Tabitha Ganye Buba Garkida was born in 1927, when Nigeria remained under British colonial rule. Her life spanned an extraordinary period of social and political transformation, including colonial administration, independence, military government, the expansion of formal education and the gradual opening of political participation to women across northern Nigeria.
Born into the family of Dumadu Abba Garkida, Tabitha was the only daughter among sixteen children. Her fifteen brothers received formal education, while she did not have the same opportunity.
Her childhood reflected the unequal educational opportunities available to many girls in northern Nigeria during the early twentieth century. Western-style education expanded more slowly among girls than boys, while expectations surrounding marriage, domestic responsibilities and family life often influenced decisions about whether girls attended school.
For Tabitha, however, education would become important again many decades later.
Childhood, Garkida and the Biu Royal World
Tabitha’s early life was connected with the traditional political world surrounding Garkida and Biu.
Biu developed as an important traditional state in what is now southern Borno State. Its rulers were associated with indigenous titles including Mai and Kuthli. During British colonial rule, Ari Dogo was formally recognised as Emir of Biu in 1920.
Ari Dogo remained on the throne until his death in 1935. He was succeeded by his brother Ari Gurgur, who ruled from 1935 until 1951.
Marriage relationships between influential families formed part of the political and social networks linking communities across the region. Ayuba Y. Mshelia’s history of the Bura and Pabir peoples also provides examples of marriage connections involving prominent local families and the Biu royal establishment.
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Tabitha had been promised in marriage within this traditional environment. Rather than accept the future that had been planned for her, she resisted the arrangement and escaped.
The episode became an important part of her life story, illustrating an independence of character that would appear repeatedly during her later involvement in women’s activities.
Marriage to Buba Garkida and Life Across Nigeria
In 1947, Tabitha married Buba Garkida, a soldier in the Nigerian Army.
Life within a military family brought considerable movement. Soldiers could be posted to different parts of the country, requiring their families to adapt to new communities, languages and social environments.
Tabitha lived at different times in places including Katsina, Lagos, Borno and Enugu.
These movements gave her experience of Nigeria beyond her home region during a period when the country itself was rapidly changing. Nationalist politics was expanding, British colonial authority was weakening and debates about education, political representation and Nigerian self-government were transforming public life.
Tabitha and Buba Garkida had three children, John, Larai and Lami.
As she moved around the country, Tabitha became increasingly involved in women’s organisations. Religious groups, community associations and political organisations provided important spaces through which Nigerian women organised themselves, supported families and entered public life.
Her experience placed her within a much broader history of women’s collective action during the final decades of colonial rule and the early years of independence.
Tabitha Ganye Buba Garkida and Northern Women’s Political Activism
One of the most important figures associated with the world of women’s political activism in which Tabitha participated was Gambo Sawaba.
Sawaba became one of the best-known female political activists in northern Nigeria during the twentieth century. She was closely associated with the Northern Elements Progressive Union, better known as NEPU.
Founded in 1950, NEPU emerged as an important radical political movement in Northern Nigeria. It challenged established political authority and promoted greater participation among ordinary people.
Women became an important part of this political mobilisation.
The NEPU Women’s Wing encouraged women’s organisation, literacy, political education and participation in public affairs. Gambo Sawaba became especially prominent for her activism and her willingness to challenge restrictions placed upon women.
Tabitha became involved in women’s mobilisation and worked alongside women campaigning for greater political and social opportunities.
Education formed an important part of these efforts. Literacy could give women greater independence in political meetings, correspondence, record keeping and dealings with government institutions.
The Long Road to Women’s Voting Rights in Northern Nigeria
Women did not gain political rights uniformly across Nigeria.
During the colonial period, women in parts of southern Nigeria began participating in electoral politics earlier than women in the north, although voting qualifications initially restricted participation even there.
Northern women remained excluded from major electoral participation for considerably longer.
This difference became one of the defining inequalities in Nigeria’s political development. Women’s organisations and political activists continued to campaign for greater participation in public life, education and government.
The political reforms of the 1970s brought major changes. Local government restructuring expanded opportunities for political participation, while the transition to the Second Republic transformed the national electoral system.
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By the 1979 elections, universal adult suffrage had become a nationwide reality. Northern Nigerian women could participate fully in federal elections alongside men.
For women of Tabitha’s generation, this represented an enormous transformation.
A girl born in colonial Nigeria in 1927, when women’s political participation was severely restricted, lived to see women throughout the federation recognised as voters in national elections.
Returning to Education at 62
Perhaps one of the most striking moments in Tabitha Ganye Buba Garkida’s life occurred when she was 62 years old.
She enrolled in an adult literacy class.
The decision carried particular significance because she had grown up watching her brothers receive the education denied to her.
Adult literacy programmes allowed people who had missed formal schooling during childhood to acquire basic reading and writing skills later in life. Such programmes became increasingly important across Nigeria as governments, religious organisations and community groups sought to expand literacy.
Tabitha learned to read and write.
She then strengthened her new skills by volunteering to take notes during women’s meetings.
It was a simple but significant transition. Literacy made it possible for her to participate in organisational work in a new way. Instead of depending entirely on others to record discussions, she could write for herself.
Her return to education also echoed a wider development within northern Nigerian women’s movements. Political organisations recognised that education and literacy were closely connected to women’s ability to participate confidently in civic life.
Tabitha had been denied education as a girl. More than five decades later, she reclaimed it for herself.
Community Leadership in Later Life
Tabitha continued to take an active role within her community as she grew older.
In 2001, she became Queen Mother of Garkida.
Her later public activities also included service connected with institutions in Kaduna State. Her interests included women’s reproductive health, community security and justice for women affected by gender-based violence.
These concerns reflected long-standing priorities within women’s organisations across Nigeria.
Health, education, protection from violence and political representation remained important issues even as women’s formal rights expanded.
Tabitha’s life consequently crossed several different forms of women’s leadership. She experienced community organisation, political mobilisation, adult education and traditional leadership.
By the early twenty-first century, she belonged to a generation that had witnessed extraordinary changes in Nigerian society.
From Colonial Nigeria to the Fourth Republic
Tabitha was born more than three decades before Nigerian independence.
She was 33 years old when Nigeria became an independent nation on 1 October 1960.
The decades that followed brought profound political upheaval.
She lived through the First Republic, military coups, the Nigerian Civil War, the creation of new states, the Second Republic, repeated periods of military government and the return to civilian government in 1999.
Nigeria’s social landscape changed alongside its politics.
Educational opportunities expanded significantly. More girls entered primary and secondary schools. Universities trained increasing numbers of women, while women entered medicine, law, teaching, business, journalism, politics and public administration in greater numbers.
Women’s organisations also became increasingly visible in public life.
The Nigeria of Tabitha’s later years therefore differed dramatically from the country into which she had been born in 1927.
That transformation was neither simple nor complete. Gender inequality remained an important national challenge, but the possibilities available to women had expanded enormously.
Tabitha’s own journey reflected many of those changes.
Education, Organisation and Personal Agency
There is an important connection between the major stages of Tabitha’s life.
As a child, decisions about education and marriage were largely made around her.
As an adult, she increasingly became involved in organisations through which women made decisions collectively.
Later, she returned to education herself.
These changes mirrored the broader transition experienced by many Nigerian women during the twentieth century. Expanding educational opportunities allowed increasing numbers of women to participate in professions and public institutions. Political movements brought women into campaigns and elections. Community organisations created spaces for leadership outside formal government structures.
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Adult literacy was particularly important for older women who had never received formal schooling.
Tabitha’s decision to learn at 62 therefore represented more than the acquisition of a practical skill. It closed a circle that had begun during childhood.
The educational opportunity once denied to her became something she eventually chose for herself.
Conclusion
The life of Tabitha Ganye Buba Garkida belongs within the wider history of Nigerian women whose experiences crossed colonial rule, independence and the expansion of women’s participation in public life.
Born in 1927, she grew up at a time when educational opportunities for girls in northern Nigeria remained limited. She later married a soldier, travelled through different parts of Nigeria and became involved with women’s organisations during decades of intense political and social change.
Her lifetime coincided with the emergence of figures such as Gambo Sawaba, the development of women’s political organisations and the long struggle that eventually brought universal voting rights to women across northern Nigeria.
Yet one of the most memorable moments in Tabitha’s story did not occur in a political meeting or government office.
It occurred in a classroom.
At 62, the woman who had once watched her brothers receive an education began learning to read and write herself. She then put those skills to practical use by taking notes during women’s meetings.
Her journey from exclusion to literacy captured, on a deeply personal level, part of the wider transformation experienced by Nigerian women during the twentieth century.
Author’s Note
Tabitha Ganye Buba Garkida’s life demonstrates how major historical transformations are often experienced through ordinary human decisions. Nigeria’s changing attitudes towards women’s education, political participation and community leadership were not confined to legislation or national institutions. They were also visible in classrooms, homes, women’s meetings and local communities. Tabitha’s return to education at 62 stands as an especially meaningful part of that history, showing how an opportunity denied in childhood could still be reclaimed decades later and turned into a means of fuller participation in community life.
References
Carolyn Seaman, Tabitha Ganye Buba Garkida, photograph and accompanying biographical description, June 2012, Wikimedia Commons.
Mubarak Tukur, “Feminist Pan-Africanism and NEPU Women’s Education in Northern Nigeria, 1951–1979”, Feminist Africa, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2024.
Epiphany Azinge, “The Right to Vote in Nigeria: A Critical Commentary on the Open Ballot System”, Journal of African Law, Vol. 38, No. 2, 1994, pp. 173–180.
Ayuba Y. Mshelia, The Story of the Origins of the Bura/Pabir People of Northeast Nigeria: Language, Migrations, the Myth of Yamta-ra-wala, Social Organization and Culture, AuthorHouse, 2014.
John Stewart, African States and Rulers, McFarland.
S. J. Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria: A Preliminary Survey of Their Historical Traditions, Oxford University Press, 1966.
