The Rise and Fall of Garkida, a Social Decline

The Rise and Fall of Garkida, a Social Decline 

By: Balami Lazarus 

In my recent visit to see my aged mother in Shaffa, a small rural town. In a chat with some of my peers, Garkida came up, and one of us immediately informed the group that the town is socially dredged. I made some findings, and you may wish to agree. I believed students of history my generation were once taught about the rise and fall of great empires, kingdoms, rulers, warriors, and other historical events during our secondary school days. In the cause of those lessons, our imaginations were always taken far to other lands. 

We never thought that someday there would be a fall or decline of our own, which could be a town, village, or settlement, but never like the fall of the known historical empires/kingdoms of Oyo, Jukun, Fante/Ashante, Kanem-Borno, Songhai, etc. To rise is a difficult task in life or in the course of growth, be it individual, town, or city. But to fall is easy. Garkida has rose and fallen, or, to say, declined socially. Once a bubbling rural town in Buraland, being in Gombi Local Government Area of Adamawa State has nose-dived from the social ladder. 

As a historian, I will not subscribe to the use of the term fall; it will defile my histo-journalistic sense of reasoning because Garkida is a proper noun and is there real. So it will rather go well with me and perhaps some readers of this essay to accept Declined as a better use of historical language for the purpose of this work. I am not a native of Garkida and have never lived there, but it was the home of my cousins and nieces long before now. 

As a young man, I had it well with friends when the town was in her social chemistry and apogee. In spite of her decline, the arrears in our kitty, notwithstanding the flow of time, are the mutual friendship, an indelible mark in our social life. I remember clearly as a holiday-maker with my grandmother at Shaffa, Garkida was the in-thing in our youthful days because of the mass social activities that used to take place there. 

There were social interactions with friends and relatives from different places, parties of all kinds—a social front burner. And to most of my peers, it was the center of today’s mobile social handle—Facebook, where you meet and make new friends. That was Garkida for us. As a rural town, it flourished with glamour, elegance, and pride, triggered by the social engineering of Who is Who? The creme de la creme of her sons and daughters who made nane in their vocations or professions that promoted and spread the name of Garkida as social lighthouse. 

It was the abode of top military brass in the ranks of generals. Her businessmen once made the town tick as a cluster of has.  It was the nerve of vogue and socialites in Buraland. There was declined in this capacity. Historically, Garkida came to the limelight and appeared on the colonial map of Nigeria in 1923, when the white Christian missionaries of CBN/EYN first settled there and made it their home on the 17th March of the aforementioned year. The beginning of her social mobility started in the 1970s, through the 1980s, to the dawn of the 1990s, her zenith. 

I doff my hat for the united daughters of Garkida; credit goes to them; their exposures, taste, beauty, love, elegance, sophistication, unity of purpose, and social agrandisement made them wives of husbands of men from far and near who are of different walks of life. The women of Garkida were a central force, once the venus de milo of the town before its social decline. I cannot conclude this article without appreciating the fact that Garkida was the center of learning and vocational training and once the hold of good and efficient healthcare services in Buraland and its neighbors. Today, Garkida is no longer in the vantage position. 

Balami, a Publisher/Columnist, 08036779290.