Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No hate speech!

Oga Afolayan,

God bless you.

I always enjoy your presence too.

It would have been good to have been at  TOFAC, but I'll try to ameliorate that  through an essay submission to the conference organizers. Not the same thing as a physical presence at the conference but an approximation. 

Unmodified Clarity 

On right wing Fulani terrorism, I was referring to Falola's intervention here which I quoted in my response, not to his comments at TOFAC or in other contexts.

When a historian insists on equalizing the various sides in an unequal conflict, when he chooses to suggest that there is no conclusive evidence of a one sided ethnic centred massacre of other ethnicities by members of one ethnicity, publicly supported by the most high ranking elite of the belligerent ethnicity, suggestions he has made  in the following summation on the current crisis- 

"Evil and Good are equally distributed all over the country. All ethnicities have their evil leaders"

Then we have a problem.  

Clarifying Fact from Fiction

You state:

"I think you are pushing this issue too far and in the process you seem to be seeing things that are not as if they are and those that are as if they are not."

What exactly do you think I am not seeing accurately?

It is now agreed by many Nigerians, as I have been arguing since 2015, that Nigeria is bedevilled by systematic terrorism by Fulani herdsmen militia. 

It is at last recognized by most that this terrorism scourge is being openly supported by Miyetti Allah, whose patrons  are Nigeria's most elite Fulani, most prominent among whom are the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano.

People have come to terms with the fact that Nigeria's Fulani President, Muhammadu Buhari, enables this openly sponsored terrorism through security agencies that never challenge, question or arrest the terrorists or their public managers, talk less prosecute them, leading to these characters being able to publicly defy the laws of an entire state, Benue and subsequently  commit  a massacre of hundreds to reinforce their defiance.

These are not incidents imagined by Adepoju.

In the light of these developments, we are being informed here that  this travesty is not localized to an ethnicity and is no different from the reality across Nigeria.

Afenifere, OPC, Agbekoya of earlier years, Middle Belt Elders Forum, Niger Delta Militants, Ohaneze, IPOB, and other regional pressure, ethnic-centred and militant groups across Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt, are they equatable to Miyetti Allah and Fulani herdsmen militia in this context or even in the entirety of Nigerian history?

Has any group struggled to decimate and scatter entire communities and occupy their lands as is being done in the Middle Belt by Fulani herdsmen militia and their political backers? Efforts occurring in a less systematic but definitively destabilising manner in Delta, Edo and the SE?

At what time have Afenifere or Ohaneze given support to any such as aspirations from OPC ,  IPOB or MASSOB, aspirations that have never existed?

Was MEND ever so brazen, so destructive and so widespread, even at their most active?

What of OPC?

It is vital to caution agst extremism in crisis but is it suicidal to argue agst the existence of an ongoing unilateral war.

Some people claim the incidents I am describing are not real even though attention to news and a simple Google search verifies them.

I have made the following compilation to suggest the heart of the problem- the demonstration of a jihadist mentality by right wing Fulani:

"Partial Timeline:Declarations of Responsibility for and Justification of Massacres in Nigeria by Right Wing Fulani Groups"

The right wing Fulani are ruthless ethnic supremacists like the Nazi Party. Their private army, the Fulani herdsmen militia, are like the Nazi paramilitary wing, though the herdsmen militia are more deadly.

Buhari is steadily using the Nigerian armed forces and security agencies in enabling the efforts of this militia through a policy of non-engagement and non-challenge of either their foot soldiers or their leadership, the latter being figures prominent in civil society, unlike the Boko Haram sponsors, who remain undisclosed except by inference.

I am open to critique of my compilation and position on this subject.

Existing Danger

As for the Chamberlain reference, even some Jews in Nazi Germany refused to heed the oncoming Holocaust even with all the clear signs. 

They had lived in Germany for generations. The expulsion of Jews from Spain, the anti-Jewish pogroms of earlier centuries Europe,were things of the past, they believed, even as the Nazis proceeded to destroy Jewish establishments,  to segregate and ghettoize Jews, people who used to be among the most illustrious members of German society.

It was when the transportation of Jews to the concentration camps began that the truth became inescapable.

People seem afraid to face the central qs here-

What are the Implications of an Organisation Headed by Nigeria's Most Elite Fulani Openly Supporting and Coordinating a Fulani Terrorist Movement?

Facing such realities squarely is vital for the survival of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt as free people.

Public and Semi-Public Contexts

With all due respect to Professor Toyin Falola, making a public speech or other public pronouncement is different from navigating the more intimate contexts of a group such as this.

Falola has close connections with people across Nigeria.

A good number of his scholarly contacts across Nigeria could be on this group.

He was recently in Sokoto and spoke well of his experience there.

Yet, an increasing tide of animosity is rising against a particular  constituency in this demographic on account of the inhuman behavior of their leadership which the majority are doing nothing to deflect, preferring to remain silent or in a few cases to make arguments that strip the murderers of primary responsibility for their actions and generally refusing to address the daylight murder of Nigerians and of the Fulani name by these right wing leaders.

Unlike many, Falola is able to see the faces in the crowd of those being vilified, to invoke J.P. Clarke's poem "Casualties",  on the group demonisations that fueled the Nigerian Civil War.   Falola may then be seen as overreacting  by trying to paper over problems you describe him as publicly acknowledging. 

Fulani Led Fed Govt's Alliance with Various Terrorism Strategies

Such overreaction may be seen as disguising the fact that it is inhuman for Fulani people generally to carry on as if the country is not burning, as if blood is not flowing in rivers on account of their most prominent leadership unleashing a unilateral war on Nigerians, and beating their chests about in public, in addition, with Miyetti Allah and other right wing establishments of the Muslim North practically indistinguishable from Buhari's government. 

Right now, a Northern Muslim coalition has given Southern governors 30 days to accept the national Fulani resettlement plan known as RUGA or have all Southerners evacuate the North.

I understand that days after this threat, Buhari has made no comment on it. An APC representative, from Buhari's party in the SW, has cried out that Buhari should arrest the leadership of this coalition.

My understanding is that this APC man from the SW has done well, demonstrating humanity over party and creating a platform to further open the eyes of Nigerians to the deadly inhumanity of the characters now running Nigeria.

I expect no one will be arrested.

Why?

Because those people are Buhari's mouthpieces. They could not have made an inflammatory threat of such proportions without the tacit or explicit understanding that they are immune from prosecution, just like a similar coalition that threatened Igbos with expulsion from the North if IPOB did not call off its planned boycott of the Anambra gubernatorial elections, an action by IPOB that the figures behind that group knew would lead to the beginning of the unraveling of Nigeria, their fiefdom.

I anticipate the next four years of Buhari's Presidency could be terrible as he pursues his primary goal, total Fulani/Muslim North  hegemony through various terrorist and political manoeuvres.

The only weapon the South has is speaking up as loudly as possible.

Access to the government's armed forces has been secured by Buhari, that being the first thing he did on coming to power through his Muslim North centred appointments of leadership of the security agencies, agencies under which Boko Haram Islamic terrorism thrives and where terrorism by right wing Fulani is openly empowered.

The Question of Collective Responsibility in Combating  Evil

On  28 Dec. 2011, on the thread of a post "Boko Haram and the Silent Majority," on the NaijaPolitics yahoo group, among others, at a time when Boko Haram was entrenching itself in the Muslim North through its initial strategy of presenting itself as a Muslim army fighting an infidel government and Christians as they built on bitterness in that region that the region did not get the Presidency as expected and with Atiku Abubakar earlier threatening  violent change because a Muslim Northerner, himself was not made PDP 2011 Presidential candidate, which would have led him to the Presidency, Pius Adesanmi made the following observation:

"The majority of peace loving Muslims are powerless before this very powerful radical minority, and for the sake of their lives most prefer to keep quiet. But the agenda of Islamisation which is a crucial expected outcome of these radicals will be an outcome welcome by all Muslims whether radical or not." - Reverend Father Bassey

 

Dear Father Bassey:

 

Thanks are due to Oga Ojo for circulating your thoughts widely. I agree with his critique of same. I have also excerpted a curious point you make. I couldn't disagree with you more on what you state above. 

The majority of Nigeria's peace loving Moslems are certainly not powerless before the bloodthirsty cannibals among them.

 The proper thing to say is that the rest of us, Nigerian non-Moslems, have somehow never held the Muslim majority accountable for their silence over these orgies of murder that come complete with the ability to tar-brush all of them and even their religion. 

I am not saying that we don't hear from a few courageous and progressive Muslims but the numbers are not up to the ten fingers of my non-leprous hands. Apologies for the hyperbole. It is for discursive effect. Just look at my constituency: how many Northern Muslim University lecturers have ever come out to denounce these killings? 

How many of them have ever thought of coming together in pressure groups and thinktanks - something like a League of Northern Academics Against Religious Violence - to mount pressure on Northern state governors, religious leaders and elders? How many of them have organized themselves in NGOs and sought funding from local and foreign bodies to mount public campaigns against religious violence in the core north? 

Don't we have colleagues everywhere from Usmanu Dan Fodio University in Sokoto to Bayero University in Kano? How many of them have you ever heard from? They don't have voices or they suddenly become too busy with academic work whenever these orgies of violence require their voices in the public space?

 I think the time has come when we must begin to make it clear to that Moslem majority that we do not believe that they are powerless to rein in the murderers who are giving their religion such a bad name; that, where we stand, their silence means acquiescence or indifference or both; that we are no longer satisfied with a handful of well-meaning Muslims and Muslim organizations coming out to apply medicine after death by issuing statements after every bomb blast and going back to sleep until the next blast - let them be proactive! 

Let them do the right thing with conscientization campaigns and other socially prophylactic initiatives in the warrens of radical Islam in the North, etc. 

We want to see them get their hands dirty in the trenches of the North, involved in very publicized and mediatized campaigns for religious harmony and against religious violence. That Muslim majority must be seen working proactively by the rest of us. 

Otherwise, the Sultan rushing to Aso Rock for a photo-op presented as a security consultation while we are burying our dead is cold comfort.

 

Pius"

 

 The reaction Adesanmi was hoping for eventually emerged, in a more surreptitious but effective manner after two years of steady bombing and machine gunning of churches and worshipers and govt establishments and killing of informants agst them by Boko Haram.

But there was never, to the best of my knowledge,  a public response from the Northern Muslim academic community, a move that, admittedly,  is likely have been dangerous on account of Boko Haram's policy of executing critics and informants, and even without such criticism from academia in the Muslim North  Boko Haram eventually targeted their universities.

Adesanmi also seemed to be referencing however, a culture of anti-Southern violence in the Muslim that has recurrently erupted since the 1950s. 

What has been the response, for example, of other Northern Muslim and Fulani scholars to Umar Labdo's declaration, in the midst of massacres by Miyetti Allah militia in Benue, that Benue belongs to the Fulani by right of conquest?

Silence.

What has been their response to the various acts of owning up to and justification of massacres by Miyetti Allah?

Silence or description of the killers as reacting to injustices or problems beyond their control.

What is their response to the current threat for Southern governors to support RUGA or face expulsion  of Southerners from the North?

Silence.

The Present as Seeds of the Future

If the right wing Fulani succeed in their colonization plans, will such Northern Muslim scholars not help their Southern colleagues adjust to their new circumstances?

Did cooperative learning by various peoples not flourish in Islamic Spain after the conquest by Muslims?

It did, but the Muslim overlords kept a tight grip on the country they had colonized through unprovoked attack until the Spaniards got their country back after long fighting, after which their own culture thrived.

 

#NotoTRF (Terrorism by Right Wing Fulani)

thanks 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

On Mon, 8 Jul 2019 at 04:07, 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

"Efforts like yours to claim, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that all is well, will not dissuade the right wing Fulani warlords, as the rivers of blood they are spilling makes clear, as they persistently struggle to manipulate  govt policy in tandem with the massacres they are committing, trying to force Nigerians to bend to their dominance in order to gain respite from this incessant bloodletting." (Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju)

Dear Toyin Adepoju:

I think you are pushing this issue too far and in the process you seem to be seeing things that are not as if they are and those that are as if they are not. One of such is the claim that Falola is claiming that "all is well." I am a living witness to the fact that we just finished a conference (TOFAC) here in Nigeria (at Babcock U) plus another major gathering at the First Technical University, Ibadan, where Falola gave the first keynote address of the new institution. If anything, he said exactly the opposite of what you just said about him. I think much of what he uttered was that all was not well, and proffering solutions on the way forward.  Even press reports indicated his firm stance on the need for the nation's leadership to address the problem with the "Fulani warlords" (I'm not sure he used that phrase though). Suggesting he is promoting the "all is well" propaganda tends to align him with the disillusioned folks who, like the proverbial ostrich, hide their heads in the sand. I think he is too apolitical to be in that group and is as concerned about this matter as you are, if not more. To subtly align his effort with that of Neville Chamberlain (I can't even believe you said that!!!) is such an unfair characterization for which you need to apologize to him (not that he would care whether you do or not). It's just my own "egbonly" advice to you since I like you personally.

And by the way, we missed you at TOFAC with your most interesting topic!

Stay well . . .

Michael O. Afolayan

===

On Sunday, July 7, 2019, 6:36:57 PM GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, Prof.Falola,

But with all due respect are you not avoiding reality? 

Your No.1 is not true - " 1. Evil and Good are equally distributed all over the country. All ethnicities have their evil leaders."

There us no other ethnicity in the country engaged in nation wide terrorism apart from right wing Fulani.

Even Boko Haram dont have that national spread.

There is no ethnic leadership in today's Nigeria supporting terrorism apart from right wing Fulani ethnic leadership, particularly Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation which has severally owned up to and justified massacres by Fulani herdsmen and gone scot free under the watch of Nigeria's Fulani led govt in which practically all, if not all the security agencies are headed by ethno/religious affiliates of the same right wing characters.

You are a historian. You are well informed of the dangers of appeasement of persistently dangerously belligerent characters.

Neville Chamberlain's efforts to appease Hitler before WW2 are well known.

You are also informed about the use of the janjaweed in Sudan by President Omar Al Bashir, the same line being towed today by Buhari. Miyetti Allah and the Fulani herdsmen militia.

Efforts like yours to claim, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that all is well, will not dissuade the right wing Fulani warlords, as the rivers of blood they are spilling makes clear, as they persistently struggle to manipulate  govt policy in tandem with the massacres they are committing, trying to force Nigerians to bend to their dominance in order to gain respite from this incessant bloodletting. 

The only way they can be made to pull back is persistent push back from Nigerians, like the recurrent outcries over the various moves to hoist Fulani herdsmen settlements on other Nigerians, the latest being the RUGA plan.

Fora are badly needed for these issues to be aired and debated as is done here.

Its wise to prevent extreme attitudes but your stated stance looks like a flight from reality.

You might have  blocked my post on the possibility of all out war in response to the war already declared on unwitting Nigerians by the right wing Fulani. The imminence of that all out war is already staring us in the face.

Safer to raise issues and debate them than claim that the house that is Nigeria is not already on fire by right wing ethnic supremacists.

SW, SE, Midwest, Southern Kaduna, the entire nation is crying out under the burden of Fulani herdsmen terrorism and you are declaring that "Evil and Good are equally distributed all over the country. All ethnicities have their evil leaders"?

Thanks

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju  

On Sun, 7 Jul 2019 at 17:10, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Some postings on the Fulani that I rejected have bothered on hate speech.

Let us all exercise caution and to remember the following:

1. Evil and Good are equally distributed all over the country. All ethnicities have their evil leaders.
2. The victims are the poor
3. Hate speech can trigger genocide
Moderator


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