GADUNGURU: HOW GHANA ORIGINATED FROM NUPE Few, if any, people are today cognizant of the datum that the ancient Ghana empire originated from KinNupe; that the ancient Ghana empire was initially a Nupe kingdom, and that the original founders of the ancient Ghana empire were initially from people of Nupe origins and descents. This unfortunate state of affairs, namely, that people are no more aware today of the verity that the ancient Ghana empire originated from Nupe, is as a result of the fact that modern Western scholarship is totally and completely ignorant of the truth of the origins of the ancient Ghana empire. The ignorance of Western scholarship, however, doesn’t preclude the reality that the Ghana empire was of Nupe origins. As a matter of fact, and as recent as on the eve of the advent of the White man to the Guinea Coast, it used to be a widely known truth that the people of ancient Ghana and the people of KinNupe were kindred one of the other. As is documented by the renowned Africanist, Sir H.R. Palmer, many ethnic peoples of the West African region have traditions and folklores directly connecting them with the ancient KinNupe general area as a pristine place of origin. Sir H.R. Palmer also documented the actuality that the people who went into the formation of the ancient Ghana empire have ancient traditions that directly link the KinNupe general area as their initial place of origin. In any case we shall go ahead to discuss in some details in the following paragraphs how the ancient Ghana empire was originally a Nupe kingdom through and through. Modern Ghana and Ancient Ghana For a start we need to differentiate between the modern State of Ghana and the ancient Ghana Empire. The modern State of Ghana was named the Gold Coast by the White men colonialists but it was renamed Ghana by Kwame Nkrumah. The Gold Coast was renamed Ghana in honour of the great and ancient empire of Ghana that, once upon a time (c. 830 – c. 1235), flourished in the areas of today’s southern Mauritania and western Mali. Our discussions are on how the ancient Ghana Empire originated from Nupe. The Wangara Nupe People First and foremost we have to mark the veracity that ancient Ghana traditions have consistently maintain that Ghana was founded by the Wangara people from the east. The Wangara are an ancient Nupe people. In fact the first people to bear the name Wangara were the Nupe people in very ancient times and long before the foundation of the ancient Ghana empire in the earlier decades of the 9th century. Long before the founding and establishment of the Ghana empire the Nupe people were known as the Wangara or Gara people for the simple reason that they were located on the banks of the River Niger which was the one known as the River Gara in those far off days. Professor Smaldone demonstrated the actuality that the initial, and pristine, bearers of the name Wangara were the people of the general KinNupe area and that it was only in latter times that the people of the west coast of West Africa became known as the Wangara. In fact Wangara was the national name of the Nupe Nation or KinNupe in those far off days. Professor Alan Ryder also noticed the interesting fact that by the time the people of the west coast became known as the Wangara they in effect appropriated the national name from the ancient Nupe people who were the original bearers of the national name Wangara. But the fact remains to the effect that the first, and original, Wangara were the Nupe people. AtaGara The ancient Ghana traditions also maintain that the leader of these Wangara people was known as the Dinka or Dinga. The Dinka was also known as the Diko, particularly here in the Central Sudan. And the Diko was also known as the Kodi, Kadi or Kanda. Of course, Sir H.R. Palmer have pointed out long ago that the Kanda was the same as the Kanta and that the Kanta or Kanda was the name of the head of the ancient Akanda or Kakanda or Kyadya or Kebbi Nupe people who later on merged with the ancient Gara Nupe people to form the united kingdom of AtaGara. The ancient kingdom of AtaGara was a Nupe empire through and through. That AtaGara was Nupe is this much corroborated on the authorities of no less formidable historians in the likes of Sultan Bello, Sir C.R. Niven, the Kano Chronicle, and so on and on. Dunguru But AtaGara was known in ancient Nupe traditions as Dunguru. To this very day the Nupe people refer to the general Zungeru area in Niger State as Dunguru. And Dungurugi was a common Nupe personal name until the Islamic missionaries came and relentlessly replaced Nupe personal names with Arabic names. This ancient AtaGara or Dunguru Nupe kingdom was said to be the kingdom of the Nupe dynasts called the Kuta, Kanta or Kanda. Of course the works of Sir H.R. Palmer have implied long ago that the ancient Akanda, Kakanda, or Kyadya Nupe people referred to their kings as the Kanda – the same that the Kebbi people, originally a Nupe people, referred to as the Kanta and the same that the Gbagyi people, also originally a Nupe people, refer to as the Kuta. Whatever the case might have been the point we are making here is that the ancient Ghana Empire was founded by the ancient Wangara Nupe people who came from KinNupe in the days when KinNupe was known as Wangara and the Nupe kings were known as the Kuta or Kanta or Kanda because they ruled over the ancient Nupe kingdom, and later empire, of AtaGara otherwise known as Dunguru in local Nupe traditions. Ga-Dunguru the Greater Dunguru Interestingly enough the first capital city of the ancient Ghana Empire was actually known as Wagadugu, our modern Ouagadougou. But then, Wagadugu is the shortened form of Wagaduguru or Wagadunguru. Of course we can all see that Wagadunguru is a compound of Waga and Dunguru – this same Dunguru that was the local Nupe traditional variant of the historical AtaGara which was the almighty Nupe kingdom and empire of ancient times. Actually Wagadugu, Wagaduguru, or Wagadunguru is a compound of Wa and Gadunguru whereby ‘wa’ was the ancient Nupe affix to indicate a ‘person’ and ‘Gadunguru’ literally translates as ‘Greater Dunguru’ such that ‘Wa-Gadunguru’ simply means ‘The Person from Greater Dunguru’ or ‘The Person from Greater AtaGara’. That the first capital city of the ancient Ghana Empire was named ‘Gadunguru’ or ‘Wagadunguru’ which was the national name of ancient Nupe kingdom of AtaGara is formidable corroboration of the fact that the founders of the ancient Ghana Empire were people of Nupe origins and descents. The Nupe Founders Of Ghana The implication here is that an ancient Nupe people from the Nupe kingdom of AtaGara or Dunguru travelled as Wangara long distance traders to the west coast where they founded a new city called ‘Greater Dunguru’ or ‘Ga-Dunguru’ after their original Dunguru or AtaGara Nupe KinNupe from which they came. It was this ‘Greater Dunguru’ that later on grew from a capital city into the Ghana Empire of historic fame. This scenario is substantiated by the traditions of the Wangara founders of the ancient Ghana peoples themselves. The Tarikh al-Fettash wrote that Ghana was founded by the Wakori and Wangara people. But the traditions of the Wakori or Soninke people and the Wangara or Mande people in turn maintain to this very day that they are of Nupe origins. Sir H.R. Palmer demonstrated the fact that the Wakori and Wangara people originated from the KinNupe general area in the form of the Nupeko Kororofa people of Tsudi (Tsoede). In fact Wakori is a variant of Wakoro which simply mean ‘River Niger People’ while ‘Wangara’ is also a variant of this same word and also meaning the same thing. The journals of Mungo Park shows that Wangara or Guangara was a national name of KinNupe for a very long time and the people of KinNupe were known as the Wangara for several centuries on end. It was these Wangara Nupencizhi who, through their long distance trading activities, reached as far as the west coast of the African continent to severally found the Wakori or Soninke people of today’s Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia and Guinea Bissau, the Wangara or Mande people of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte dIvoire, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone, and the Sanhaja people of Senegal and Niger. The traditions of all these people – the Soninke, Mande, Mandingo, and Senegal – all trace their origins to KinNupe to this very day. We see here also, and in parenthesis, that almost all the people of West Africa are in one way or the other of Nupe origins. Please read my book titled ‘Kwa Kukuruku: How the People of West Africa Originated from Nupe’ for all the details you may need on the fact that almost all the tribes and ethnicities of the West African sub-region are directly or indirectly of KinNupe origins. In our present discussions we are however concentrated on the fact that the ancient Ghana Empire and its Wangara founders were of Nupe origins. The Name ‘Ghana’ Is Of Nupe Origins In fact even the name ‘Ghana’ is itself of Nupe origins. It was Professor Eva Meyevoritz who first pointed out that the very name ‘Ghana’ is of Middle Niger, that is KinNupe, origin. Then Sir H.R. Palmer pointed out that the name ‘Ghana’ is derived from ‘Ogane’ or ‘Gana’ which the Portuguese sailor Jao Affonso, based on the information he collected from the king of Benin kingdom in the mid-15th century, said was the name of the almighty Nupe emperor who ruled over the whole of the Central Sudan in former times. And to this very day the name Gana is a very common one among Nupencizhi. Gana was actually the royal title of a superpower dynasty of almighty Nupe emperors once based in an ancient Nupe geopolitical area known as the Agaie. This name, Agaie, was the name of ancient Nupe kingdom that, once upon a time, flourished right here in Central KinNupe. Agaie was originally the name of the capital city of the ancient Nupe kingdom formed by the ancient Gara Nupe people. This Agaie was also known as Gaie or Gao and was, according to both Sir H.R. Palmer and Professor Alan Ryder, the same that was known as Gaoga, Gungu or Kukia which, according to Sultan Bello, was the name of the first, Nupe, capital city of the Songhai Empire. The Songhai Empire, as I discussed in exhaustive details in my book titled ‘Tsudi, Kanta and the Askia: How the Songhai Empire Originated from Nupe’, was a Nupe empire through and through in its beginning. But that topic is by the way as far as our present discussions on the Nupe origins of the Ghana Empire are concerned. As we were saying: the ancient Nupe kingdom of Agaie was also known as Gaoga or Gungu. As recent as the time of Mungo Park KinNupe was still known as Guangara, Gunguru or, simply, as Gungu. So, we see that, Gungu, Gaoga, Gao, Gaie or Agaie are all one and the same ancient national name of the Nupe Nation pronounced differently due to dialectal differences. But then the very name ‘Agaie’ is our modern transcription of ‘Aganye’ which is the same as ‘Aganyi’ or ‘Agani’ or, simply, as ‘Gani’.... .... Gani was the name of the ancient Nupe emperors of the Agaie empire and it was the same that was pronounced as ‘Ogane’ by the Edo-Benin people of the Benin Kingdom who were in those days completely serval to their almighty Nupe overlords.... .... And, as we all know, the Gani festival is celebrated in Kutigi – and, according to Professor Michael Mason et al, among the Gbagyis, the Kanuris, the Kambaris, etc, etc – to this very day in remembrance of those almighty Nupe emperors known as the Gana or Gani in ancient times. The Gani Nupe Emperors Sir H.R. Palmer said that the ancient Ghana Empire was name after these Ogane, Gana or Gani Nupe emperors who once ruled over the whole of the Central Sudan (Nigeria and its neighbours) and established satellite colonies in all parts of ancient Middle Africa (West, Central and Middle Africa combined). It is these Gara or Gana, Agaie or Gani Nupe emperors that were referred to as the Dinka or Dinga or Dingani in the founding traditions of the Ghana people. [This article is a summary of my book titled ‘Gadunguru: How the Ghana Empire Originated From Nupe’.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:48:43 +0000
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