By: Engr. Daudu Abdul'aziz
There have been a lot of speculations in the past couple of years as to what should become the fate of the historic Hadejia N.A. Works Department buildings and yard, or simply, N. A. Works for short. The N.A. Works is a magnificent buildings complex situated in the centre of the town at the Kofar Fada. This building had served the Hadejia N.A. very well as the centre for the execution of public works in the days of the Native Administration of old and for several more years in the aftermath of the local government reform of 1976. It has now been left to rot away and decay; such a shame that a building of great utility value should be afflicted by the canker worm of official neglect that has become the bane of the country’s public infrastructure.
It has to be admitted that the story of the deplorable state of national infrastructure is not new or peculiar; it is a reflection of society’s collective nonchalance to maintenance and the wanton disregard for public property; this is unfortunately a common Nigerian malaise borne out of a declining quality of leadership, indiscipline and a general lack of sense of propriety. And of course now, corruption, which has eaten so deep in the fabric of society.
The large impressive buildings of the N.A. Works are comprised of offices, workshops and stores. They have been constructed with the highest standards of quality. What gives the main building housing the workshops its iconic appearance is the choice of roofing material, in consideration of the prevailing threat in the early 1940s—it is made of slate shingles to obscure it from Hitler’s bombers during the Second World War.
Its utilitarian nature apart, the N.A. Works is an important part of the town’s colonial heritage which together with the Central Office and other offices in the vicinity like the Emir’s Council Chambers (the Majalisa),the Alkali Courts and the Local Police Charge Office formed the central core of the old Native Authority administration. They constituted what in today’s parlance would be referred to as the township’s Three Arms Zone.
The N.A. Works, as an imposing edifice, also adds greatly to the visual appeal of the Kofar Fada (forecourt to the emir’s palace) and modern equivalents stand no comparison. It has survived the pressures and tensions of times past and is still strong. It cannot by any stretch of the imagination be thought to have outlived its usefulness. Pulling it down will be a great mistake which will surely be regretted in the course of time.
But why has this important building been abandoned in the first place? The ostensible reason is the building of a new local government secretariat outside the town walls in the late 1990s; it was aimed at decongesting the existing offices and also to cater for the needs of the continually expanding administrative machinery at the local level. This is logical. What is illogical is the decision to move out every department to the new secretariat and leave the existing historical offices to decay.
To be sure, the Emirate Council later inherited part of the office complex, particularly the Central Office, but the Council simply doesn’t have the staff strength to fully occupy an office complex that served an entire local government administration. Even the Central Office which was once a magnificent semi-Moorish style building is now in a state of disrepair. It presently serves as the secretariat for the Hadejia Emirate Council. The building, constructed with the characteristic red bricks of colonial government and N.A. infrastructure in Hadejia, had effectively served as the secretariat for the Hadejia N.A. and later Hadejia Local Government.
Abandoning the historic N.A. Works Department buildings and yard when the new secretariat has provision for office accommodation only beggars belief. The importance of the works department cannot be overemphasised—as stated above, it is the local government equivalent of the public works department, the agency for executing works and providing services to the community.
The old building complex had separate workshops for carpentry, masonry and painting; metal work, automobile workshops and garages, all equipped with the necessary tools. It also housed sections for building feeder roads and maintenance of township roads, for constructing wells and lots of other essential services. How could a yard housing such important workstations be abandoned?
So much for the importance of this building! The question now is what to do?
I understand there have been suggestions to have it torn down and then build, on the spot, an extension for the adjacent, albeit separated by an alley way, Hadejia Central Mosque. That would have been ideal had the present mosque been inadequate. And besides, there are no less than ten Friday mosques dotted around the township which provide convenient alternatives to the main central mosque for the Muslim faithful in Hadejia.
Having said that, what do I recommend instead? In one word, I would say restoration; and conversion to a museum and a centre for historical documentation.
Hadejia is a town that prides itself on its history, of craftsmanship and equestrian skills and, especially, the dogged resistance to the imposition of British colonial domination. Unfortunately, written or physical evidence of that history is scanty or not available at all.
A rehabilitated and converted N.A. Works can easily become Hadejia’s equivalent of the Gidan Makama and Mambayya House, all rolled in one.
The workshops section can be used to showcase the town’s artefacts and other war-time paraphernalia while the offices can be turned into a centre for historical research and documentation. It is instructive that those offices originally housed the N.A. Library & Reading Room before it was moved to its present location.
The proceeds earned from visiting tourists can be used for the maintenance of the edifice.
I use the word, restoration, deliberately to emphasise the need to restore the building to its former pristine form complete with the semi-Moorish style architecture and particularly, the arched entrance and exit gateways which carried the unmistakable inscription “1960 HADEJIA N.A. WORKS DEPARTMENT 1960” spanning full-length of the perfectly semi-circular arch.
It is here in Nigeria that we don’t seem to cherish monuments and symbols of our historical past. Other societies do and can sometimes exert unimaginable efforts to preserve them. One such example from a different clime readily comes to mind: the Old Bridge, built in the 16th Century, in the historic city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The bridge was destroyed during the Croat-Bosniak War in 1993 but the multi-cultural denizens of Mostar were so determined to preserve this piece of their history that they sought for international help through UNESCO and reconstructed it.
What makes the exercise all the more remarkable is the insistence and utmost care taken which ensured that not only the original Ottoman architectural design was maintained but that fragments of the original material were recovered from the rubble of the old bridge and reused in reconstructing the new bridge!
There is one aspect of the preservation of historical monuments that the Hadejia Emirate Council is doing very well— the old buildings at the Emir’s Palace. The Council deserves commendation for this effort. Specifically, the old Soraye (singular: soro). These large entrance halls or lobbies are mud buildings with vaulted roofs (Daurin Guga) constructed with traditional Hausa architecture. The inside is adorned with arches (Bakan Gizo) and decorative motifs. They constitute the public area in the Palace and are actually a complex of interconnected rooms.
One particular room or reception hall, in the Hadejia Emir’s Palace, Babban Gwani, is named after the legendary Zaria master builder who is said to have built it. His real name is Muhammadu Munkhaila Dugura, and was the Sarkin Magina of Zaria. He was nicknamed Babban Gwani for his outstanding craftsmanship and was considered as inimitable. He constructed the Friday Mosque in Zaria during the reign of Abdulkarim in the late 1830s or early 1840s. He is also reputed to have built Friday mosques and palaces in quite a few Hausa towns and cities. Little wonder that he has been linked with the Hadejia Emir’s Palace in this significant way.
The Babban Gwani deft touch is obviously what the N.A. Works needs at the moment.
