The Bororo of Northern Nigeria

BY USMAN TANIMU

The Bororo are the cattle-rearing mobile tribe of Fulani stock who live in the outskirts of virtually all the major towns and cities of the Hausa-dominated Northern Nigeria. They are a culturally rich people. Their young men are almost all tall, slim and handsome. Bororo girls are very beautiful, shy and cheerful.

Bororo boys plait their hair and carry sticks slung on their shoulders. A Bororo young man never allows a distance from his stick as he uses it to drive his cattle and to defend himself in the towns or the bushes as the case may be.

Young Bororo men and women are not given to glittering attire. However, on market days (once a week) the girls dress attractively and put on as much make-up and ornaments as their social circumstances can allow. The attention of prospective suitors is thereby attracted. The young men also dress well, but the attraction of girls to boys is more in character than in the façade of dresses.

The strength of character of potential husbands is tested during an annual festival called “sharo.” During the festival, Bororo young men whose families live on the outskirts of a town or city, play host to visiting peers who whip them [hosts] on their stripped chests with tree branches. The hosts, in turn, after a week of being beaten, take turn and whip the visitors. Any Bororo young man who defaults from this Spartan tradition loses the social right to get married, as he is adjudged a coward and, therefore, lacking the  endurance to fend for a wife through thick and thin.