A few years ago, I wrote about Queen Amina of Zazzau: the Great Hausa Warrior born to Rule, the woman remembered today in Nigeria as  ‘Amina, rana de Yar Bakwa ta San’ (Amina, daughter of Nikatau, woman as capable as a man). Crowned queen of Zazzau in 1576, Amina expanded her kingdom’s boundaries down to the Atlantic coast; she founded several cities, and personally led an army of 20,000 soldiers to numerous battles. During her 34-year reign, she commanded the construction of a defensive mural around each military camp that she established.  Later, those camps evolved into prosperous cities within those walls, and some can still be seen today in northern Nigeria.  Those cities are known as walls ‘ganuwar of Amina’ or ‘Amina’s walls‘.

Queen Amina’s achievement was the closest that any ruler had come in bringing the region now known as Nigeria under a single authority. Enjoy this trailer for the movie Amina by Izu Ojukwu and the website for it: AminaQueenOfZazzau.com; the BBC also made a cartoon about her. With Hollywood’s recent lack of imagination and appropriation of other people’s culture, I would not be surprised that they copy her story to bring it onto big screen. However, Africans should put forward their own stories and value them… not wait for some imagination-hungry entity to come grab it, to all of a sudden value their own history (Black Panther).