Dear Toyin,
It is a commandment to be happy, so please don't be surprised that someone sometimes jumps happily. But I am not jumping for joy on these matters. Sure, not only black lives matter, every life matters.
In these dangerous times, there ought to be a law that applies to both the Fulani herdsmen and the Church men. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth although applied as compensation, in reality also levels down the playing field to each individual's equality when facing the law – it is not that the Church man's eye or tooth is superior to the Fulani herdsman's eye or tooth or vice versa.
Reverence for life: I understand that you are not an active part of Nigeria's law enforcement agency and I pray that as a stranger or as a first time visitor to Apostle Johnson's church or as an undercover agent you should not be mis-taken for a Fulani herdsman, even if as a Nigerian, you look like one, because in that case when they finally do a post-mortem on you , too late - a case of "mistaken identity" would not have saved you.
Consider these words attributed to Apostle-pastor Johnson Suleiman tendered in evidence in a court in Cambridgeshire for example or in a court of law that is peculiarly Nigerian :
"And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him."
"I have told them in the church here, that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, Kill him, Kill Him. Cut his head. If they are busy killing Christians and nothing is happening, we will kill them and nothing will happen"
I guess that the attorney general (of whatever religious background) would then proceed to cross examine Apostle Johnson Suleiman as to exactly how he intends and intended that these premeditated murders should be committed - - he does say " Cut his head" but what is not clear is what instruments or weapons should be used, should it be a knife from the church kitchen , a sword or a machete ? And since his general instruction is to "kill him" - I do suppose that just like David Koresh who requested that his followers stockpile on assault weapons, Apostle Johnson could have also been making a similar recommendation to members of his congregation, to prepare and to arm themselves suitably, in order to do the killing – to kill any Fulani found/seen in the vicinity of their tabernacle.
I suppose that Apostle Johnson's testimony would have stood in Texas, in Trump's America or even in an earlier America – as in the case of the murder of Amadou Diallo ( a Fulani from Guinea) was gunned down in the United States
Apostle Johnson Suleiman citing some "conspiracy theory" of some impending assault on his church, some false news possibly whispered to him by an evil spirit, should not absolve him of all responsibility for the consequences of what he exhorts his followers to do. Granted : In normal circumstances he would turn to the police for protection if he thought that his church was going to be attacked or used as a grazing ground for someone else's cows, but in this regard things are not normal, in Nigeria. That's the problem. Now, what do you want me to do about it?
Pray for us.
Cornelius
On Sunday, 5 February 2017 03:35:48 UTC+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:
EDITED
I have a problem with the tone of the Faroq intervention and the happy jumping on that by Cornelius.Gentlemen, can you please point out to readers your contributions on this subject as Fulani herdsmen set the nation ablaze from the Middle Belt to the South East, contributions worthy in scope and consistency in relation to the long running character of the wanton vampirism Fulani herdsmen have made synonymous with themselves across the nation?Now that the long heating kettle has begun to boil you start fuming?The current spiraling push-back agst the wanton murders and colonization initiatives by Fulani politicians, the Fulani cattle herders umbrella inspiration, Miyeti Allah and Fulani herdsmen and their terrorist militia has been years in the making, steadily rising to a critical point in the orchestrated escalation of Fulani herdsmen terrorism under the cover and guidance of the government of the Fulani herdsman Muhammadu Buhari.This critical point began to emerge with the effort of some indigenes in the South East to protect themselves agst Fulani herdsmen terrorism for which efforts they were arrested by the agents of the Nigerian government. It continued with one or more governors in the SE initiating self help vigilante groups agst these murderers when it became clear they were under the protection of the Nigerian govt . This strategy was made prominent by Ekiti State governor Ayodele Fayose adopting the same method.We now have a Christian pastor calling for a response in kind agst those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings while the Nigerian govt aided the murderers and your response consists largely in adopting a stance of righteous indignation.toyinOn 5 February 2017 at 03:12, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:I have a problem with the tone of the Faroq intervention and the happy jumping on that by Cornelius.Gentlemen, can you please point out to readers your contributions on this subject as Fulani herdsmen set the nation ablaze from the Middle Belt to the South East?The current spiraling push-back agst the wanton murders and colonization initiatives by Fulani politicians, the Fulani cattle herders umbrella inspiration, Miyeti Allah and Fulani herdsmen and their terrorist militia has been years in the making, steadily rising to a critical point by the orchestrated escalation of Fulani herdsmen terrorism under the cover and guidance of the government of the Fulani herdsman Muhammadu Buhari.This critical point began to emerge with the effort of some indigenes in the South East to protect themselves agst Fulani herdsmen terrorism for which efforts they were arrested by the agents of the Nigerian government. It continued with one or more governors in the SE initiating self help vigilante groups agst these murderers when it became clear they were under the protection of the Nigerian govt . This strategy was made prominent by Ekiti Sate governor Ayodele Fayose adopting the same method.We now have a Christian pastor calling for a response in the spirit of those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings while the Nigerian govt aided them.toyinOn 4 February 2017 at 20:30, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:--Many thanks Prof Kperogi, for this timely intervention. I'm sure that apart from that "ignorant and hate-filled preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleiman" and some members of his congregation, every good-hearted person is with you on this one.
Apostle Johnson Suleman , in the name of Jesus or even in the name of common sense, ought to know better.
Pikuach Nefesh is a very high ethical value common to some other non-satanic religions such as Islam (Surah Al-Ma'idah ayat 32) - it's Ahimsa in Hinduism (which sees beef - from Fulani cattle for example – as murder – the murder of holy mother cow and her children – indeed " no beef" is the universal Hindu principle) but this non-injury to others in thought, word or deed, is taken to an extraordinary extreme conclusion in Jainism from which the ethic probably entered Hinduism and that compassionate, caste-less religion which for once, doesn't talk about God, Buddhism.
But first things first : The Nigerian media/ social media of which you speak and which is guilty of orchestrating this malicious campaign against the Fulani without discrimination labelling everybody "Fulani herdsmen" should be brought to order – this kind of hate speech and incitement should be criminalized and brought to justice.
The media's hysteria in classifying the Fulani people with one brush fits all : "Fulani herdsmen" and thereby promoting a witch-hunt of the people falsely demon-ized. " Are you Fulani? " - Yes ? – stand over there - (thinks, he must be a Fulani herdsman or one of the sympathizers - "Constable – here is one of them..."
Time for one more of what I hope is not an "anecdotal irrelevancy" or worse still lashon hara :
The persecution of the Fulani herdsmen reminds me of an incident with my late best friend Dr. Mikhail Tunkel (a dentist, of Lithuanian parents but born and raised in China, in Harbin, before emigrating to Israel in 1952, at the age of thirty four) he sometimes liked making dramatic statements, I thought just to get attention. We were at a Klezmer festival at Kungsträdgården, had some beautiful female company - it started to rain suddenly so we had to rush indoors to the Victoria Restaurant and no sooner had we sat down than he announced it : "All Germans are Nazis!"
" All?", I asked him in disbelief and this was in the autumn of 1999..
" Yes, All !" he snapped back and wiped his moustache with a serviette, dumped it on the table and went on to tell his tale : He had visited a German doctor for a check-up - he said that soon enough the doctor identified his blood as being Jewish and from that point on the doctor pretended that he couldn't understand Tunkel's German – as if Tunkel's German was so awful - and that the doctor then started speaking a strange German to him, started some kind of deliberate speaking-in-tongues, the doctor started mocking him by speaking some kind of garbled, fantasy Yiddish and gave us the impression that from Tunkel's point of view he could have been speaking Greek or Nigerian English as far as he was concerned and was beyond comprehension. Sill enraged, "Was that not Nazism in action ?", he appealed to one of the ladies in our company (one Kerstin Eriksson) no doubt to get some sympathy. In my opinion the doctor in question was obviously practising a rabid form of anti-Semitism and possibly a Nazi, but why Tunkel bought the matter up then , is still a mystery. Perhaps his memory had been stimulated by the Klezmer music?
And so it is, that a victim that has once been bitten by a Fulani herdsman or his bodyguard may erroneously believe that ALL Fulani people are Nazis…
Of course, I can understand someone like Fathi Hammad , also variously guilty of incitement
But this Apostle-pastor Johnson Suleiman (in this link heard preaching murder) should be arrested – by the state police - for hate speech and for incitement to murder his fellow citizens most of whom are "peaceful, organic members of the communities in which they live".
Doesn't Sheikh Anta Diop refer to the Fulani people from Mauritania to Lake Chad, as one of the lost tribes of Israel? The Fulani people brought Islam to Sierra Leone , all the way from the Futa Jallon in Guinea. Gambia's new leader Adama Barrow is Fulani. The greatest Fulani hero of all time is undoubtedly Shehu Usman dan Fodio (r.a.)
On Saturday, 4 February 2017 08:40:31 UTC+1, Farooq A. Kperogi wrote:My column in today's Daily Trust on Saturday:By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
The Nigerian mass media—and the online echo chambers they have spawned on social media and elsewhere—have normalized the pathologization and criminalization of the Fulani ethnic identity through their popularization of the odious "Fulani herdsmen" collocation. Criminalizing and pathologizing an entire ethnic identity is often the precursor to genocide.
That's why an ignorant and hate-filled preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleiman could glibly tell his church members to extra-judicially murder "Fulani herdsmen." "And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him," he said in a widely circulated video. "I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!"
Before I am misunderstood, let me be clear that I am not defending, excusing, or minimizing the mass murders attributed to some "Fulani herdsmen" in Agatu, southern Kaduna, and elsewhere. No human being deserves to be killed by any group for any reason. For as long as I breathe, I will always defend the sanctity of human life. That's why, although I'm not a Shiite, I came down very hard on the Buhari government for its horrendously bestial mass slaughter of innocent Shiites in 2015.
But we can condemn a wrong by a people without tarring an entire community numbering millions of people across vast swathes of land in West Africa with a broad brush. The Fulani people are far and away the most widely dispersed ethnic group in West Africa. And, although they dominate the cattle herding trade, they are not all cattle herders, and most cattle herders aren't violent and murderous. Nor are all cattle herders Fulanis.
Most importantly, though, although "settled," urban Fulanis are mostly Muslims, cattle-herding Fulanis are mostly neither Muslims nor Christians. Their whole religion is usually just the welfare of their cattle. In addition, cattle-herding Fulanis don't recognize, much less have loyalty to, Nigeria's prevailing geopolitical demarcations. In other words, they are not invariably northerners.
So if they have sanguinary clashes with farmers, those clashes aren't instigated by religion or region. They are just age-old farmer/herder clashes. I admit, though, that it isn't just Middle Beltan and southern Nigerian victims of farmer/herder clashes that use the lenses of Nigeria's primordial fissures to gaze at Fulani herders; northern Nigerian Muslim politicians, especially those that have a Fulani bloodline, also use these lenses to defend and protect their "kinsfolk," often ignorantly and opportunistically.
In 2000, for instance, General Muhammadu Buhari traveled all the way from Kaduna to Ibadan to protect Fulani herdsmen who were at the receiving end of retaliatory killings by Yoruba farmers. Governor el-Rufai is also a self-confessed Fulani supremacist who once threatened retaliation against other ethnic groups on behalf of Fulani herders. I think it is these sorts of misguided parochialisms that conduce to the conflation of Fulani herder identity with the identity and divisive politics of urban northern Nigerian elites with tinctures of Fulani ancestry.
But this is all wrong. My late father was raised by Fulani herders for the first 12 years of his life. I also have adoptive full-blooded Fulani cousins who were raised by my grandfather and my paternal aunt. They were abandoned at birth in the hospital when their mothers died in labor in my hometown, and they were adopted by my grandfather. That was not unusual in my community in bygone days. So when I talk of cattle-herding Fulani people, I do so with the benefit both of personal experience and scholarly immersion into their life, history and ways.
The Fulani nomads who destroy communities throughout West Africa, not just in Nigeria, don't have any sense of rootedness in any modern nation-state. They are, for the most part, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of modernity, and owe no allegiance to any overarching primordial, regional, or religious identity. That's why they are called transhumant pastoralists.
But there are also bucolic Fulani herders who plant roots in communities, live peacefully with their hosts, and even speak the languages of the communities they choose to live in. In my hometown, the Fulani are so integral to the community that the king of the Fulani, who is appointed by our emir (who isn't Fulani), is part of the 7 kingmakers that elect a new emir. These rooted, bucolic Fulani herders are often exempt from the episodic communal upheavals that so often erupt between sedentary communities and itinerant herders.
I recall that there was a particularly sanguinary class between Fulani herders and farmers in the early 1990s that caused so many deaths in western Borgu. Farmers chose to retaliate the killings of their kind and organized a well-planned counter attack that caused scores of itinerant cattle herders—and their cattle—to be killed. What was intriguing about the counter attack was that the farmers spared all settled Fulani herders. They told them apart from the transhumant herders because the local Fulani spoke the local language. Ability to speak the local language indicated that they weren't the "citizens without frontiers" who unleashed terror on farming communities.
A similar incident happened in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State in 2000. In the retaliatory attacks against Fulani nomads who killed farmers, Yoruba-speaking Fulani cattle herders were spared. Like in Borgu and elsewhere, bucolic Fulani herders are intricately woven into the fabric of the communities in which they live.
I am saying all this to call attention to the reality that farmer/herder clashes aren't north-south, Muslim-Christian or ethnic conflicts. The Fulani who have lived in the south for ages don't see themselves as northerners living in the south—and they are NOT. In any case, they've lived there prior to the advent of colonialism that invented the Nigerian nation-state. Notions of southern Nigeria and northern Nigeria are colonial categories that have little or no meaning to both the bucolic Fulani nomads who live peacefully with their hosts and the blood-thirsty, marauding citizens without frontiers who inflict violence on farming communities all over West Africa, not just in southern or Middle Beltan Nigeria.
So which of the two categories of Fulani herders do the Nigerian media mean when they criminalize "Fulani herdsmen?" And which one does Apostle Suleiman want his church members to murder in cold blood?
But it gets even trickier. Sometime in 2003 in Gombe, itinerant Fulani herders called the Udawa killed scores of farmers most of whom were ethnic and linguistic Fulanis. Former Governor Abubakar Hashidu had to request federal military assistance to contain the menace of the Udawa. Similarly, hundreds of Hausa and Fulani farmers in Nigeria's northwest get killed by transhumant Fulani herders every year. But such stories don't make it to the national news because it isn't "newsy" to read about Fulani herders killing Fulani farmers.
The media have a responsibility to let the world know that it is transhumant herders with no sense of geographic rootedness that are drenching communities in blood, not all "Fulani herdsmen," many of whom are peaceful, organic members of the communities in which they live.
Related Article:
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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