Nigeria's Borno State is the heir to a thousand-year Saharan empire
Borno is the only Nigerian state touching three countries, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and it holds Nigeria's share of Lake Chad. Its name and its emirs descend from the Kanem-Bornu Empire, which ruled a swathe of the Sahel for centuries, stretching at its height from the Fezzan in southern Libya down into Borno.
From the 700s the area lay within the Kanem Empire. After losing wars in the late 1300s its rulers shifted base and re-emerged as the Bornu Empire, which dominated the region for about 500 years. Decline set in with the Fulani jihad of the early 1800s, which carved much of the south into the Adamawa Emirate, and it was during that upheaval that the present Kanemi dynasty took control. The Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr conquered Borno in 1893 and held it until French forces killed him at the Battle of Kousseri in 1900.
Colonial powers then split the territory. Britain folded its portion into the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1902 and in 1907 founded a new capital at Maiduguri, still the state capital. Germany's slice, Deutsch-Bornu, belonged to Kamerun until Allied troops took it in the First World War; that eastern fringe joined Nigeria only after a 1961 referendum. Borno State itself was created on 3 February 1976, and its western districts broke away as Yobe State in 1991. The emirs still sit on councils advising on cultural matters, though reforms since 1976 stripped them of political power.
Physically it is huge, second only to Niger State in area, running from semi-desert Sahel in the north through Sudanian savanna to the Mandara Plateau in the southeast. Rain falls for only four or five months, and May averages 34 degrees. Chad Basin National Park shelters black crowned cranes, roan antelope and some of Nigeria's last bush elephants. Kanuri people and Shuwa Arabs dominate the north and centre, while many smaller groups such as the Mafa and Margi live in the south, and dozens of Biu-Mandara languages are spoken in the hills.
About 5.86 million people lived there in 2016, roughly 85 per cent Muslim. The Boko Haram insurgency that began in 2009 hit Borno hardest, emptying farmland and, for a time, the Sambisa Forest's wildlife; elephant herds were seen returning in 2019 and 2020.
Source: Borno State
