FULANI HERDSMEN: A MULTI-FACETED SECURITY CHALLENGE
By Titus Orngu
Recently, Nigeria has been inundated with assault on her civil populace by a notorious group of marauders known as Fulani herdsmen, the world’s 4th most deadly terrorist organisation, who attack sleepy villages in the dead of night, massacre hordes of people, and leave without a trace, before day break. The most brutal attacks have been in Benue and Plateau states.
As troubling as the Fulani herdsmen challenge is, it is imperative to note that it is far worrisome than it looks on the surface. It is a multi-faceted challenge that is deep-rooted in history for which cows and grasses are only being used as a facade.
The Fulani are a small group of people, in terms of numbers, that first came into this country in 1804 having migrated from Futa Jallon in the present day Guinea and settled in Gobir during the reign of Sarkin Yunfa, a Hausa Moslem. Yunfa’s hospitality to the Fulani immigrant, Uthman Dan Fodio, was his greatest undoing as just four years after settling in Gobir, Uthman Dan Fodio attacked and overthrew Sarkin Yunfa because Yunfa was not practicing ‘pure’ Islam.
Thus began the wars of conquest and conversion to the brand of Islam Dan Fodio propagated. And he was so ingenious that he dangled the carrot of assuming leadership of the conquered kingdom by the commander of the conquering troops so, in no time, the Hausa Kingdoms were overrun and Fulani emirs installed in those places. In the whole of what is known as Northern Nigeria, it was only the Kanem Bornu Empire that Uthman Dan Fodio could not conquer. This, thus explains while till date, there is a Shehu in Borno, and not an Emir.
The Fulani behave in some ways as the mistletoe: They get to a place and become parasitic on the people while maintaining their own identity. They took over Hausa territories and the Hausa Language to make the Hausa think they are one since they are all Muslims but the Fulani are distinct.
They have an air of superiority about them that makes them feel no other person can, and should be a leader over them. This is one of the reasons why Nigeria is experiencing a surge in Fulani herdsmen attacks. The superiority complex of the Fulani has made them to believe that Nigeria is their country to administer as they wish.
At the dawn of independence in Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello, a descendant of Uthman Dan Fodio, had said “this new nation called Nigeria is the inheritance of the Fulanis given to them by their great grandfather ‘Uthman Dan Fodio. We shall use the northern minorities as conquered people and the south as willing tools until we dip the Koran in the Atlantic Ocean”. The Fulani have taken this to heart.
Uthman Dan Fodio had pursued such ambition during his jihads but was stopped by the Tiv at Ushongo hills. The Fulani have vowed to avenge that defeat and continue with the march down to the Atlantic on the eastern flank.
As I noted earlier, the Fulani as at 2006 population, were said to be just a little above 6 million but if you look to see, they have taken over political leadership of what is the core north. It is thought-provoking, to note that there is no Hausa man that is a governor of any state in the core north; that the governor of Kwara State which many assume to be a Yoruba state, is a Fulani man. This stems from the Fulani supremacist thinking. In the mosques, Fulani Muslims would seldom pray in a mosque where the imam is not a Fulani.
In the run up to the 1979 presidential elections, Maitama Sule, a Hausa man was the leading candidate for the presidential ticket of the NPN but the Fulani, led by Sultan Attahiru of Sokoto, would have none of that. They had to feret a little-known Shehu Shagari from Sokoto and hoist him on the party and country. When President Obasanjo gave important positions in his government to non Fulani northerners, the Sultan of Sokoto led some Fulani supremacists to complain to him that he was marginalizing the north.
Earlier in 1953, when Aminu Kano, a Hausa man founded the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), Sir Ahmadu Bello, a Fulani who had founded the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) chided him for being ‘anti north’.
The Fulani have taken not only political power but with it, economic, military and administrative powers. This is not an accident; it is a deliberate, well-orchestrated plan to realize the dreams of their founding father. If you look carefully, there is no aspect of the Nigerian society that is not in the hands of the Fulani. This became so glaring during the reign of Muhammadu Buhari.
The Fulani elites mowed down government structures and raided the CBN, NNPC and the armed forces all in preparation of what we are seeing today: a violent putsch against the Nigerian nation.
While the elites have seized political, economic, military and administrative powers, the illiterates have been allowed to become herdsmen and kidnappers. They are raiding whole villages, killing the natives, chasing away those they cannot kill and taking over their lands.
In all this, there has been a conspiracy of silence by their elites. The armed forces and police force do nothing about these killings. Since the marauding and massacring of Nigerian villagers started, the educated elites have continuously absolved their kith and kin of involvement, or defended them for only reacting to the killing or rustling of their cattle.
They had said it was killers from Libya that got into Nigerian and were perpetrating such evil. But when Zulai and some of his fellow Nigerian Fulani were arrested in Enugu State for attacking, murdering and butchering the people of Nimbo in Enugu State in 2016, the truth came to the fore through his confession.
The killer Fulani are Nigerian Fulani. And Fulani all over Nigeria contribute soldiers to attack any place they choose to attack. Zulai made the hideous video of the Nimbo massacre to go and show his family that he participated in the war against the Nimbo community.
After such confession, and public parading by the Nigeria Police, nothing was heard, and has been heard, of the Nimbo butchers who were arrested, confessed to the crime, and were paraded before media men, till date. That is the cover these marauders receive from the Nigerian state.
As the insecurity is raging, there are reports of a bandit leader named Mai Jikka, a Fulani, who goes by the alias of Shekau of Zamfara. He is reported to have said his mission is to take vengeance on the Hausa people so he is an ethnic executioner: he kills Hausa and non-Fulani but leaves Fulani people he captures to go free.
Apart from ethic supremacy, another facet of this challenge is Islamofascism. Islam is a religion that is ill at ease with other religions and always thrives to have its own space to operate as it wishes. This is because adherents believe that Islam is not a religion nor cult; it is a way of life. It has political, religious, legal, political, social and military components with the religious component being the umbrella for all the others.
When politically correct, tolerant and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well. When the society refuses, Islam patiently waits and continues recruiting adherents till it gets a critical mass and starts forcefully bringing the other components into it.
According to Peter Hammond in his Slavery, Terrorism and Islam, any society that has under 2% of its population as Muslims is generally peaceful because the Muslims are seen as peace-loving and not a threat to the populace. But any nation with a 20% Muslim population is liable to experience ‘hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings and burning of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues’.
At between 40 to 60%, such nations experience ‘widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, unfettered persecution of non-Muslims, and sporadic ethnic cleansing, use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and jizya, the protection tax levied on infidels. Nigeria is at this stage now.
The Islamists are now on a violent push to Islamize the whole country and they are using all at their disposal to achieve this. The religion enjoins adherents to embark on jihad in defense of their religion, faith, honour and property because jihad is a religious ruling of Islam.
This, their holy book says, is a task for all believers and those who cannot be physically involved in jihad, are enjoined to finance it. Those who cannot do either are enjoined not to speak out against those who are fighting a jihad. This explains why no Fulani leader has ever condemned the nefarious activities of the murderous herdsmen who kill, rape, maim and burn human beings in this country.
Funding the jihad is not an issue. They have international and internal sources of funding. When UAE sent a list of terrorism financiers in Nigeria to the Nigerian government to arrest and prosecute them some years back, nothing was heard of them to this day. And nothing will happen. Because they are all in it together. The Boko Haram in Borno and the Fulani herdsmen in the rest of the country are working to achieve the same goal: Islamization.
The Fulani herdsmen are forcing the Nigerian populace to finance their jihadi activities through kidnapping for ransom. With an unwilling or compromised, colluding security apparatus, it is easy for them to fleece some unfortunate Nigerians of their hard-earned resources in order to buy more ammunitions and kill more people and conquer more lands. Kidnapping for ransom is a multi-billion-naira industry and it is almost wholly controlled by the Fulani who are never arrested!
Some Fulani leaders like Sale Bayeri Bala Mohammed, Bauchi state governor, had openly called on Fulani of the world to come to Nigeria as it is the only country God has given them. They know that they were (and are still) numerically inferior to the other tribes and need their kith from other countries to join forces with them to take over Nigeria in a jihad.
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The Nigerian state is susceptible to the influx of Fulani from all over Africa because of her porous borders. And they have been flooding in. In a 2014 attack on Gbise village in Benue state, some Fulani warriors were captured but they could not speak Hausa, or Fulfulde, the language spoken by Nigerian Fulani, nor English. They could only speak French and when they were interrogated, they had come in from Mali. Lots of the herdsmen killing people, kidnapping, raping and raiding villages today are part of those Nasir El-Rufai had admitted on national television to have imported into the country to make the country ungovernable for president Goodluck Jonathan.
In the face of this, it is incumbent on the Nigerian people of good will to unite against this evil. Islamists are enemies of even moderate Muslims. Ethnic supremacists do not see anything good in anyone who is not of their tribe or stock. Hitler, an Aryan supremacist, plunged the world into a bloody war. Non-Fulani Muslims should look to the Hausa Kingdom of old and know they will not fare better. Yoruba need not look beyond Kwara State.
It is imperative for Nigerians to organize themselves and confront this monstrous existential threat. What is happening in Nigeria is not about cows and grasses. The killers who go by the name Fulani herdsmen do not have cattle. They have been recruited to kill and seize lands.
And as General TY Danjuma had said, the military is colluding with them because their high command in in sync with the grand plan. When the killers kill and chase natives away, the cattle herders move in to inhabit the land. This is what some local governments in Benue State are facing. Large swaths of land in Kwande, Katsina-Ala and Ukum local governments are now in the hands of the herders. Any native who dares to go there is killed.
In the face of this existential threat, it behoves the people come together and face this monstrosity. It is time for the people to unite and defend themselves. Ngugi wa Thiong’o had said the hunter would fear the hunted if ever the hunted were to unite. We have the numbers and if we have unity of purpose, we will overcome. Our forefathers did; we should, also.
Government alone cannot do this, even if she is willing. Praying to God is good; but praying without action is waiting for death. Jesus had enjoined his disciples in Luke 22:36 that anyone who has no sword should sell his cloak and buy one. The time is now!
