Ancient Curse Prevents Males From Attaining Tribal Throne

statesman - The palace, under a rusted, corrugated roof, looks mostly like a shed. Only one pair of feet in its single room is shod, and they are in rubber flip-flops.This is the genteel court of Queen Hajiya Haidzatu Ahmed.The queen's henna-dyed fingers are childlike and slender, her smile girlish and her voice soft. When she speaks, the men who are her courtiers listen, enraptured. When she giggles, they laugh loudly. When she explains a point, they nod solemnly.In Nigeria's conservative Islamic north, women are barred from ruling, except in the kingdom of Kumbwada. Here, an ancient curse keeps males off the throne, according to locals. Male pretenders who dare to try will be buried within a week.The last man who wanted to overturn the tradition of female rulers was the queen's father, Prince Amadu Kumbwada, 58 years ago. All he did was say he wanted to succeed his mother, then still alive. He was immediately taken ill.The prince was rushed to a distant kingdom, where he eventually recovered. He never returned."There has never been a male ruler," the queen says. "Even my father just voiced his desire to be chief, but it almost killed him."Her grandmother, on the throne for 73 years, died when she was 113."It's a women's affair," the 65-year-old monarch says. "Women are the rulers, and they rule as effectively as men, sometimes even better than men."These are alien pronouncements in a part of Nigeria where women typically are relegated to second place. But in the community Queen Hajiya has ruled for 12 years, women get a sympathetic hearing in cases of wife beating or divorce."When domestic issues come to me, the way I treat them will be quite different to other traditional chiefs," she says. "I'm a woman and I'm a mother, and I have so much concern and experience when it comes to the issue of marriage and what it means for the maintenance of the home and what it means for two people to live together."For years, there have been hostile mutterings among northern Islamic clerics in other tribal kingdoms that the curse against male rulers amounts to witchcraft."Once there is evidence of the use of black magic in any situation, Islam considers it a deviation which must be reversed," Sheik Aminuddeen Abubakar, imam of the Daawa mosque in the city of Kano, said several years ago.But Musa Muhammad, the chief imam of Kumbwada, defended the queen, saying Kumbwada's position is unique."We can't live without a leader, and the fact that any male rulers that ascend the throne die quickly and mysteriously, while female rulers reign for many years, makes our case a peculiar one," Muhammad says. "This is an exceptional situation none of us can change."As the traditional ruler, the queen handles local disputes such as quarrels over land, divorces, petty violence, accusations of theft and arguments between neighbors. Government courts step in only if a traditional ruler refers a case or if the situation isn't resolved to everyone's satisfaction."The royalty have a very important role in Nigerian society," Queen Hajiya says. "I am closer to the people. The traditional rulers are the ones the people trust."She has more than 33,000 subjects, most of them poor farmers. But she had no education to prepare her for leadership."My only handicap is that I don't have a Western education, because in my time, people didn't educate their daughters. I'm not educated in the modern way, but in the traditional way, I have wisdom in my dealings with people," she says.The queen can't bear the idea of leaving any case that comes before her unresolved, to be handed over to the local court system. She has never let that happen."I've never had a crisis I couldn't solve," she says.Most traditional African rulers reflexively side with the male head of the household in a family dispute. So a woman who complains that she is being beaten is likely to be told to obey her husband.Hajiya had one wife-beating case early in her reign. "I told him if he ever beat his wife again, I'd dissolve the marriage and put him in prison," she says.Since then, she has made a point of campaigning against domestic violence when she holds court in local communities. She says she's never had another beating case. People know where she stands.If a girl is miserable in an arranged marriage, the queen listens to her side of the story, although she dislikes divorce."In such cases, I try to strike a balance. I don't just end such marriages. I try to be tactful and see if there's any way this woman can come to love this man," she says. "But if that's not possible, if there's no way she can have any compassion for him or love, it's not her fault or his fault. It's just natural."I intervene and ask for the marriage to be dissolved for the sake of the woman, the man and everyone's sake."She often addresses women's groups, urging members to become educated so that they can be leaders. Most of all, she wants to live to see a female Nigerian president."It's my most ardent wish," she says. "I think the problems in Nigeria have become intractable. Let's try a woman. Men have failed."She keeps her grown daughter, Idris, by her side when she holds court, grooming her to be queen. Her son, Danjuma Salihu, also grown, has no hope of succession."Nobody has any doubts about it. He wouldn't survive it," the queen says.Ancient Curse Prevents Males From Attaining Tribal Throne

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