I never knew the Fulani were a totally alien and different race from me, until now. For in truth, every aspect of my childhood and upbringing was intermingled with Fulani people and the Fulani culture and way of life. I was born in the remote hilly countryside of Randa in Southern Kaduna. Randa is a pristine and scenic town comprising four acephalous villages in Sanga Local Government of Kaduna State. Surrounded by the ancient hills of the primeval savannah, Randa reminds one of the Alpine region of Switzerland without the permafrost. The climate is cool most year round, with wild flowers, exotic birds and perennial waterfalls. The Fulani settlements nearby were the regular source of our milk and butter for our community, from whom they also had all their rice, corn, yam and vegetables. It was a symbiotic, positive-sum relationship. The Fulanis have been an inseparable part of our community since time immemorial.
My father’s missionary work took him to far-flung places such as Jos, Gindiri, Miango, Toro and Nguru, before he finally settled in Lafia, the present capital of Nasarawa State, where we all grew up. When I was due to start elementary school Father took the decision that I should go and live with my grandfather, his own father, in Randa, where, it was hoped that I would imbibe the values and traditions of our forefathers. Grandfather Baba Gambo Galadima of blessed memory was tall, slim and highly athletic in build. He was something of a hero since his teenage years. Because of his bravery he was recruited into the British Colonial Constabulary, serving as the principal security guard to the white British District Commissioner.
Grandpa Gambo and Grandma Celia both had striking Fulani features. I for one would be greatly surprised if they did not have some Fulani DNA and blood coursing through their veins. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe developed the mystical concept of ‘elective affinities’ to explain the mysteries of love and friendship. My own father, like his own father before him, had ‘elective affinities’ with all manner of Fulani tribesmen. Grandfather stood out in our primordial community by the dozens of Fulani families who came to settle in our ancestral homestead. Most of them owned cattle, but a few were itinerant Muslim scholars and clerics. We grandchildren all had to learn the basic Muslim prayer even though we were Christians. Nobody saw anything strange about that in that highly close-knitted community of ours. When Sallah came, sheep were slaughtered and we all celebrated. When Christmas came, the same thing happened. The very notion of difference was in itself a sacrilege that was never heard of.
One of Grandpa’s greatest Fulani friends was Mallam Bani. He was so old, so wise and so ancient, as we children remembered him. Mallam Bani fasted most times – reading the Qur’an day and night — always looking thin, except for his crown of white hair and sunny smile. Believe it or not, my father, an evangelical churchman, allowed me to learn the Holy Qur’an as an almajiri at the feet of Mallam Bani. No one could have had a better training in interfaith understanding, respect and tolerance.
Grandpa went to join Sarki Tukura, Ungbotari and the venerable ancestors in April 1991, at the grand old age of about 106. Every December, after celebrating my birthday on December 24th, I would make the journey to my ancestral village to pray at the graveside of my grandparents. As late as December 2005, while I was visiting Grandpa’s grave, a young Fulani woman, with fura da nono on her head, quietly asked my entourage if truly this ‘great visitor’ was ‘jikan Baba Gambo’ (grandson of Baba Gambo). To my astonishment, she asked in my native tongue, “Can he still speak our language?” It was a deeply touching question. I turned to her and replied gently in our native Ninzam that, yes, indeed, if with her ‘fura da nono’ on her head she speaks our native tongue so flawlessly, why should I not do the same? Everyone burst into hilarious laughter, the ululation of the women ringing down the ancient hills and valleys of my beloved ancestral homeland.
With time, people changed. Distrust began to creep into the hearts of men and new, unknown, hatreds began to emerge. Sadly, Grandpa’s friend, Mallam Bani, was killed in the so-called ‘Sharia riots’ in Gwantu in November 2000. Since some mischievous characters decided to introduce what President Olusegun Obasanjo correctly dismissed as ‘political sharia’, much of the North has been thrown into turmoil. Kaduna state, in particular, has never recovered its glory days as a result of this march of folly. From what we know, a lot of money had been hauled into the palace of the Muslim chief of Gwantu, the capital of Sanga Local Government, ostensibly for the purpose of implementing sharia law. When the local pastor and his younger brother went to plead with the chief not to attempt the impossible in a land that was 99.9 percent Christian, the two brothers were summarily beheaded by the Dogari, the royal palace policeman. All hell broke loose as the news spread like wildfire into the surrounding villages.
A war horn that my people had never blown in a generation was heard throughout the farmsteads, almost as far as the rocky hills of the Jos Plateau. My first cousin was one of the younger wives of the chief. They were allowed to leave while the entire palace was razed down in a bombfire of the vanities. Millions of naira brought for forcible conversion were burned down as a curse of evil. Mayhem was let loose. Mallam Bani, who refused to flee, believing he could not be felled by his own people, was reportedly beaten to death before his body was set ablaze. For the men who murdered him, he was just another suspect Fulani ‘settler’. I was an Associate Professor in London at that time. My family and I received the heart-breaking news with much sorrow and grief. For us, he was an uncle – he was family. We continued to mourn old Mallam Bani for many years.
My primary school days in my ancestral homeland were interrupted, when Mother Dearest insisted that she did not want any of her children to grow up without being close to her. And so I was brought back home in Murya, near Lafia, Nasarawa State, to continue schooling. Just a stone-throw from our home was a ‘ruga’ settlement of Fulani herdsmen. Children all over the world know neither colour nor tribe, race or religion. It is adults that teach them to differentiate, to discriminate and, ultimately, to hate the other. My late brother and I soon became firm friends with the Fulani brothers Ori and Lawal. We were inseparable. Their mother, Gogo, with her toothless smile, was the very quintessence of gentleness and humanity.
In my little child’s mind, I could not understand why my best friend Lawal had to go tending cattle from dawn to dusk while we went to school to study and learn. I was never fond of the headmaster, Mr Alaba, who never spared the cane. I found every ruse and subterfuge in the books to avoid school. I soon started playing truant. I would pretend to my parents that I was going to school, only to sneak into the bush path to find Lawal and Ori wherever they were with the cattle and sheep. I would spend the whole day with them, frolicking and having the time of our lives in that joyful burning bush of unspeakable enchantment. Whenever we were thirsty we would go under the udder of the fattest cow and have our fill of fresh milk.
During naming ceremonies or weddings we would join in the festivities. Most people view the Fulani as jungle people who live in sprawling dirt in ramshackle thatched huts in the primeval jungle. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are highly intelligent and meticulous people, prone to mysticism and naturalism. Their women, in my considered opinion, are the most beautiful in the world. During our days the young men plaited their hair and often decorated their bodies and faces with tattoos. They are a highly romantic people.
The homesteads of the Fulanis, to my recollection, were always spotlessly clean and pristine. The cattle were encamped in a restricted area with their dung separated from the living spaces. During festivities rice was invariably served with roasted lamb. Fulanis did not often eat their rice with stew, as I was to discover. But the onions mixed with fresh butter gave their rice a taste that was any child’s delight. It is the closest thing to paradise that I could remember from my childhood. And for them, friendship is forever.
After secondary school I went to Ahmadu Bello University, and from there I was off to France, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and England. I also did time as an intern with the French Commercial Attaché in Ottawa, Canada. I later worked as an academic in England before joining the African Development Bank Group, serving in Abidjan and Tunis; travelling to all the corners of our great continent of Africa. I had joined the international development set and acquired world-weary mannerisms of the Anglo-Saxon Aryans far removed from the innocence of my rustic childhood in the ancient savannah.
In all these years, I was told, there was never a Christmas that Lawal did not visit my parents. He always enquired how I was doing and was in awe of all the places he was told I had been at. We got to meet in 1995 when I was first home on holidays after almost a decade. I observed that my friend had changed a lot. His parents had passed away, and Ori too. All the cattle were gone. After decades of wandering across the vast millennial savannah, by now married with grown up children, Lawal had moved into the neighbouring town and had virtually become a ‘Fulanin gida’ (home Fulani). But I could see that something was amiss – the magic and spark were gone. Lawal, I was told, had taken to too much alcohol. Mother Dearest ever observant, with a great power of intuition, sadly noted that what Lawal was up to was ‘more than just alcohol’. I brought him gifts from abroad – money, shirts, jeans, a watch and things like that. Lawal quietly reminded me that our friendship – our ‘zumunci’ — went beyond any material things. He held the gifts disinterestedly with a sad, distant smile. Lawal passed away the following year after a brief illness. He is a friend and brother that I will cherish for all eternity.
Today, a new breed of Fulani are on the rampage throughout our country. They have killed and maimed and wiped away entire villages in what amounts to a genocidal war. From the Jos Plateau, to Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa, Benue, Taraba, Adamawa, Kogi and as far down as Delta and Ondo, they have left nothing but dead bodies and ashes on their trail. Gurara Forum is a gathering of young men and women — most of them students – from Southern Kaduna. With their own limited resources, they have tried to document all the Fulani atrocities in Southern Kaduna. Their website provides a grim picture gallery of some of the recent killings committed by the herdsmen. Viewer discretion is counselled in visiting the site (http://www.guraraforum.org/gallery/).
These mercenaries have been armed with the most sophisticated weaponry imaginable while their victims are not allowed to carry even bows and arrows in self-defence. Nobody has been arrested or convicted for these crimes. When, recently, they went on another killing spree in the village of Agatu in Benue State, all we heard are plaintive promises that grazing landwill be carved out for them, with grass to be imported from Brazil. From the statistics that we have, possibly a 100,000 souls have perished under these herdsmen of our doomsday apocalypse. Rural livelihoods have been destroyed, with a looming food crisis rearing its ugly head for the first time in the Middle Belt, which remains the bread basket of our great country.
Many reasons have been adduced for this unfortunate turn of events. There are those who blame the devastating impact of climate change – desertification — and the lot. There is also the Malthusian demographic nightmare of population increasingly geometrically against dwindling water and other natural resources, including land space. I would also point to the factor of politics. In our political era, politicians have been known to import mercenaries and millions of illegal immigrants to boost their potential voting blocs and also to use them to settle differences by the barrel of the gun.
Some crypto-communist pseudo-intellectuals have whitewashed these atrocities as anodyne problems of ‘cattle rustling’ and ‘rural banditry’. And anybody who expresses anger and outrage is committing ‘hate speech’. To my mind, those who implicitly deny the sanctity of human life while covering up diabolical atrocities in meaningless intellectual abstractions are the real purveyors of hate, not we, the victims. Nobody has been held to account for any of these killings. Probably more souls have perished from these genocidal killings than from Boko Haram. The recent attempt to conflate Boko Haram with the marauding herdsmen is nothing short of sophistry at its worst. Boko Haram and the marauding herdsmen are different species of the same rampaging Jihadist tiger. But they are not interchangeable, even if they belong to the same ruling spirit of violence and death. They may well be part of the overall strategy of conquest and subjugation by force of arms. The Middle Belt are what they are because they were never defeated by Jihad. What their forebears could not achieve, they now believe they can by chicanery, subterfuge and sheer wickedness. They will fail in the same manner as those proverbial people who live by the law of the sword.
I humbly submit that most of these so-called ‘herdsmen’ are mercenaries from outside Nigeria. They cannot be relations of my late friend and brother Lawal or my uncle Mallam Bani. They are foreign mercenaries imported into our country to kill, overwhelm and colonize. Whose ancestral land is going to be handed over to foreign marauding mercenaries who have committed murder on such a scale?
For me, the only prudent way of tackling this menace is for the Nigerian military to restore the dispossessed people back to their villages and to enforce the rural piece across all the troubled areas. We need a proper census of all the Fulani herdsmen and their cattle. Those of them who are not bona fide citizens should be repatriated to Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon or wherever they are supposed to have come from. The government of Ghana, ever more efficient and more vigilant than ours, recently repatriated over 50,000 Fulani herdsmen and their cattle, with a terse warning that they would never be permitted to get away with the kind of violations they have perpetrated in Nigeria.
I am not opposed to the idea of grazing reserves. My problem is that notion of grazing reserves, proposed since the days of Ahmadu Bello, the first premier of the Northern Region, have never proven successful. In Kachia, a huge grazing reserve was carved out for Fulani communities some thirty years ago. Until today, none of the indigenous communities have been compensated for the forcible dispossession of their land and the turning-over of ancestral usufructuary rights to an alien people, who have become, to all intents and purposes, enemy combatants. Not only have these Fulanis been involved in violent killings of local people, they are also agitating for the right to create their own chiefdom. As far as I know, this is colonisation by theft and gerrymandering subterfuge.
This is not to say that grazing reserves should not be revisited. I would encourage such reserves to be created in the states of the core North where the Fulanis naturally belong. Land for such purpose should be negotiated with local communities on possibly 99-year leaseholds, with adequate compensation by the states and the federal government. Such reserves can also go with the grass importation proposition that Agriculture Minister Audu Ogbeh is coming up with.
For more than a century, the Enclosure Movement in England was provoked by the same problem of relentless clashes between farmers and herdsmen. The rural communities were so fervent in their campaign that the British Parliament had to pass the Enclosure Act 1773. By this act, herdsmen were required to keep their cattle within bounds. Until today, any animal that trespasses into the farmland of an Englishman ipso facto becomes his property. It has brought peace and prosperity to the glorious English countryside. We in Nigeria need to borrow such a piece of jurisprudence. Peripatetic cattle rearing is not only primitive; it is irksome to the common peace. Cattle that travel up and down lose half of their economic value compared to those that are kept in one place.
The UN Resident Representative in Nigeria recently described the atrocities committed by the herdsmen as the worst humanitarian disaster she has ever witnessed. Government has a solemn responsibility to preserve the lives of all our citizens. A situation where a few herdsmen are allowed to carry sophisticated firearms and to unleash a reign of terror against innocent defenceless rural peasants is not acceptable to anyone with a modicum of conscience. International Law has established the principle that communities that face an existential threat to their lives have a right to defend themselves where the state is unwilling and/or unable to defend them. All men and goodwill – all of us who love Nigeria and want to see her move forward – should seek peace and pursue it. But we cannot accept a peace of the graveyard. Peace must evolve on the foundations of justice devoid of fear. Those who live by the sword will ultimately perish by the sword.
Obadiah Mailafiya
