Kingdoms & Monarchies

Yobe state capital throne; elevated to first-class after 1991.

Potiskum is a major Karekare/Hausa trading town; flashpoint of Boko Haram violence.

Bade kingdom on the Yobe River; the Bade have an ancient drum-king tradition (*Toron Bade*).

Near the ruins of Birni Ngazargamu — the lost capital of the Bornu Empire (1470–1808).

Sub-stools.

• Cohen, *The Kanuri of Bornu* (1967).
• Brenner, *The Shehus of Kukawa* (1973).

• [Principal historic polity — TBC] → [1900 Native Authority — TBC] → [1976 LGA — TBC] → [today's Federal Constituency — TBC]
• [Secondary polity / sub-emirate / clan — TBC] → [1900 NA — TBC] → [1976 LGA — TBC] → [today's Federal Constituency — TBC]
• [Minority / highland / clan throne — TBC] → [1900 NA — TBC] → [1976 LGA — TBC] → [today's Federal Constituency — TBC]

*Each row is a unit of continuous administrative life — the same population, in the same district, under successive labels. Read across to see what the British Native Authority captured, what Murtala's 1976 LGA reform redrew, and what today's Federal Constituency makes electorally visible. TBC = to be confirmed from the state's chieftaincy gazette, NA Ordinance files (NAK / NAI), and the INEC delimitation map.*

Yobe's emirates and chiefdoms: the Emir of Fika (the Bolewa dynasty, whose seat moved from Fika town to Potiskum, and the state's senior stool), the Emir of Damaturu, the Emir of Bade at Gashua (a Bade-Kanuri throne with its own pre-Bornu dynasty), the Emir of Nguru, the Emir of Jajimaji, the Emir of Machina (Manga-Kanuri), the Emir of Tikau, the Emir of Gudi, the Mai of Bursari and the Mai Yobe stools of the Bornu-tradition east. Almost all of these were vassal or tributary states of Kanem-Bornu rather than of Sokoto — Yobe is the caliphate's frontier, not its interior, and its courts keep Kanuri titles (*Mai*, *Galadima*, *Zanna*) rather than Fulani ones. Boko Haram's campaign destroyed several of these palaces outright; the Emir of Fika's palace and the Gujba and Buni Yadi councils were among the buildings burned in 2013–2015.

In the Sokoto-tradition emirates the Emir's household is ordered by title, not by publicity. The senior wife is the Uwar Soro ("mother of the chamber"), who runs the interior of the palace and the female household staff; the Magajiya is a titled woman of the court, in many emirates a princess rather than a wife, with jurisdiction over women's affairs, and in the pre-jihad Hausa states the *Magajiya* was in several cities a reigning queen in her own right (Daura's Magajiya line, Zazzau's Amina). Other palace female titles include Mai Babban Daki (the queen-mother's title, notably in Kano, held by the Emir's mother rather than his wife) and Yar Daji. The names of a serving Emir's wives are, by settled custom in most of these palaces, not published; they appear in the emirate's own *takarda* household register and in genealogies, not in the gazette. We record the offices and leave the names to the palace.

In the Kanuri-tradition courts of Yobe and Borno the queen-mother's title is Magira and the king's senior sister's is Magara — two of the oldest recorded female state offices in West Africa, attested in the Bornu *girgam* chronicles from the medieval period. Both outrank the *Mai*'s wives in court precedence.