Conspiracy of silence by northern ruling caste
Speaking with Yahua Getso, a security and intelligence expert, last Thursday March 26, Channels TV’s Morning Brief wanted to know where northern political and religious leaders and communities under siege
- By Jide Oluwajuyitan
Speaking with Yahua Getso, a security and intelligence expert, last Thursday March 26, Channels TV’s Morning Brief wanted to know where northern political and religious leaders and communities under siege stand on terrorism war that has brought north eastern, north central and north-western geo-political zones to their knees, with thousands dead, thousands more condemned to IDP camps while children are shut out of school and farmers out of their farms. Are northern leaders and their compatriots aggrieved enough to tell the insurgents and terrorists who live among them enough is enough, or would they rather continue to treat them as fellow Muslims and brothers – they wanted to know.
Gesto, after an attempt to dance around the question failed finally admitted that the tragedy of the north is the hypocrisy of northern political and religious leaders who, in order to remain relevant, often exploit religion and ethnicity to mislead the poor and the unenlightened who look up to them for direction. Their role models after all, remain revered leaders like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Emir of Kano, who, as patron of Miyetti Allah directed Fulani herdsmen in Benue to disobey their host’s anti-open grazing laws; Sheik Gumi who described those he himself identified as ‘Fulani terrorists’ as “our brothers” who are being selectively ‘killed by Christian soldiers’, and Ahmed Yerima Sani, the former governor of Zamfara who against section 10 of the 1999 constitution “carved out an Islamic state out of Nigeria” on October 27, 1999 claiming ‘sharia system will assist his state to achieve social, and economic transformation”.
But one can hazard a guess. Zamfara, 26 years after remains one of the poorest states in the federation. It is a state where most of the secondary schools and General Hospitals were before the coming of the governor had one teacher or doctor each. It is also a state that for the same period has been experiencing a civil war between the indigenous Hausa people and their Fulani brothers. It is therefore not unlikely people of Zamfara – having been swindled for so long by Ahmed Yerima and his promoters, including the late Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari, who contrary to Council of State’s declaration went on to hail his illegal introduction of “political Sharia” (Obasanjo) – can today identify their enemies.
But let us admit from outset that elite hypocrisy and betrayal of those that look up to them for direction is not the exclusive preserve of northern elite. Indeed, it has long been established that Nigeria’s political elite are the scourge of the nation. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, long before independence said that because of their aversion for justice and fairness, given a choice between them, the traditional rulers and the departing colonial masters, Nigerians will choose in reverse order.
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Of course, Awo’s observation became a self-fulfilling prophecy when the West, denied of fairness and justice, ensured those who sowed the wind reaped the whirlwind by embarking on ‘operation wet e’, a euphemism for killing state representatives and torching of houses. This, in the words of Professor Femi Osofisan, was part of what “forced the nation to commit fundamental error of allowing soldiers into the seat of power and allowed them to stain our land and hands with blood”. No lesson was learnt from that tragedy. In fact, if anything, killings as tools of negotiation between the state and the people became the new normal. The second republic collapsed in just four years when Walter Ofonagoro’s theory of “landslide and sea slide victory in opposition strongholds” pitched the people of old Ondo State against representative of the state, with Ofonagoro, the rain maker and Akin Omoboriowo, the declared winner of the 1983 governorship election, having to be smuggled out of Ondo State in a boot of a car. The third republic was aborted following wave of assassinations of critics of self-succession by Babangida and Abacha.
By the fourth republic, the political elite had become more vicious The treacherous Niger Delta governors that hide under revenue allocation to introduce insurgency by arming youths to attack oil pipelines found parallel in perfidious northern Sharia governors that send northern youths for indoctrinating under Osama Bin Laden then taking refuge in Sudan, and of course, in IPOB’s insidious terrorism clandestinely promoted by Igbo political leaders as strategy for political bargaining.
Now let us return to the conspiracy of silence by the hegemonic northern ruling class that has gone on for far too long while Boko Haram insurrection and Fulani insurgency, their creations today threaten the survival of the nation.
Fulani constitute the hegemonic power in the north (13 of the 14 flag bearers appointed by Uthman Dan Fodio after pacification of the north through in 1804 Jihad were Fulani).
Sheik Gumi has identified those who lay siege on Nigeria as ‘disgruntled marginalized Fulani herdsmen seeking government recognition and compensation’, just as Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Aminu Masari of Katsina and Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna saw them as ‘Fulani immigrants without fathers who should be bombed for unleashing terror on Nigerians’.
And if further evidence is needed, it will be recalled that as soon as Buhari won the election, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACABAN), wrote a 70-page letter to Buhari even before his inauguration that they would make the country ungovernable if open grazing was abolished in any of the state of the federation. They carried out their threat.
The question therefore is that with undisputed overall control of the northern political space by Fulani ruling class, how can they continue to refuse calling their compatriots making Nigeria ungovernable to order?
The hegemonic power in the north must find answers to the recent spate of kidnapping in Kogi, Kwara and Kaduna after three years of relative peace, if not because the World Terrorism Index not too long ago declared Fulani herdsmen as the ‘fourth most violent terrorist group in the world’, at least for the fact that ‘to whom much is given much is expected’.
Our powerful emirs must stop playing the ostrich, emulate the traditional ruler of Wukari Aku Uka his royal Highness Shakamu Angyu who, following killing of 77 in April 19, 2014 in Tarawa village, gave an ultimatum for the Fulani herdsmen to vacate his forest.
The Minister of Defence has said that ‘a friend of a thief is a thief’. Therefore, the state must prosecute not only terrorist sympathisers like Sheik Gumi and Abubakar Malami currently facing terrorist sponsor charges, but must include the likes of Bala Mohammed. He without restraint, in order to beef up support for his presidential ambition, which he knew would be dead on arrival without the endorsement of the Fulani ruling caste, not only supported bearing of arms by criminal Fulani herdsmen, but shamelessly declared that “Fulani from any part of Africa can lay claim to Nigerian citizenship” And still playing politics with our tragedy, he recently accused his unidentified political enemies of unleashing thousands of criminal armed Fulani herdsmen on his peaceful state .
Because there will be no incentive for vengeance seeking Nigerian Fulani herdsmen to negotiate settlement with their hosts communities as long as our powerful emirs in the name of ethnic irredentism continue to protect land grabbers involved in mindless killings of our compatriots, it has become imperative to choose the nation above ethnic group.
