I will admit I lack expertise on the Sokoto Caliphate, but I remain highly skeptical of your claims. Meiji Japan was an extremely advanced society. There was widespread literacy in Japan with rates similar to Europe at the time. Literacy in the Sokoto Caliphate was among a very narrow elite and along Islamic theology and jurisprudence, not science and engineering.
Not claiming parity with both, but merely that you can get a period of rapid change and economic expansion like that of Meiji Japan. The society was already transforming in ways that would be conductive to industrialization.
Japan also had an extremely highly skilled workforce that could make almost everything the country needed, and its workforce could transfer their skills to value added industrial work. In Japan there were specialized work forces dedicated to producing one type of goods, not just peasants who crafted items in their homes when they were not planting or harvesting, or just in a few special arsenals producing items solely for government use. The small cottage industries in Africa were nowhere near that level of skill or size relative to the population. Edo period Japan had major highways, bridges, a postal service, lighthouses, civil engineering, and other advanced public infrastructure and services. It had banks and a financial industry that could capitalize investment. I am not aware of anything similar in the Sokoto Caliphate. It simply lacks enough skilled people, knowledge, and capital to industrialize.
This is literally Sokoto. The country's large size and population combined with its stability, decentralization of political control (thus giving experimentation of rule) and flourishing of its intellectual/political elite provided enough of a demand for goods, which were attended to by classes of artisans. Its Islamic governance provided the framework for rationalized economic policy that in effect led to economic standardization alongside incentives for public infrastructure. (Lovejoy, Paul E. “LONG-DISTANCE TRADE AND ISLAM: THE CASE OF THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY HAUSA KOLA TRADE.”
Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, vol. 5, no. 4, 1971,) Additionally, the Islamic Quranic schools and associations were responsible for a boon in literacy over the decades. (Mottin A. Rashid, and A. Rashid Moten. “POLITICAL DYNAMISM OF ISLAM IN NIGERIA.”
Islamic Studies, vol 26, no 2, 1987)
Its why entire towns like Kura were devoted to textile production, or towns such as Babba Karofi to dye production, and there was enough of a road system to make transport of said goods and dyes profitable. (Shea, Philip J. “Big Is Sometimes Best: The Sokoto Caliphate and Economic Advantages of Size in the Textile Industry.”
African Economic History) The Kano region was at one point estimated to produce around half of the Western Sudan's textiles, yet at the same time it was not the only major textile center- competing with Ilorin and Bida in the latter half of the 19th century as time passed. (Kriger, Colleen. “Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate.”
The Journal of African History) Technological innovation and diffusion was well attested in the region, congruent with the explosion of textile manufacturing. For example, the vertical loom became standard practice amongst even remote villages.
I'm not sure where you're getting this notion of Sokoto, or the broader Western Africa as relatively primitive state societies.
Japan was a much more urbanized country - Edo had a population of a million people (making it the biggest city in the world for a time), four more that were in the hundreds of thousands, and several dozens with populations over 10,000. How large were the major urban centers of the Sokoto Caliphate? I know this region of Africa was relatively more urbanized than the rest of Africa, but the urban population was still low. The explorer Heinrich Barth estimated that the city of Sokoto itself around 1853 only had around 20,000 people and that was the capital! That's only about the number thirty on the list of populated urban centers in Japan at the time. So while Sokoto had a total population of about one-third of Japan (ten million to thirty million), its urban population was dramatically lower indicating a far lower sophistication in economy, administration, and technology.
Sokoto was in the process of rapid urbanization. And I have no idea where you got that 20,000 number given other explorers such as Chapperton claimed Sokoto had around 200,000 inhabitants being the largest city in West Africa and later writers attest to being a very large city. Furthermore, a number of cities sprung up around the various fortresses propped up by the Caliphate and the emirates' plantations. (Swindell, Kenneth. “Population and Agriculture in the Sokoto-Rima Basin of North-West Nigeria: A Study of Political Intervention, Adaptation and Change, 1800-1980".
Cahiers d'Études Africaines, vol. 26, no. 101/102, 1986)
So no, the Sokoto Caliphate was nowhere near being similar to Meiji Japan. The Caliphate was relatively more advanced than much of sub-Saharan Africa, but even compared to North Africa (which failed to industrialize) it was backwards.
If you can provide more specifics, I am willing to re-evaluate my opinion.
Again, I'm not claiming total equality to Japan, far from it, but merely that there was the potential for the rapid administrative and economic transformations akin to Japan. We have a political stable state (minus the bungle of the last few Caliphs, which can be butterflied away) undergoing large population growth, large expanses in education, productivity and busineses
If you want specifics, I can point to plenty of authors such as the above.