[ 3/4/2019]
In 1974, just 4 years after the Nigerian-Biafran war had ended, UKEHE — a town in the Northern Igbo land of the present Nsụka senatorial zone and the home town of Nnia Nwodo and Okwy Nwodo — hosted some hundreds of Fulani people who intended to settle there for their cow-grazing business. Ukehe gave these Fulani a landspace at a communal forest called "Agụ Ukehe" where they settled and continued to multiply and grow as a community till this day. I had engaged a young but informed Ukehe man recently to know this. I asked the man if the famed John Nwodo (Nnia's father) who was the foremost politician from the area as at the time was part of the arrangement and he replied "most probably".
As at this month in 2019 — 45 years after — these Fulani settlers have risen to no less than 10,000 in numerical strength. The Ukehe man got out his phone and showed me some videos he took of the Agụ Ukehe and the numerous Fulani persons milling around there. He said they are no threats and that they live together, peacefully and freely with ndị Ukehe. I asked him if he really knows how futuristic Fulani settlement problems are in history and he quickly acknowledged the angle I was coming from. He was not going to be sentimental either and so he told me how they express fears before their Igwe about futuristic uncertainties of these Fulani settlers that have grown into thousands since 1974, but the Igwe would ask them "are they threatening you or constituting nuisance?" He revealed to me the exact sum the Igwe gets from the Fulani community in Agụ Ukehe every year which runs into some millions and how some of the cows herded by the Fulani settlers belong to him.
I tried to get him know, following some historical patterns, that the Fulani do not often confront their hosts but they wait for their hosts' offsprings who would have lowered their guards over the years thinking that the "peace" they knew years earlier would remain same decades later. Some glaring examples of that are in Kaduna, Jos and Benue and should instruct us, ndị Igbo to never ever lower the guards no matter how calm everywhere is at any moment. By 2024, just 5 years away, those Fulani settlers in Agụ Ukehe would be celebrating their 50 years in that space. By 2034, it would be 60 years and the present Igwe of Ukehe may no longer be alive just as many from his generation who hosted the Fulani settlers and watched them grow into thousands. The active people that would be around would be the ones born when the Fulani settlers had arrived and settled. They'd be the ones who might face "equal rivals" who have spent equal years with them within the Ukehe space. Added to it is the fact that most of those future middle-aged Ukehe sons and daughters would have grown up in cities and countries faraway from Ukehe and would have only returned once a year or more but would not be as frequent as the Fulani settlers who would have thoroughly known the community over the years and would have depeened their involvement in the political processes too.
Nnewi people, ever wise, had the lobbying pressure to give out a landspace for some "settlers" just around the same time as the Ukehe. But their wise leaders were too educated and historically alert to make a decision to benefit Nnewi people and not some "settlers", hence there's no such space in Nnewi where you can point to as Fulani settlement.
I have written this to make my generation (1980s born) and the ones older than us (1970s born) see and imagine the challenges (and their respective proportions) we might be grappling with in some parts of Igbo land as we approach our ages of eldership and leadership in the next two decades taking over from our parents. The future is not bright, ndị Igbo! E kwena ka a ghọgbuo gị!
©Chijioke Ngobili, 2019
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