'New town': a residential quarter for non-indigenous settlers in northern Nigerian cities. Before colonial rule such settler quarters already existed apart from the old towns. Under British rule, railway-era migrants from southern Nigeria were housed in segregated sabon gari quarters, institutionalised by the Cantonments Proclamation of 1914 and the Township Ordinance of 1917, which placed them under British rather than emirate control.
Most southern traders in Kano lived in the Sabon Gari.