When Honourable James Inshelia, 69 got married and was set to leave his parents to settle down as a man decades ago, his father gave him a bow and arrows among his souvenirs. With those, he could defend himself from any assailant and danger.

Decades later, he still retains his father’s parting gifts. They now play an educative role in his native Marama, where he is the village head (Lawan), and the entire Biu Emirate where he serves as a custodian of culture and among the vanguards protecting Bura/Babur language from dying.

Honourable James Inshelia was once the council chairman of Hawul Local Government Area from 1996-1998, during the experimental  Zero Party system of General Sani Abacha military government.

Every last day of the year, 31st day of December, the Bura/Babur ethnic group converges on Marama to celebrate the culture of the people.

“The celebration is all about getting the entire Bura people in the Biu  Emirate to celebrate the culture of the people. These include Hawul, Biu, Kwayar and Bayo local governments,” he says.

Before, Shani, which was federated with Biu and Askira to form the Federation of Biu Native Authority in 1957, was part of the emirate, but it has gone its way with a separate emirate, though they both remain culturally close.

Biu is an ethnically plural society. Right from precolonial times, various ethnic groups have domiciled in the territory, including Babur, Bura, Tera, Kanakuru, Chibok, Marghi, Pidllimdi, Jara, among others. Only the Babur and Bura are homogeneous.

Of course, Bura and Babur speak the same language. They share similar  vocabularies and proverbs. Perhaps the only difference is in pronunciation. But they have been recognised as the same people and language, according to Dr. Bukar Usman, in A History of Biu, and constitutes the dominant ethnic group in Biu Emirate.

Marama Day Festival is a unifying factor for all, as Saturday Sun reporter, who came a long way from Lagos to Borno State, in search of exotic minority cultures, discovered.

“During the festival, all the emirs from the northeast region, with our royal highness, Mai Mustapha Umar 11,  the chief host. The essence is to get people together, enjoy ourselves, then show our cultural heritage, because we don’t want to forget our traditional ethics, says Inshelia.

“We display our bow and arrow, old grinding stone, clay mortar pots, traditional dresses like wrapper, caps,  among others. If you don’t showcase them, they won’t know some of these things,” he adds.

Why is it important to continue this tradition? Inshelia tells Saturday Sun:

“We don’t want our children and younger generation to forget our past, because we don’t want to forget the history of our tradition.”

Though it’s a cultural event, the festival is conducted in English language, “because many people who have come to participate in the festival may not understand our language. So we have to use English and Hausa languages. Hausa is widely spoken in the entire north, so we use it side by side with English,” says the village head who was educated at the University of New York.

“Also, during the festival, we perform  traditional dances like Bansuwe,  Waksha Waksha, and Mwar Mwari. Everybody in the emirate has similar dances,” he informs.

Reiterating the importance of the festival, he says: “We perform the Marama Cultural Day, because we want to maintain our status. We don’t want it to die. We want our children to attend and ask questions: What’s this? What’s that?”

Again, the mass gathering is important because of its tendency to serve as a melting pot. “And that’s the best possible way we can revive our culture, because the festival attracts our people from far and near who visit to see spectacular performances” he explains.

Against the backdrop that many indigenous languages stand the risk of going extinct, according to a Unicef survey, Saturday Sun asks what effort is being put in place to save Bura language from dying.

Charity begins at home echoes in his response. Yes, Inshelia will clock 70 by next year. Though his children reside outside Marama, he has made speaking the local language a must in his home.

“Whenever they step into this house, they leave every other language, including English, and communicate in Bura language. Even their children, who come with them, I ensure they speak in our native language, Bura/Babur.”

Borno State is a heterogeneous society. There are 28 languages, mostly Chadic, spoken as first languages in the state, though many of them are endangered due to the influence of Hausa and Kanuri.

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Kanuri, Shuwa Arabic and Marghi have a sizable number of native speakers, while some languages are spoken across the border in neighbouring Chad and Cameroon. In the southern part of the state, Bura/Babur is the main Biu-Mandara central Chadic language. Other central Chadic languages include Marghi, Jara, Chibok and Hwana.

Outside Borno, Bura speakers can be found in Garkida and Gombi local government of Adamawa State. An Oxford study puts the number of speakers at over 250,000.

Unfortunately, Bura/Babur isn’t taught in schools in Biu Emirate where they form the majority of native speakers. This hasn’t gone well with Inshelia: “Unfortunately, there is no curriculum for our indigenous language. It’s not  taught in schools here, which is not supposed to be so. In Maiduguri, Kanuri language is taught in schools.

“We have been fighting that our local language should be taught from primary to secondary levels.

In our days, when we attended Marama Central Primary School, we had Bura language in our curriculum, but, now, it’s no longer there. We were taught how to read in Bura language; the school was second to Biu Central Primary School, having been established in 1930.”

You may ask, why is Marama strategic to the Biu cultural renaissance? Inshelia doesn’t want to be egocentric, “but  I can say it’s the  centre of Bura people. Here, we share boundaries with Shani, Kwaya Kusa. Hawul is in the centre of Biu.”

But organising a cultural festival like this is one thing, luring the youths to show keen interest, away from their phones and computer games, is another big deal.

Inshelia doesn’t see that as an obstacle: “They participate and enjoy it. The festival is unique to them. You see them dancing along, though they don’t know how to dance well, which means they have the interest, because we have inculcated in them that they are supposed to maintain their own culture.”

How has modernity affected traditional society in this part? Inshelia sees the effects in both negative and positive lights. “In everything, there are both positive and negative lights. Positive, western culture encouraged us to get western education. Marama, I can say, is either the first or second in the Biu Emirate in education. While Biu Central Primary School was established in 1924 by the colonial masters, that of Marana was established by the missionaries from England in 1930, and it actually affected us positively.

“In every house you enter in Marama, you must see a graduate. In my house, I have six children, of which five have graduated, while one is about to graduate.”

Inshelia graduated from the University of California in 1984, while his wife graduated from the University of Maiduguri. “It means we are a home of graduates,” he smiles.  “In one house in this community, related to me, they have two professors.”

The negative side of the coin includes the dressing of our youths. “I don’t like it,” he says, “because they copy western people. I like somebody dressing traditionally smart.” Another negative influence, he says, is copying the drinking habits of the Western world when it comes to alcohol.

Though there may be no new programmes slated for this year’s festival, he hopes the number of participants will increase. “Last year, many people came from rural communities. They must have told their friends what they saw, and they may have come to participate.”

If you think the security problem ravaging the northeast is still a big hindrance, Inshelia is quick to allay your fears, as concrete arrangements have been put in place, using the vigilance group, the police and army.

Lest we forget, life in Borno State was disrupted when the Boko Haram insurrection started over a decade ago, coupled with the recent presence of ISWAP. Luckily for people in this community and Biu in general, they have been the least affected by terrorism.

“It’s God that secures; that’s the first thing. It’s God that saved the entire Biu Emirate during those waves of attacks across the state. Apart from God, we had a strong emir, Mai Umar Mustapha Aliu, who died in September, 2020. The present emir is following the same footsteps taken by his father, and we are well secured. Up till now, we didn’t encounter insurgency because of the seriousness of our traditional authority.”

Fearmongering has made many Nigerians believe everywhere in Borno is unsafe and is exploding with bombs. James laughs at the wrong notion. He would like you to put the festival in your annual cultural calendar.

“What makes Biu unique is, first, its natural terrain. Besides, it’s a protective area, because if you are in a mountain and see an intruder coming. We also have good weather and our emir has created a unity of purpose among all the components.

“There is no problem with religion or ethnicity. We live together peacefully. I am a Christian, but my subjects, as a lawan include both Christians and Muslims, as well as traditional worshipers. Despite being a Christian, the late emir has allowed me to head this place. So there is no segregation religion wise.”

Inshelia owns a small stable where his lone brown and white spangled horse is fed and sheltered. To own one is something of pride and a status symbol, valued more than a Lamborghini. Suddenly, the horse nickers momentarily with familiarity with a stroke from the master.

The village head also owns a spear that goes with his position. His sojourn to America hasn’t eroded his cultural values. With people like Hon. Inshelia and Bukar Usman, Bura/Babur culture and language may likely survive the doomsday prediction. The signs are already there.