Toyin Adepoju,
May the carcasses of the wanton, unrepentant murderers, rot in hell!
My main beef is concern about the violation of this commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
And how can there be "land usurpations by Fulani herdsmen" if there are laws that do not permit that?
I hope that you also understand that I am very far from the equivalent of Holocaust denial, when all I ask for is evidence in support of the allegations that you and others have been making against Fulani herdsmen, that they are responsible for all the banditry and brigandry that is being perpetrated all over Nigeria, when obviously they are not and cannot be…
Once you provide that incontrovertible evidence I will probably be as strident as you in protesting against any such atrocities. Of course, if such evidence is available or obtainable then the major question is why are the perpetrators not being brought to justice? It should not merely be about self-defence and the inevitable rise or proliferation of self-defence outfits such as Amotekun. Obviously, when people of the moral stature of your namesake, our own Toyin Falola, Messrs Wole Soyinka, Anthony A. Akinola, Segun Ogunbemi, Tunde Bewaji, Baba Kadiri, your good friend Olayinka Agbetuyi and the Hon. Bola Tinubu espouse such a just as cause as saving our own lives, then I must also fully embrace such a cause.
Cornelius,Are these protestations of yours not outdated?Since 2015, we have been on this game of denial on behalf of culprits who dont want your help, being eager to demonstrate how powerful they are, massacring and justifying the massacres again and again, with their evils documented again amd again by various agencies within and outside Nigeria, with clear descriptions of their actions, and you choose to generate dust with claims of 'no proof'.Are you not guilty of the equivalent of 'Holocaust denial' all bcs of you want to side Buhari whom you should have jettisoned long ago?Of recent, you have agreed that its true Nigeria is facing a scourge of land usurpations by Fulani herdsmen..Have you changed your mind?Are you aware that Miyetti Allah is now presenting itself as a determinant of who becomes Nigeria's President, declaring that the Amotekun initiative could cost the SW the 2023 Presidency?Various Nigerians, such as myself, have concluded they are speaking for the right wing Fulani warlords who are at the heart of the right wing mindset dominating the Muslim North.Can this country move forward, composed as it by these incompatible civilizations?thankstoyin--On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 at 14:05, Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:Dear Toyin Adepoju,
Have a heart!
Yes, Nigeria is a big country, the most populous in Africa and all set to become the world's third most heavily populated country in another thirty years' time. But for now, let's conduct a headcount. Right now, how many heavily armed and dangerous Fulani Herdsmen are we talking about, that according to you and some other propagandists, are - on foot and accompanying their herds of cattle are making the onerous journeys, traversing the vast spaces between the North and the South and from the East to the West, simultaneously raping the womenfolk that they meet on the way, burning down churches everywhere and terrorising the whole of Nigeria?
An explanation or an accusation is not the same as proof. This means that it doesn't matter how often the accusations or allegations are made or by whom such accusations and allegations are made about those who provide all the beef that's consumed in Nigeria, in the absence of proof, we are still in the same territory of scepticism and disbelief as with other mundane occurrences such as tooth fairies, holy trinities, sons of God, miraculous virgin births, resurrections and ascensions to the throne of heaven.
You say that you "have been chronicling this subject on this and other fora since the 2015 escalation, and even drew up a timeline of these atrocities ". Congratulations! But of what importance are your chronicles, you sitting over there in Oxford or in Lagos, so far away from the scene s of the crimes reported by others? The unbelieving Thomas, asketh.
About the Agatu massacre – attested by many unresurrected corpses, there is the heinous equation made about the unfair retaliation of killing armed or unarmed human beings – fellow citizens, in retaliation for cows that were killed, the loss of such capital – cows, that are the Fulani herdsman's private property, their livelihood. It certainly does not boil down to "But if there is a fatality, you shall give a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot; a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise." (Shemot/ Exodus 21:23-25).
There is also this (so many have judged) the indiscriminate retaliation for the rape of Dinah , her brothers Simeon and Levi wiping out all adult the male members of a whole tribe – as narrated in Genesis 34 of the Holy Bible…
Conspiracy theorists have another explanation of Omar al Bashir in Sudan using the Janjaweed militia – that there are some precious minerals buried in Darfur and that the Janjaweed were being used to clear the ground above the minerals
There is a similar conspiracy theory that provides a ready explanation as the raison d'être of Boko Haram and their current activities: that they are being supported by the French who want to clear up that area and eventually start mining the uranium that is buried under the earth….
In both instances – and if I may repeat, in all instances, an accusation or an explanation is not a proof.
Last word on your tedious tirades: Baba Kadiri has severally argued and credibly demonstrated the improbability of the much-vilified Fulani Herdsmen being the agents of all the banditry that has overtaken Nigeria, that has and is plunging the country into lawlessness and anarchy, for which the evil anti- Fulani propaganda wants to make the Fulani Herdsmen the convenient scapegoats
--On Sat, 25 Jan 2020 at 04:10, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:Not true on Agatu massacre, Cornelius.I followed it closely.The killers first justified the massacre by claiming that they were acting in revenge for cows that had been killed.When Nigerians queried the exchange of human lives for those of cows they changed their story to the claim that a Fulani man was killed.They have sustained a war of conquest in the Middle Belt, massacring communities, displacing the inhabitants and moving in with their cows.You seem to forget that I have been chronicling this subject on this and other fora since the 2015 escalation, and even drew up a timeline of these atrocities, with links to news reports of the massacres and the justifications by Miyeti Allah and their celebration by various Fulani groups.You also forget that I have severally posted here assessments and information mapping the massacres by both the British Parliament and various terrorism mornitoring groups.Nigerians now recognize the existence of a Fulani terrorist militia led by Miyeti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation and enabled by the right wing Fulani led Nigerian govt.It is this realization that has given birth to Amotekun.We are facing an ethno/religious jihad as was waged by Omar al Bashir in Sudan using the janjaweed, a civil war waged agst the rest of Nigeria by an entity that is integral to Buhari's govt, an unofficial union of govt/and non-govt forces, an aspiration towards what Hezbollah has officially achieved in Lebanon.toyin--On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 at 22:45, Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelbergcornelius4@gmail.com> wrote:Toyin Adepoju,
To be a more persuasive and more convincing or believable messenger, even as a messenger of your own conscience, you have to at least appear to be even-handed.
To your credit, so far, you are consistent, and you often give some of us the impression that you are mostly preaching to the already converted, especially when you take it upon yourself to act as the spokesperson of the Edo people. We are yet to observe you say a bad or a more nuanced word about them for any kind of infraction, such as their over-reacting to the mere presence of any Fulani herdsman in the Edo-man's vicinity – a peaceful herdsman, minding his own business ( his cows), not disturbing anybody, simply passing through gives some people goose-pimples because of their disposition to all the propaganda out there, that a Fulani herdsman, a fellow Nigerian citizen passing through Edo land cannot be up to any good.
My Edo friend said he saw one on his land when he was holidaying back home in Edo-land last year, and I believe that for all we know he might have well been hallucinating, just out of fear, because he failed to capture anything apart from some bushes on his mobile phone camera. He assures me that the first thing that should be done when an Edo-man sees a Fulani man with or without cattle on his Edo-land, should be that he should run or reach for his rifle or his revolver as soon as possible. Better safe than sorry. As if the Fulani herdsman, a fellow citizen is always his enemy. So it was with the Holocaust, that Jews were slaughtered for merely being Jews and so it was with the murder of Fulani man Amadou Diallo. The guy who pulled the trigger on him assumed that Amadou was a fellow American who was well acquainted with the jargon in Hollywood's cowboy movies, so that when he ( like John Wayne) shouted at Amadou, " Reach for the sky" and Amadou just kept coming, he had no other option than to pull the trigger.
Does the Edo-man speak Fulani? That's another question.
Whenever the perception is that you are not being strictly honest, or that you are too one-sided and too Islamophobic to be "strictly honest", your credibility is thus at stake with the result that you cannot be an honest broker.
For example, let's take the Agatu Massacres which you cite. Your words:
"How did the current sharp decline in security emerge outside the Boko Haram crisis?
It began, shortly after the ascension of Buhari, with the massacre of hundreds in Agatu by Fulani herdsmen, who owned up to the massacre and justified it, through their umbrella group Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation, and who went on to perpetrate more of such cycles of massacres and justifications, massacring and dispersing various Middle Belt communities and taking over their lands. "
Dear Toyin, thou shalt not exaggerate! We live in a world of cause and effect: that is not how the Agatu Massacres are reported here – it's not that Fulani herdsmen went on a mindless rampage of wanton slaughtering; on the contrary, it started with the massacre of Fulani assets, their cows, their property, their livelihood….
--On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 at 11:55, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:Beautifully written, but knowing the ideological/ethnic/religious provenance of the writer, I was waiting for certain admissions of reality, which unsurprisingly did not come, being instead subsumed into broad generalizations in the determination not to acknowledge those facts.How did the current sharp decline in security emerge outside the Boko Haram crisis?It began, shortly after the ascension of Buhari, with the massacre of hundreds in Agatu by Fulani herdsmen, who owned up to the massacre and justified it, through their umbrella group Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation, and who went on to perpetrate more of such cycles of massacres and justifications, massacring and dispersing various Middle Belt communities and taking over their lands.They even reached a point, as in Nimbo in the SE, of threatening to strike and doing so successfully, with the governor being powerless to stop them, the soldiers organised for the defense having been ordered to step down by an outside power before the attack, as the governor struggled unsuccessfully to reach Buhari at Aso Rock.This is the kind of horror we have been subjected to since Buhari came to power.As these outrages occurred, people like Jibrin Ibrahim from the same demographic as Miyetti Allah did not cry out about the absolute inhumanity demonstrated by this group led by Nigeria's most elite Fulani, most prominent of whom are the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano, ex central bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.When these persons eventually spoke up, the consensus among them was to lay the blame for the massacres on problems supposedly suffered by the herdsmen.Buhari, from the same demographic, preferred to keep silent until stung into action by the criticism of Ayodele Fayose, then governor of Ekiti State and Femi Fani Kayode, ex minister of aviation.The Fulani led govt did everything to accommodate the murderers, from policy initiatives to making sure their foot soldiers were not brought to book and the Miyetti Allah terrorist representatives were never questioned, as they became virtually a part of the Presidency, as demonstrated by the Minister of Defence, the Inspector General of Police and Buhari addressing the nation in tandem with the ideologies of Miyetti Allah.As their power grew, right wing Fulani terrorism expanded into kidnapping, a sharp rise in abductions demonstrated by a high no of victims attesting to the fact of their abductors being Fulani.So, its not factual to attribute the current drastic degeneration in security in Nigeria to faceless 'bandits and brigands' or to a generalized free for all between Nigerians or to the euphemistic 'herders and farmers' conflict.It stems from the expansion of terrorism by right wing Fulani aided by their patron in Aso Rock, Muhammadu Buhari.Fulani Militia, along with Boko Haram, are rightly described by international terrorism watch agencies, with reference to personnel, operational style, victim zones and casualties of victims as two of the deadliest terrors groups of the world, a fact that those who share ethno/religious identity with the Fulani militia refuse to acknowledge, in the face of the evidence, as with Jibrin's ostensibly even handed essay above.Toyin--On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 at 09:52, Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinibrahim891@gmail.com> wrote:--Our Collective Fears and the Urgent Need for Presidential Response
Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy Column, Daily Trust, 24th January 2020
It has been a long time since I have seen Nigerians as frightened as they are currently. It's the type of all-pervasive fear that emerges when people become acutely aware that they are confronted with multiple threats to their safety and that if one does not get them, another would. It's above all the fear grounded in the belief that as the numerous threats march towards them, no one in authority is trying to do anything about it. It's the fear rooted in the knowledge that State authority has substantially collapsed in Nigeria, small arms and light weapons are in the hands of bandits, terrorists and militants and these bad guys are using the arms against the people. As the situation deteriorates, people are frightened that their president is talking to them less and travelling out more to network with the world while they are being killed, abducted and stolen from.
If I had access to the President, my advice to him is to declare a one-year moratorium on foreign travel and start talking to Nigerians about what could be done to address the problems facing them. My second advice is that he should warn his spokespersons, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu to stop sending Presidential letters of felicitations and goodwill to all members of the elite over 70 years celebrating their birthday. I see them almost daily and I always ask myself is birthday wishes the most important issue on the President's desk today? For me, there are more pressing issues that he should concern himself with.
The Presidential narrative on Boko Haram has been that their capacity to fight has been degraded, the territories they took five years ago have since been recovered and they have become a ragtag group capable of inly hitting soft targets and sending girls on suicide missions. Every Nigerian wishes that this is indeed the situation. Every Nigerian knows however that they have moved from attacking soft targets to attacking and killing our gallant soldiers virtually on a daily basis. That over the past week, they have taken over control of the road between Maiduguri and Damaturu and have been killing and abducting travellers. The Borno State Governor has had occasion to complain last week that soldiers have been busy collecting toll from rather than defending road travellers and after his complain, the road fell completely to the control of the insurgents. Nigerians are afraid because they can see a decline in performance of the military and there is no attempt on the part of the Government to get a new leadership for them. Nigerians are also frightened because the security situation in the North East further deteriorated when the Chadian soldiers helping us withdrew. How and why has the mighty fallen?
Nigerians have become frightened of travelling on the roads in all geo-political zones in the country because bandits and kidnappers have become the kings of our roads. Hundreds of people are being attacked regularly, killed, kidnapped, raped and forced to pay ransoms in millions. We live in dread because payment of the ransom is itself not a guarantee that our kidnapped loved ones would be returned alive. Meanwhile, so many families and communities are becoming bankrupt as they are forced to sell their belongings to pay ransom that might or might not lead to the release of their loved ones.
Nigerians live in apprehension because there has been a massive expansion of the phenomenon of rural banditry in the country. The problem which started as conflicts between farmers and herders has been transformed into widespread armed attacks on rural communities leading to mass killings, arson, theft and again the despicable action of rape and sexual violence. Many people are no longer able to access their farmlands or stay in their communities leading to the mortal fear that their land would be taken away from them. Armed banditry which was a largely urban phenomenon is now everywhere and people are in anxiety because they are neither safe in their urban abode or in their home communities.
Nigerians are dismayed because as fear and dread follow wanton killings and destruction, the phenomenon of hate has enveloped their lives. The narratives emerging on rural banditry in the media and in popular discourse have become part of the drivers for expanding the conflicts and killings. The growth of rural banditry has been grafted upon a background of intense competition over increasingly scarce land and water resources in rural communities. The problem is that the protagonists in these growing conflicts are being reduced in an over simplified manner to nomadic Fulani cattle herders, who are mostly Muslims, and sedentary farmer communities of several other ethnic extractions, who are often non-Muslim. These two distinct groups are usually depicted as perpetrators and victims, respectively. The reality is more complex and more serious as freelance armed banditry has taken over the killings and bandits of all religious and ethnic persuasions have joined the fray while the ethno-religious narratives have remained. Fear is intensifying because more and more Nigerians are convinced that the others hate them, are trying to destroy them and no one is trying to defend them.
The danger of the unfolding dynamics is that the expansions of hate speech, stigmatization of communities, religious and ethnic groups is causing growing distrust as negative stereotyping between "the one" and "the other" becomes the national pastime. The result is the rise of ethnic and religious bigotry, culminating in the escalation of further chains of attacks and counter or revenge attacks being exchanged between these different groups. There is dismay in the country because each group is convinced they are victims and the State is not there to protect them. Life has become in Hobbes words – "nasty, brutish and short". No one appears worried about the manner in which the social media in particular is mass-producing discourses and narratives that are intensifying conflicts. Each day, we receive numerous reports, especially on our WhatsApp platforms about how the enemy is killing and abducting our people while the State would not act. Nigerians in Katsina, Benue, Bornu, Abia and elsewhere are all convinced about their victimhood and the absent State thereby maintaining the country on the straight path to self-destruction.
The rural peace offered by the British following their formal occupation of all of Nigeria's territory in 1903 has completely crumbled and rural and urban banditry by well-armed criminal gangs, most of them multi-ethnic, is emptying Nigeria of its objects of value – lives, livelihoods, property, liberty and safety. Part of the effects of the process is massive population displacements and as the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) grow, farming becomes impossible in many places and the risk of famine is today very real. The Government appears to believe it has a lot of time to work on these issues so there is no rapid response to multiple crises. The security situation in the country is unravelling and citizens have become despondent as they see no State action addressing the issues. I have not even spoken of the traditional problems including militancy in the Niger Delta and Biafran secessionist movements, not to talk of the new Amotekun challenge.
What must get out of the conundrum of the constant relay between a normally absent State and an occupation State that appears when killings have occurred and soldiers are brought in. The President must act, continuously engage with Nigerians on what is happening and what he is doing about it. He and his Government must address our fears, anxieties and concerns and assure us that there is a future for the Nigerian State on the basis of concrete actions being taken to address our collective fears over our security and welfare.
Professor Jibrin IbrahimSenior FellowCentre for Democracy and Development, AbujaFollow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17
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