Dr Zeken Banki Tabam
The ongoing Fulani warfare in southern Benue state suffers from the absence of a shared ancestral affinity between the Fulani and the native population, which could have been a pivot to the rationale for contestation over natural resources in matters of such grave societal disorder.
Materially and spiritually, the basis for any claims by the Fulani in contending for cultural geography or ecological resources is absent in the festering war. There can not be any rationalization of the Fulani invasion and the ensuing horror other than their rapacious greed for the advancement and perpetuation of feudalism. Even if fatuous claims of Fulani superordination, or the claims that lands are free resources and do not belong to any group of people as being made and sustained by the Fulani are to be examined, the basis for such claims can not be located in the historical and socio-cultural reality of the local population.
The communities being sacked have consistently fostered the ancient foundations of their bequest in terms of societal organization and the generally local economy of subsistence farming activities and livelihood system.
Definitively, Apa, Agatu and Otukpo local government areas in southern Benue are now in immense turmoil, through the Fulani invasion as embodied by the umbrella Fulani group, Miyetti Allah Nomad Militia. This Militia was founded recently in Lafia, Nasarawa state. The president of a section of the Miyetti Allah association that birthed this militia is Bello Bodejo. The central objective of the militia is mass appropriation of lands through wanton killings of the indigenous people, and destroying the cultural foundations of their society and economy. The systematic waging of this highly coordinated war in multiple local communities simultaneously surpasses all such previous attacks in terms of ruthless lethality. This may be because of the consciously targeted recruitment of retired Fulani personnel from the military and the police force. An added pool also came from Fulani aliens recruited from Mali, Niger and Cameroon. This much was revealed by Bodejo during the launch of the Militia. The horror of it all is that the Fulani Nomad Militia as a private Fulani fighting force is not under the control of the government, at all. This bespeaks the unremitting lawlessness in the general ranks of the Fulani in Nigeria.
The potential or actual violence in the invitation Bello Bodejo extended to Bello Turji, a bandit leader in Zamfara state for a combined fighting force is evidence enough of deliberate war plans against identified or specific enemies and targets in the immediate and intermediate intersections with other states round about Nasarawa state, such as Benue and Plateau states. The immediate effects are being experienced in the most violent form in southern Benue.This Nomad Militia is subsumed under the armed Fulani herders as a stratagem meant to pass off as if all were herders. They have since sacked several local communities in the form of mass atrocity crimes of numerous killings and mass displacement in the three local government areas of southern Benue through conscious overcapacity in sophisticated weaponry, huge numbers that easily mass up around the local communities, a wide and active spy network made up of settled Fulani in the state and the local youths they have recruited, highly deliberate war plans, a good understanding of the terrain made possible by the recruited local youths and the armed herders who traverse the land, and a highly barbaric attacks highly imitative of military precision with the element of surprise.
The past pattern of armed Fulani herder attacks and their ongoing attacks, which started in Okokolo and then moved to Ekwo, Okpanchenyi, and Ugboju in the Agatu local government area, all have a definable pattern in which the herders (unfailingly) take occupation of lands around readily available water and herbage, all year round. So, in effect, their war operations are deliberately planned towards clearly defined objectives of violent displacement of the local people from their lands and their economies of subsistence farming and sundry forms of livelihoods.
What has emerged as the attacks morph to a higher tier of sophistication is the unbearable feudal over-burdensomeness in the way the Fulani herders and their masters carry on as if a constituted government were absent. The brazen disregard for peace and order, and the exhortative embrace of murderous disorder is definitively present in the Fulani claim that lands belong to nobody, particularly. If this perception of society were to be operative in general terms, then, a weaker community can be dispossessed of its resources, whimsically, through the use of instruments of violence. The conscious prevention of disorder by the government means that tendencies towards disorder or anarchy must be held in constant check.
The same pattern of attacks continues in Umogidi, Opa and Entekpa-Adoka in Otukpo local government area. What has been the duty of the local councils and the state government to the violently uprooted people as they roam about in bushes, and stay in uncompleted buildings and open fields? No visible attempts at relief provisioning, at all.
In the Apa local government area, the killer herders have sacked villages ranging from Imana-Ikobi, Ikobi, Akpete, Ologba, Ugbobi, Ebini, and Ochumekwu. Others are Ukano, Ujos, Okwiji, Akpanta, Adija, Ewili, Edikwu, and Oji.
In these attacks, multiple villages have been sacked. There have been sustained wanton killings. And mass pillaging. The Fulani herders in bacchanal or Dionysian excesses continually rape both young and old women. These routine orgies are fuelled by overabundance of crack cocaine, heroin, cannabis and tramadol. Who are the people behind the supplies of these hard drugs? Some of these developments betray a grand design that has been in place over the years.
The killings are ritualized mass beheadings, amputations, rape and cutting open the wombs of pregnant women; gleefully carried out by the (seeming) meta-human killer Fulani herders. They currently occupy vast swathes of land in a manner that clearly shows they are a rampaging army of occupation, with staging posts in Odejo, Imana-Ikobi and Ochumekwu; and sundry outposts all over the occupied lands.
The armed herders have systematically carried out mass ruination of these farming communities, deliberately tearing at the core of the vitality of the local people, which is subsistence farming. The warning signs of an imminent food crisis in the country are all over the place. This is because food availability in Nigeria is merely an aggregation of supplies from subsistence farming. Nothing more. So, the violent disruptions of this supply chain caused by the Fulani war against subsistence farmers should ordinarily cause a national outrage.
These perennial attacks visited on these farming communities by the Fulani have resulted in acute disruptions of farming activities and the entire socio-economic lives of the people. The last farming cycle was violently disrupted. Now, the fast-approaching farming season has no promise of starting, at all, because of the ongoing Fulani herder war. The farming communities are presently laid waste by the rampaging army of the Fulani attackers. Why are the present and future dimensions of food shortage not an immediate concern of the government? The attendant ongoing effects of hunger, malnutrition, disease, poverty and death are stark realities that define the lives of very many citizens.
Some of the festering national issues are that the Fulani have refused to embrace the reality of modern times, which requires ranching and not nomadism and its subset of transhumance. They believe that nomadism is a culture which must be perpetuated, no matter the demands of the changing times. But the odds against nomadism are hidden in plain sight. Their failure to see cattle rearing as principally a business enterprise in the 21st century is so bewildering. At every point in time the cattle are being sold and not culturally displayed or preserved. Even if the Fulani cultural dimension were to be upheld, what about the culture of the farmers that is being trampled underfoot by the herders? Subsistence farming is both a culture and a livelihood system for the local communities that the armed herders are violently displacing from their lands. They have been violently uprooted and made homeless with no means of livelihood. No immediate relief. No camping facilities. The immediate effects are homelessness, hunger, malnutrition, poverty, diseases and death. Additionally, affordable food is absent in the country. Nothing is being done to address hunger, malnutrition, poverty and diseases rife amongst the rural farmers. Above all, the armed herders while holding fast to their ridiculous culture of wondering about have effectively decimated the cultural sustainability of the agrarian communities. Why is there no national outrage against the extreme violence unleashed on innocent people by Fulani, all across the length and breadth of Nigeria?
Why do the Fulani hold the rest of the country in contempt? Why do they think that they are meta-human? There may not be reasonable answers but the medieval qualities of feudalism that are embedded in Nigerian democracy may account for such idiotic tendencies and latencies. This ludicrous situation slows down the pace of development in northern Nigeria, so poorly. The Fulani consciously created a structure that enforces a superordination versus marginality culture, whereby other people are swept into the enslavement labyrinth, for the advancement of Fulani interests, only.
If we remove the emphasis on regional identities and place such emphasis on states, a lot of the subsisting religious, socio-cultural and political problems would have been substantially lessened. The identities based on configurations such as North Central, North East, and North West blocs tend to heighten tensions in religious, cultural and political relations. The earlier such formations are de-emphasized as being merely relational, and not some rigid blocs of social, religious and political identities, the better for the health of the country.
The North/South dichotomy has given Nigeria a lot of trouble. The divide has to be breached consciously for meaningful progress to materialize. For instance, all the so-called northern Minorities must stoutly resist the vagaries of feudalism emanating from the rump of the Sokoto caliphate. That the Fulani think that they are superior to anyone in Nigeria, at all, is a grotesque misalignment of reality. Where is the substantial marker of such a fatuous claim? But the condemnation of some indigenous communities to fiefdom by the unacceptable excesses of Fulani herders and their masters point to this sickening notion that the rest of the population is made up of second-class citizens. A unified platform that fights for the elimination of the vestiges of this shameful history must remain resolute to the very end.
In northern Nigeria, there must be a counter-hegemonic vanguard to reign in the unbearable excesses of the residual feudal system, which impinges on the full functioning of democracy. It is highly monstrously misnomered to embed feudalism in a democracy. The two can not abide in the same system. The present situation is a tragedy of immense proportions as political Islam has crept in to make the intermix of feudalism and Islam a life-obliterating force against non-Muslims in northern Nigeria. So, the hegemonic forces of the leftovers of the Sokoto caliphate must be confronted by the counter-hegemonic vanguard of all the so-called minority peoples of northern Nigeria in a fight that must vanquish the feudal order. For it’s absolutely right to do so in a democracy.
As an ideology, the Middle Belt is an organization of peoples of the erstwhile monolithic North who are generally referred to as northern Minorities, who are Christians, moderate Muslims and Traditionalists and are opposed to the hypocritical designs of fundamental Islam or political Islam, which espouses slavery and domination. This has to be differentiated from the Middle Belt as a geographical entity, which is the same as the political North Central geopolitical zone; an ill-conceived notion for the continuation of the old North, which is now an abortive behemoth in many ways. So, the North Central geopolitical zone is the same as the geographical Middle Belt in terms of being a representation of a physical space or location. However, the Middle Belt as an ideology is radically different in many respects from the geographical Middle Belt. Chiefly, it is an umbrella union of all the so-called minorities of northern Nigeria; and it opposes fundamental Islam or political Islam, or Islamic terrorism as having no place in a democracy; for it is largely a faulty medieval notion, where the dictates of Islam form a governance model for the oppression, persecution and enslavement of others.
If what we have were a
full democracy in theory and practice, then it wouldn’t have been possible for the Fulani to subject an expansive range of communities in southern Benue to grotesque killings, and there wouldn’t be any consequences, as the manifestations unfold. The defence of the sovereignty of the nation necessitates the defence of the lives and individual rights and freedoms of citizens. If there were to be a reversal of fortune, would the Fulani accept the lot of the people they are killing? The idea of domination of one group by another in a democracy is totally murderously aberrant. Why are the Fulani not facing the consequences of the infernal circumstances they have foisted on the country? This question is at the heart of what is, currently, destabilizing the country. The mistaken military bombing of Tudun Biri in Kaduna state, sad as it was, was however converted to a huge bazaar or a stupendous lottery win for fanatical Islamic preachers and some suave Fulani politicians. The Fulani elite manipulatively turned it into a huge fundraising event, far removed from the interests of the suffering local inhabitants. They threatened the federal government to submit to their will that the anti-terrorism fight be de-escalated. And it has been de-escalated ever since. They claimed that Tudun Biri is a Muslim Fulani settlement. But the fate of northern Minorities is so very different. They are being killed in their villages by Fulani herders with reckless abandon. Yet, there is general silence in the country.
A modern society is only possible because of the military that exists to safeguard it. So now that the military is spread thin all across the country, a much more decisive approach to reigning in some of the security challenges may be by concentrating attention on a few challenges at a time. Such a process might be effective in confronting the offensive strategy of the Fulani which is to uproot and destroy many communities within the shortest possible time in a downright barbaric fashion through its scorched earth policy. So on close examination, what is happening in southern Benue is terrorism embarked on by Fulani as they sack villages, take them over and rename them.
Here is a simple citation of facts, for instance, that the history of Potiskum in present-day Yobe state, as taken over by the present occupiers through Islamic terrorism, is a highly tragic account of political Islam in its entire gamut of virulent Islamic persecution, oppression, and total subjugation and/or domination of the indigenous population. It presents a lesson and a pattern in all of where Fulani have used armed herders, nomad militia, Islam and feudalism to take over the ancestral lands of other people. Each time, the consequent fierce dispossession of lands led such natives to forced and uncoordinated dispersal, in their flight from persecution and domination. Anywhere that the Fulani have settled, the pattern of land dispossession has been the same. Even in the seemingly settled emirate system, the take-over of lands and settlement patterns were through war operations or masterful deception schemes. Though successes in the emirate system were largely recorded in Hausaland and the present-day Ilorin in Kwara state, the aftermath usually presented a violent uprooting of the local population as gleaned from historical records. The present Ilorin emirate is a critical citation of the violent disruption of the Yoruba people, and their history and culture. The Afonja dynasty that was uprooted and replaced might have lost its claim to the rulership of Ilorin, permanently. Even at that, the 1804 jihad, which opened the floodgates of Fulani expansionism in what is now northern Nigeria, met successful resistance in various communities that used moats, and metaphysically commanded oceans into being as defence mechanisms, to halt further advance of the jihad.
However, in the immediacy of modern times, strangely and increasingly, Nasarawa state has become the staging post for armed Fulani herders and their Nomad Militia for war operations in southern Benue. Nasarawa, too, has eventually become a state of origin for the Fulani. In the 21st-century democratic Nigeria, how come the Fulani are the only people in Nigeria who freely pick and choose states of origin(fancifully)? From the ongoing attacks on southern Benue, the mobilization, organization and deployment of resources being coordinated in Nasarawa state largely resulted from the conscious offensive strategy and espionage embarked on by the Fulani Nomad Militia led by Bello Bodejo. The dangers of the Miyetti Allah Nomad Militia being headquartered in Nasarawa state, and the invitation Bello Bodejo extended to Bello Turji, a bandit leader in Zamfara state are amply manifestly unfolding violently and rapidly in southern Benue, in the most destructive manner. The perpetuation of these attacks creates an abyssal line where the so-called superordination of the leftovers of the feudal system forces itself against the interests of the so-called marginal people, who are being killed without any consequential actions against the armed Fulani herders, who are the antagonists.
The hasty pressure and push for a ridiculous “deus ex machina” element in establishing Cattle Colonies or RUGA, or Ranching, or the National Livestock Transformation Plan(NLTP) by the federal government in the states, such as Benue and Plateau, only exposes the conspiracy involved in power and land grabs for the hegemonic interests of the Fulani in what is, definitely, state-aided politics of domination. This should be a clarion call for all the so-called minorities in northern Nigeria to embark on emancipatory politics, which is a permanent revolt against feudalism. The abysmal fate of playing second fiddle is enslavement, imposed by the Fulani feudal order which, staunchly, negates democratic order. A concerted struggle against the abyssal line between superordination and subordination drawn by the Fulani hegemonic system is the barest minimum requirement in the emancipatory struggle of the minority people for equality, equity, and justice in northern Nigeria.
