Fulani
Terror, the Kaduna Massacres and the Obasanjo Government
by Femi Awoniyi
What is most
shocking or rather infuriating about to the latest bout of mass,
genocidal violence in Nigeria, part of the campaign of terror being
waged by the Fulani establishment since President Olusegun Obasanjo’s
assumption of power in 1999, is the official reaction to it.
During the
heat of the gruesome killings, a statement issued and signed by the
Secretary to the Federal Government, Chief Ufot Ekaette, on November
21, 2002, said: "The Government is appealing to Moslems not to take
the law into their hands over the matter as their complaints are being
redressed. People should accordingly go about their lawful duties
without fear of molestation. We should remember that this is the holy
month of Ramadan when all are expected to behave soberly and with
restraint.” (This Day, November 22, 2002)
That statement
is not only absurd but unwittingly legitimises genocidal violence. It
appeals to ”Moslems” not to take the law into their hands
instead of expressing the resolve of the state to deal sternly with
any law-breaker; it was begging hoodlums not to kill instead of giving
assurances of state protection to potential victims of unprovoked,
unjustified violence.
Odi people
should be enraged.
"What happened
in Nigeria obviously could have happened at anytime. Ramadan is
regarded as a holy month for all Muslims and a period of abstinence,
fasting, prayer and those of their brothers must also respect their
sensitivities and their sensibilities. The Nigeria paper did not
observe that and, of course, we have all suffered the consequences,"
the president said on CNN on November 25.
Has human life
become so superfluous in Nigeria that the government seems more
concerned with the feelings of perpetrators of unprovoked violence
than showing official compassion for its victims? Or Are we getting
used to Fulani terror or have we become exhausted by their ceaseless
troubles?
"There is an
international conspiracy just to show that an African country like
Nigeria cannot host this thing. I think Nigerians should be really
angry with the international press." Information and National
Orientation Minister, Professor Jerry Gana said, according to the
French news agency, AFP (Daily Trust, November 25, 2002).
Meanwhile,
the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun, has consistently
emphasised the role of the ”irresponsible journalist” in the carnage,
in every press meeting he has had in the last five days.
With the
active connivance of the Nigerian press, so it seems, the federal
government through the utterances of the president, the police chief
and information minister are diverting attention from the heinous
crimes committed by murderers and their sponsors in Kaduna, and from
their victims, to the journalist, who wrote the alleged ”blasphemous”
article, and now to a phantom international conspiracy.
Whatever the
journalist must have written, I repeat, WHATEVER the journalist must
have written or said, nobody has any right to go into the streets,
killing innocent, defenceless, citizens; pouring petrol on school
children and setting them ablaze. No reasonable religion and
definitely not Islam, which expressly forbids the killing of the
innocent, permits that kind of barbarism. The Muslim youths who were
reported to have doused children in petrol and set them ablaze are the
real culprits of blasphemy, not the journalist.
Why are we
deceiving ourselves? Why are we pretending that we do not know that
the latest assault on the peace of the country is part of the
unending, unrelenting subversive criminal activities of the Fulani
power elite?
If the young
journalist didn’t write that article, a reason would have been
invented to carry out those killings. Developments in our politics in
the last three years tell us that.
"But with a
blasphemous article that appeared in one of the recent publications of
ThisDay, the government needs to cancel the contest for the sake of
corporate survival. Let it be unequivocally stated here that Prophet
Mohammed forms the chunk of passion of a conscious Moslem that any
insult on the Prophet's personality unleashes the rage in the Moslem.
That is why a portion of the satanic article in ThisDay of November
16, 2002 has dared the guts of the Moslems," Council of Imams and
Ulama, Kaduna State chapter in a statement by its chairman, Sheikh
Abubakar Abdulkareem. (The Guardian, November 21, 2002)
The quoted
article further reported:
An
Islamic leader, Dr. Mohammed Mahdi who came to the scene of the
inferno, praised those who carried out the operation, saying that "the
Moslems in the country have been pushed to the wall and it is high
time we reacted vehemently and swiftly".
Supreme
Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN) President, Dr. Ibrahim Datti, who
reacted to the publication said that the newspaper had declared war
against Islam and Moslems should, therefore, wage same against it.
The Guardian
of November 22, 2002 reported:
In his
own address, the chairman, Rapid Response Committee of the Jamatu
Nasnil Islam (JNI), Malam Zubair Jibril Maigwari II, declared: "We
condemn the misguided provocation and the dangerous publication
currently threatening the peace of the country."
Maigwari
II, who is also the Emir of Birnin Gwari argued: "The stand of Moslems
on the unfortunate ongoing show of shame called the beauty contest is
simple. We abhor it on religious grounds and we believe that based on
morality, it is not sanctioned by other religions and on this we owe
nobody any apology."
And the
BBC Africa website, in its edition of November 21,2002, published
the following:
The BBC's
Yusuf Sarki Muhammad says that local mosques had been calling for
action against the paper and said that some people were first alerted
to the article by text messages being sent to their mobile phones.
And to add
insult to injury, the deputy governor of Zamfara still had the guts to
issue a ”fatwa” after all the killings of the last days, this
is a slap on our face in Nigeria. Those who should be under
investigation for instigating homicidal violence are again inciting
it. Yet, the federal government has not deemed it necessary to warn
the politician, satisfying itself with only declaring the ”fatwa”
as ”null and void” through his chief spokesman.
From the
foregoing it is evident that the Fulani establishment abetted the
latest callous violence on our people. For the government to now make
funny references to an international conspiracy signals danger for
Nigeria. And nobody should be deceived by the news of the arrest and
arraignment of more than 1,000 suspects in court since none of the
instigators are among those being held by the police.
Wouldn’t it
have been more plausible to interrogate the Emir of Zaria, who has
been implicated in every violent religious-ethnic disturbances in the
area since 1966, or Wada Nas and Muhammadu Buhari (never mind his
latest press statement), who, going by their antecedents, must have
been behind the killing orgy?
The latest
carnage must be rightly situated within the Fulani culture of
employing murderous violence as a tool of power bargaining. By seeking
to create instability they intend to blackmail the government into
submission.
The modern
history of this form of power struggle dates to 1953, when an
unprovoked genocidal violence was unleashed against Yorubas in the
North. Other examples range from the 1966 pogroms against the Igbos,
to the Kafanchan eruptions of 1987 to the on-going mayhem in Wase, Jos
and the Mambilla Plateau.
The latest
bloodletting is condemnable. The murder of innocent, defenceless and
law-abiding citizens, including women and children, should not be
acceptable in any society. What we are experiencing is a culture of
barbarism, where violence has become legitimised tool of power
negotiation in a supposed democracy, is being foisted on us.
We have
neglected for too long the tragic plight of our peoples who live in
the Muslim North, who have been at the mercy of Fulani-instigated
violence. One could not imagine how disruptive this terrible reality
is to civilised peaceful life and the frustration it breeds in our
people. Is it any wonder that ordinary people were seeking revenge in
Igboland, tired of receiving corpses of their relatives killed in such
carnage?
Nigerians
would have to decide if to continue to allow the Fulani elite to
arbitrarily determine their fate. We are dealing with primitive albeit
powerful forces of cultural barbarism. We are dealing with people who
hold that the constest for power can only be
resolved by the logic of force.
For how long
will we continue to pretend that all is well with us, that we are not
practically in a state of war? In the last three years, more than
10,000 people are said to have died as a result of violent actions
either through religious unrest or ethnic conflicts or terror attack
on military installation, all the handiwork of the Fulani power elite.
When would
this land rise to the challenge that Fulani supremacy poses? For how
long would we allow them to continue to recklessly raise the stake in
their murderous gamble for power in Nigeria?
The
Christian Association of Nigeria, Yoruba Muslim associations,
organisations representing our various nationalities, human rights
groups, state governments and both state and federal legislators,
among others, should put pressure on the federal government to fish
out those who sponsored the latest killings.
If we do
not force the government to hold the Fulanis to account for their
latest dastardly deeds, we would be encouraging them to even bolder
and more devastating acts of violence against us.
We must put a
stop to this vicious circle of Fulani-instigated violence, to ”the
killing of Nigerians by other Nigerians which have become a sport in
some parts of our country” in the words of Ambassador E. Olu Sanu.
We must put a
stop to our suicidal habit of acquiescence.
Martin Luther King warned many years ago that "if you don't bend your
back, no man will ride it".
Without a
decisive victory over Fulani-instigated barbarism we will never know
peace in Nigeria.
Enough of
Fulani-sponsored bloodshed in our land!
Moreover:
The Nigerian press must not allow itself to be blackmailed into
silence on the reckless politicisation of Islam which the Sharia
represents.
And it
is time other Nigerian Muslims, especially Yoruba ones, challenge the
Fulani claim to the monopoly of the understanding and defence of
Islamic morality, or even of Islam generally, in Nigeria.
