that he was not sure how many children Rabeh had.
You should hold this the way the people of Dikwa hold it: as a story about a man, not a count from a register. Nobody stood at the gate with a ledger. But the number tells you how people remembered him. He was a man who had more than anyone, who seemed to stop just short of a perfect thousand, and who had birds that did his bidding. It is the memory of fear and wonder mixed together.
For a long time the fort was not only a ruin. People lived their lives around it. A resident of Raberi, Mohammed Kimmie, told the paper that this part of Dikwa is a ward named after the warlord himself. Before the insurgency, Islamic teachers used Rabeh's domed palace as a school for the children of the area.
Another resident, Bakura Babagan, described a kind of open-air workshop that grew up there, under neem trees, which people called the museum market. In the evenings women would sit and weave the local Zanna mats. Men made hoes, knives and cutlasses. Caps and crafts were laid out for sale. Students and researchers came from Nigerian and foreign universities. Students of the Nigerian Defence Academy came to study how the fort was designed. The Shehu remembered that when he was young, white visitors used to come to Dikwa to see it.
Then came the insurgency. Between 2014 and 2015 Boko Haram attacked and took Dikwa, and the whole town emptied. Mr Manda described what happened to the site. One of the insurgent commanders, an Amir, moved into the German colonial residence. Other commanders took over Rabeh's main palace. When they heard that Chadian troops were coming, they looted everything they could carry: the artefacts, the art collection, the picture exhibitions.
Mr Manda was attacked himself, and everything he owned was burned. He lost all he had in Dikwa. With no one able to care for the building, the palace dome collapsed.
Chief Lanre Obadiah, a retired executive secretary of arts and culture in Borno State, said the fort had already been decaying through neglect, but the insurgents did far worse. They carted off its valuable pieces and then set fire to it. "This left Rabeh Fort a ghost of itself," he said.
Still, nobody the Daily Trust spoke to wanted to let it go. Chief Obadiah said it remains one of the most attractive historical places in the North East, precisely because there is nothing else quite like it, and that governments, researchers and tourism people need to work together to restore it. "We can't do away with history," he said. Mr Manda said the federal government was working on bringing the site back to its original state, and that work should begin soon because Dikwa was lively again.
The Shehu agreed. After years of deadly attacks, he said, people in Dikwa were picking up the pieces of their lives, and the town was safe for tourists and researchers. A delegation had recently told him renovation would start. He hoped the fort would bring jobs for young people in hotels and hospitality, and that visitors would come again the way they did when he was a boy. Mr Babagan added one practical plea: fix the road from Maiduguri to Dikwa, because without it, no visitor will make the trip.
