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2025-04-23 Africa Subsaharan
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Fulani expansion war, a federal pet, by Ochereome Nnanna - Vanguard News
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A backgrounder on Nigeria's internal dysfunction.
[VANGUARDNGR]Before his sudden, mysterious death, former Head of State, General Sani Abacha, left us with an enduring, prophetic soundbite. He said: “If an insurgency lasts for more than 24 hours, then, know that government has a hand in it”. Way back on May 8, 2014, The Cable newspaper published a retweet of the late General’s daughter, Ms Gumsu Abacha, quoting exactly the same one-liner in response to Boko Haram “exploits”.
What would you say of the Fulani expansionism “insurgency” which has lasted 25 years? By “federal”, I do not necessarily mean the President Bola Tinubu administration, though it is also complicit as will be shown shortly. “Federal” here means the machinery of the Nigerian State, the ruling Establishment or dispensation, the power that be which produces and dictates to successive Federal Governments.
Since 1999, this power dispensing machine has produced five presidents – Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu, always making sure it does not fall into “wrong” hands. Only such mechanism could enact the magic of making Obasanjo president from jail, ensuring that no Northern candidate would stand against him. To the best of my knowledge, the Fulani wars of conquest started around 2001 in the Plateau area. Armed Fulani “herdsmen” were routinely massacring the indigenes to take over their fertile farmlands. The military, police, security and what have you, have failed to stop them despite several eye-service deployments.
But when the Tarokh people armed themselves and retaliated in May 2004, President Obasanjo declared a state of emergency and removed PDP Governor, Joshua Dariye, who was seen as encouraging his indigenous people to defend themselves. What did Dariye do later? He joined Muhammadu Buhari’s APC and helped the party capture the state in 2015. Buhari pardoned and released him from his 14-year jail conviction for allegedly stealing N2bn. Dariye could not beat them. He joined them, and was rewarded by Buhari himself, just as Adams Oshiomhole had promised all who join APC.
Lionhearted governors who were crushed became a lesson to others. Fight the State and pay for it; collude with the State against your people and be rewarded. When you see Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo State running kitikiti-katakata to lick the toes of fellow governors from the North over the Uromi lynching, you know the fear the State exerts over occupants of powerful or lucrative positions.
When Buhari came to power in 2015, he saw himself as the Nigerian variant of Omar Al Bashir of Sudan, who armed Arab pastoralist militia, the Janjaweed, to conquer and annex the lands of black Sudanese, thus sparking the Darfur crises. Buhari was determined to make Nigeria the new home of his Fulani kinsmen from everywhere. He tried to enforce his Ruga grazing routes, water resources and Livestock Plan policies throughout the country, but these were stiffly resisted. Buhari then threw open the borders for armed Fulani and their families, especially the nomads from everywhere, to relocate to Nigeria.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, he and his powerful kinsmen used food and cement trailers and trucks to distribute armed Fulani youths in forests all over the Middle Belt and Southern states. It was clearly a well-organised operation aimed at forcefully grafting alien, violent Fulani elements among unwilling indigenous communities. They were camped in the forests where they killed people in their farms and harvested organs for sale. They kidnapped for ransom and used livestock to destroy farms. They flushed people out of their ancestral lands and occupied communities.
The Federal Government and its organs of security and coercion protected them from those seeking to defend themselves. They were promptly released when arrested by vigilante groups and handed over to the supposed law enforcement agencies. Government and (unfortunately, sections of the media) deceived the public, calling attacks on innocent Nigerian farming communities “farmers-herders clashes”. Government kept promising displaced people they would be restored to their ancestral lands but have now become permanent occupants of Internally-Displaced Persons, IDPs, camps. The invaders are settling down and renaming conquered communities.
The Federal Government refused to even acknowledge Fulani invaders as terrorists. Instead, they turned around to falsely slap that moniker on the Eastern Security Network, ESN, formed by the concerned diaspora Igbo through Mazi Nnamdi Kanu's Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, to defend Igboland.
When Tinubu controversially won the 2023 presidential election, I consoled myself that Buhari the Fulaniser was out and Tinubu, being a Southerner, would check the Fulanisation agenda. It has also been wreaking even more havoc in the South-West, Tinubu's home zone. But we were in for a shock. After initially arresting and detaining Bello Bodejo, the leader of the loquacious and violent Miyetti Allah Kyautal Hore, Tinubu quickly released him when the Fulani elite threatened him. He even went ahead to create Federal Ministry of Livestock to appease them, thus fully resuscitating Buhari's Fulanisation agenda.
Tinubu holds on to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu even after releasing Fulani's Bodejo and Sunday Igboho of Yoruba Nation. Under Tinubu, the cuddling of Fulani herdsmen terrorism continues unabated, and so do the endless barrages of meaningless condolence messages and empty promises. The entire landscape is filled with cowardly governors and political leaders who sell out their people for political power and lucrative posts. At this rate, the indigenous people of Nigeria are doomed.
Retired Lt-General Theophilus Danjuma warned before (and has just repeated the warning) that the government is an enhancer of Fulani expansionism. ''They collude,'' he says. ''They will not protect you! Arm and protect yourselves''. Danjuma, a hero of the Nigerian side of the civil war, has written off the armed forces he once served and led. Who are we to believe otherwise? Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and ESN have once again been vindicated, even by Danjuma!
Self-defence is the first law of nature. The ball is in our court.
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Posted by Fred 2025-04-23 00:00||
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