Declining Relations and Emerging Partners: A Historical Analysis of Re- Direction of Kano Trade from Jeddah to Dubai and China, 1970- 2012

Abstract

This paper is on the long standing trade relations between Kano and Saudi Arabia. This long relation spanned several centuries and the relation transcends pilgrimage to trade and diplomatic intercourse. Research have shown that trade was and is still part and parcel of annual pilgrimage from West Africa to Saudi Arabia. Due to its commercial importance, in precolonial and post colonial period, Kano occupies center stage on pilgrimage operations in Northern Nigeria. Pilgrimage is inseparable from trade and in Kano; from this relation emerged the phenomenon of Kano to Jeddah in the 1970s, which is a trade relation between the Hausaland and the Arabs of Saudi Arabia. However, in contemporary parlance of trade diplomacy, lack of bilateral trade agreement between Nigeria and Saudi Arabia made the trade conducted through unofficial means. Although the trade relations spanned for decades at least since the independence of Nigeria, by mid 1990s however, the relationship between Nigeria and the Western world forced the then military regime to introduce new economic policies that pushed Kano to Jeddah traders to re-irect
their trade activities elsewhere, specifically to Dubai and China. Thus, the decline of the hitherto trade relations began between Kano merchants to Jeddah and the emergence of new partners in Dubai and Asia. The new trade relationship has its own positive impacts on Kano merchants but research have shown that its negative impacts outweigh the positive ones.