Fwd: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Nigeria’s Elections Won’t Change Anything

I will tell you what I expect Atiku/Obi to do if they win and what they will do if they do not win and why I think so.

We can measure that against the outcomes we shall observe in the next one to four years. Based on developments so far, I expect the following outcomes or a variant of them. 

If Atiku/Obi Win

If they win, I expect Atiku will revert to the standard operating system of the terrorist movement to which he and Buhari belong, the movement that has given Nigeria both of them as the primary contenders in yesterday's Presidential election.

That strategy is to apply pressure on the polity through the simultaneous use of  chaos and shock by consistent but largely unanticipated mass, individual and smaller group murders and political manipulation, a method that has worked with Boko Haram and which they are struggling to work with in the use of Fulani herdsmen militia.

I expect Atiku's strategy will be to urge Nigeria to adopt a rebranded version of the cattle colonies colonization strategy that Buhari has struggled to impose on Nigeria.

I expect him to to try to sell the idea using the smokescreen of his credentials a successful businessman, a central selling point of his image making in the just concluded Presidential campaign. I expect the technocratic image of Peter Obi to also be deployed in this task.

The strategy I expect him to use is to try to cajole Nigerians to accept the location of Fulani herdsmen cattle colonies across Nigeria as sound business strategy that will alleviate the rigours of the life of the nomadic Fulani, eliminate conflict with farmers over cattle routes and provide jobs covering the entire scale of the commercial significance of cattle.

Why not the millionaire owners of the cattle use their huge resources, resources currently employed in arming, training and recruiting a vicious militia, as well as in sustaining a propaganda machine, as was employed in the attack on Apostle Suleiman, the first and perhaps the only Christian minister who took the fight to them, though at the level of rhetoric,  in building these ranches in their own territory and ferrying the cattle across the country in trucks, thereby obviating the fears of Nigerians about the deadly reputation Fulani herdsmen have cultivated in the last ten years, escalating with Buhari's 2015 ascension?

That approach will not be considered because it presupposes that other Nigerians exist on the same level as the scions of Usman Dan Fodio, the subjugator of nations, the ideological descendant of Muhammad, the latter last of the prophets, the former the creator of the feudal headship of the Fulani over the Hausa kingdoms, establishing an Emirate as far as  Illorin, initiatives achieved through force of arms, and in the Hausa kingdoms, complemented by   the claim of offering a superior existence while in fact the movement was motivated largely by the vision of feudal domination in which a puristic, intolerant form of Islam was a primary construct of the self identity of the colonizer and his method of subjugating the natives.

Approaches that place the burden of responsibility on keeping the Fulani herdsmen centred in their current geographical centres in the Muslim North while using the more effective method of movement in trucks in transporting their cattle will also not be considered or if claimed to be considered will not be adopted because it places the burden of change on the Fulani, both nomadic and settled, to restructure the centuries old lifestyle of the nomadic Fulani in a manner that negates the dominant perception of ethnic superiority projected by their leadership and suggested by a broad rage of Fulani at various social levels, a style of thinking in which others bear the responsibility for contradictions emerging from your way of life, not yourself,  contradictions demonstrated in the incompatibility of the idea of extensive roaming with growing urbanization and population expansion, hence the cry over cattle routes which Buhari tried to mobilize in the current struggle and the claim of a couple of Hausa-Fulani academics I spoke to who argued that it is the responsibility of the Benue govt to provide alternatives for the Fulani herdsmen before creating the anti-open grazing law created to protect the state against their ongoing colonization through massacre as well as Miyetti Allah, an organisation headed by the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano,  threatening to continue business as usual in the state in spite of the law and their launching a massacre after the law was promulgated and the Emir of Kano calling attention to an alleged but disputed massacre of Fulani elsewhere in the Middle Belt as a counterweight to that massacre by Miyetti Allah troops in Benue.

Cattle centred nomadism is central to the identity of the nomadic Fulani. It is reflected in their mythology, where in one version, the primal substance of existence is the central nourishing product of the cow, 'In the beginning, there was a huge drop of milk' ( the "Fulani Creation Story" readily accessible online and beautifully analysed in K.E.Senanu and T.E. Vincent's African Poetry) while  a version of the Fulani cosmogonic picture places the man,  the woman and the cow as a unified progression ( as depicted at  webPulaaku, an encyclopedic Fulani cultural site) while a particular Fulani initiation system describes the cosmos in terms of a system of relationships derived from the patterns formed by the coats of cattle ( "Peul Pastoral Initiation" by Germaine Dieterlen in African Systems of Thought  edited by Meyer Fortes and Dieterlen and Koumen: An Initiation Text of the Peul Pastoral Fulani retold by Dieterlen and Ahmadou Hampate Ba).

The nomadic  Fulani are facing a cultural crisis. The nomadic life is becoming increasingly problematic, and possibly unviable. They need leadership to forge a new cultural identity.

I also get the impression that Fulani migrants want to establish a stronger presence in some places they are now settled in, particularly the Mddle Belt,  but are being resisted for various reasons, resistance in the South being caused by a reputation for deadly anti-social behavior. The situation requites serious bridge building and cultivation of goodwill and alleviation of fears of those previously on the land. 

The central Fulani leadership, however, is having none of such weak looking approaches particularly since with Buhari, they control the central govt, with the Fulani herdsmen's militia, they have a standing army and with Miyetti Allah who openly coordinate the terrorist army and not only are never questioned by the govt but declare that they have no business with being investigated by the police, they have what they are projecting as an invincible pressure group.  

What the Fulani have as their most influential leaders  are people like Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar, and such figures as the Fulani professor who declared that Benue belongs to the Fulani by right pf conquest, rich settled Fulani and employers of the nomadic Fulani, who are drunk on the ethno-centric sense of superiority emerging from their ancestry of conquest, amplified by a sense of Islamic exceptionalism made stronger by the fact that Islam has not suffered the kinds of upheavals that Judaism and Christianity suffered and which compelled foundational internal reform in those other cultures, figures who insist that the Fulani do not negotiate, they take,  leaders for whom long range cunning and destruction are primary tools of dominance, the only relationship they seem to believe they can have in the long run with fellow Nigerians.

The one Fulani leader whom I understand as putting in some effort to develop a self assessing stance among his people is senator Shehu Sani but even he is careful to restrict his actions severely. A person who has the potential to make a difference is the Emir of Kano, internationally applauded ex-central bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Islamic scholar, critic of the backward feudalisms evident in Northern Nigerian Islam  and potentially rugged political fighter as shown by his going toe to toe with immediate ex-president GEJ, but he is trapped in a contradiction represented by his self identification with the Emirship that means so much to him and the wide ranging threats across social levels in the Muslim North to discipline him through investigations and possible dethronement   if he persisted in his spectacular challenges to the destructive archaisms of the region, seen by the status quo as central to its identity, a situation made more jarring by his conducting his critique in public, thereby disrupting regional identity in relation to the rest of Nigeria, as one view goes. The threats of investigation and possible dethronement have been dropped, most likely in the face of an agreement with Sanusi. He has since become quiet on the reformist  front and is now a spokesman for Miyetti Allah terrorist colonization initiatives.

If Atiku/Obi Do Not Win

If Atiku/Obi do not win, Atiku will pretend not to notice the ongoing colonization efforts of his fellow right wing  Fulani, that approach being his central strategy before having to say something as the election cycle heated up in 2019. If he is compelled to speak, he will struggle to dethnicise the narrative and project the script the movement is working with-Nigerians must accept cattle colonies for the carnage to stop.

I expect nothing of substance from Peter Obi on this subject. Any Southern politician who teams up with a Buhari or an Atiku is a lost case.

thanks

toyin

I have neither  listened to nor read his comments on the subject even though the reports I came across bear out my anticipation. Although I have read a campaign banner coming from the duo which promises an end to the crisis. I am not taking much interest in anything they are promising because I have no hope in them.

On Sun, 24 Feb 2019 at 01:02, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:

Toyin,
Academic argument aside, do you think that a President Atiku would look the other way while Fulani herdsmen cause trouble in Onne, Rivers state, where he has multi billion dollars investment (Equity interest in "Intels  Services Limited")?

CAO.

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