Place name · Pre-colonial tradition · Legend
Image: Zuma Rock.jpg — Jeff Attaway, CC BY 2.0 · source
A Koro naming tradition links the famous rock to guinea-fowl hunting, while another remembers it as a protector in war.
Long ago, the Koro people tell, their ancestors were on the move, looking for a new home. The diviners gave them one instruction: keep walking until you find an extraordinary rock.
They found it in thick forest. A huge grey dome, bigger than anything they had seen, rising straight out of the trees. They stopped and built their villages around it. Some settled in the forest to its north, at Chachi. Others went to the plain to the south-east, at Shinapa. The ancestors of today's Zuba people were among them.
The forest round the rock was full of guinea fowl, and the newcomers hunted them. So they called the place Zumwa, the place for catching guinea fowl. (In Koro, the story goes, ezhu is guinea fowl and mwa is to catch.)
Hausa speakers found Zumwa awkward and said Zuma. The Europeans wrote down what the Hausa said. That is the name on the maps today. Jibrin Mamman of the Zuba Youth Development Association tells it this way, and so do the elders.
The rock was more than a landmark. The ancestors brought offerings to it when they were in trouble, and came back to give thanks when the trouble passed. In war, they believed, the rock protected them and gave them victory.
Today Zuma Rock stands beside the highway near Madalla, in Suleja, Niger State. Most people think it is in Abuja. It isn't, though it's close. It is on the back of the 100-naira note, so most Nigerians carry a picture of it in their pockets.
What the note doesn't show is the guinea fowl. Next time you hand one over, remember the hunters who named the rock after their dinner.
