USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Nigeria's Questionable Nationhood and the Fulani aka National Grazing Bill

Sir,

I read your article and see that you really have injected a large measure of emotion into it. That is good. However emotional responses to issues of the magnitude you are addressing can often be ineffective. For example, how do you decouple the North from the South? And, really, we do need the cows, although they do not necessarily have to come from the North. Thirdly, you have confessed that you have never lived in the North, nor spent any significant time there. It may be really dangerous to come to your conclusions with little or no knowledge of a people. We need to be more rational in our approach to the issues of our national development. I have a few comments for your consideration.

I suppose, by the West, you mean Europe and America. I know that many of these nations too have their own social upheavals that may not be visible to us in Nigeria. However, many of those countries deal with their issues as a united entity - AND LOVE FOR THEIR COUNTRY.. Do not get me wrong. I have not found in your article that you are asking for the dissolution of our country. All I am saying is that it is often not necessary to always compare our country with the West. For example, but for the Boko Haram violence, there are more killings and other forms of violence in the US than in Nigeria. However, Americans deal with this issue and try to find a solution to them.

For Nigeria to change, the South - as you call it have a lot to do. There has to be a large measure of cooperation between us in the South - for the good of the country. If you have been to a gathering that are comprised of Yorubas and Ibos, even in the US, you would notice how it is almost impossible to get anything achieved. Take a case of the level of vituperation that emanate even on this forum, particularly among people of high paper qualifications. You will see that the problem is hardly a case of North versus South. It is an issue of the South against itself. 

But as you come to realize, Nigeria needs all Nigerians to develop. However, there has to be some measure of self determination within each group. For example, there is absolutely no reason on earth why the cattle business,is left for the Fulanis. We, particularly in the Southwest need to show the nation a better way of agriculture by developing ranches of our own. Quarreling with the Fulanis, who either refuse to embrace modern methods of agriculture or see some level of impunity in their behavior will not work.

As big and technologically advanced as the US is, there are still cattle ranches in NYC and California. Any group which depends on others for its livelihood will suffer the repercussion that we see today. We in the Southwest, now depend on the North of meet, tomatoes, onions, rice, etc for food. We depend on Ibos for electronics, spare parts, building materials, furniture etc. How do we then survive the onslaught of outsiders when we refuse to strive to become self sufficient?.

Similarly in the East they have their own issues which they need to address. It is not always a case of us against them. More often than not, it is a case of us dropping the ball in the first instance. Let us first go home and do our homework. 

FAKINLEDE 

On Monday, April 25, 2016 at 11:34:58 AM UTC+1, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:

Just want to add my own comments on the possibility that such a bill exists.

The Muslim North is primitive compared to the rest of Nigeria.

Nigeria is primitive compared to the West.

If Nigerians were to take over the West and run it the way they run Nigeria, and the West were to move to Nigeria, the West will become underdeveloped and Nigeria will become developed, so stated my father.

To continue to accommodate leadership from a region that can hardly lead itself is too seek continuous underdevelopment.

It is not necessarily racist to describe a people as primitive.

A good number of African societies , to a large extent, are confused. They were thrust by colonialism into a world they still don't fully understand. They are often like children learning to walk because of the social dislocations that created their contemporary societies.

Within the global configuration, we have societies that are in denial that their social models are unsustainable. These are theocratic systems like Saudi Arabia and Communist systems like China.

Saudi Arabia had to bribe its citizens not to demonstrate at the time when demonstrations were sweeping Arab nations in the wake of the Arab Spring, even as the country is run on relentless censorship and oppressive religious policing. China has done everything in its power to conceal its brutal suppression of the Tienanmen Square pro-democracy demonstration and believes that material well being is enough to satisfy human beings, as demonstrated by its description as lifting many of its citizens out of poverty, even as it polices its populace relentlessly to block perspectives that may undermine its dictatorial grip on its people.

Nigeria's Muslim North is caught in a particularly backward form of the decay of Islamic civilization. The Muslim North's  more vocal politicians are often prominent  for crude and bullying behavior, for threatening the nation with violence and for the worst forms of ethnocentrism, while impoverishing their own people.

The Islamic culture of the region is marked by recurrent anti-Muslim pogroms across the decades, by forms of Islam that are deeply insular and contribute little to national culture, to the entrenching of poverty through child marriages and ensuing biological damage and poor education to those children, family disintegration and inadequate care for the children of those marriages  and for low educational standards in all the more than 50 years of Nigeria's history, even as its citizens are deeply unfairly advantaged in admissions criteria to federal Nigerian educational institutions by being assessed in terms of very low pass marks in contrast to high pass marks enforced on most states from the South.

Southern Nigerian politicians continue  to commit social suicide for their own societies  by not insisting on the decoupling of the North and the South. As long as these two units are coupled, the country might not achieve true nationhood but remain a breadbasket for soldiers of fortune known as politicians.

We are again faced with another example of the primitivity emanating from the Muslim North. A terrorist group, described by the Global Terrorist Index as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world,  a group known in Nigeria as Fulani herdsmen, has been engaged for years in a program of genocidal colonization in the North Central and rape, murder, kidnapping and destruction of crops across the rest of Nigeria. With the ascendance of a Fulani man as ruler of Nigeria, they have become more brazen than ever, reaching a climax with the massacre of hundreds at Agatu and continuous  murderous attacks in various parts of the nation, as they are aided by the silence and supportive actions of the Nigerian government, while most politicians insist on silence, on careful diplomatic responses or on connivance, as the government floats the idea of turning the run of the entire nation over to these monsters through a bill that will enable them establish themselves across the nation in government protected grazing grounds, rather than build ranches for them in their own homeland, as is done in civilized countries unlike the backward insisting approach of cultivating nomadism at the expense of other people.

People in the South dont want your cows or the meat from those cows. The cost is too high. Please keep them in your region in the North. Since in your world, cows are more valuable than humans, keep your cows to yourself and your region, is now the general cry across the South.

Any society run on claims of divine revelation, as the Shariah law of the Muslim North, will inevitably become a backward and primitive  society as other societies  move on. No amount of modern infrastructure, no access to modern technology, as in Saudi Arabia,  will change that fundamental backwardness.

Claims of divine revelation are inevitably subjective presentations from an individual or small group promoting a personal or group agenda based on claims that cannot be satisfactorily verified by most people. These claims may contain much that is elevating but they demonstrate the limitations of the human mind which is severely restricted in the scope of knowledge it can manage and is compelled to operate in terms of the little frames representing what it is most comfortable with, hence demonstrating distortions reflecting the peculiarities of those claiming to receive those revelations.

A central problem with Nigeria's  Muslim North is that its leaders use the populace to consolidate power by keeping them grossly underdeveloped, even more than the rest of Nigeria, maintaining a society, which in some sense, is more medieval than modern.

I have never lived in that region, nor spent any significant time there, but the news reports from the place and my interaction on social media with people from there make clear the character of the place. The constant vociferous cry from a stream of Northern Muslim politicians, backed my some members of their populace to rule Nigeria is not only an exercise in misplaced priorities but a demonstration of delusion arising from ethnic and religious pride.

It is vital to acknowledge one's limitations and strive to overcome them. It is ridiculous to insist that one's limitations are one's strengths and use those limitations to browbeat others in accommodating one's limitations to the detriment of everyone. The Muslim North needs a desperate social upheaval to transform its direction in all aspects of society. Nigerians should stop accommodating a badly formed child that is refusing to address its inadequacies but insists on lording it over other people.

 This perspective addresses a general orientation of a society not positive qualities individuals may demonstrate. When there is no unifying vision, as in Nigeria at present, the country goes round in circles. Nigerians need a referendum to decide whether or not they wish to remain within this national construction created without consulting the constituent groups. The current arrangement looks to me like a house without a strong foundation and so is always wobbly and disjointed.

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