Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sunday Musings: On the Matter ofFarmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State - by Mobolaji Aluko

Professor Braggadocio, you say. What a sense of humor you have Mr. Kadiri!

Well we need to laugh in this grim Covid season.😂😅🤣🤣😄

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2021 5:28 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sunday Musings: On the Matter ofFarmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State - by Mobolaji Aluko

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

​Like a bull, the Associate Professor of English, Farooq Kperogi, always see red in whatever Professor in Chemical Engineering, Bolaji Aluko, writes for which he has to be gored. Inspired by the current debates caused by the quit order issued to herders occupying Government forest reserves in Ondo by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu, Professor Aluko wrote an 8-point essay on farmers-herdsmen clashes in Ekiti State. He began with six maxims in item 1 with which he established the facts that, not all criminals in Ekiti State are Fulani; not all Fulani are criminals; not all Fulani are herdsmen; not all herdsmen are criminals; not all herdsmen are Fulani; and no criminal is desirable in the society, Fulani of not herdsmen or not. Exhibiting his characteristic behaviour of a bull seeing red in anything written by Bolaji Aluko, the Associate Professor of English cited the first sentence in item 6 to gore at Aluko.

Quoting Aluko, Kperogi wrote, "Our Muslim Yoruba citizens must decide whether the Umma principle of brotherhood is greater that [sic] the collective security of our Yoruba citizenry." The real reason for the Associate Professor of English, Farooq A. Kperogi, of citing the first sentence in item 6, is to humiliate Professor Aluko with bracketed [sic]  before the word 'that' so as to indicate that Aluko misused the word. Every normal reader would understand that it was a typographical error when Aluko wrote "greater that" instead of "greater than" but the Associate Professor of English language seized the opportunity to humiliate Aluko. Since Professor Braggadocio could not do this openly, he had to hide under the pretext of defending minority Muslims in Ekiti State, whom he claimed Aluko was inciting the Christians majority in the State to attack. However, Farooq Kperogi is exposed of dishonest and false accusation against Mobolaji Aluko in view of the contents of the 2nd sentence in item 6. Aluko wrote, "Similarly, the Kabiyesis, top politicians/society bigwigs and government functionaries who are said to own large heads of cattle, and who use these herdsmen to herd and multiply and secure their investments must measure their financial livelihoods against our threatened lives." Unless one intends to be consciously stupid, will one believe that the *Kabiyesis, top politicians/society bigwigs and government functionaries who are said to own large heads of cattle and who use these herdsmen to herd and multiply and secure their investments* in Ekiti State are all Muslims. 

As I stated earlier, the primary purpose of Farooq Kperogi's engagement with Aluko is just to point out that he, Bolaji Aluko, committed typographical error and not because of the hallucinated incitement of attack on Muslims in Ekiti. A times, when we write we have no time to read over before sending out and, in the process, grammatical and spelling errors occur. In the long run fair minded readers would tolerate such errors in silence as long as the errors do not distort the sense of information being conveyed. In the fourth paragraph of his 25 January 2021 diatribe against Aluko, Associate Professor of English language wrote, "Yorubaland is the only part of Nigeria where Christianity and Islam co-exists [sic] largely peacefully, where nuclear families adhere to different religious faiths without tensile stress and mutual suscpinions [sic] and where one looks up to for religious tolerance." No one is above mistake and even a professor of English can commit grammatical and spelling errors as confirmed above. Whatever grammar we may blow, and whatever religion we may adhere to, the big question I have for our overeducated Nigerians is, should nomadic pastoralism still be in practice in the 21st century Nigeria?

S. Kadiri

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: 26 January 2021 00:11
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sunday Musings: On the Matter ofFarmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State - by Mobolaji Aluko

 

Professor Aluko,

There is no justification for that paragraph. None whatsoever. "Reframing" won't salvage it. Only expungement and a sincere apology would.

You didn't write "Ekiti Muslims"; you wrote "Yoruba Muslims." There's a difference between the two. Writing "Yoruba Muslims" renders you vulnerable to the legitimate charge that you're talking about Muslims in all of Nigeria's Southwest since, in any case, this problem isn't limited to Ekiti. But let us for the sake of argument agree that you're talking only of Ekiti Muslims. Well, most of my points are still valid. In fact, limiting your exoticization of Muslims to Ekiti State makes your bigotry even more dangerous. Here's why.  

Muslims are a minority in Ekiti State, and you're inviting non-Muslim Ekiti citizens to be suspicious of their Muslim brothers and sisters on account of their faith because Fulani brigands are supposedly Muslims who are fighting on behalf of Islam. That's a dangerous and inaccurate narrative that shouldn't come from a government official (who is also a close friend of the governor.) 

You are imposing on Ekiti Muslims the double burdens of existential anxieties over Fulani brigandage (since their Muslim faith doesn't immunize them against it as we have seen in northern Oyo and in northwest Nigeria) and the Aluko-created incubus of unhealthy suspicion from their fellow Ekiti citizens. Since there is no record anywhere, including in the predominantly Muslim far North, that being Muslim has ever caused Fulani bandits to fraternize with and spare would-be victims, this was not only unnecessary but also inciting.

Farooq Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 5:32 PM Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com> wrote:

OAA:

Thanks for coming to my aid!

I am lucky that Farooq Kperogi found only one point in my piece problematic, otherwise I would have been drowned in his famed critiquing vitriol. Without it, he would probably not have made any comment at all, not even the partial commendation, for which I thank him all the same.

Maybe he can reframe that paragraph appropriately - or it is beyond repair?

I thank you.

Bolaji Aluko

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 23:05 OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:

Aluko wrote about Ekiti state and not the whole of Yoruba land.  The Muslim /non Muslim ratio in Ekiti is not the same as Oyo, Oshun and Ogun.  It was not that high in those states before but converts thought the ' Umma brotherhood' principle will transcend ethnic considerations and lead to inter ethnic collective security, aiding more conversions but tragically this has not been so.  

So Farooq is buttressing Aluko's argument that in security matters religion should not count and not refuting it.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>

Date: 25/01/2021 20:00 (GMT+00:00)

To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Sunday Musings: On the Matter ofFarmer-Herdsmen  Clashes in Ekiti State - by Mobolaji Aluko

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (farooqkperogi@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

Many great points, Professor Aluko, except for your inability to transcend unhelpful political partisanship and toxic religious particularism. You wrote:

" 6.  Our Muslim Yoruba citizens must decide whether the Umma principle of brotherhood  is greater that [sic] the collective security of our Yoruba  citizenry."

This is wrong on at least four levels: 

First, you exoticized, needlessly put Yoruba Muslims on the spot, and created a false binary between being Muslim and being Yoruba, even though (nominal) Muslims constitute the majority of people in Oyo, Osun, Ogun (?), and Lagos states, and Islam has been in Yorubaland centuries before colonialism.

Second, Yoruba Muslims are themselves victims of the homicidal fury of Fulani brigands. In fact, northern Oyo, where a violent clash happened between Fulani herders and Yoruba people last week, is a predominantly Muslim area. It shares a common boundary with my local government, and I have many relatives from there. If being Muslim hasn't immunized Yoruba Muslims against sanguinary clashes with Fulani people, why should they be singled out as people who are suspect, as people who might betray non-Muslim Yoruba people to the Fulani out of "the Umma principle of brotherhood," which, by the way, is nonsensical, meaningless verbiage?

Third, this claim assumes that all Fulani brigands are Muslims (they are NOT) and that they are committing their crimes on behalf of Islam, which would predispose them spare Yoruba Muslims in the spirit of "the Umma principle of brotherhood." But nothing can be more ignorant and bigoted than that.

 If  "Umma principle of brotherhood" (whatever the heck that means) were a thing, Muslims in Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, and elsewhere (who are also incidentally Fulani, Hausa, or "Hausa-Fulani") wouldn't be killed, kidnapped, and overawed by criminally bloodthirsty Fulani brigands. That should tell anyone that this isn't about religion or even ethnicity.

Fourth, your assertion undermines the famed, praiseworthy religious ecumenicalism of the Yoruba. Yorubaland is the only part of Nigeria where Christianity and Islam co-exists largely peacefully, where nuclear families adhere to different religious faiths without tensile stress and mutual suscpinions, and where everyone looks up to for religious tolerance. Aluko wants to disrupt this. And he is an Ekiti State government official who is also very close to the governor.

I think it's unconscionable and irresponsible to exploit a tragedy of this magnitude to stealthily evangelize your faith and to demonize and alienate innocent people who don't share your faith. We can do better than that.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 7:01 AM Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com> wrote:

*Sunday Musings:  On the Matter of Farmer-Herdsmen Clashes in Ekiti State*

My People:

I wish to  make a few observations, comments and suggestions on this vexing matter.

1.  Not all criminals in Ekiti State are Fulani.  Not all Fulani are criminals.  Not all Fulani are herdsmen.  Not all herdsmen are criminals.  Not all herdsmen are Fulani.  No criminal is desirable in society, Fulani of not herdsman or not.  These six maxims are irrefutable.

2.  The identity of all Ekiti citizens, down to the ward level, must be ascertained and documented.  This has both planning and security advantages.  The ongoing NIN registration may be such an opportunity, with ancillary state action.  This way, nobody will say that we are asking for documentation of just one ethnic group and not of another. We can claim thereby equal treatment and protection under the law.

3.  There are  about  sixteen (16) Local Government Areas LGAs,  one-hundred and thirty one (131) towns with crowned Kabiyesis of different grades A, B and C, and maybe three-hundred and thirty (330) Communities with known community leaders in Ekiti State.  Those entities that border other states, and particularly that border the North where herdsmen enter, should be given special attention.

4.  There are ten Forest Reserves in Ekiti State.  Those towns and communities in and around them should be identified and given special attention.

5.  All the Serikis/Sarkis of Hausa and Fulani  citizens in the communities in question  must be identified and tasked to ensure obedience to the law and restriction to influx of unknown and undocumented persons.  In the time being, the granting of traditional Seriki titles as part of our Yoruba chietaincy tradition must stop.

6.  Our Muslim Yoruba citizens must decide whether the Umma principle of brotherhood  is greater that the collective security of our Yoruba  citizenry.  Similarly, the Kabiyesis, top politicians/society bigwigs and government functionaries who are said to own large heads of  cattle,  and who use these herdsmen to herd and  multiply and secure their investments must measure their financial livelihoods against our threatened lives.

7.  We must enforce:

    i.  Our anti-trespass laws;
   ii.  Our anti-homicide laws;
  iii.  Our anti-thievery laws;
   iv.  Our open and unlicensed arms-carrying laws;
    v.  Our traffic obstruction laws.

It really does not matter whether it is Fulani or not rampaging our farms, eating our crops or raping and murdering our people.  Laws already exist, and so  we must de-ethnicize and de-mystify trade,  publicize these laws, prosecute offenders and publicize the guilty verdicts.

8.  Ekiti State must fully operationalize Community Policing, of which the newly-established Amotekun Security Network is but one example. Spotty security coverage and  enforcement compromise (bribery, ethnic favoritism and tip-offs, etc) are rife with our current dependence on Abuja-controlled national police, army and other security forces

Now, I also know that there are two tendencies that cloud all of these discussions:

1.  The political opposition - particularly the ardent anti-Buharists -  who want to portray the ruling political party as incompetent and even complicit.  Buhari's aides do not help matters by their rushed side-taking interventions.

2.  The Separatists - the "A-fe-pin', Oodua Nation enthusiasts-  who act as agent-provocateurs -  egged on episodically by pro-Biafrans -  and who want to hype the matter so as to speed up the dissolution of the "marriage of inconvenience that Nigeria's mere geographical expression is" (mixed quote solely mine please!)

Both tendencies are not helpful, but to the extent that they exist, cannot be ignored.

Finally, there are two other over-arching issues which have to be tackled over  the points above:

1.  Sensitization about and financial incentivization  with respect to modern animal husbandry.  This puts the modernists of ranching against  the traditionalists of itinerant grazing. The victims of farm destruction, rape, murder and land grabbing must make a forceful case for cattle ranching and set some examples in our region.  We must convince the traditionalists about the modern practice  and make their traditional practice less profitable until they give it up.

2.  Suspicion that the itinerant hersdmen are seeking not just pasture, but rather that that  is a mere foil for  territorial hegemonic political agenda.  In that case,  the targets  must say it loud and clear that they know the real agenda  - land grabbing hegemony - and use the force of law to prevent this, and cause the would-be hegemonists maximum penal pain.

There you have it for now.

Bolaji Aluko
January 24, 2021

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