How the Jigawa town of Hadejia got its name and what it refers to

Hadejia town and the kingdom, and later emirate, got its name when Hade and his wife Jiya settled in the area, and the people in the surrounding settlements started to migrate to, or identify the area with, them.

It is said that the people often referred to the settlement as Garin (town of) Hade and Jiya and later merged the two names and simply called it HADEJIYA, after the name of the man and his wife.

Be that as it may, what emerged from the little we know is that Hadejia together with the six other kingdoms in the region were all at one time or the other brought under the control of Borno Empire.

They constituted what the Bornoans called the “Nguderi or “Gudiri’ territories. They remained under Borno’s imperial control up till the beginning of the Nineteenth Century when the Fulani invaded and transformed it into what became known as the Hadejia emirate.

The founders of the emirate were a group of nomadic cattle herdsmen who were descendants of one Hardo Abdure. They were said to have come from Machina in western Borno in search of grazing land; and by the end of the 18th century a sufficient number of them had settled in the area due to the availability of rich pasture. Owing to the growing number of Fulani communities in the area, Sarki Abubakar, the last Hausa King of Hadejia, appointed one Umaru B. Abdure as Sarkin Fulanin Hadejia in about 1788.