The solution: People should stop whining. When I hear Idoma leaders bleating like lambs, pleading for the authorities to "come and save us before they finish us of", I get angry. The leaders of the affected communities should take steps to defend their communities. This is a socrasanct principle of international law since John Locke and Hugo Grotius. It is an established jurisprudential principle of the Law of Nations that communities who face an existential threat have a right to resort to self-help if the state is unwilling and/or unable to defend them. Churchill famously said you don't negotiate borders; you defend them. Communities that have been persecuted and traumatized must take bold action to defend themselves if there is no one that is able to come to their help. I was nurtured on the nonviolent principles of MLK and Mahatma Gandhi, but I am also a believer in the teachings of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If a madman is driving a truck against the traffic on the highway in total disregard of the laws, it shall be our duty to stop him.
---Dr. Mailafia
I'm pressed for time (I am prepping to give a public talk on Boko Haram on my campus later today), but I wanted to write to express my wholehearted agreement with the sentiment in the quoted excerpt above. It's been disheartening to read the whining when strategies for effective self-defense should be preoccupying my Idoma brethren. The state is incapable, perhaps even unwilling, to protect you against these Fulani herdsmen raids and invasions, which has been going on in the area now for four years. It is time to mobilize for self-defense. It is an existential threat.
I do not believe the Fulani militia are Jihadists by any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe that most of them are foreigners recruited by Nigerians who want to forcefully take over land in the Middle Belt to create, not a caliphate, but a de facto Fulani grazing reserve. This expansionist campaign has intensified as drought in the Sahel has forced more Fulani to graze their cattle year-round and to even live among communities in the Middle Belt (a departure from the seasonal southward Fulani migration of the past), much to the resentment of farmers whose crops are being destroyed.
In the last few days since the carnage started, many eye witness accounts have spoken of the militia being armed not just with sophisticated weaponry that scared away security forces stationed in the Agatu communities but also of a helicopter hovering above and supplying the mass murderers with food and ammo as they ravaged one community after the other. The biggest suspect, in my opinion, is MACBAN, but their invasive efforts may also be financially and logistically supported by politicians sympathetic to the Fulani expansionist cause.
Governor Al-Makura of Nassarawa State is often fingered as a sponsor. He is said to have relied on this militia for hire to neutralize Ombatse, the ethnic militia of the Eggon people, whom the governor believed where out to scuttle his second term ambition. The same Fulani militia fought our cousins, the Doma and Keana peoples, the Wamba, Mada, and other ethnic groups in Nassarawa, whose leading politicians were believed to be hostile to the governor. Curiously, the Fulani militia has never attacked the Gwandara, the governor's ethnic group (he is a Hausaized Gwandara married to a Fulani woman).
On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:36 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwasrividya@gmail.com> wrote:
Cameroon is significantly a dictatorship run by Biya nd his party so I dont see how such a state can be used as an example here except to buttress the dangerous forms of govt these artificial African nations are too often known for.The character of the new state was consolidated at the end of apartheid, so the best that could happen was a degree of jostling for position btw the Zulu Nkatha party and the ANC.There was no territory fought over and the political landscape of the country was not profoundly altered.On the Zuku/Ndebele conflict after Mandela's release, that conflict is best understood as a low level conflict with very limited stakes apart from the loss of lives.I doubt if Nigeria has an ethos, except one of every man or interest group for itself.The split between northeast and south, southwest, Midwest, etc,' of the US is more a demonstration of cultural differences that cannot be said to create a distinctive identity among those states outside the national ethos of the nation.In contrast, the Toledo War between Michigan and Ohio was almost bloodless and was resolved through determined politiking by in which President Andrew Jackson played a central role.That is why nothing is done in all all the years this carnage has been developing.The structure of Nigerian politics is such that they have been sustained by a policy of wariness on the part of the govt, policy possibly fueled by the culture of making violence the center of national negotiation among politicians from the Muslim North, along with the co-opting of politicians from other regions since there is really no sustained vision of national development that unifies these politicians.The Fulani army is a serious, well equipped and well trained army, not some random group.There was a report some years ago that these people were able to successfully ambush a military formation and would have decimated them if not for the timely arrival of a helicopter gunship to the aid of the mitary.The process has been ongoing for years yet the govt does not take definitive action a the Fulani grow in acquisition of sophisticated weapons and military training.What should be done to prevent this effort at ethnic decimation and colonisation?So, the North Central should be subsumed by the Fulani bcs that is the expected historical process?Are we to sit quietly in the understanding that England, for example, is a blend of influences from the conquests of the Vikings and the French with the native Angles?The process is already well advanced.The way the Nigerian conflicts are going is that space is being created for a group of people, the Fulani, to decimate another people, the natives of the North Central and steal their land.These conflicts are resolved in various ways.Its true that many states have been forged through conflict.Thanks, Ken.Why?
In the Nigerian instance the national ruler may be seen as aiding and abets the massacre through silence and when he speaks refuses to address the issues frontally.
His fellow Fulani, getting the message he sent them, renew their massacre.
Nigeria, on the other hand, is still in flux, as demonstrated by the long development of the Fulani crisis and the climax it has reached.
I dont see a consensus being achieved in Nigeria without a deliberation about staying together or going apart.
Cote d'ivoire is a troubled and divided nation yet to recover from its second civil war.
The Cameroon-Nigeria Bakassi conflict was resolved through international arbitration with the cooperation of the heads of states of both countries.It would be fantastic if we could get such help in the Fulani terrorist crisis, particularly since the Fulani militia are recognized by various investigative organizations as one of the words deadliest terror groups.I wonder if such pressure can be brought to bear on the Nigerian govt unless through the most extreme measures, such as a collective re-examination of the terms of existence of the nation, since most likey the greatest glue holding the nation together is oil wealth.I have expressed my views on the chances of that in the current conflict.Belgium addresses the conflicts between its Dutch and French speaking peoples through a succession of state reforms from 2007-2011.In Nigeria, on the other hand, the national ruler declares that those who did not vote for him cannot be expected to be treated the same way as those who voted for him.Peaceful demonstrators from the population of those who did not vote for him, pro-Biafra demonstrators, are massacred by the army while his kinsmen massacre entire populations but are met with silence and an indecisive response when he speaks.The divisions between the majority French population and the Muslim immigrant population affect French politics in a different way from the Nigerian situation with the Fulani bcs the immigrants have no historical roots in France nor are they of any long lasting security danger, unlike the Nigerian situation where these divisions are central to the lack of consensus over a national ethos and violence by the Fulani has become a central means gaining land.
Its true that the human race is violence prone, hence everything must be done to reduce the tendency to violence or eliminate it.I am arguing that the character of the Nigerian state is one which inspires violence and must be changed if its people energies are to be adequately channeled in constructive ways.States in which violence does not play a defining roles in their lives have created safeguards agst such demons.Nigeria needs do so too through a collective decision on the future of the nation.thankstoyin--On 2 March 2016 at 13:37, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:toyin
is this any different from cameroon, cote d'ivoire, or all the other states along the west african coast.
i think of this as a function of the nation-state today in most configurations, in fact. consider s africa, almost at war between zulu and ndebele after mandela's release. and kenya...or even, historically, belgium, france, germany. all very divided internally, even at war, as with the u.s., and our split between northeast and south, southwest, midwest, etc, is still a real one.
even our states are internally divided, between urban and rural interests. did you know michigan went to war with ohio over its border in the 19th century?
the nation state has its divisions and its violence; once its borders are established, then it turns hostile toward its neighbors over borders, like mali and burkina or nigeria and cameroon.
we belong to a bellicose species which constructs difference and then uses it to mobilize populations to fight.
not very pretty, but historically very widespread.
ken
On 3/2/16 2:30 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
toyinI expect that as long as this forced unity endures, the political equation of Nigeria will not achieve balance bcs you cant have religious fundamentalists and others of a more secular and rationalistic bent equitably sharing the same social space for a long period of time.A major factor in the unworkability of Nigeria is the amalgamation of the Muslim North and the South, one of the great destructive factors of Nigerian history.The Jihad of Uthman Dan Fodio, a central mission of which was to create a puristic Islam, seems to have created a fanatical form of Islam in the North, manifest in recurrent pogroms agst non-Muslims, individual and mass murders in the name of religion or ethnic and political affiliation, and the culture of invocation of violence among politicians- civilian and military, from that region, along with ambivalence about the direction of their society-as demonstrated in the prevalence of attitudes that are known as barbaric or backward in other parts of Nigeria- child marriage and its health horrors, low level of modern education even as educational criteria are brutally skewed in favour of the region, and contributing to the nonsense in the Nigerian constitution about a primary school certificate with work experience and in service courses being the minimum educational qualification to run for the Presidency of Nigeria, the fact of an insular society which defends its own people agst national interests, which will not vote for contenders for office if those contenders are competing with its own people, the threat or use of violence as a primary tool of achieving the goals of those who see themselves as representing the region.
This situation leaves other regions scrambling to appease this bloc by agreeing to demands agst the interests of the nation bcs those demands belong to this culture that has little value beyond its borders and the price for such appeasement is played by Nigerian underdevelopment.
The issue here is about the dominant attitudes of a region, the most influential attitudes, not the uncharacteristic social beauties the region shares with other civilizations.
It does not work.
The current situation is that the possibility of progress has been frozen by this underlying conflict.
This conflict exacerbates others at play in Nigeria.
I expect that as long as all ethnicities composing Nigeria do not, by themselves, review their union and choose to remain or leave, we shall have this sub-standard existence.
--
On 2 March 2016 at 06:54, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwasrividya@gmail.com> wrote:
Great thanks Obadiah Mailafia,You are clearly better informed on this horror than myself and have done us the honour of sharing your knowledge and making a wise suggestion about what the communities facing extermination should do anidst the Nigerian govt's complicity by omission.
As for your argument about Nigeria in comparison with the US, I think you have a problem there.
The US is the outcome of the colonizing will of the Caucasian majority who share particular values and who are dedicated to the nation they created.
They fought for the nation agst the British after stealing the land from the Native Americans and unified the country through the victory of the American Civil War..
Whose will does Nigeria represent?
The will of colonizers who have long left.
Trading and other relationships that emerged among Africans before colonialism are not equivalent to nationhood or represent the harbinger of a united nation hood.
The same goes for contemporary interpersonal relations.
A better example might be the European Union which exists as an expression of the recognition of correlations in European culture, history and economic development.
That does not mean,however, that the various countries of the EU will be collapsed into one another and even within the EU the UK has kept its own currency amidst current rumblings about why the UK should leave the EU, and is not bound by EU law in all instances.
You can live in Berlin and work in London, as someone I met does, but there is a world of difference between Germany and England and these countries are keeping their differences as central to their individual identities amidst their overarching unity.
That looks to me like a better model for Nigeria than the current behemoth that belongs to no one.
thanks
toyin
On 2 March 2016 at 05:39, Obadiah Mailafia <obmailafia@gmail.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
Thanks for your own contributions to the national debate. Yes, I believe THERE IS A COUNTRY. The fact that we face enormous political and developmental challenges does not negate that fact. The United States of America -- on the authority of Alexis de Tocqueville -- was a wild collection of unruly communities. The 'Wild West' was a historic fact. War, conflict, slavery, violence -- these were the realities of the living experience of most Americans. And yet, out of that bedlam, there emerged a nation. Nationhood is a process, not a finite equilibrium solid state.
One of the greatest myths that our latter-day irredentists harp upon is the false notion that Nigerian nationhood was a historic 'mistake' committed by the British in 1914. This presumes that the various fissiparous collectivities that constitute modern Nigeria were somehow artificially put together by the logic of colonial administrative fiat. The truth is much more complex. The various groups that made up modern Nigeria were already in close interaction (the effusive and ebullient Emmanuel Ayandele would say 'intercourse') with each other for the better part of a millennium. Recall the recent family quarrel between Ife and Bini, all of them undisputed legatees of Oduduwa. The Yoruba are spread as far afield as Ilorin and Okun in Kogi State. The Ebira are intermingled among the farming communities of Ondo and Ekiti. The Onitsha royal clan trace their origins to Benin. The Igbo sacred 'inri' heritage hails for Igala land in the Middle Belt. The Igala themselves are spread as far afield as Onitsha and Nsukka. The Kanuri and Yoruba share the same racial origins in being a Nilotic people. The Nupe of the Middle Belt have strong links with Yoruba and Bini civilisations. Whatever the Yoruba and Bini pride themselves is an offspring of the great Nok civilization of the Middle Belt which has very strong links with ancient Egypt. I believe that most historians are agreed that the flow of demographic migrations were from the north to down south and not the other way around. The so-called Hausa-Fulani are an amalgam of two distinct groups that became fused together. They are also intermingled with the Yoruba in Kwara, right down to Ibadan and the rest of it.
"Par la force de destin", lots of Nigerians are gradually acquiring a genuine national consciousness. Consider a man like General Ike Nwachukwu. He is a gallant retired Igbo general whose mother happens to be a Fulani princess, being the younger sister of late Sir Usman Nagogo, illustrious Emir of Katsina. His wife is Yoruba. His son, who is "Yorigbo", is married to a beautiful Yoruba young woman. What would you call the offsprings of people with such a pedigree? If we break up Nigeria, where will they go? And these are no longer isolated cases. I have met many young Nigerians with that sort of background.
Speaking for myself, I feel, if truth be told, a Nigerian at heart. Ethnicity means very little to me. Neither does religious affinity. I relate to people first and foremost as Nigerians and not like Bini, Esan, Idoma, Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba or Ndigbo. People are people and we must begin to see ourselves as Nigerians, no matter what.
Having said this, I also that Oluwatoyin for his expression of moral outrage regarding the recent horrendous massacres among the Agatu. This thing has been going on for years, but our Hausa-Fulani brethren refuse to take moral responsibility. In my own local government area of Sanga, the so-called 'Fulani herdsmen' descended one dawn with sophisticated weapons. By early morning, 900 lay dead -- women, children, the elderly, the infirm -- it was an indiscriminate feast of death. The same sort of thing has been going on in Plateau villages for years. And also Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Southern Kaduna and Kogi. It is an undeclared Jihad. The purpose appears to be to decimate and demoralize the local communities of the Middle Belt and achieve what the Fulani Jihad failed to achieve in the nineteenth century. We must call evil by its name. This thing is worst than Boko Haram. The silence of the authorities speaks so loud that we can safely ignore their hypocritical pieties. There is an ancient Arab military doctrine known as "fitna". You keep pounding communities and continuously hound them until they surrender and leave the land to you. This is the scenario that has ben unfolding. Sadly, many of these mysterious so-called marauding 'herdsmen' are foreigners. For those of us who speak Hausa, whenever anyone opens his mouth, you know exactly where they come from. Hausan Kano has its own distinctive cosmopolitan panache. Hausan Sakwatto has its own seductive sonority. Hausan Jos has flair and sophistication while Hausan Zazzau has a mix of cosmopolitanism mixed with a touch of learning and prosody. Hausan Niger and Chad and Cameroon sound a bit wild to some of us. A lot of the killers speak that kind of Hausa. Truth is there are probably millions of people from neighbouring countries who cross the border and become automatic "Nigerians". In the North they would have more rights than Christian northerners and Yoruba, Igbo and others who dwell in the North. It is these aliens who are the vanguard of the undeclared genocide in the Middle Belt.
The solution: People should stop whining. When I hear Idoma leaders bleating like lambs, pleading for the authorities to "come and save us before they finish us of", I get angry. The leaders of the affected communities should take steps to defend their communities. This is a socrasanct principle of international law since John Locke and Hugo Grotius. It is an established jurisprudential principle of the Law of Nations that communities who face an existential threat have a right to resort to self-help if the state is unwilling and/or unable to defend them. Churchill famously said you don't negotiate borders; you defend them. Communities that have been persecuted and traumatized must take bold action to defend themselves if there is no one that is able to come to their help. I was nurtured on the nonviolent principles of MLK and Mahatma Gandhi, but I am also a believer in the teachings of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If a madman is driving a truck against the traffic on the highway in total disregard of the laws, it shall be our duty to stop him.--
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 9:39 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwasrividya@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Oluwatoyin Vincent AdepojuthanksAnything else can only benefit those who are happy with life in the jungle.Form new political parties, debate endlessly about one issue or another, ultimately anything different from close collective examination of the social space called Nigeria, allowing those who want to leave the forced union to do so and those who wish to remain to do so, while establishing the terms for either choice, is a waste of time.It is simply a space where brigands are in control and those who have an understanding with these brigands can do anything they like.All these are expressions of the fact that the social space and geographical entity where all this is taking place is not fit for human habitation, no matter how much people pretend about it.The problem is not the current chasing of political opponents in the name of fighting corruption while ignoring members of the national ruler's team who have spent millions in building a personal website or in hosting a birthday, among other inanities.The problem is not the allocation of millions for books for the office of the Vice-President, or the massive amounts allocated for food in the ruler's residence, along with other silly allocations in mind staggering amounts.The problem is not the strange 2016 budget in which millions were allocated to pay rent on the official residency of the national ruler.A no-mans-land where wild animals roam and among whom some humans insist they want to dwell.What we have is a jungle.We could build all the fine houses we like, engage in as much politiking as we like, we don't have a nation.I increasingly think this object Nigerians call a country is a waste of time.It is akin to pouring water into a leaking basket.
The problem is not with the years long consistent murders, rapes and pogroms by Fulani herdsmen/militia, reaching a climax in the ongoing Agatu massacre in which which whole communities have been rendered full of corpses and razed to the ground as the Fulani move in with their cows to occupy the land while the government presided over by a Fulani man surrounded by his cronies maintains silence or pretends what is happening is a quarrel between neighbours.
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-- kenneth w. harrow professor of english michigan state university department of english 619 red cedar road room C-614 wells hall east lansing, mi 48824 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu--
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