The residential parts of Kano are made up of irregular square mud houses, most of them with slightly domed flat roofs. That is the prevailing form of architecture. There are some round ones having thatched tops and a few made altogether from that material. They belong to the poor. The style is not favoured by reason of the danger from fire. The Emir allows the more flimsy product on an understanding that it be replaced by mud as soon as the worldly prospects of the dwellers warrant the improvement.
There is no private landlordism—or rather, according to the law, there is supposed to be none—in Kano. The State, in the person of the Emir, owns the ground. It is not his individually; it belongs to the people; he regulates occupation.
A ground rent is fixed according to the space covered by the compound—which may contain several buildings—at the fraction of a penny per square foot annually. This does not work out at an extravagant sum according to our ideas. You can, as a native of Northern Nigeria—none others are allowed to be occupiers—obtain a house if it be vacant or ground to build one at a rental of 1s. 6d. a year. These dwellings are not exactly palatial mansions.
The scale of rents rises by a few pence to 3s. 6d., at which quite a desirable residence may be secured. My very good friend Adamu Ch’Kardi, a man greatly respected by all classes, from the Emir to the beggars in the streets, pays 3s. 6d. a year, and as 34 persons live in his house and its annexe, and as Adamu is not a person to be content with piggish surroundings, the house will be estimated as pretty large. Those who desire to keep up greater style have full opportunity. Rents go as high as £1 a year or even £2, £3, £4, or £5, which is the scale for a palace with a large surrounding garden. The Prime Minister occupies a house of the kind in the corresponding Belgrave Square of Kano.
Though there are 30,000 inhabitants, streets are not named, but each house has a number. I do not know the top numerals; all my observations and investigations were made without official local assistance. Adamu’s house is 4,032, and I have seen 6,249. So, whilst in the Cantonment at Zungeru you may live up to number 8 Zungeru—if I remember rightly that is the highest—here your address might be 6,242 Kano. I happened to pass number 1 and took a photograph of it. It struck me as distinctive—no. 1 Kano. But there was nothing distinctive about the house. The occupier’s 9 olive branches came outside for the picture, but neither is that quantity of youngsters distinctive for a proud father in these parts.
HOUSES IN KANO CITY.
The cheapest type of house. Rent, 1/6 a year.
A detached dwelling. Rent, 1/9 a year. ([See page 93.])
The population is to some extent a floating one. Many persons stay in Kano a matter of weeks or months, then journey eastwards or north for a similar period, alternating from Kano to the centres of commerce in the interior of Africa and on the shore of the Mediterranean. Certain of the Arab merchants keep their own houses in Kano. Others are boarded and lodged for a stipulated amount. The more general arrangement is for a man to be put up at no settled sum. He agrees to pay his host 1s. from each £5 worth of goods sold, and the host helps the guest by making enquiries respecting requirements in quarters where he will have better and more intimate knowledge than the stranger within the gates.