The Nomadic Fulani and the Rest of Us (3)

The Nomadic Fulani and the Rest of Us (3)

Last week I tried to take a sociological peep into the reality of the pastoralist, drawing from experiences from far away climes and epochs and a pattern is clear. For anyone interested in testing this analogy, a further study into closer pastoralist tribes in central Africa, East and Southern Africa should be more revealing.

This week, the attempt is to see if the Fulani are also victims, of sorts, of their circumstances. Some eight or so years ago, I was at a certain seminar and during one of the breaks we got chatting with some fellow participants, amongst whom was this Fulani gentleman from Sokoto – a jolly good fellow. We talked about the many clashes, including the many acts of sheer roguery, involving the Fulani. My friend from Sokoto told of a certain young Fulani man caught in one of such acts of banditry and, when asked why he was involved, he replied, “to an dafa mu da magani, kuma yanzu babu shanu, ga kuma jini na tausa… yo to me za mu yi?” Roughly translated, the young man said what do you expect of us when we have been so fortified with charms to protect ourselves and our cattle in the bush and now the cattle are no longer there and we are still energetic? Now if this is true, then it is very telling. Remember also that, for a very long period of time from the 1990s, northern Nigeria was plagued with vicious armed robbery on our highways: the Kaduna-Lagos road along the Birnin Gwari-Tegena axis, the North-Eastern highways amongst others. People who have survived such attacks would always tell you that the perpetrators were Fulani or Chadians – still Fulani. One begins to wonder if these bandits are a collect of the many charm-fortified young men who have lost their cattle and have got lots of energy to expend. While this might seem a bit generalist, it is worth interrogating: where did the cattle go to?

Traces of this pattern began manifesting in the late eighties into the early nineties. Not much attention was paid it. Around the Birnin Gwari area, time came when the settled locals began to find ways to protect themselves from Fulani onslaughts which had begun to threaten their existence in no small measure. They came up with community vigilante groups as a response and because these groups were not trained, their interventions were wanton and innocent other Fulani were affected which has led to reprisals and counter reprisals, thus exacerbating the situation. It is noteworthy that the Birnin Gwari axis is on a cattle belt that extends northward to Zamfara and beyond, which is also facing the same intractability. Infact apart from outlawing grazing at night presently, the governor of Zamfara State has been making a strident case to be allowed to arm local vigilante; thus, state police of sorts.

Of course there are natural explanations to what might have happened to the Fulani cattle – and mind you when talking about them, one must accept the reality that one cannot restrict one’s considerations only to Nigeria’s Fulani but those of the entire West African sub-region as they are frontier-blind. The Sahara desert is said to be advancing southward at the rate of 900 meters annually. It has been made even worse by the aggravating realities of climate change. Therefore even before we saw the desert within our frontier, many pastoralists were already losing their cattle to the trend, hence left without livelihood. These pastoralists have had to move southward with all their survival skills but without their cattle and any skill in crop farming to help them make a possible switch. Of course there will also be those who must have lost their cattle to some disease plague or the other; or due to their very own irresponsibility. They will naturally constitute a threat to the communities they come in contact with.

Some quarters have found these realities of the Fulani very profitable in many strange ways that many may not ordinarily imagine. There is the need for some persons in these quarters to remain politically relevant and they would stop at nothing. Some of these persons are infact kinsmen of the Fulani, in other words, they are Fulani: the more the situation festers, the more their relevance, hence they surreptitiously pitch their unsuspecting kinsmen against others only for personal gains to the detriment of society at large. Even in government, this anomie serves the personal or group interests a great many whose duty it is to forestall the trend and, therefore, they would look the other way while it festers.

If ordinary citizens pay heed to the dynamics of this problem by interrogating more closely, they would realize that instead of always going on rampage, they can do a lot to be part of, and also compelling duty bearers to do their bit in, getting rid of this problem.

 

Published on BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thursday Jan 23, 2014

The Nomadic Fulani and the Rest of Us (2)

The Nomadic Fulani and the Rest of Us (2)

So, to the first question raised last week: is the Fulani inherently wicked to people other than his own? Is the Fulani simply a trouble maker who goes around, in racial arrogance, causing crises all over the place? In the light of what is generally held about them as a people, it is probably helpful to take a peep into the sociological make up of the Fulani and see if any meaningful deduction can emerge.

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, discussing the many feuds between many families around the Appalachians in the United States of America in the 1800s, notes that “when one family fights with another, it’s a feud. When lots of families fight one another in identical little towns up and down the same mountain range, it’s a pattern”. We have seen a clear pattern in the manner in which clashes involving the Fulani across Nigeria have manifested. One finds Gladwell’s argument quite fascinating in locating a trend and a metaphor in this Fulani quagmire of ours.

For almost a hundred years, the 19^th century saw a lot of killings in that mountainous area between families: the Howards versus the Turners in the Harlan County; Hartfield versus McCoy on the West Virginia-Kentucky border, which stretched over twenty years; the French-Eversole feud in Perry County, Kentucky; the Martin-Tolliver feud in Rowan County, Kentucky; the Baker-Howard feud in Clay County, Kentucky. These were just to mention a few of the many known ones.

Gladwell further indicated that of the many potential explanations to this pattern debated, there was a consensus on what sociologists consider a particularly virulent strain called the “culture of honour”. Such cultures tended to take roots in marginally fertile areas like Sicily, the Basque regions of Spain and the northern counties of England and Ulster in Northern Ireland. Because of the low arability of such areas due to their rocky nature, the peoples tended to be herdsmen. They were very spartan. They were constantly under threat not just by the elements but also by other people like them, not to mention the wild animals. In contrast to the settled farming populations whose crops cannot be easily stolen wholesale, the livestock of the herdsmen can easily be totally plundered. Therefore, as a means of survival, they had to be aggressive; they had to make it clear that they were not weak. They saw any challenge as a threat to their personal reputation. It becomes, for such persons, a matter of honour.

The inhabitants of the Appalachian mountain areas emigrated originally from historically the world’s most ferocious cultures of honour. They were Scotch Irish: the lowlands of Scotland, the earlier mentioned northern counties of England, and Ulster in Northern Ireland. These borderland regions were known to be lawless territories, fought over for hundreds of years. They replicated their livelihood and lifestyle in the new world around the Appalachians.

Herdsmen are very clannish, “responding to the harshness and turmoil of their environment”, as Gladwell puts it, “by forming tight family bonds placing loyalty to blood above all else”. Being herdsmen also, it is easy to locate the Fulani in the above context. They are very clannish with very high loyalty to family bonds. Infact because of their quest to keep the family intact, it is common practice amongst them for first cousins to marry each other, which many other Nigerian communities find rather strange. The extent of their familial bonds sometimes leads them to treat children amongst them who have one of the parents coming from another tribe other than theirs with some reservation. To demonstrate honour and bravery in the typical Fulani society, a young man seeking the hand of a maiden in marriage will have to subject himself to the gory and sometimes life-threatening Sharo contest with other suitors, in which they subject themselves to vicious lashes – or thuds? – of each other’s herdsman staff. The last man standing wins the bride, having proved his capacity and capability to fend for and defend his family.

It is also, therefore, easy to see why any feud with one of them anywhere, as is commonly held, is a war with his family everywhere, no matter how seemingly remote the tie is: from Senegal to Mali, Gambia to Cameroun, Guinea to Chad, Niger Republic and Burkinafaso. It would not matter the enemy’s religion, tribe (including theirs) or the length of time, they would seem to visit with vendetta, regardless of frontier. Any wonder then why some of them caught during some of these attacks we see today don’t appear Nigerian? Again, once an older member of the family declares such battle, no matter how unjustifiable younger persons in the family construe such, it would take the former’s peers or seniors to stand them down.

This discourse is not an attempt to explain away the irascibility in question or vilify the Fulani, but to begin to suggest context for policy formulation toward permanently addressing the problem.

 

(Published on BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thursday Jan 16, 2014)

The Nomadic Fulani and the Rest of Us (1)

The Nomadic Fulani and the Rest of Us (1)

Last Sunday, Kaduna State awoke to the news of attack on the Sholio (also known as Moroa) people in Manchok, Kaura Local Government Area, by unknown gunmen. The Sholio blame this attack on the Fulani, who have severally been credited with other such attacks on populations in the southern parts of the state including the lush areas of Plateau State, such as Riyom, Ganawuri and others, which border the Sholio, Takad and Gworok lands, in Kaduna State. It is interesting and instructive to note that, especially after the post-election crisis that ravaged Kaduna State and most of the north in 2011, the Oegwam Sholio, HRH Mallam Tagwai Sambo, was on record for his eloquent pacifism in inviting displaced Fulani and Hausa in those parts of the State to make his domain home. Whatever is the immediate reason for the recent attack is not the subject of this piece today.

Only yesterday also, some national dailies reported the confirmation, by the Special Task Force and Police, of the death of 16 persons in a similar attack attributed to the Fulani on Tuesday in the Riyom area of Plateau State. From Katsina to Oshogbo, Sokoto to Benue, Zamfara to Taraba, Kebbi to Nassarawa; virtually every other part of this country is having to contend with the Fulani. The Fulani are clashing with people almost everywhere they find themselves and are earning for themselves enemies all over the place. It would appear to simple watchers that there is something inherently wicked about the Fulani herdsman that propels him into such mindless onslaught. Infact one has heard opinions such as that the Fulani never forgive any undoing; that they must repay, pound for pound, either now or later; personally or by proxy.

But this problem does not only stop there at the level of the Fulani as a tribe. It gets even more complicated. In many quarters, everything Fulani is northern Nigeria; everything Fulani is Hausa; everything Fulani is Islam, depending on where one finds oneself. Therefore, the Takad or Berom man, who is generally Christian, who finds himself attacked by the Fulani easily construes some Islamic conspiracy in the situation and, therefore, every Muslim, especially of the “Hausa-Fulani” extraction, is an enemy. The community in Cross Rivers State that finds itself in altercations with the Fulani easily construes northern political domination in the dispute and so sees in every northerner an adversary, regardless of tribe or religion. Hence, as a result of such attacks in the past attributed to the Fulani, there have been reprisals which have affected many peoples, depending on where the attacks took place, who have absolutely no link with the attackers or the Fulani except that they were perceived to share the same religious, regional or political cause with them. Such innocent people so affected in such reprisals also have gone on counter attacks in their own enclaves and the cycle has gone on and become intractable. Thus, for very simple reasons like this, many Nigerian communities have gradually become each other’s enemies. This speaks to a certain level of crass failure on the part of the state to which we shall return.

Some questions have to be posed here. Is the Fulani inherently wicked to people other than his own? Is the Fulani simply a trouble maker who goes around, in racial arrogance, causing crises all over the place? Is he by any means a victim also? What are the possible factors that can predispose a people to such self-inflicted pariah status? Have any quarters seized the Fulani reality for gains of whatever kind? What possibly could the Fulani nation, especially the educated ones, have done that they have either failed or refused to do to arrest the situation? What about the Nigerian state: has it paid due attention to this problem and the dimensions it is taking the Nigerian society to? Are there concrete steps taken by the state, with every sense of goodwill and determination, to address the problem and its effects? Even though it is becoming difficult to tie the Fulani to any one region, the fact remains that they are a northern people; has northern Nigeria really cared to be a part of really putting the their problem to rest apart from harping rhetoric? What about the vast peoples that have clashed with the Fulani; have they done well enough to, putting their anger and pains aside, interrogate these realities with a view to being a part of pushing for a holistic solution to the problem other than dwelling in their hurt?

In subsequent editions, I shall offer my thoughts on some of the questions raised above, if only to stir a more critical debate on the subject. Keep a date with me.

 

(Published on BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thursday Jan 9, 2014)

I Cannot Forget 2013

I Cannot Forget 2013

Remember not to forget!

Anon

As we step into this new year, I recall that the British, having conquered the southern and northern protectorates of what has come to be known today as Nigeria, on the 1^st day of January, 1914 (which is, by the way, the very day the first commercial air flight took place in the US), officially cobbled this country together, thus making it a centenary yesterday. Therefore, it is only fitting to wish Nigeria and all of us Nigeria a happy centenary, inspite of the gloom that hovers over the nation and the reticence with which many Nigerians, and even non-Nigerians, are wont to view this milestone for very real reasons. Indeed some quarters have submitted that why Nigeria has failed to forge as a nation during these hundred years of existence is easily traceable to that event, a century ago, when peoples were forced into cohabitation without their consent. Reasonable as that sounds, it has proven to be rather simplistic in the light of the fact that many other countries with similar credentials have navigated the initial inconveniences and stand strong and tall today. Very few nations can beat their chests and claim that they naturally evolved, without any such forced human interventions as wars, conquests, colonialism, forced subsumption and “forced marriages” like ours. The difference is that while others decidedly decided to forge ahead with nation building, some, like ours, threw away their common humanity and humanness to the dogs, thus, our lot today.

For any individual, institution or nation to make progress in life, they cannot afford to ignore their past, advertently or inadvertently. If they do so, it is at their peril. Nigeria has continued to do so. Events continue to happen in this country that we, our leadership in particular, should learn from in order to more properly order our nationhood journey, if not for ourselves and today, for our children and tomorrow, but we keep going on like a fool with his brains in his stomach. We go the polls and still allow the travesties that we have seen to continue to happen, Anambara State, for example. We do same things and expect different results.

But we must not forget. I, for one, will not forget 2013, for the good, the bad and the ugly. I will not forget that in 2013, the PDP, a party that has had privilege and bounteous grace to lead this country into the bright future hoped for but has severally failed and with impunity, is gradually beginning to sing its swansong owing to self-inflicted wounds. I will never squander gracious opportunities. I will not forget that in 2013, a possibly real opposition is finally threatening the PDP. Yet I will not forget that so far, this opposition, the APC, is not proving to be any much different from the ruling party given the fact that they are yet to offer Nigerians anything else but the desire to upstage their rival. Good as that in itself might be, I see many who plundered and riddled this nation moving into the APC in droves and I can’t help but conclude that they are only changing garbs.

I will not forget the cowardly slaughter of innocent students in the College of Agric, Yobe State, by the Boko Haram insurgents in September, 2013. Whatever their cause is, I will never sympathize with such groups whose actions show them as not recognizing God in fellow human beings. Yet I will not forget, in May of 2013, the state of emergency declared on the same insurgency. In my little sphere of influence, I will not allow injustice to fester to the point of de-robing man of dignity, for it to bring out the animal in him only for me to in turn fight.

Tertiary institutions were on strike for the most of 2013. I will not forget that for the sad implications to every facet of our national life. Nor will I forget the mess that our aviation sector churned out: the air mishaps, the ghastly shame that is little Daniel Ihekina’s trip in the purported tyre compartment of an Arik airplane from Benin to Lagos, and the brazenness that is Oduah-gate. All these speak to the insensitivity of leadership to the reality and future of the nation.

How can I forget the hypocrisy that followed Oshomole’s encounter with the widow or the hypocrisy that is Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan, true as the content may be? I will seek to be true to myself at all times and always seize the moment.

Finally, I will not forget the 20^th day of December, 2013, when right in my car at about 9:00am, my father breathed his last enroute hospital. Three days later, we interred him, thus, effectively rendering me the living patriarch of our Zwahu lineage.

May we never forget for good.

A prosperous and happy new year is my wish for you.

(Published on BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thursday Jan 2, 2014)

Emmanuel, God With Us!(?)

Emmanuel, God with us!(?)

In Christian cosmology, the birth of Jesus Christ, which is celebrated at Christmas, manifested the incarnation of God to the entirety of humanity; an event which actually took effect when the Angel Gabriel visited the Blessed Virgin Mary with the news that she had found favour with God and was to be the mother of God the Son on earth. Mary, after the initial shock and apprehension, considering the fact that she was a virgin and had known no man, submitted herself totally to the will of God, inspite of what the society would think of her being pregnant before wedlock, with those profound words: “behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to Thy word”. From that moment of declared submission, the Word of God became incarnate – in other words, took flesh – in her womb. He was named Emmanuel, which means God with Us, for He was God physically amongst men. Today, His presence is real in a special manner that only faith can percieve, accept and believe.

Living in today’s world poses a great challenge to the fact of Emmanuel, God with us. With all the crises that have come to define this age, sometimes one is tempted to really question the existence of God: wars are ravaging different corners of our earth, and these wars are quite senseless. Man has redefined the concept of truth to pursue his self-seeking motives, challenging natural laws and order thus, pushing the concept of the divine even further into abysmal recesses.

Inspite of the apparent and professed commitment to religion and faith, Nigeria is probably one country where God has has been so compartmentalised such that one looks around and wonders if it is really still Emmanuel. This reality has so taken hold of the Nigerian society to the extent even the Christian Church has dethroned the very God that it has set out to proclaim – whether it realises it or not remains another question. One only needs to switch on one’s TV to watch the many a man of God who has turned the pulpit into some circus of sorts, seeking to impress viewers and followers alike. These men of God have totally enthroned mammon and use every means possible to feed from the trough of this god. The name Jesus is employed to further this end and this end only.

Because of listening to these preachers and being daily bombarded with their messages, many Nigerians have lost their sense of social justice, if they ever had one, and many yet are growing up without any. People have become so concerned about the self and nothing more. The Christian vocation to solidarity with the rest of humanity, especially the less priviledged and those in need, no longer makes sense and so one hears such slogans as “it’s my year of abundance”, “it’s my turn to shine”, “ it is my… it is my… it is my…” and so on. People never pay heed to the extent of damage that such messages inflict on their Christian calling subliminally and before they know what is happening, they have been disembowelled of their humanity. No wonder we have the kind of politicians that we do today in Nigeria. No wonder we have the kind of leadership that we have had in this country. It is now all about the self and, tragically, the Church whose purview it is to provide the moral compass out of this morass lacks the standing because, now more than ever, it has depleted that precious capital by feeding from Mammon’s trough. Indeed one cannot be faulted for asking if God is still with us; if it is still Emmanuel.

But all hope is not lost. Did Isaiah the prophet not say of the birth the Messiah “the people that walk darkness have seen a great light”? Did the heavenly host of angels on the night of Jesus’ birth not burst forth in glorious singing “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to PEOPLE OF GOODWILL”? No matter how few they are, these people of goodwill will have the final word. As hopeless as the situation looks, the people of goodwill only have to stand up and talk the talk and the walk the talk; that way this country will be redeemed. It can be as simple as trashing your rubbish properly or as taking your civic resposibility seriously. It can be as simple as struggling not to shunt traffic in hold-ups: simple as it is, this can test one’s calling to human solidarity and justice, for you will stick to your lane and feel very stupid that you are doing the right thing; but that is the cross one is called to bear.

As we celebrate this Christmas, may we be reminded that any life that is not conscious of and responsive to the reality of the other is not worth living. That is the only way that we can bring to manifestation the fact and truth of Emmanuel, God with us.

Merry Christmas

 

(Published on BLUEPRINT Newspaper, Thursday Dec 26, 2013)