Sir, there are many nationalities in the cooked-up country called Nigeria; non likes to take over others’ land. ONLY the Fulani want to ta...
Sir, there are many
nationalities in the cooked-up country called Nigeria; non likes to take over
others’ land. ONLY the Fulani want to take over other people’s land. So where
is Fulaniland so that we too can go and live there? Thanx” – Regular SUNDAY
VANGUARD reader, February 21, 2021
As someone who had lived and worked in all the four corners
of Nigeria, as well as places in between, I had long been puzzled by one
astonishing fact which is often ignored by everybody when discussing our
current ethnic conflicts. I have travelled all over the country, visiting, on
average, twenty-eight states a year during a ten-year-period.
Still, the same fact keeps staring me in the face. Yet for
one personal reason – to which I will get shortly – my mind refused to
acknowledge this vital but inconvenient truth. And, the truth is there is no
place in the whole of Nigeria one can call Fulani land. None.
Go state by state, zone by zone, and you will discover
specific parts of the Nigerian territory which are recognised as land belonging
to particular ethnic groups – no matter how small in size and number. Before
and while working on my book IBRAHIM B BABANGINDA 1985-1992: LETTING A THOUSAND
FLOWERS BLOOM, I had taken a keen interest in documenting ALL the ethnic groups
in this country.
It has taken me over 30 years to gather the list on page 373
of that book. From A-Z, starting with Abonema and ending in Zuru, 85 ethnic
groups have so far been identified, including the Adara people of Kaduna State.
Despite a few trips to various areas of the state, the Adara, whose presence
was revealed to me recently by Obadaiah Mailafia, escaped my attention.
I am sure there are more to come – otherwise we have been
deceiving ourselves about the number of nationalities we have in Nigeria. About
one thing however, nobody can fool me. All the other people known to me have a
definite geographical location in this country they and others call their own.
It is easy for most Nigerians to identify Yoruba, Ibo, Ijaw, Tiv, Kanuri,
Berom, Efik, Igala and Ibibio etc lands – among the large ethnic groups. What
most people, however, cannot know is how even some small nationalities have
very strict historical geographical territories they call their own.
Two examples will help to illustrate the point. From Keffi
to Toto in Nasarawa State, less than 60 kilometers apart, about three or four
ethnic groups have occupied that territory from time immemorial. Indigenes of
those places, including those who have never been there, still claim the places
as their own. Till his death, our late Prince Tony Momoh, as well as others
like him, claimed to be from Afemnai – despite the fact that he spent less than
one percent of his time on earth in that place.
He never claimed Lagos where he spent the vast majority of
his time in this side of the grave. About 45 kilometers separate Auchi, the
headquarters of Afemnai people from Oke and Sabon Gida Ora – where some of the
Ishan people call home all their lives – even if they don’t know where they
are. Remarkably, nobody disputes (or has disputed) the ownership of these
places with their ancestral owners.
Most conflicts, including violent ones, occur at the
boundary of two groups. There is never any disagreement between Beroms and
their ethnic neighbours about the core territory of each group. The single
national exception to everything written above is the Fulani.
To be candid, there is no Fulani land in Nigeria. The lack
of an ancestral territory has forced the Fulani to spread all over the country
in search of parcels of land to grab. It cannot be otherwise. Usman Dan Fodio,
1754-1817, started it all. And briefly, here was the history of how we started
on the long journey which has brought us to the brink of an all-out-war today.
Just remember what a great historian said.
“History is, indeed,
little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of
mankind” – Edward Gibbons, 1734-1794, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, P 92.
Two among the crimes of mankind got us on the way to where
we are. The British came from the South holding the Bible and guns to conquer
the nationalities below the Niger and Benue rivers. The Islamic Jihadists came
from the Middle East with Quran and also guns to subjugate the inhabitants of
the parts of the North now called Northern Nigeria. Englishmen never laid claim
to any land in the geographical space which in 1914 became Nigeria. They left
in 1960.
The Islamic Jihadists, led by Dan Fodio, stayed, and after
conquering the largest Northern ethnic group – the Hausa – forced them to help
capture and subjugate several other nationalities. The only major exception
were the Kanuri of Borno State. Under their traditional ruler, El-Kanemi,
Kanuriland remains “the land of the unconquered” till today. No El-Kanemi will
ever accept the Sultan of Sokoto as his superior.
The Fulani, as Dan Fodio’s descendants were called,
immediately established an apartheid social and political system under which
people of every other ethnic group were second class citizens; Fulani were
first class.
The amalgamation of North and South in 1914 and the British
scheme to hand over to the Fulani-led North was the final step towards covert
legitimisation of Nigerian apartheid; which was only a little bit better than
the South African version.
Under Ahmadu Bello and Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the Fulani
superiority complex was mooted. Power was shared fairly evenly with other
ethnic groups. Other Northern leaders – Gowon, Mohammed, Babangida, Abacha,
Abubakar and Yar’Adua – were enlightened benevolent dictators and they avoided
rubbing salt on injury with even-handed distribution of power during their
regimes.
And, that explained why the resentment of Fulani domination
of the North had not led to open confrontation until now. Buhari’s election as
President changed everything.
With the first 40 to 60 appointments he made, Buhari had
demonstrated that his own was going to be a government of the Fulani, by the
Fulani and mostly for the Fulani. Without realising it, his response to the
genocides in Enugu State and Agatu in 2016 was a wake-up call to all other
Nigerians who had ignored a growing problem.
“Dan Fodio was a Fulani descendant of a Torodbe family that
was well-established in Hausaland” -WIKIPEDIA This brings us to the question
asked by our reader above – “where is Fulani land?” The obvious and honest
answer to that question is this. “There is no Fulani land in the whole of
Nigeria. After first of all establishing the Caliphate in Sokoto, and from
there capturing several communities, they failed to hold any particular
geographical area as their new homeland.
Instead, they were contented to appoint Emirs and Serikis as
rulers of the people and they demanded and received the right to graze their
cattle anywhere. Until 1967, there was very little dispute about that. Even
places which were not conquered by the Islamic Jihadists allowed them free
grazing right down to the water front in the South.
“Anyone who controls the army controls the nation” – Ahmadu
Bello (IBRAHIM B BABANGIDA 1985-1992: LETTING A THOUSAND FLOWERS FLOW, Pg 22)
Until 1966, the Fulani had undisputed hold on power. The first coup changed
that.
The second coup in 1967 which ended with Gowon, an Ngas from
Lur, a small ethnic group from Plateau State, who was surrounded by officers
from other small tribes, was the beginning of the end of Fulani political power
hegemony.
Ahmadu Bello, a descendant of Dan Fodio, had inadvertently
shown young men from other nationalities how to reduce Fulani political power.
Get armed. Alhaji Shehu Shagari, another Fulani, was tossed out by officers
from minority tribes. They installed General Buhari, a Fulani; and again
removed him 20 months after. Yar’Adua, another Fulani, was imposed by Obasanjo
– not his kinsmen.
Finally, Buhari would not have defeated Jonathan even in 2015
if the progressives of the South-West had not led a coalition of political
adventurers to persuade Buhari to run one more time. For all concerned, the
decision to field Buhari was a monumental blunder.
It has led us to where we are now. But, remember this.
Fulani now occupy every “forest” they can find because, unlike the rest of us,
they have no land anywhere in Nigeria to call their own.
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