Let us be clear: leaving the message to demonize the messenger does no one any good in this saga of Fulani herdsmen. We must actually congratulate Dr. Danesi for using her professional skills and insight to shine some light on this contentious issue.
If others of her professional persuasion sitting at the very apex of governance have had the courage of their convictions to speak truth to power and ask of their governmental colleagues hard headed, soul searching questions perhaps we would not be in the sorry state in which the nation finds itself on this vexatious issue.
And I shall be very blunt:
For once the nation has at its helms a personality highly versed in law. For once a country has at its helms a personality who rode to power on the winds of born again Christianity (that is avowed truth tellers who supposedly descended from the traditions of Saint Peter who would suffer themselves to be thrown to the lions in the amphiteaters of Rome rather than compromise on the truth.
For once the teeming masses heeded the call of the Save Nigeria brigade who promised to rid the nation of corruption and violence in alliance with their monotheistic alter ego up North only to be treated once again to the equivocation that the dance this time around is yet deffered.
How do we explain that an acting president versed in law and armed with born again Christianity finds himself bereft of ideas of how to put into effect the process of bringing to book powerful officers of state and party functionaries implicated in corruption deals?
How do we explain the fact that London published a list that alleged that Nigeria's Senate President is among those involved in dubious property ownership and the whole federal government establishment seems to be at a loss as to do to bring their frontline statesmen to accountability? And to boot the Senate Presidency lacks the will to affirm or deny the allegations; the Senate President lacks the will to step aside until the matter is cleared up seeing that the nations publics offices are by no means hereditary positions or irremediable dictatorship.
Events in Oyo state has indicated the pointer in the right direction in which executives step aside where the process leading to their appointments are in doubt only for the appropriate officer to be invited back to office when justice has taken its due course. Why cant a similar situation be applied at the federsl level?
I suspect starting from the OBJ administration party interests are being put above national interests. The only reason why Atiku was not brought in for questioning during the Jefferson corruption affair in the United States can only be to sustain party unity at the expense of national integrity (Note that bringing Atiku in does not imply that he would be found guilt/not guilty but due process would have been seen to have taken place rather that the impunity with which it was substituted). In the event PDP and the OBJ administration established this bad precedent in civilian accountability for which the mute legal profession in Nigeria should hang its head in shame.
We have seen how this achilles heel of modern democracy has played itself out recently from the land where Nigeria borrowed the system. An attorney General dared her principal choosing to stay on the side of the citizens, the Constitution and the rest is now history...
This PDP shenanigans set the stage for the advent of this administrarion with the qualifications of its current leadership which as current events indicate are mere window dressings for leaderships of two extant monotheisms to equally share power (rather than any attempt at godfearing accountability on behalf of the electorate).
That any sitting governor (El Rufai) can admit that Fulani herdsmen committed murder in his state but had to be appeased to stop further killings is the greatest travesty of justice in modern Nigerian stateshood. He ought to have been impeached on evidence supplied by himself of his ineffectiveness as governor.
In this age of the apotheotical manifestation of the communications God (Esu-Elegbara; I mean in the age of the ubiquity of the phone camercas being used to record crimes in progress and bring criminals to justice in the West we are being made to believe that in all the well reported cases none has been captured on camera to help expedite the convictions of the villanous herdsmen? Tell us another story! And should the Nigeriam borders be held porous for any Fulani ilk across the West African sub region sinner or saint?
For the avoidance of doubt (for I shall not deal in equivocations) the buck now stops on the table acting President Osinbajo (thanks to the indisposition of the substantive office holder).
Whereas the substantive office can seek cover in the verity he is a 'puruntu' in the knowledge of due process, such escape route is not available to the acting President in view of his religious and professional pedigree:
Acting President Osinbajo and the Nigerian Legislature, the time to act is NOW. (It is not enough to hear grievances of citizens 'loud & clear" Half way through the proceedings of any dispensation is enough time to gauge its effectiveness.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Date: 09/02/2017 02:25 (GMT+00:00)
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity
Ogbeni Kadiri,
In these links, the allegations against Fulani Herdsmen are very serious and many.
He who feels it knows.
One no less than the Ohanaeze is charging the Fulani herdsmen with "destroying our farms and raping our women."And raping our women. Is that not adding insult to injury?
By what sleight of hand/ feats of propaganda and false media reports have Fulani Herdsmen been labelled not only a terrorist organisation but as the fourth most deadliest terrorist group in the world ! How does one set about dismantling/dispelling the statistical evidence on which such an assessment is arrived at ?
May I suggest that the idyllic Nigeria of peaceful, law-abiding, pastoral Fulani herdsmen that you once knew has changed dramatically and that's one of the reasons why just a few years ago there were no complaints about Fulani Herdsmen, not even from Pastor Lucifer and his disciples.
The other reason could be that the herdsmen are associated with the North which is identifiable as mostly Muslim and therefore the accusations against them, undoubtedly part of the general pattern of the growing Islamophobia in Nigeria directed against the herdsmen who their enemies want to typify as being murderous representatives of Islam.
The syllogism that Prof Kperogi and all truth sayers must vehemently dement:
"All Fulani Herdsmen are wanton murderers
Ogbeni B is a Fulani Herdsman
Therefore Ogbeni B is a wanton murderer."
As bad as the blood libel when Toyin Adepoju accuses me of being one of those who repose in mere indignation at "those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings " as if I like blood, or eat blood or drink it as sacrificial wine...
Various postings on this forum have explained why certain miscreants are appealing to the one that they believe is the great Islamophobic president of the United States to rally to their cause and are delighted with the solemn promise made in his first inaugural address, to "unite the civilised world against radical Islamic terrorism which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth". This of course is music to the ears of Apostle Satani.
To me these injunctions are quite clear :
# Not to love the missionary--Deuteronomy 13:9
# Not to cease hating the missionary--Deuteronomy 13:9
# Not to save the missionary--Deuteronomy 13:9
# Not to say anything in his defence--Deuteronomy 13:9
# Not to refrain from incriminating him--Deuteronomy 13:9
Here endeth.
According to the TV meteorologist it's going to be eight degrees below zero in Stockholm, today, the 9th of February 2017. So you see, we are getting our punishment already, so that we don't have to fear ever going to join Pastor Lucifer inside or near the hell-fire…
Yours sin-cerely,
Cornelius
On Wednesday, 8 February 2017 00:01:11 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:
Dear Dr, Rosemary Danesi (PhD Law, Essex) BSc. LLB, LLM (MCIPM, MNIM), Fulbright Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States, Lecturer, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria, Legal/Labour Relations Consultant!!!
Although I am not an admirer of Dr. Farooq Kperogi, his admonition against criminalisation of Fulani herdsmen should be of interest to anyone who desires justice at all levels of life in Nigeria. I assume that, even from your pedestal of academic degrees, you know not only how Fulani herdsmen look like but that you are also acquainted with their working conditions. With that assumption, may I know if you have personally witnessed Fulani Herdsmen wreaking havoc on farmlands and killing innocent people? If not, why are you so categorical in your statement and your subsequent question?
S.Kadiri
Från: 'Ms rosemary danesi' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com >
Skickat: den 7 februari 2017 18:19
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity--Dr Farook can you tell us why nothing has been done to the Fulani Herdsmen who have wreaked havoc on farmlands and killed so many innocent people. Why has there been no arrest of these criminals and murderers?
__________________________________________
Dr. Rosemary Danesi (PhD Law, Essex) BSc. MSc. LLB. BL LLM. (MCIPM, MNIM)
Fulbright Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States,
Lecturer, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria
Legal/Labour Relations Consultant
Mobile Phone: 08100534915 & 08185825232
'Do unto others as you wish them do unto you'
On Saturday, February 4, 2017 8:40 AM, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooq...@gmail.com> wrote:
My column in today's Daily Trust on Saturday:--
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Twitter:@farooqkperogi
The Nigerian mass media—and the online echo chambers they have spawned on social media and elsewhere—have normalized the pathologization and criminalization of the Fulani ethnic identity through their popularization of the odious "Fulani herdsmen" collocation. Criminalizing and pathologizing an entire ethnic identity is often the precursor to genocide.
That's why an ignorant and hate-filled preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleiman could glibly tell his church members to extra-judicially murder "Fulani herdsmen." "And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him," he said in a widely circulated video. "I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!"
Before I am misunderstood, let me be clear that I am not defending, excusing, or minimizing the mass murders attributed to some "Fulani herdsmen" in Agatu, southern Kaduna, and elsewhere. No human being deserves to be killed by any group for any reason. For as long as I breathe, I will always defend the sanctity of human life. That's why, although I'm not a Shiite, I came down very hard on the Buhari government for its horrendously bestial mass slaughter of innocent Shiites in 2015.
But we can condemn a wrong by a people without tarring an entire community numbering millions of people across vast swathes of land in West Africa with a broad brush. The Fulani people are far and away the most widely dispersed ethnic group in West Africa. And, although they dominate the cattle herding trade, they are not all cattle herders, and most cattle herders aren't violent and murderous. Nor are all cattle herders Fulanis.
Most importantly, though, although "settled," urban Fulanis are mostly Muslims, cattle-herding Fulanis are mostly neither Muslims nor Christians. Their whole religion is usually just the welfare of their cattle. In addition, cattle-herding Fulanis don't recognize, much less have loyalty to, Nigeria's prevailing geopolitical demarcations. In other words, they are not invariably northerners.
So if they have sanguinary clashes with farmers, those clashes aren't instigated by religion or region. They are just age-old farmer/herder clashes. I admit, though, that it isn't just Middle Beltan and southern Nigerian victims of farmer/herder clashes that use the lenses of Nigeria's primordial fissures to gaze at Fulani herders; northern Nigerian Muslim politicians, especially those that have a Fulani bloodline, also use these lenses to defend and protect their "kinsfolk," often ignorantly and opportunistically.
In 2000, for instance, General Muhammadu Buhari traveled all the way from Kaduna to Ibadan to protect Fulani herdsmen who were at the receiving end of retaliatory killings by Yoruba farmers. Governor el-Rufai is also a self-confessed Fulani supremacist who once threatened retaliation against other ethnic groups on behalf of Fulani herders. I think it is these sorts of misguided parochialisms that conduce to the conflation of Fulani herder identity with the identity and divisive politics of urban northern Nigerian elites with tinctures of Fulani ancestry.
But this is all wrong. My late father was raised by Fulani herders for the first 12 years of his life. I also have adoptive full-blooded Fulani cousins who were raised by my grandfather and my paternal aunt. They were abandoned at birth in the hospital when their mothers died in labor in my hometown, and they were adopted by my grandfather. That was not unusual in my community in bygone days. So when I talk of cattle-herding Fulani people, I do so with the benefit both of personal experience and scholarly immersion into their life, history and ways.
The Fulani nomads who destroy communities throughout West Africa, not just in Nigeria, don't have any sense of rootedness in any modern nation-state. They are, for the most part, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of modernity, and owe no allegiance to any overarching primordial, regional, or religious identity. That's why they are called transhumant pastoralists.
But there are also bucolic Fulani herders who plant roots in communities, live peacefully with their hosts, and even speak the languages of the communities they choose to live in. In my hometown, the Fulani are so integral to the community that the king of the Fulani, who is appointed by our emir (who isn't Fulani), is part of the 7 kingmakers that elect a new emir. These rooted, bucolic Fulani herders are often exempt from the episodic communal upheavals that so often erupt between sedentary communities and itinerant herders.
I recall that there was a particularly sanguinary class between Fulani herders and farmers in the early 1990s that caused so many deaths in western Borgu. Farmers chose to retaliate the killings of their kind and organized a well-planned counter attack that caused scores of itinerant cattle herders—and their cattle—to be killed. What was intriguing about the counter attack was that the farmers spared all settled Fulani herders. They told them apart from the transhumant herders because the local Fulani spoke the local language. Ability to speak the local language indicated that they weren't the "citizens without frontiers" who unleashed terror on farming communities.
A similar incident happened in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State in 2000. In the retaliatory attacks against Fulani nomads who killed farmers, Yoruba-speaking Fulani cattle herders were spared. Like in Borgu and elsewhere, bucolic Fulani herders are intricately woven into the fabric of the communities in which they live.
I am saying all this to call attention to the reality that farmer/herder clashes aren't north-south, Muslim-Christian or ethnic conflicts. The Fulani who have lived in the south for ages don't see themselves as northerners living in the south—and they are NOT. In any case, they've lived there prior to the advent of colonialism that invented the Nigerian nation-state. Notions of southern Nigeria and northern Nigeria are colonial categories that have little or no meaning to both the bucolic Fulani nomads who live peacefully with their hosts and the blood-thirsty, marauding citizens without frontiers who inflict violence on farming communities all over West Africa, not just in southern or Middle Beltan Nigeria.
So which of the two categories of Fulani herders do the Nigerian media mean when they criminalize "Fulani herdsmen?" And which one does Apostle Suleiman want his church members to murder in cold blood?
But it gets even trickier. Sometime in 2003 in Gombe, itinerant Fulani herders called the Udawa killed scores of farmers most of whom were ethnic and linguistic Fulanis. Former Governor Abubakar Hashidu had to request federal military assistance to contain the menace of the Udawa. Similarly, hundreds of Hausa and Fulani farmers in Nigeria's northwest get killed by transhumant Fulani herders every year. But such stories don't make it to the national news because it isn't "newsy" to read about Fulani herders killing Fulani farmers.
The media have a responsibility to let the world know that it is transhumant herders with no sense of geographic rootedness that are drenching communities in blood, not all "Fulani herdsmen," many of whom are peaceful, organic members of the communities in which they live.
Related Article:Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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