After the Kaduna Massacres
by Femi Awoniyi
It is
Time to Respond to Fulani-instigated Genocidal Violence in Northern
Nigeria
The Kaduna
massacres, only after about 14 days, have almost wholly receded into
oblivion without any consequences for the perpetrators, just as
similar atrocities in the past. And the very reasons why it is so is
because each time these violent eruptions in the North occur, after
the ritual expression of outrage and the customary official appeals to
Nigerians ”to live in peace with one another ”, nothing happens until
they repeat themselves again.
We have heard
horrific stories such as that of the Kano riots of 1953, in which
Yorubas were slaughtered in their hundreds; during which 8 members of
a family, including children and infants, were burnt out of a house in
which they had fled and then bludgeoned to death in the morning of May
17, 1953, by a group of Muslim youths.
We have read
about the terrifying way in which many Igbos were held down like
cattle and slaughtered with knives by their murderers during the
pogroms of 1966 in Bauchi, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Sokoto.
BBC told us
the story of the heavily pregnant Yoruba woman whose womb was slit
opened by Hausa and Fulani youths and the foetus thrown into a
bonfire, while the poor woman was left to die slowly in unimaginable
agony during the anti-Yoruba riots in Kano on July 22, 1999.
During the
anti-American Kano riots of November 2001, a Yoruba Muslim, Alhaji
Kamorudeen Olawore from Offa, Kwara State, was literally cut into
pieces by Fulani and Hausa co-butchers with whom he used to worship in
the same Mosque, while Alfa Ali Dawodu, a Quranic teacher from Epe,
Lagos State, was clubbed and stabbed to death by his neighbours. We
have heard of how the 3 children and a nephew of Mrs Christina Ajayi
were burnt to death, during those riots.
ThisDay
of February 4, 2002, reporting on the Idi-Araba, Lagos riots of early
this year said: ”The OPC were said to have come in after the Hausa
youths attacked innocent Yoruba as against the Area Boys who were
involved in the clash with them. The OPC were said to have been
particularly touched by the killing of a three month old baby by the
Hausa. The Hausa youths were said to have slashed off the head of
the three-month old baby, a development that made residents to
invite the OPC to come to their rescue”.
And only last
month, we now know that many children on their way to school were set
upon by the rampaging Muslim youths, who doused their defenceless
victims in petrol and set them on fire.
And the
barbaric, Fulani-instigated violence is always directed against
specific social groups (Christians, Southerners, Igbos, Yoruba
Muslims,....) irrespective of the issues in dispute and even when
these groups are obviously not contenders.
For example,
in November 1988, when the federal military government, headed by
Ibrahim Babangida, appointed Ibrahim Dansuki as the Sultan of Sokoto
against the wish of his subjects, youths shouting ba mu so (we
don’t want) went on a rampaging binge, destroying Igbo properties,
including hotels, shops and residential houses. About 50 Igbos and
other Southerners were slaughtered during the 10-day violent orgy. The
hapless victims were punished for a matter Igbos or Southerners had no
connection to and could not have influenced.
When Awwal
Ibrahim was installed ”Sarkin Zazzau” (Suleija), better known
by the title of Emir of Suleija, on June 2, 2001, displeased
inhabitants of the Hausa town, who deemed Ibrahim, a former governor
of Niger State, not to be a legitimate claimant of the throne, went on
a rampage, attacking and destroying the properties of Southerners.
Igbos were hardest-hit as their shops were looted and 5 of them killed
during the fracas, in a supposed intra-ethnic Hausa conflict.
And last
year’s November, many Yoruba Muslims were slaughtered during a violent
protest against the Afghan policy of ”Christian America”.
Violent
communal eruptions directed against Christians, Southerners and
Yorubas will not cease because violence is the staple bargaining tool
of the Fulani power establishment. From the so-called ”Jihad”
until today, Fulanis have always employed violence to achieve their
political objectives in Nigeria and with huge success. And through the
rhetoric of Fulani Muslim and political leaders Islam has been
distorted to suggest that the massacre of innocents is permitted.
The human
tragedy of these eruptions do not seem to be understood by Nigerians
who are not directly affected by them. Can’t we imagine the tragedy of
a woman who loses three children in a single day and, in addition to
that, all her family’s properties?
And the
ensuing wide-scale destitution and homelessness after these riots
force many families to relocate, imposing immense sufferings on these
internal migrants and their relations who have to host them.
Are we being
fair to ourselves by accepting this kind of situation? And by our
complacency, we are becoming cold complicit in these atrocities.
Is it any
wonder that they have become so emboldened to bring the violence to
Lagos, killing Yorubas and destroying their properties in their
homeland? More than 1,000 houses were burnt down during the Idi-Araba
riots.
For how long
would we be unwitting accomplices in the degeneracy of our land and
its slow descent into barbarism?
Are we being
fair to ourselves in tolerating a situation that allows Fulani cattle
traders to go about their business without fears of molestation all
over South Nigeria while Christian and Southern market women or shop
owners in Hausaland must always live in the trepidation of
Fulani-instigated violence?
Is it fair
that Aliko Dangote, Mohammed Marwa, Ahmed Hamza and many other Fulani
businessmen could own properties, including aircraft, fleet of
commercial trucks and factories, in all parts of the country, while
the Fulani elite, through the violence they instigate, make it
difficult for our people to live and work peacefully in Hausaland and
even in places like Jos? Or who is the Igbo or Yoruba businessman who
would take the reckless risk of building a factory in Kano or Kaduna
today?
Is it fair
that while Fulani managers, engineers and other employees of NNPC,
Shell and other oil companies resident in places like Warri, Sapele,
Port Harcourt and Calabar could live with their families in peace
without ever having to entertain the fear of falling victim to
communal violence specifically directed against them, while Uhrobos,
Itshekiris, Ijaws who work in Kano, Kaduna and Bauchi must live under
the anxiety of sudden, unprovoked violence in which their homes could
be burnt down and, in fact, in which they could lose their lives?
Is it fair
that while Fulani civil servants, bank managers and others who are
employed in private enterprises and public institutions in Lagos,
Ibadan, Benin-City and Enugu could be confident that their children
will never be suddenly set upon by a murderous mob and immolated while
the children of our people in Bauchi, Kaduna and Kano could be waylaid
by hoodlums on their way to school and cruelly murdered for the most
flimsiest of excuses?
It is time for
our people in the South, acting in concert with the Christian peoples
in the North, to devise an appropriate response to these incessant
violent eruptions, to these arbitrary killings and destruction in the
North as a way of deterring them.
