Now, it’s once upon a Bade fishing festival

Unfortunately however, the social and economic significance of the Bade Annual Fishing Festival has been altered by many factors including natural and man- made activities. The deterioration has reached the extent that the fishes have been chased away and Moyigangan festival as well as the rivers where the fishes once thrived are now synonymous with […]

Unfortunately however, the social and economic significance of the Bade Annual Fishing Festival has been altered by many factors including natural and man- made activities. The deterioration has reached the extent that the fishes have been chased away and Moyigangan festival as well as the rivers where the fishes once thrived are now synonymous with a forgotten treasure.
Even Gashua, the headquarters of the Bade emirate which houses the throne of the vice chairman of the Yobe State council of chiefs, is becoming less famous especially when viewed from its highly revered motto: Home of Fish and Potash.
This is simply because the festival no longer holds even as fishermen and thousands of fish mongers whose source of livelihood depends on the river are struggling to make both ends meet.
It is a foregone dream for fishermen to catch gigantic fish that is worth its name in the Kumadugu-Yobe river and its tributaries which stretch to the shores of Lake Chad.
Nowadays, only a few ‘fingerlings’ are available when compared with what obtained before; a bad experience which reminds lovers of sea water products of those days when a fisherman must seek the assistance of his colleagues to evacuate his large net from the rivers with dozens of fish to the river bank.
For more than a decade, the annual Bade fishing fiesta which hitherto, used to bring together sons and daughters of the emirate living in Nigeria and in the diaspora to a joyous platform did not hold.
Children of fifteen years or so only hear stories that there was once a yearly competition in Bade emirate which was akin to the famous Argungu fishing festival.
“Those beautiful days are gone,” Jalil Ibrahim, a secondary school student in Gashua observed.
“My  dad told me that Gashua was once the tourist delight of the white men because of the happenings along the River Yobe but the fame has gone…in fact even its ‘mother’, the Lake Chad has shrunk beyond imagination,” Jalil added.
Dr Yarima Lawan Ngama, the Matawallen Bade, who described culture as the identity of man, says efforts are being put in place to revive the Moyigangan festival.
“If we don’t revive our culture, it means we are doing a lot of disservice to ourselves and to our children who are yet unborn,” Dr Yarima said.
While tracing the history of the festival, he says even rice cultivation which Bade was once noted for, was something new to the people because it came much later, adding that fishing and cattle rearing was their main occupation which was boosted by the flowing waters.
“Historically, the Bade people are unique especially when it comes to river ownership. This is because I have not heard of any place on earth where people own a river.
“You find people owning plots of land or farmlands but it is difficult to see someone saying, ‘from this point of this river to this point is mine’ or belongs to my family except in Bade,” Dr Yarima said.
He said river ownership in Bade had actually developed to the extent that the people have what is called ‘river ownership law’ in their judicial system.
According to him, in those days, all the families who have ‘ big portions’ within the rivers used to find it difficult to evacuate the fish alone and  what they normally did was that they would set a day and invite members of other families from across the community to come and fish together.
He said at that time, the late Emir of Bade, Alhaji Umar Sulaiman, observed the need to restructure the fishing activity into a big ceremony; a noble idea which culminated into the Moyigangan competition at a location close to Gogaram village.
Historically therefore, Gashua is closely related to Gogaram which is located about 27 miles along the south eastern part of Gashua town.
Gogaram was built by Mai (ruler) Lawan Babuje in 1825 and it remained the headquarters of Bade, up to the mid 1940’s when colonial administrators found it too inaccessible for their economic, political and social activities.
But despite the movement, Gogaram remained the chief host of the Moyigangan festival which was introduced around 1959.
Kanem Trust learnt that the essence was not just to keep fishing alive, but also to maintain the cultural links with the Bade people who were left behind in Gogaram. “I remember a time in my youth during one of such ceremonies when people caught a lot of fish to the extent that some of the fishermen were returning them to the river because they had nowhere to take the fish to,” Dr Ngama recalled.
Though it was widely acknowledged that the festival had strong cultural influence among the Bade people, it was however surreptitiously left to fade.
The present emir of Bade, Alhaji Abubakar Umar Sulaiman, had at different fora, said the festival would soon resurface.
“We actually wanted to do it in February this year as it used to be done but for some little hiccups which we are close to addressing,” a palace source told Kanem Trust.
Even government officials have continued to respect the name of the festival as it remains conspicuous in all tourists guide books, historical documents and yearly diaries of ministries, parastatals and agencies of the state.
But Dr Yarima Ngama attributed the falling fortunes of Moyigangan to the construction of dams which distorted the natural flow of the Hadejia-Jama’are-Kumadugu-Yobe river.
His observation was also the replication of the position of Governor Ibrahim Gaidam which he made known when he hosted Engineer Mohammed Nasir, the project consultant of the federal government’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the proposed Kafin Zaki dam in Bauchi State.
According to the governor, “It may interest you to note that 30 years ago, the Kumadugu-Yobe Basin was endowed with abundant natural resources, like agricultural land, fisheries resources, grazing areas for livestock and surface water. 
“Due to the abundance of these aforementioned resources, the inhabitants were living together happily. Farmers, herdsmen and fishermen from many parts of Nigeria and even from outside this country, used to visit the area in order to partake in the exploitation of this natural endowment
“When Tiga and Challawa Gorge dams were constructed in 1976 and 1992 respectively, 40 percent of the water that naturally used to flow into the Kumadugu Yobe basin was arrested. 
“The attendant consequences were catastrophic. There was drastic reduction in farming and agro-allied activities, heavy siltation and weed infestation including typha grass that reared menacingly along the course of the river,” Governor Gaidam said
He therefore condemned the proposed Kafin Zaki dam, which according to him, will aggravate more environmental consequences including flooding and the arresting of 55 percent of the main source that supplies the basin with water as well as the loss of N3 – 4 billion annually in terms of revenue.
There is however a sigh of relief because the federal government has earmarked N300 million for the optimisation of the Tiga and Chalawa rivers in Kano state which will allow water to flow freely to communities in parts of Jigawa, Yobe and Borno States.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Accounts, Senator Ahmed who is also a son of the Bade emirate, confirmed the development, assuring  that when the optimisation is completed, all economic and social activities such as the Moyigangan festival will  be revived.
“Since the pronouncement of the planned optimisation, we always offer special supplications in our five daily prayers for the programme to start so that life will come back to Gashua and environs,” Isma’ila Mohammed, a fisherman, said.