Kafanchan

Kafanchan (Fantswam; Nikyob: Manɡyanɡ) is a town located in the southern part of Kaduna State, Nigeria, which owes much of its development to the railway development in the area, being situated at a particular junction of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) station built in 1927, and it sits on the railtrack connecting Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kafanchan, Kuru, Bauchi, and finally Maiduguri. As of 2007, Kafanchan had an estimated population of 83,092. James (2000) asserted that the indigenous inhabitants of the Kafanchan town and environs, the Fantswam people (who speak a dialect of Tyap), added the prefix "kwa" to all names of peoples and places, hence, the phrase, "kwa Fantswam". However, the Hausa immigrant elements who interacted with them found it more convenient to pronounce the phrase, kwa-Fantswam, as Kafanchan. The town developed as a result of British colonial commercial activities, i.e. a railway junction town in the early 20th century. This fact brings another claim as to how the name Kafanchan came into existence. It was said that the name originated during the Nigeria railway construction period in the 1920s, when the railtrack crossbars were being laid, the white man would say in Hausa "kafachan", meaning "leg there", i.e. "put your leg there", then a crossbar would be laid after the labourer widens his leg, pushing a leg forward. Hence, the name Kafanchan. The above account, however, seems to be false, as the name "Kafanchan" was mentioned by A. J. N. Tremearne in his notes published in 1912, over a decade before the railway construction began in the area. In the words of the Agwam Fantswam I, Musa Didam, “latter-day settlers corrupted Fantswam to Kafanchan.” In addition, he viewed the popularising of the word as a work of the British colonial authorities. The colonial writer Harold D. Gunn was also stated to have rendered the spelling as "Kabanchan" and accordingly he gave names to related groups using their non-native words on pages 80–81 of his book Pagan Peoples of the Central Area of Northern Nigeria, such as Kaje, Kagoro and Kaninkon instead of Bajju, Agworok and Nikyob.