Monsieur le Professeur Farooq A. Kperogi,
You know where we're coming from.
Clearly ( according to the printed evidence) you are the one who was and is being overwhelmed with emotion, not the erudite, very polite, diffident, apologetic, civilised Professor Okey Iheduru. And your shameless outburst ( from my point of view) unbecoming and undignified as it is does not blow away the central issue that Professor Iheduru and I too say still has to be addressed :
the land encroachments of the Fulani cattle and their herders as they migrate from the relatively arid North through the greener pastures to be found in the South brazenly leaving behind them one humanitarian crisis after the other (death and destruction) as they unlawfully rampage and romp through other people's private property ( farms and farmlands) chewing cash crops such as cabbage , the lush lettuce and the rich foliage on which they graze as if all has been specially for them and only awaiting their arrival for breakfast, lunch and dinner ( the Fulani cattle). Now that's not right is it? It's a burning issue. Are we to suppose that ethnicity is of secondary importance when it comes to breaking the law in the Federal Republic of Nigeria as if there are statutes of special protection if you are from the Bagabaga tribe ?
As Marx said ( Grucho) ; " These are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
You have eminently made your point, "three quick factual inaccuracies in the article that I wish to highlight" and if at a later date you want to spend more time on that you could count prominent Fulanis all day long , Abass Bundu among others
As Dr. Zimmerman sang, even if adjudged grammatically incorrect by the likes of you,
"Don't put my faith in nobody, not even a scientist"
Your part estimation of Dr. Obadiah Mailafi (" fast and loose with basic facts") could also be applied to what seems to be your utter reliance/ faith/ iman in how some DNA science lab has mapped your family history. Even given the fact that when it comes to "roots" we are not trees as Joseph Brodsky put it - for instance - my friend Kenneth Ofodile's wife Winifred – from Sierra Leone – passed away in Sokoto - and for mankind in general, it's a history of migrations - exactly as I heard the greatest living Talmudist declare a few years ago in the great synagogue of Stockholm and Paul Kagame heard it too since he was sitting in the front pew : "We all came from Africa" ( I was sitting next to a Polish guy at the time and pinched him lightly on his thigh when I heard that we ALL came from Africa , but all he said was " there's always a black sheep in the family". Of course if he had said "monkey" instead of sheep, Yours Truly would have punched him there and then . Anyway, to this day I still don't know if the Rabbi was talking about the 220 year sojourn in the historical or metaphorical Egypt , Egypt representing everything bad – carnality etc. and consequently the commandment "You must not go back that way again " or if he was referring to the cradle of civilisation as the Biblical location of the Garden of Eden where lived Adam and Eve, their first residence and even if it was on this planet.
Harvey Cropper a mentor now late once defined Cosmopolitanism, " When I see another human being, I see one of us!"
On a personal note, long before Shlomo Sands , from Richard Leakey (not Darwin) ( The Origin of Humankind) a little rant here, on to the Lemba through Richard Dawkins and later on inspired by Ed Smith ( who said all he needed was a little saliva from me) eventually you get to the most professional of DNA mapping - and it's so astounding that you keep it personal - I'm just wondering what my great grandparents DNA looked like and what my descendants DNA could look like two hundred years from now bearing this in mind : critique of ancestry DNA tests
All is vanity. This holy month of Ramadan, I hope that you will exercise more control over your emotions. Your nafs. (smile). You are at liberty to forgive my grammar, spelling, syntax, poor wordology, punctuation , if you like, but BTW, I really don't care or mind, if you do or don't. As the bard said,
I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours
And there you have it....
Cornelius
On Wednesday, 30 May 2018 17:26:14 UTC+2, Farooq A. Kperogi wrote:
Professor Iheduru,I had to do a double take to be sure that you are actually the author of this sterile, unproductive rant. If you can't engage with the substance of an intervention because it's beyond your ken, it doesn't hurt to keep your emotions to yourself. How does one respond to this vacuous outburst of yours without transgressing the bounds of conversational civility? It's supremely ironic that a truly semantically puerile response tags other people's nuanced, substantive contributions as "puerile." Go look up the meaning of "puerile" and re-read what you wrote: you will see yourself in the semantic mirror. I have bothered to respond because I hold you in high esteem. You can do better than that!FarooqFarooq Kperogi, PhD
Associate Professor
Journalism and Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building Room 5092
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, GA 30144
Office phone: 470-578-7735
Fax: 470-578-9153
Cell: 404-573-9697
Website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
Sent from my 4G LTE Android device. Please forgive typos.
On Wed, May 30, 2018, 2:46 AM Okey Iheduru <okeyi...@gmail.com> wrote:Diversions! Interesting diversions!! Fascinating "recreational" diversions!!!What have all this got to do with crux of Mailafia's piece: the perception and/or reality of officially-sanctioned genocidal activities of the FULANI herdsmen that are eerily similar to the FULANI CONQUEST IDEOLOGY AND TACTICS of Usman dan Fodio and Mohammed Bello? And, the later-day realization by Professors Moses Ochonu and Farook Kperogi that what's going on in Nigeria today is way beyond their fixation with their puerile fantasies about the Bororo and their "fura de nunu"?--On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 7:06 PM, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooq...@gmail.com> wrote:I only just now got a chance to read Obadiah Mailafia's article. While it makes excellent points in some some places, it played fast and loose with basic facts in many areas. I don't have time to write a detailed response to it, but here are three quick factual inaccuracies in the article that I wish to highlight:1. The Musa Yar'adua family (of which the late President Umaru Musa Yar'adua was a scion) isn't, as Mailafia claims, Fulani; it is patrilineally descended from a Tuareg ancestor (the Tuareg are a branch of the Berber cluster in North Africa), whom Hausa people call Buzu. Another prominent Buzu family in northern Nigeria that people mistake for Fulani is the Baba-Ahmed family in Mailafia's Kaduna State. Similarly, the late Murtala Mohammed's paternal identity is the subject of elaborate, long-standing speculations, none of which points to a Fulani ethnicity. The most credible speculation, in my opinion, is one that says his father descended from northern Edo State. Several accounts give his father's name as Dako Mohammed who was said to have migrated to Kano from the village of Igbe in the Auchi area of Edo State. Given the number of "Auchi" people who rose to prominence in the Kano society (including the late multimillionaire Isyaku Rabiu and several others), this speculation isn't far-fetched. We know, of course, that his mother was a member of the powerful Inuwa Wada family in Kano, but if Mailafia can arbitrarily use Murtala's matrilineal lineage to determine his ethnicity and disregard his paternal lineage, then he should also denude Buhari of his Fulani ethnicity since Buhari's mother is half Hausa and half Kanuri.2. There are two incumbent elected presidents in West Africa who self-identify as Fulani: Macky Sall of Senegal and Adama Barrow of the Gambia.The Fulani are just about 18 percent of Senegal and 21 percent of the Gambia. Ahmadou Ahidjo, a Fulani man, was also Cameroon's president (actually the country's first president) from 1960 to 1982, even though the Fulani are only 10 percent of Cameroon's population. So Mailafia's notion of universally reviled, unredeemable Fulani demons whom no nation in West Africa wants to entrust with leadership at the highest level is not supported by the facts. Not everyone, obviously, is as obsessed with unreflective ethnic particularism as Mailafia is.3. Mailafia's ethnic essentialist arguments are also so preposterous on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. But let's start with the acknowledgement that identity is actually fiction, even if it's emotionally valid, politically consequential fiction. Mailafia himself has said several times on this list, before he disappeared, that he is part Fulani. The truth is, no one is pure anything. We are all ethnic "mongrels," whether we know it or not. We are all trapped in what Jean-Loup Amselle calls "Mestizo logics."
My recent interest in recreational genetics has solidified the truth of this mestizo logic of our ethnicity for me. I did an ancestry DNA for my mother and me a few months ago and found that I am 14 percent Asanti (I was able to determine the ethnicity because ancestry.com's database matched my mother with a 4th cousin from Ghana who turned out to be Asanti from Accra), 17 percent Malian (I haven't determined what Mailian ethnicity it is, but I suspect Bambara), 33 percent Benin Republic/Togo, and 34 percent Nigerian. (One percent is from Senega and another one percent from Congo/Cameroon). My mom, from whom I got my Asanti ancestry had not the foggiest idea that she had any ancestors from the Asanti. No one ever mentioned it to her. I knew she had Malian ancestry from the clan names of her forebears (Manneh and Toure), which are similar to names Mandinka/Mandingo/Bambara/Joula, etc. people bear in Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, etc. But the oral history handed down to her says her ancestors came from Katsina and Borno. I have a slightly higher Malian DNA than she does, which means my father has a little bit of Malian DNA, too. And it's known to geneticists that several people in Mali, Guinea, the Gambia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, etc. embody complex ethnic alchemies, and it's reductionist to talk of ethnicity in the essentialist terms that Mailafia did in his article. For instance, Alpha Konare, Mali's president from 1992 to 2008, was born by a Fulani mother and a Bambara father, but he self-identifies as Bambara. The country's first president, Modibo Keita, has a Fulani first name, although he didn't self-identify as Fulani. Several Guinean presidents who self-identified as Mandinka had Fulani mothers or grandmothers. Using the matrilineal logic Mailafia deployed to assign a Fulani ethnicity to Murtala Mohammed, many Guinean presidents would also qualify as Fulani. Don't even get me started on Nigeria: I won't end this intervention that was intended to be short.My own attitude to identity is that people are who they say and believe they are, even if that's not necessarily who they are. But given the originary syncretism of all modern ethnic identity, Mailiafia's nativist logic of Nigerian citizenship (which alienates people whose ancestors have been here before Nigeria was even conceived) is another (politically consequential) fiction.And this: "Usman Dan Fodio was himself wounded by the Tivs in Benue, of which he later died in April 1817." I actually laughed so loud when I read it that my wife thought something had come over me. Well, there are historians on this list. I leave to them to confirm or disconfirm this.Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, 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. WillOn Mon, May 28, 2018 at 10:34 AM, 'Babayola M. Toungo' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com > wrote:--OBADIAH MAILAFIYA: HATRED, BIGOTRY & INTELLECTUAL THUGGERY
Babayola M. Toungo
Mr. Obadiah Mailafiya is a person that I previously held in high esteem because of certain objectivity he brought to public discourse. However on reading his "Genocide, Hegemony and Power in Nigeria", this high esteem I had of him became diminished . In the said article, Mailafiya tried strenuously to prove the allegation of genocide and hegemony against the Fulbes and their being aliens in Nigeria to the extent of rewriting history of the Fulbe to suit his attempt to re-write contemporaneous history . What is glaring in Mr. Mailafiya's essay is nothing but a furtherance of the myopic world view of colonial imperialism and present islamophobia exhibited elsewhere that others here in Nigeria wish to adopt and paint the Fulbe. I will say to Mailafiya "Facts are sacred sir, therefore you can't change anything by lying through your teeth." The man has always presented himself as an intellectual – what I have always struggled to understand is whether he is the academic or thuggish type. He always comes across as a victim without a cause with a penchant to create villains on whom to hang his grievances. In all, throughout the rambling piece he has penned, the only truth I could find in the article is his quotation form Gramsci. Which he failed to apply to the issues he was raising.
In his fixation of trying to hang the Fulbe he didn't bother to reconcile the contradictions inherent in his write-up. For instance, he postulated that "historians the world over agree that the original home of the Fulani people is the Futa Jallon in the Upper Guinea highlands of the West African Republic of Guinea" who are these historians? The colonialist or Anglo-American pontificating culturalist who tried to make the world his or her own? In the next breadth, he continued, "…the Fulani are thought to have emigrated from North Africa and the Middle East in ancient times, settling in the Futa Jalon Mountains…". There may be a different meaning for 'original', which I may have not come across. For Mailafiya and his fellow dreamers, who crave for the establishment of a "Middle Belt" of their warped dreams, the Fulbes are original to every country and continent, bar Nigeria. The Fulbes can't be Nigerians and therefore are fair game to be targeted for annihilation. It is in this type of propaganda that pretext is provided or veiled "hate speech" given credence to provide the environment for ethnic cleansing. Mailafiya's attempt to re-write the history of the Fulbe is a message that could be interpreted that the Fulbe's origin is elsewhere therefore they are not Nigerians to enjoy the benefit of the rights of citizenship and therefore they could be treated at will and to their detriment.
Our good Doctor failed to tell us when the Fulbes came to Nigeria and the tribes they met in what is today known as Nigeria. But in the typical fashion of the emerging ethnic bigots masquerading as intellectuals, Mailafiya couldn't even crosscheck his facts about the Sokoto Jihad – where it was fought, Dan Fodio's participation and how it reached the Fombina. Attempting to separate the Caliphate and the Fombina is part of the mischief of Mailafiya and his frustrated group who think they can wish away the past. Nobody took the jihad to Tiv land and Shehu Usman Dan Fodio did not fight anywhere near Tivland for him to be 'wounded' in battle which led to his death. Is this the new fable? "Dream on sir."
Mailafiya took time to detail the travails of the Fulbe in Guinea with relish and one can feel him practically drooling when he got to this part and how he wished this same thing can be applied as a final solution to the Nigerian "settler" Fulbes. Oga, how do you present a people who could not rule in their "original ancestral land" as hegemonic in a country where the likes of you are the lords of the manor? He glibly said the Fulbes are about 20 million spread all over West Africa, can he tell me any other tribe with such a spread and number in the west coast?
"The lack of political opportunities in Guinea explains why the Fulbes turned their attention to Nigeria," so proclaimed our sage. So the British Empire saw in the Fulbe a contemporaneous empire building traits indigenous to West Africa? And this is the narrative that the likes of Mailafiya want to perpetuate? So Fulbes are just turning their attention to Nigeria? Compared to the history that Mailafiya is relying on, when did Nigeria come into being? Is it a construct of the British colonial enterprise? The Fulbes? Or the likes of Mailafiya? The great success of the Fulani jihad led by Shehu Usman Dan Fodio and his son Muhammadu Bello preceded the 1884 Berlin Conference and subsequent colonial chicanery of the French and English particularly in respect of what is now known as Nigeria. Were the Mailafiya's of this world represented at the Berlin Conference? Or in the Colonial administration of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria or the amalgamated territories of Northern and Southern Protectorates? Mailafiya reminded those who might have forgotten that the country had three leaders of Fulani extraction in the past – Shehu Shagari, Murtala Mohammed, Umaru 'Yar Adu'a "and the current incumbent of our High Magistracy Muhammadu Buhari". Na wa wo! Why was Buhari qualified as "High Magistracy"? Mailafiya unwittingly showed his hand – the target all along is Buhari. Lacking the courage and firm conviction to come out and attack Buhari, he chose the well-beaten path of ethnic hatred.
The whole article was a bunch of contradictory postulates. What has come to be known as the "Sokoto Jihad" was never for slave raiding and other reasons Mailafiya wants to ascribe to it. The underlying reasons of the Sokoto Jihad have been well articulated that I could only advise Mailafiya to go and read the books written by the leaders of the Sokoto Jihad or latter day historians like the late Abdullahi Smith. When the Imperial British came to this part of Africa, it was only the emirates that stood up to them and the British had to use superior firepower to subdue the emirs. The British destroyed the emirates, not strengthened them. Any elementary reading of history can tell you that. I now know why many of the likes of Mailafiya are opposed to the teaching of history in our schools – so that they can rewrite it. The British destroyed the Caliphal system because emirs under the Caliphate resisted the conquest, while others welcomed them with open arms. Could the British, who were accompanied by Christian missionaries, be supportive of an Islamic Caliphate to the extent of supplanting existing Christian chiefdoms as alleged by our "erudite" scholar? Can he tell us when the Berom chiefdom was created, before it was stealthily converted to that of Jos?
In attempting to demonise the Fulbe, Mailafiya glibly linked the Fulbe with slave raids in the Middle Belt. The usual "divide and rule" argument perpetrated by the British colonialist and now perpetuated by the likes of Mailafiya. Were the Fulbe jihadists ever in "his" middle belt? I think what he is trying hard to hide (or deny) is the fact that he is failing to place the blame at the feet of those that sought to use our population to provide cheap labour whether here in Africa or their other colonies elsewhere in the world. In all historical narrations by real scholars, I have never come across such brazen lie that Shehu Usman Dan Fodio took the jihad to the Tivs. That was not the modus operandi of the Sokoto Jihad. It was local leaders that were convinced of the egalitarian aspirations of the Sokoto Jihad that went to Sokoto or specifically to Shehu Usman Danfodio to declare their allegiance and be made part of the Sokoto Jihad. I hope Mailafiya understands the difference that the Sokoto Jihad was not about conquest of "geographical territory" in comparison to British Imperialism. I therefore cannot fathom the point Mailafiya was trying to make here knowing he is lying through his teeth. Feeding the minds of young innocent ones on a diet of hatred and bigotry?
The average Pullo hates being called a 'hausa-fulani' because such "new mongrel race" as postulated by Mailafiya, is a creation of his friends, the then Lagos – Ibadan press, just to compress the population of the two groups. A term, or yet still – a new mongrel race – coined by Mailafiya and his challenged bedfellows, is now to be used as a weapon of hatred by the same people. Claiming that most Fulbe are largely settled in urban Nigeria is admission clearly coated with bile. To admit there are settled Fulbes in urban Nigeria is to jolt the narrative out of sync. He rambled on about the Fulbes not able to speak Fulfulde, scattered across states like Gombe, Adamawa, Katsina and Kano. I wonder what point he was trying to make by this assertion. He alleged in his disjointed piece that the Fulbe are right now on a rampage of "killing, pillaging and burning down entire villages". Why are they doing so? Just for the heck of it? History taught us about causes, courses and effects. Not only do they kill, according to Mailafiya – they also destroy farmsteads and repopulate them with their own. Can he be benevolent enough to give us the name of one such farmstead destroyed and repopulated by the Fulbe?
In the recent haste of ethnic profiling and hate mongering, I cannot remember coming across a poorly done hate crusade by someone strenuously trying to present himself as not preaching hate. I will like everyone to read his piece and see how hatred and bigotry spew out.
If Mailafiya found the call by TY Danjuma to his people to come out and defend themselves to be in line with the Nigerian Constitution, in conformity with the sacred precepts of the Law of the Nation, Natural Justice, Equity, Good Conscience and the dictates of the Just Law Theory, why does he begrudge the Fulbe from enjoying such legal protection?
Intellectual thugs and a complicit media bred the Rwandan crisis. The genocide started with dehumanizing the Tutsis (a Fulbe group) by politicians and their intellectual thugs in the media; the killings started and did not stop until about 800 thousand souls were wasted. When the Tutsis gained control of the country in 1995, they restored peace, social harmony and egalitarian cohabitation that is genuinely federalist. There have not been reported that the Hutu's have been harmed on a "retaliatory ethnic attacks by the Tutsis" because of who the President of Rwanda is. Neither did Kagame attempt to create hegemony for the Tutsi's because he is one.
Let's be well advised to be mindful of what we say in our utterances made public or in the public.
On Monday, 28 May 2018, 14:42:22 GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tvol...@gmail.com> wrote:------------ Forwarded message ----------
From: Ugo Harris Ukandu abuj...@gmail.com [Edo_Global] <Edo_G...@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wed, May 23, 2018 at 4:19 PM
Fulani Powerless in all of Africa but only in Nigeria do they have some power.
Genocide, Hegemony and Power in Nigeria, By Dr. Obadiah Mailafia a Former Central Bank of Nigeria Deputy Governor.
https://sundiatapost.com/2018/ 05/15/genocide-hegemony-and-po wer-in-nigeria-by-obadiah-mail afia/
Posted by: ojonugwa ugboja in Social Media Feeds 8 days ago
The Fulani who once enjoyed great political power as founders of empires are today largely powerless. Despite the fact that they constitute the single largest ethnic majority in their original homeland of Guinea, they have never enjoyed political power in that country. The ethnic composition of Guinea, according to recent estimates, is as follows: Fula (41%); Mandinka (33%); Susu (12%); Kissi (5%); Kpelle (5%); and others (4%).
Ever since independence from the French, Sekou Toure, an ethnic Mandinka, ruled the country with an iron hand. He was particularly hard on the Fula, whom he accused of plotting with the French to undermine his government. One of the prominent casualties was Diallo Telli, a Fula. He was the pioneer Secretary-General of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) before becoming Minister of Justice under Sekou Toure. In March 1977 Toure accused him of being the arrowhead of a Fula complot to overthrow the government. He was thrown into the notorious Camp Boiro prison where he died a gruesome death.
Subsequent rulers of the country, from Louis Lansana Beavogui, Lansana Conté, Moussa Dadis Camara and the incumbent Alpha Condé, have all been non-Fula. It would seem that all the other ethnic groups have ganged up to ensure that a Fula will never rule over them. One of the closest who came to grabbing power was the brilliant Fula economist and banker Cellou Dalein Diallo. He had been prime minister under the late Lansana Conté where he acquitted himself as an effective administrator. He has become a rallying point of the opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG).
By Dr. Obadiah Mailafia a Former Central Bank of Nigeria Deputy Governor.Perhaps this explains why the Fulani have turned their attention to Nigeria. They remember the great success of the Fulani Jihad led by Usman Dan Fodio and his son Mohammed Bello. They believe that if they cannot establish hegemonic power in their own ancestral homeland then they have a right to turn to Nigeria, a land they believe was given to them by God Almighty Himself. Today, the Fulani number about 20 million worldwide. They are spread all over West and central Africa, particularly Guinea, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Niger, Sudan, Chad, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and The Gambia. Their population is between 7 and 8 million in their original homeland in Guinea.ABUJA (Sundiata Post) The Italian Marxist political philosopher Antonio Gramsci was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. I admire his freshness of approach and his critical spirit in approaching issues of domination and power in world politics. Gramsci invented the notion of "hegemonia" (hegemony) to explain the structure and anatomy of domination in political society. He identified varying forms of domination economy, culture and politics. According to him, dominant elites manipulate capital, political power, ideas, information and knowledge to consolidate their stranglehold on society. Hegemony can be so effective that the people dominated begin to accept their fate as a part of the natural order and the best of all possible worlds. I find this concept of hegemony so relevant with what is going on in relation to the genocide being perpetrated by the Fulani militias in the Middle Belt of our country today.Historians the world over agree that the original home of the Fulani people is Futa Jallon (also known in the French as Fouta Djallon) in the Upper Guinea highlands of the West African Republic of Guinea. Also known as Fula, Fulbe or Pullo, the Fulani are thought to have emigrated from North Africa and the Middle East in ancient times, settling in the Futa Jallon Mountains and intermarrying with the local population and creating a unique ethnic identity based on cultural and biological miscegenation.
Futa Jallon is also the source of the great River Niger that undulates a vast region of our beloved West Africa; traversing over 4,000 km. It is a region of great beauty, with a near-temperate climate. It has been described by a European visitor as "the Switzerland of Africa". The Malian writer and ethnologist Amadou Hampaté Ba famously described Futa Jallon as "the Tibet of West Africa", on account of its surfeit of Muslim clerics, Sufi mystics, itinerant students and preachers.
The second traditional home of the Fulani is Futa Toro, by the banks of the Senegal River in the current nation of Senegal.
Over the centuries the Fulani converted to Islam and some of them became zealous Muslim clerics and itinerant proselytisers. Through war and conquest they formed several kingdoms, among them Tukolor, Massina, the Caliphate of Usman Dan Fodio and Fombina in the early nineteenth century.
Today, the Fulani number about 20 million worldwide. They are spread all over West and central Africa, particularly Guinea, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Niger, Sudan, Chad, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and The Gambia. Their population is between 7 and 8 million in their original homeland in Guinea.
The Fulani are the world's largest single pastoral ethnic community, ahead of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania and the Karamajong of Uganda. Out of their population of 20 million, a third are pastoralists while the rest are settled, sedentary communities consisting of farmers, traders, artisanal craftsmen and Muslim clerics.
The Fulani who once enjoyed great political power as founders of empires are today largely powerless. Despite the fact that they constitute the single largest ethnic majority in their original homeland of Guinea, they have never enjoyed political power in that country. The ethnic composition of Guinea, according to recent estimates, is as follows: Fula (41%); Mandinka (33%); Susu (12%); Kissi (5%); Kpelle (5%); and others (4%).
Ever since independence from the French, Sekou Toure, an ethnic Mandinka, ruled the country with an iron hand. He was particularly hard on the Fula, whom he accused of plotting with the French to undermine his government. One of the prominent casualties was Diallo Telli, a Fula. He was the pioneer Secretary-General of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) before becoming Minister of Justice under Sekou Toure. In March 1977 Toure accused him of being the arrowhead of a Fula complot to overthrow the government. He was thrown into the notorious Camp Boiro prison where he died a gruesome death.
Subsequent rulers of the country, from Louis Lansana Beavogui, Lansana Conté, Moussa Dadis Camara and the incumbent Alpha Condé, have all been non-Fula. It would seem that all the other ethnic groups have ganged up to ensure that a Fula will never rule over them. One of the closest who came to grabbing power was the brilliant Fula economist and banker Cellou Dalein Diallo. He had been prime minister under the late Lansana Conté where he acquitted himself as an effective administrator. He has become a rallying point of the opposition Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG).But it would seem that the rest of the ethnic groups are already determined that they would never be ruled by the Fula, who remain the majority as well as being the most educated and among the most moneyed classes. The Mandinka, the Susu and others believe the Fula are a highly clannish and racist group and that once they seize power, they would turn the rest of them into slaves in their own ancestral homeland.
Perhaps this explains why the Fulani have turned their attention to Nigeria. They remember the great success of the Fulani Jihad led by Usman Dan Fodio and his son Mohammed Bello. They believe that if they cannot establish hegemonic power in their own ancestral homeland then they have a right to turn to Nigeria, a land they believe was given to them by God Almighty Himself. They have been encouraged by the fact that the population of Fulanis in Nigeria is even threatening to overtake that of their original home in Guinea. They are also inspired by the fact that three Nigerian leaders have been of the Fulani ethnic extraction, namely, Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari, Murtala Ramat Mohammed (through his mother), Umaru Yar'Adua and the current incumbent of our High Magistracy Muhammadu Buhari.
Under the Nigerian constitution, the Government of Nigeria has a duty to cater for all our citizens. Unfortunately, the Fulani from throughout West Africa and beyond believe Nigeria belongs to them by right. They are under this illusion that they can come from across the border with their cattle and the next day, have a right to demand land for settlement. They also forget that under the ECOWAS Protocol on the movement of peoples, visitors from our region can live only for 3 months as visitors. If they plan to live beyond the statutory 3 months they have to apply to regularise their stay. Unfortunately, recent Fulani emigrants recognise no such regulations. They can come today and tomorrow they are demanding all the rights and privileges appertaining to all bona fide citizens. Not only that, they are laying legal claims to ancestral lands belonging to the peoples of Benue, Taraba, Plateau and the rest of the Middle Belt.Before the arrival of the British, the Fulani spearheaded raids throughout the Middle Belt in a bid to capture slaves and for material booty, land and conquest. The peoples of the Middle Belt heroically resisted them. Usman Dan Fodio was himself wounded by the Tivs in Benue, of which he later died in April 1817. Perhaps it was on account of this that the Fulani established a relationship of "abokanin wasa" (playmates) with the Tivs. For the better part of a century, the Tivs regarded the Fulanis as their friends and playmates. This relationship has foundered on the full realisation of their renewed ambitions for conquest, subjugation, genocide and dispossession.
During the era of British colonial rule, the Caliphate was strengthened to bolster the moral economy of British imperial power. The Emirs were strengthened to lord it over the peoples of the Middle Belt, so long as they were satisfying the expectations of the colonial masters. Thus it came about that Emirs were created in areas that were 99% Christian, including such areas as Jema'a, Lafia, Keffi, Jere and Wase. They were even touting with the idea of creating emirates in Makurdi and Jos, were it not for the grace of God! Where they could not create new emirates the people were placed under the tutelage of Caliphal feudal overlords. A good example is the Tiv people, who for many years in the fifties and sixties were placed under the tutelage of the Emir of Muri.
In Nigeria the original Habe Hausa peoples have become integrated into a new mongrel race known as "Hausa-Fulani". It is a constructed identity of very recent times. Most Fulani in today's Nigeria are largely a settled urban community. Today, their foot soldiers are their pastoralist herdsmen that they have armed with sophisticated weapons to wreck bloodshed and pillage throughout the vast expanses of our ancestral savannah homeland in the Middle Belt. The Fulbe language is rarely spoken by most Fulanis in Nigeria.
Contemporary Fulbe speakers are to be found mainly in Gombe, Adamawa, Katsina and Kano. Although all the Emirs are Fulanis, you are most unlikely to hear their language spoken in their palaces. Hausa has become their lingua franca.
By lumping themselves as Hausa-Fulani, the Fulanis have successfully hidden their oppressive stranglehold on Northern Nigeria. The truth is that the Hausa people make up the bulk of the Talakawa. No Hausa person could ever aspire to be Emir. The Fulani have successfully exploited the Caliphate to consolidate their stranglehold over the North and over the rest of Nigeria which they believe to be their patrimony by right.
What the peoples of the Middle Belt today face is a tragedy that can best be described as genocide. Fulani militias in their thousands have been rampaging across the primeval savannah, killing, pillaging and burning down entire villages. Not only do they maim and kill; they destroy farmsteads and repopulate them with their own people.
I myself do not believe in preaching hatred. We must preach the gospel of love. We would never advocate for people to go about hunting Fulanis and doing reprisal killings. But nobody should deny the leaders of the victim communities the right to voice their legitimate concerns. When General T. Y. Danjuma raised alarm about it, he was told to "use his influence wisely". General Danjuma urged his people to "defend themselves", which is not only in line with the constitution of Nigeria; it is in conformity with the sacred precepts of the Law of Nations, Natural Justice and the dictates of Just Law Theory. The
customs and international laws of war since time immemorial demand that people who face a direct threat to their own existential survival have a duty and right to engage in legitimate self-defence. It is not only a principle derived from law, it derives from morality and international ethics.
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