The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity

151 views
Skip to first unread message

Farooq A. Kperogi

unread,
Feb 4, 2017, 2:40:31 AM2/4/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
My column in today's Daily Trust on Saturday:

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.


The Nigerian mass media—and the online echo chambers they have spawned on social media and elsewhere—have normalized the pathologization and criminalization of the Fulani ethnic identity through their popularization of the odious “Fulani herdsmen” collocation. Criminalizing and pathologizing an entire ethnic identity is often the precursor to genocide.


That’s why an ignorant and hate-filled preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleiman could glibly tell his church members to extra-judicially murder “Fulani herdsmen.” “And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him,” he said in a widely circulated video. “I have told them in the church here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, kill him, kill him! Cut his head!”


Before I am misunderstood, let me be clear that I am not defending, excusing, or minimizing the mass murders attributed to some “Fulani herdsmen” in Agatu, southern Kaduna, and elsewhere. No human being deserves to be killed by any group for any reason. For as long as I breathe, I will always defend the sanctity of human life. That’s why, although I’m not a Shiite, I came down very hard on the Buhari government for its horrendously bestial mass slaughter of innocent Shiites in 2015.


But we can condemn a wrong by a people without tarring an entire community numbering millions of people across vast swathes of land in West Africa with a broad brush. The Fulani people are far and away the most widely dispersed ethnic group in West Africa. And, although they dominate the cattle herding trade, they are not all cattle herders, and most cattle herders aren’t violent and murderous. Nor are all cattle herders Fulanis.


Most importantly, though, although “settled,” urban Fulanis are mostly Muslims, cattle-herding Fulanis are mostly neither Muslims nor Christians. Their whole religion is usually just the welfare of their cattle. In addition, cattle-herding Fulanis don’t recognize, much less have loyalty to, Nigeria’s prevailing geopolitical demarcations. In other words, they are not invariably northerners.


So if they have sanguinary clashes with farmers, those clashes aren’t instigated by religion or region. They are just age-old farmer/herder clashes. I admit, though, that it isn’t just Middle Beltan and southern Nigerian victims of farmer/herder clashes that use the lenses of Nigeria’s primordial fissures to gaze at Fulani herders; northern Nigerian Muslim politicians, especially those that have a Fulani bloodline, also use these lenses to defend and protect their “kinsfolk,” often ignorantly and opportunistically.


In 2000, for instance, General Muhammadu Buhari traveled all the way from Kaduna to Ibadan to protect Fulani herdsmen who were at the receiving end of retaliatory killings by Yoruba farmers. Governor el-Rufai is also a self-confessed Fulani supremacist who once threatened retaliation against other ethnic groups on behalf of Fulani herders. I think it is these sorts of misguided parochialisms that conduce to the conflation of Fulani herder identity with the identity and divisive politics of urban northern Nigerian elites with tinctures of Fulani ancestry.


But this is all wrong. My late father was raised by Fulani herders for the first 12 years of his life. I also have adoptive full-blooded Fulani cousins who were raised by my grandfather and my paternal aunt. They were abandoned at birth in the hospital when their mothers died in labor in my hometown, and they were adopted by my grandfather. That was not unusual in my community in bygone days.  So when I talk of cattle-herding Fulani people, I do so with the benefit both of personal experience and scholarly immersion into their life, history and ways.


The Fulani nomads who destroy communities throughout West Africa, not just in Nigeria, don't have any sense of rootedness in any modern nation-state. They are, for the most part, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of modernity, and owe no allegiance to any overarching primordial, regional, or religious identity. That’s why they are called transhumant pastoralists.


But there are also bucolic Fulani herders who plant roots in communities, live peacefully with their hosts, and even speak the languages of the communities they choose to live in. In my hometown, the Fulani are so integral to the community that the king of the Fulani, who is appointed by our emir (who isn’t Fulani), is part of the 7 kingmakers that elect a new emir. These rooted, bucolic Fulani herders are often exempt from the episodic communal upheavals that so often erupt between sedentary communities and itinerant herders.


I recall that there was a particularly sanguinary class between Fulani herders and farmers in the early 1990s that caused so many deaths in western Borgu. Farmers chose to retaliate the killings of their kind and organized a well-planned counter attack that caused scores of itinerant cattle herders—and their cattle—to be killed. What was intriguing about the counter attack was that the farmers spared all settled Fulani herders. They told them apart from the transhumant herders because the local Fulani spoke the local language. Ability to speak the local language indicated that they weren't the "citizens without frontiers" who unleashed terror on farming communities.


 A similar incident happened in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State in 2000. In the retaliatory attacks against Fulani nomads who killed farmers, Yoruba-speaking Fulani cattle herders were spared. Like in Borgu and elsewhere, bucolic Fulani herders are intricately woven into the fabric of the communities in which they live.


I am saying all this to call attention to the reality that farmer/herder clashes aren't north-south, Muslim-Christian or ethnic conflicts. The Fulani who have lived in the south for ages don't see themselves as northerners living in the south—and they are NOT. In any case, they've lived there prior to the advent of colonialism that invented the Nigerian nation-state. Notions of southern Nigeria and northern Nigeria are colonial categories that have little or no meaning to both the bucolic Fulani nomads who live peacefully with their hosts and the blood-thirsty, marauding citizens without frontiers who inflict violence on farming communities all over West Africa, not just in southern or Middle Beltan Nigeria.


So which of the two categories of Fulani herders do the Nigerian media mean when they criminalize “Fulani herdsmen?” And which one does Apostle Suleiman want his church members to murder in cold blood?


But it gets even trickier. Sometime in 2003 in Gombe, itinerant Fulani herders called the Udawa killed scores of farmers most of whom were ethnic and linguistic Fulanis. Former Governor Abubakar Hashidu had to request federal military assistance to contain the menace of the Udawa. Similarly, hundreds of Hausa and Fulani farmers in Nigeria’s northwest get killed by transhumant Fulani herders every year. But such stories don’t make it to the national news because it isn’t “newsy” to read about Fulani herders killing Fulani farmers.


The media have a responsibility to let the world know that it is transhumant herders with no sense of geographic rootedness that are drenching communities in blood, not all “Fulani herdsmen,” many of whom are peaceful, organic members of the communities in which they live.


Related Article:

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building 
Room 5092 MD 2207
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter: @farooqkperog
Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 4, 2017, 3:12:03 PM2/4/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Many thanks Prof Kperogi, for this timely intervention. I'm sure that apart from that “ignorant and hate-filled preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleimanand some members of his congregation, every good-hearted person is with you on this one.

Apostle Johnson Suleman , in the name of Jesus or even in the name of common sense, ought to know better.

Pikuach Nefesh is a very high ethical value common to some other non-satanic religions such as Islam (Surah Al-Ma'idah ayat 32) - it's Ahimsa in Hinduism (which sees beef - from Fulani cattle for example – as murder – the murder of holy mother cow and her children – indeed “ no beef” is the universal Hindu principle) but this non-injury to others in thought, word or deed, is taken to an extraordinary extreme conclusion in Jainism from which the ethic probably entered Hinduism and that compassionate, caste-less religion which for once, doesn't talk about God, Buddhism.

But first things first : The Nigerian media/ social media of which you speak and which is guilty of orchestrating this malicious campaign against the Fulani without discrimination labelling everybody “Fulani herdsmen” should be brought to order – this kind of hate speech and incitement should be criminalized and brought to justice.

The media's hysteria in classifying the Fulani people with one brush fits all : “Fulani herdsmen” and thereby promoting a witch-hunt of the people falsely demon-ized. “ Are you Fulani? “ - Yes ? – stand over there - (thinks, he must be a Fulani herdsman or one of the sympathizers - “Constable – here is one of them...”

Time for one more of what I hope is not an “anecdotal irrelevancy” or worse still lashon hara :

The persecution of the Fulani herdsmen reminds me of an incident with my late best friend Dr. Mikhail Tunkel (a dentist, of Lithuanian parents but born and raised in China, in Harbin, before emigrating to Israel in 1952, at the age of thirty four) he sometimes liked making dramatic statements, I thought just to get attention. We were at a Klezmer festival at Kungsträdgården, had some beautiful female company - it started to rain suddenly so we had to rush indoors to the Victoria Restaurant and no sooner had we sat down than he announced it : “All Germans are Nazis!

All?”, I asked him in disbelief and this was in the autumn of 1999..

Yes, All !” he snapped back and wiped his moustache with a serviette, dumped it on the table and went on to tell his tale : He had visited a German doctor for a check-up - he said that soon enough the doctor identified his blood as being Jewish and from that point on the doctor pretended that he couldn't understand Tunkel's German – as if Tunkel's German was so awful - and that the doctor then started speaking a strange German to him, started some kind of deliberate speaking-in-tongues, the doctor started mocking him by speaking some kind of garbled, fantasy Yiddish and gave us the impression that from Tunkel's point of view he could have been speaking Greek or Nigerian English as far as he was concerned and was beyond comprehension. Sill enraged, “Was that not Nazism in action ?”, he appealed to one of the ladies in our company (one Kerstin Eriksson) no doubt to get some sympathy. In my opinion the doctor in question was obviously practising a rabid form of anti-Semitism and possibly a Nazi, but why Tunkel bought the matter up then , is still a mystery. Perhaps his memory had been stimulated by the Klezmer music?

And so it is, that a victim that has once been bitten by a Fulani herdsman or his bodyguard may erroneously believe that ALL Fulani people are Nazis…

Of course, I can understand someone like Fathi Hammad , also variously guilty of incitement

But this Apostle-pastor Johnson Suleiman (in this link heard preaching murder) should be arrested – by the state police - for hate speech and for incitement to murder his fellow citizens most of whom are “peaceful, organic members of the communities in which they live”.

Doesn't Sheikh Anta Diop refer to the Fulani people from Mauritania to Lake Chad, as one of the lost tribes of Israel? The Fulani people brought Islam to Sierra Leone , all the way from the Futa Jallon in Guinea. Gambia's new leader Adama Barrow is Fulani. The greatest Fulani hero of all time is undoubtedly Shehu Usman dan Fodio (r.a.)

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 4, 2017, 9:35:48 PM2/4/17
to usaafricadialogue
EDITED

I have a problem with the tone of the Faroq intervention and the happy jumping on that by Cornelius.

Gentlemen, can you please point out to readers your contributions on this subject as Fulani herdsmen set the nation ablaze from the Middle Belt to the South East, contributions worthy in scope and consistency in relation to the long running character of the wanton vampirism Fulani herdsmen have made synonymous with themselves across the nation?

Now that the long heating kettle has begun to boil you start fuming?

The current spiraling push-back agst the wanton murders and colonization initiatives by Fulani politicians, the Fulani cattle herders umbrella inspiration, Miyeti Allah  and Fulani herdsmen and their terrorist militia has been years in the making, steadily rising to a critical point in  the orchestrated escalation  of Fulani herdsmen terrorism under the cover and guidance of the  government of the Fulani herdsman Muhammadu Buhari.

This critical point began to emerge with the effort of some indigenes in the South East to protect themselves agst Fulani herdsmen terrorism for which efforts they were arrested by the agents of the Nigerian government. It continued with one or more governors in the SE initiating self help vigilante groups agst these murderers  when it became clear they were under the protection of the Nigerian govt . This strategy was made prominent by Ekiti State governor Ayodele Fayose adopting the same method.

We now have a Christian pastor calling for a response in kind agst  those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings while the Nigerian govt aided the murderers and your response consists  largely in adopting a stance of righteous indignation.

toyin

On 5 February 2017 at 03:12, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
I have a problem with the tone of the Faroq intervention and the happy jumping on that by Cornelius.

Gentlemen, can you please point out to readers your contributions on this subject as Fulani herdsmen set the nation ablaze from the Middle Belt to the South East?

The current spiraling push-back agst the wanton murders and colonization initiatives by Fulani politicians, the Fulani cattle herders umbrella inspiration, Miyeti Allah  and Fulani herdsmen and their terrorist militia has been years in the making, steadily rising to a critical point by the orchestrated escalation  of Fulani herdsmen terrorism under the cover and guidance of the  government of the Fulani herdsman Muhammadu Buhari.

This critical point began to emerge with the effort of some indigenes in the South East to protect themselves agst Fulani herdsmen terrorism for which efforts they were arrested by the agents of the Nigerian government. It continued with one or more governors in the SE initiating self help vigilante groups agst these murderers  when it became clear they were under the protection of the Nigerian govt . This strategy was made prominent by Ekiti Sate governor Ayodele Fayose adopting the same method.

We now have a Christian pastor calling for a response in the spirit of those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings while the Nigerian govt aided them.


toyin

















--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.


Godwin Okeke

unread,
Feb 6, 2017, 9:20:50 AM2/6/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Good day everyone,
It is important to note that those who blame Pastor Johnson Suleiman, should first of all blame and caution the leader of Miyeti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, who justified the southern Kaduna killings on the ground that it was a retaliation of the 2011 killings. This he clearly and brazenly stated on a national television, and no one saw something wrong with that. Or does justice entail taking the laws in your own hands. He who wants to stop a fight MUST first of all stop FINGER POINTING.
GSM
--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 2/4/17, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity
To: "USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, February 4, 2017, 8:30 PM
Ph.D.Twitter:@farooqkperogi
The Nigerian mass media—and the online
echo chambers they have spawned on social media and
elsewhere—have normalized the pathologization and
criminalization of the Fulani ethnic identity through their
popularization of the odious “Fulani herdsmen”
collocation. Criminalizing and pathologizing an entire
ethnic identity is often the precursor to
genocide.
That’s why an ignorant and hate-filled
preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleiman could
glibly tell his church members to extra-judicially murder
“Fulani herdsmen.” “And I told my people, any Fulani
herdsman you see around you, kill him,” he said in a
widely circulated video. “I have told them in the church
here that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake,
kill him, kill him! Cut his
head!”
ProfessorJournalism & Emerging
Media
School of Communication &
MediaSocial Science
Building Room 5092 MD
2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw
State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA
30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms
of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that
you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly
surprised." G. F. Will






--

Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at
Austin

To post to this group, send an email to
USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

To subscribe to this group, send an email to
USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com

Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue

Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html

---

You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series"
group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails
from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 7, 2017, 11:37:59 AM2/7/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Dear Toyin,

It is a commandment to be happy, so please don't be surprised that someone sometimes jumps happily. But I am not jumping for joy on these matters. Sure, not only black lives matter, every life matters.

In these dangerous times, there ought to be a law that applies to both the Fulani herdsmen and the Church men. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth although applied as compensation, in reality also levels down the playing field to each individual's equality when facing the law – it is not that the Church man's eye or tooth is superior to the Fulani herdsman’s eye or tooth or vice versa.

Reverence for life: I understand that you are not an active part of Nigeria's law enforcement agency and I pray that as a stranger or as a first time visitor to Apostle Johnson's church or as an undercover agent you should not be mis-taken for a Fulani herdsman, even if as a Nigerian, you look like one, because in that case when they finally do a post-mortem on you , too late - a case of “mistaken identity” would not have saved you.

Consider these words attributed to Apostle-pastor Johnson Suleiman tendered in evidence in a court in Cambridgeshire for example or in a court of law that is peculiarly Nigerian :

And I told my people, any Fulani herdsman you see around you, kill him.”

I have told them in the church here, that any Fulani herdsman that just entered by mistake, Kill him, Kill Him. Cut his head. If they are busy killing Christians and nothing is happening, we will kill them and nothing will happen”

I guess that the attorney general (of whatever religious background) would then proceed to cross examine Apostle Johnson Suleiman as to exactly how he intends and intended that these premeditated murders should be committed - - he does say “ Cut his head” but what is not clear is what instruments or weapons should be used, should it be a knife from the church kitchen , a sword or a machete ? And since his general instruction is to “kill him” - I do suppose that just like David Koresh who requested that his followers stockpile on assault weapons, Apostle Johnson could have also been making a similar recommendation to members of his congregation, to prepare and to arm themselves suitably, in order to do the killing – to kill any Fulani found/seen in the vicinity of their tabernacle.

I suppose that Apostle Johnson's testimony would have stood in Texas, in Trump's America or even in an earlier America – as in the case of the murder of Amadou Diallo ( a Fulani from Guinea) was gunned down in the United States

Apostle Johnson Suleiman citing some “conspiracy theory” of some impending assault on his church, some false news possibly whispered to him by an evil spirit, should not absolve him of all responsibility for the consequences of what he exhorts his followers to do. Granted : In normal circumstances he would turn to the police for protection if he thought that his church was going to be attacked or used as a grazing ground for someone else’s cows, but in this regard things are not normal, in Nigeria. That’s the problem. Now, what do you want me to do about it?

Pray for us.

Cornelius

We Sweden

To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Ms rosemary danesi

unread,
Feb 7, 2017, 12:29:56 PM2/7/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Dr Farook can you tell us why nothing has been done to the Fulani Herdsmen who have wreaked havoc on farmlands and killed so many innocent people. Why has there been no arrest of these criminals and murderers?  
 

__________________________________________
Dr. Rosemary Danesi (PhD Law, Essex) BSc. MSc. LLB. BL LLM. (MCIPM, MNIM)
Fulbright Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States,
Lecturer, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria
Legal/Labour Relations Consultant
Mobile Phone: 08100534915 & 08185825232
'Do unto others as you wish them do unto you'


Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 7, 2017, 6:01:11 PM2/7/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Dear Dr, Rosemary Danesi (PhD Law, Essex) BSc. LLB, LLM (MCIPM, MNIM), Fulbright Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States, Lecturer, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria, Legal/Labour Relations Consultant!!!


Although I am not an admirer of Dr. Farooq Kperogi, his admonition against criminalisation of Fulani herdsmen should be of interest to anyone who desires justice at all levels of life in Nigeria. I assume that, even from your pedestal of academic degrees, you know not only how Fulani herdsmen look like but that you are also acquainted with their working conditions. With that assumption, may I know if you have personally witnessed Fulani Herdsmen wreaking havoc on farmlands and killing innocent people? If not, why are you so categorical in your statement and your subsequent question?

S.Kadiri
 




Från: 'Ms rosemary danesi' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Skickat: den 7 februari 2017 18:19
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity
 

Femi Segun

unread,
Feb 8, 2017, 8:05:01 AM2/8/17
to 'Chika Onyeani' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Alagba Salimonu Kadiri,
Must we witness an issue of such serious implication as killing and wanton destruction of lives and property before we believe? If we wait until we witness everything before we believe or take necessary actions on every thing, much damage would have been done. I think you can engage Dr Danesi without necessarity dismissing what she said by doubting her claim because according to you, she might not have witnessed where such killings happened. Or are you doubting that these killings never took place-even when there are pictureque evidence to that effect?  Eni oro kan lo mo o. There must be a limit to defensing what is not defensible. Prof Faroog's write up addresses a very pertinent issue, the import of which can be adapted to other areas of life. Accidental generalisation is an error of judgement which any  educated person must avoid. 
Femi

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 9:38 PM, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Dr, Rosemary Danesi (PhD Law, Essex) BSc. LLB, LLM (MCIPM, MNIM), Fulbright Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States, Lecturer, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria, Legal/Labour Relations Consultant!!!


Although I am not an admirer of Dr. Farooq Kperogi, his admonition against criminalisation of Fulani herdsmen should be of interest to anyone who desires justice at all levels of life in Nigeria. I assume that, even from your pedestal of academic degrees, you know not only how Fulani herdsmen look like but that you are also acquainted with their working conditions. With that assumption, may I know if you have personally witnessed Fulani Herdsmen wreaking havoc on farmlands and killing innocent people? If not, why are you so categorical in your statement and your subsequent question?

S.Kadiri
 




Från: 'Ms rosemary danesi' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Skickat: den 7 februari 2017 18:19
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 8, 2017, 5:33:14 PM2/8/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Dear Femi Segun,

Fortunately for me, I do not belong to the generation of Nigerians who believe that yams grow on trees like oranges and papaws grow under the earth like cassavas. I have seen Fulani herdsmen in action with their cattle. There were isolated cases of herdsmen intruding into farmlands but they were made to pay for damages done to farmlands by the herds. The case of Olu Falae is still fresh in mind. There are criminals everywhere in Nigeria and they are not peculiar to any specific ethnic group. While it is easy for a group of people to pose as policemen or soldiers to rob a bank, a group of people cannot pretend to be herdsmen (numbering four at most while driving their herds) to wreak the type of havocs that have been attributed to Fulani herdsmen. It is impossible for herdsmen who treasure their cows like jewellery to go into combat with their host communities when the obvious consequence of such aggression would be total lost of their treasured cows. All the reports I have read on purported  herdsmen/farmers clashes had been blamed on "Suspected Fulani Herdsmen." We have seen pictures of villages said to have been ravaged by Fulani herdsmen but neither Fulani nor cows were in sight. Yet, separate pictures of an AK47 carrying Fulani herdsmen leading their grazing cows, at least 100 in numbers, are often published to give the impression that the Fulani herdsman in the picture had used his gun to kill farmers. That Fulani herdsmen now carry guns originated with the emergence of cow rustlers in Nigeria, otherwise they used to equip themselves with a stick with which they flog a deviating cow into the flock and a machete for cutting down branches of trees with green leafs for cows to feed on. If real Fulani herdsmen had actually committed the destructions and killings of people being attributed to them, it would have been easy to arrest and prosecute them, since they would not have abandoned their cows and run away. The killings in Southern Kaduna, for instance, had nothing to do with religion or Fulani herdsman but chop-chop politics as practised in Nigeria.


Accidental generalisation is an error of judgement which any educated person must avoid, you wrote.

I agree with you with modification. Generalisation is not accidental in Nigeria because we have been indoctrinated to believe that actions and inactions of every official, whether elected, appointed, selected or employed, should be attributed to the whole ethnic group of the official. Whereas no official takes his salary and allowances to his/her ethnic group for sharing, we are indoctrinated to believe that he is representing his/her ethnic group in the office. If his duty, for which he is over-remunerated by Nigerian standard of living, is to generate electricity for the whole country but the entire nation is enveloped in darkness, the tribal group of the official will tolerate the incompetence of the electric engineer while other tribes will  blame his/her incompetence on the tribe of the official in question. That is why all Ministries, Departments and Parastatals in Nigeria are plagued with professional degradations. A tribe does not occupy an office and performance does not relate or depend on tribe.


Thanks to Fulani herdsmen, Nigerians consume about 20,000 head of cows per day. But in this 21st century, Fulani herdsmen still roam thousand kilometers around Nigeria to graze their cattle so that Nigerians, including that Pastor Lucifer, can get their beefs. Nigerian farmers deserted rice farms because the mode of production is hard and primitive. Consequently, plastic rice are imported for Nigerians to eat and if Fulani herdsmen have done the same thing as the Nigerian rice farmers, may be, Nigeria would by now be importing reindeer meat from the Eskimos. Nigerians should be grateful to Fulani herdsmen for providing them with beefs and the earlier our educated elites find a way of liberating them from the labour of trekking thousand kilometres in search of grazing space for their cattle, the better it will be for Nigeria.

S.Kadiri 
 




Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Femi Segun <solor...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 8 februari 2017 11:18
Till: 'Chika Onyeani' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
Message has been deleted

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 8, 2017, 6:37:53 PM2/8/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series, rosemar...@yahoo.com

Dear moderator, could you please discard my earlier post in reply to Dr. Rosemary Danesi – including the amened one? (Many Thanks )

As I was asking,

Love's labour lost?

Another timely intervention, this time from a lawyer with another timely question which in my view is long overdue, although one cannot vouchsafe the entire accuracy of these question:

Why has nothing been done to the Fulani Herdsmen who have wreaked havoc on farmlands and killed so many innocent people ?

Nothing?

What must be done to them?

Any suggestions?

Why has there been no arrest of these criminals and murderers?

Alternately, one could ask, “What has been done so far to curb the Fulani herdsmen who have been sowing wanton destruction of life and property wherever they roam on their long journeys further south?”

We ought not forget that Yemi Osinbajo - according to Wikipedia “(born 8 March 1957) is the Vice President of Nigeria, in office since 29 May 2015. He is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria,[2] Professor of Law and until his inauguration as Vice President, a Senior Partner with SimmonsCooper Partners, a commercial law practice” - This means that all legal matters including the outrageous ones are on his desktop and hopefully receiving his full attention.

When Ogbeni Kadiri enquires of Dear Dr. Rosemary Danesi, have (you) personally witnessed Fulani Herdsmen wreaking havoc on farmlands and killing innocent people?” - behind that question lurk the grounds of my own perception/suspicion/ misperception (whether it was unbelieving Thomas only believing after poking his finger in the hole in Jesus' crucified hand or Jesus ascending bodily into heaven or the Prophet of Islam (s.a.w.) receiving all the heavenly messages via the Angel Gabriel, the fact is I was not there, nor was Ogbeni Kadiri or Dear Dr. Rosemary Danesi. The question is, how many trustworthy witnesses do we need in order to verify a fact? We know that we don't have to believe everything we read, but the media and all of the innocent or not so innocent victims and witnesses cannot be wholly wrong 100% of the time or can they?

In this recent day and age of “ Fake news”, from media reports and some of the discussions, including in this forum, one gets the impression that the Fulani Herdsmen, without any love, consideration or respect for borders, for fences or for other people's land rights, on their long pilgrimage to the south, their cattle are guilty of trespassing, rampaging through people's vegetable fields and without permission from the owners, devouring what does not belong to them; as if the whole of Nigeria is just an open field and one big grazing grounds for their cattle.

Even in India where cattle are holy, this does not happen…

But, undoubtedly some of the discussions about Fulani herdsmen and maybe some of the reports too, have been hyped-up and that's what Professor Kperogi very rightly has been protesting : if we are to believe the Toyin Adepojus on this matter, then more or less, without exception, all Fulani herdsmen are criminals and wanton murderers , they have an agenda, and not only that, he believes faithfully that President Buhari is the Fulani-herdman-in-chief.

Here are some Adepoju's testimonies

All of those gifted with democratic instincts espouse the rule of law and from the relentless reports from the media, what is vastly missing - at various levels - in vast swathes of the country, is the rule of law in Nigeria. It would seem that for certain periods, whilst President Buhari's war on corruption continues, lawlessness reigns in many parts of Nigeria, currently in parts of Kaduna, I and in the environmentally degraded Niger Delta which is the source and lifeblood of much of the country’s wealth/ economy).

As far as territorial integrity/ sovereignty is concerned, Borno State, capital Maiduguri (rhymes with skulduggery) is still essentially a war zone, in spite of sporadic, upbeat proclamations from the Naija military that Boko Haram has been “technically defeatedand being informed at regular intervals by the Nigerian military or sources close to them, that Boko Haram's operational leader Abubakar Shekau has been slaughtered. What to believe when a couple of times now it seems that he has resurrected once again, smiling, polishing his teeth with his trademark siwak and telling us that some of the Chibok girls have converted to Islam , others are now happily married to their captors and have become mothers whilst yet others from that group of kidnapped Chibok girls have been sold into slavery. Shekau apparently is still very much alive, still taunting the military authorities and promising more death and destruction for the nation. He must be the proverbial cat with nine lives.

The list goes on:

In 2015 there was the massacre of Shia Muslims in Zaria – the infamous 2015 Zaria massacre

And the imbroglio that continues since the now fifteen months long detention of Nnamdi Kanu without trial the massacre of many of his innocent pro-Biafra supporters whose only crime was that they were peacefully demonstrating.

The list of areas, events, scenes of lawlessness could be long, almost infinite...

It's within the power of the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency wherever it's deemed necessary - maybe, so that the military can deal more ruthlessly with those who could be causing the trouble. But this could backfire and result in the total collapse of law and order – thus inviting the military to take over, completely. Taking us all the way back to square one.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 8, 2017, 9:24:34 PM2/8/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri,

In these links, the allegations against Fulani Herdsmen are very serious and many.

He who feels it knows.

One no less than the Ohanaeze is charging the Fulani herdsmen with “destroying our farms and raping our women.And raping our women. Is that not adding insult to injury?

By what sleight of hand/ feats of propaganda and false media reports have Fulani Herdsmen been labelled not only a terrorist organisation but as the fourth most deadliest terrorist group in the world ! How does one set about dismantling/dispelling the statistical evidence on which such an assessment is arrived at ?

May I suggest that the idyllic Nigeria of peaceful, law-abiding, pastoral Fulani herdsmen that you once knew has changed dramatically and that's one of the reasons why just a few years ago there were no complaints about Fulani Herdsmen, not even from Pastor Lucifer and his disciples.

The other reason could be that the herdsmen are associated with the North which is identifiable as mostly Muslim and therefore the accusations against them, undoubtedly part of the general pattern of the growing Islamophobia in Nigeria directed against the herdsmen who their enemies want to typify as being murderous representatives of Islam.

The syllogism that Prof Kperogi and all truth sayers must vehemently dement:

“All Fulani Herdsmen are wanton murderers

Ogbeni B is a Fulani Herdsman

Therefore Ogbeni B is a wanton murderer.”

As bad as the blood libel when Toyin Adepoju accuses me of being one of those who repose in mere indignation at “those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings “ as if I like blood, or eat blood or drink it as sacrificial wine...

Various postings on this forum have explained why certain miscreants are appealing to the one that they believe is the great Islamophobic president of the United States to rally to their cause and are delighted with the solemn promise made in his first inaugural address, to “unite the civilised world against radical Islamic terrorism which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth". This of course is music to the ears of Apostle Satani.

To me these injunctions are quite clear :

# Not to love the missionary--Deuteronomy 13:9

# Not to cease hating the missionary--Deuteronomy 13:9

# Not to save the missionary--Deuteronomy 13:9

# Not to say anything in his defence--Deuteronomy 13:9

# Not to refrain from incriminating him--Deuteronomy 13:9

Here endeth.

According to the TV meteorologist it's going to be eight degrees below zero in Stockholm, today, the 9th of February 2017. So you see, we are getting our punishment already, so that we don't have to fear ever going to join Pastor Lucifer inside or near the hell-fire…

Yours sin-cerely,

Cornelius

We Sweden

Olayinka Agbetuyi

unread,
Feb 9, 2017, 8:20:23 AM2/9/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Let us be clear: leaving the message to demonize the messenger does no one any good in this saga of Fulani herdsmen. We must actually congratulate Dr. Danesi for using her professional skills and insight to shine some light on this contentious issue.

If others of her professional persuasion sitting at the very apex of governance have had the courage of their convictions to speak truth to power and ask of their governmental colleagues hard headed, soul searching questions perhaps we would not be in the sorry state in which the nation finds itself on this vexatious issue.

And I shall be very blunt:

For once the nation has at its helms a personality highly versed in law.  For once a country has at its helms a personality who rode to power on the winds of born again Christianity (that is avowed truth tellers who supposedly descended from the traditions of Saint Peter who would suffer themselves to be thrown to the lions in the amphiteaters of Rome rather than compromise on the truth.

For once the teeming masses heeded the call of the Save Nigeria brigade who promised to rid the nation of corruption and violence in alliance with their monotheistic alter ego up North only to be treated once again to the equivocation that the dance this time around is yet deffered.

How do we explain that an acting president versed in law and armed with born again Christianity finds himself bereft of ideas of how to put into effect the process of bringing to book powerful officers of state and party functionaries implicated in corruption deals?

How do we explain the fact that London published a list that alleged that Nigeria's Senate President is among those involved in dubious property ownership and the whole federal government establishment seems to be at a loss as to do to bring their frontline statesmen to accountability? And to boot the Senate Presidency lacks the will to affirm or deny the allegations; the Senate President lacks the will to step aside until the matter is cleared up seeing that the nations publics offices are by no means hereditary positions or irremediable dictatorship.  

Events in Oyo state has indicated the pointer in the right direction in which executives step aside where the process leading to their appointments are in doubt only for the appropriate officer to be invited back to office when justice has taken its due course. Why cant a similar situation be applied at the federsl level?

I suspect starting from the OBJ administration party interests are being put above national interests.  The only reason why Atiku was not brought in for questioning during the Jefferson corruption affair in the United States can only be to sustain party unity at the expense of national integrity (Note that bringing Atiku in does not imply that he would be found guilt/not guilty but due process would have been seen to have taken place rather that the impunity with which it was substituted). In the event PDP and the OBJ administration established this bad precedent in civilian accountability for which the mute legal profession in Nigeria should hang its head in shame. 

 We have seen how this achilles heel of modern democracy has played itself out recently from the land where Nigeria borrowed the system.  An attorney General dared her principal choosing to stay on the side of the citizens, the Constitution and the rest is now history...

This PDP shenanigans set the stage for the advent of this administrarion with the qualifications of its current leadership which as current events indicate are mere window dressings for leaderships of two extant monotheisms to equally share power (rather than any attempt at godfearing accountability on behalf of the electorate).

That any sitting governor (El Rufai)  can admit that Fulani herdsmen committed murder in his state but had to be appeased to stop further killings is the greatest travesty of justice in modern Nigerian stateshood.  He ought to have been impeached on evidence supplied by himself of his ineffectiveness as governor.

In this age of the apotheotical manifestation of the communications God (Esu-Elegbara; I mean in the age of the ubiquity of the phone camercas being used to record crimes in progress and bring criminals to justice in the West we are being made to believe that in all the well reported cases none has been captured on camera to help expedite the convictions of the villanous herdsmen? Tell us another story!  And should the Nigeriam borders be held porous for any Fulani ilk across the West African sub region sinner or saint?

For the avoidance of doubt (for I shall not deal in equivocations) the buck now stops on the table acting President Osinbajo (thanks to the indisposition of the substantive office holder). 

Whereas the substantive office can seek cover in the verity he is a 'puruntu' in the knowledge of due process, such escape route is not available to the acting President in view of his religious and professional pedigree:

Acting President Osinbajo and the Nigerian Legislature, the time to act is NOW. (It is not enough to hear grievances of citizens 'loud & clear" Half way through the proceedings of any dispensation is enough time to gauge its effectiveness.







Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 9, 2017, 8:23:28 AM2/9/17
to usaafricadialogue
Not true-

'if we are to believe the Toyin Adepojus on this matter, then more or less, without exception, all Fulani herdsmen are criminals and wanton murderers'
Cornelius
 
It is vital to address this scourge without trying to demonize those who insist on this addressing in the face of efforts to whitewash the reality.

toyin













On 9 February 2017 at 12:10, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
The Fulani herdsmen terrorists and their enablers in various sectors of the Muslim North have severally publicly justified the massacres they have carried out, and have not faced any prosecution, yet Kadiri is able to roll out dead arguments pretending ignorance of this unfolding reality.

May those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.

toyin


To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 9, 2017, 11:24:43 AM2/9/17
to usaafricadialogue
Beautiful-

'In this age of the apotheotical manifestation of the [ Yoruba Orisa cosmology]  communications God, Esu-Elegbara-the age of the ubiquity of phone cameras being used to record crimes in progress and bring criminals to justice in the West...'

Olayinka Agbetuyi [ modified by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]





To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 9, 2017, 8:48:15 PM2/9/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Toyin,

Live and let live is such a simple philosophy. Who am I or you or he or she to take someone else's life? What for?

You had probably not yet arrived on planet earth when Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone gained independence/ freedom, but I remember how starry-eyed some of us were at the time. Aunty Nelly Jeffrey-Coker and Charlotte visited me in the summer of 1960 on their way home to Nigeria when their ship MV Apapa or was it the one I boarded at Liverpool with stepfather the ten-day journey a few years earlier the MV Aureol docked in Freetown briefly, on the their way to Nigeria and Independence. To my chagrin Charlotte who I had been dreaming about was taller than me then…

Much much later on it was to be

“Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended” (The Chimes of Freedom)

Personally, and as an individual, so far, I have never been oppressed or experienced oppression, simply because I have not, will not and would not permit myself to be oppressed, at least not willing or some kind of shuffering and shmiling. Nor should freedom be equated with the kind of privileges some people experience as a result of kissing authority's big black ass or being granted immunity by being close to such sources of “power “ so that they can commit one atrocity after the other with impunity. And that's why I don't like being close to authority and of course at all costs to avoid anything like nepotism – refuse all “favours” - could be a governor, a governor-general, chief justice, chancellor , vice chancellor of this and that, commissioner of police, minster of such and such, in charge of the local nuclear bomb, or like my friend “owner of hollywood”, chief rabbi of the universe and diaspora, a london big mafia billionaire, proprietor of fort knox, secretary-general of the world government, - although, when it comes to The Almighty – well a few decades ago I meditated long and deeply on an essay I think it was published by the theology department of Durham University, an essay entitled “Yours to command “ and at some point in time my sceptical son asked me, “And dad, if you get a command from the Almighty – just like Abraham got, to sacrifice his son Isaac?” - of course his main concern and worry being the holy matter of saving one's own skin, in this case, his – and the answer to that is that in the historic episode known as the akedah the Almighty showed for once and for all that He does not believe in or require any human sacrifice – although one is faced with a similar dilemma with regard to Kiddush Hashem – with your throat next to the edge of very sharp knife of e.g. Radical Islam asking you, what is the name of your God, answer me, is it Allah or is it something else?

But what is personal freedom if all of us are not free?

As far as freedom is concerned, I hope that we – you , she, he understands that we are on the same side.

Freedom House has put out its latest world ranking index by country Freedom in the world, 2016

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 1:27:40 AM2/10/17
to usaafricadialogue
God help us, Cornelius.

Can you give us a link to the essay published by the theology dept at Durham?

toyin

To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 6:13:33 AM2/10/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Good morning Sir!

I don't know if you're writing from Lagos or Cambridgeshire

Indeed, Dear Toyin, God help us all.

Heaven help us all

Another good song: Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away

Another good deed: Don't forget to pray for President Buhari (I just did, sacred duty ) as his dear sister requested

I used to spend a lot of time at the Royal Library (of which one of my Better Half's first cousins was the head) - smile - as far back as the time when Mohammad Fazlhashemi was also a constant visitor, getting acquainted with al-Ghazali. As Stephen Stills sang, “I play the music for the music you see, for money I do publicity”… Last night I visited the facebook page of Manukau Pépé Felly, one of the Congo's great guitarists and was happy to find this about another great son of Africa :

A Tribute to Fela Kuti &His shining Fearlessness Musée des Confluences Lyon le 11 février à 20h30

(Before Mr. Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I also knew where the Nobel Library was in Gamla Stan. I should like to add that one of the benefits of living in Sweden, dear Sweden, free Sweden who scores 100% (points) in the Freedom House ranking of Freedom (Nigeria scored 45 and Sierra Leone, 65) one of the benefits has been lots of time to pursue whatever aesthetic / cultural/ artistic interests one may have; but of what use is all that to people still living in chains, mentally and physically?

Anyway, avec plaisir, here's the answer to your request :

Kenneth Cragg : Yours to command: Contemporary theology and contemporary ethics in Islam

which was featured in a journal “ The Muslim World”

You could check for details, date etc. of its publication: The Muslim World ( Journal, Chapel Hill

Message has been deleted

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 7:55:09 AM2/10/17
to usaafricadialogue, Cornelius Hamelberg
Thanks for the link, Cornelius.

toyin

On 10 February 2017 at 09:41, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

Good morning Sir!

I don't know if you're writing from Lagos or Cambridgeshire

Indeed, Dear Toyin, God help us all.

Heaven help us all

Another good song: Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away

Another good deed: Don't forget to pray for President Buhari (I just did, sacred duty ) as his dear sister requested

I used to spend a lot of time at the Royal Library (of which one of my Better Half's first cousins was the head) - smile - as far back as the time when Mohammad Fazlhashemi was also a constant visitor, getting acquainted with al-Ghazali. As Stephen Stills sang, “I play the music for the music you see, for money I do publicity”… Last night I visited the facebook page of Manukau Pépé Felly, one of the Congo's great guitarists and was happy to find this about another great son of Africa :

A Tribute to Fela Kuti &His shining Fearlessness Musée des Confluences Lyon le 11 février à 20h30

(Before Mr. Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I also knew where the Nobel Library was in Gamla Stan. I should like to add that one of the benefits of living in Sweden, dear Sweden, free Sweden who scores 100% (points) in the Freedom House ranking of Freedom (Nigeria scored 45 and Sierra Leone, 65) one of the benefits has been lots of time to pursue whatever aesthetic / cultural/ artistic interests one may have; but of what use is all that to people still living in chains, mentally and physically?

Anyway, avec plaisir, here's the answer to your request :

Kenneth Cragg : Yours to command: Contemporary theology and contemporary ethics in Islam

which was featured in a journal “ The Muslim World”

You could check for details, date etc. of its publication: The Muslim World ( Journal, Chapel Hill

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 5:12:25 PM2/10/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Cornelius Hamelberg wrote : In these links, the allegations against Fulani Herdsmen are very serious. He who feels it knows.


I have spent the whole night to peruse the entire links and I am disappointed to observe that you have read the title of the links and not their contents. Otherwise, you would have discovered that there was no single evidence in the texts to support any of the title in the links. In order to avoid repetition, I will only discuss some of your links. 


In http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/02/fulani-herdsmen-destroy-farms-rape-our-wives/ the newly elected President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, was quoted as having said among other things, "The peaceful co-existence between previously peace-loving Fulani herdsmen, who herded their cattle with long canes and our local farmers has been replaced by an era of AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen who kill, maim, rape our people and destroy our farms." This statement was made on February 6, 2017. I checked throughout the whole statements of Chief Nnia Nwodo to find out when and where did AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen kill, maim, rape our (Igbo) people and destroy our (Igbo) farms, but could not find any. I noticed that in the Vanguard headline, the Ohaneze's statement of, rape our people was substituted with rape our wives. The newly appointed Pesident-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, needed to say something to live up to the reputation of the defender of Igbo people's interest and he found it convenient to scape-goat Fulani herdsmen. However, he never said, rape our wives or women as you preferred to write.



In its editorial, http://punchng.com/treating-violent-fulani-herdsmen-as-terrorists, the following, among others, was written, "In their latest atrocity, hundreds of cattle herders descended on Ukpabi Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State last week, leaving a bloody trail. In all, the herdsmen killed 46 people, injuring several others. They burnt down houses and vehicles in the village. Writing on the same event we find in http://africansuntimes.com/2016/05/fulani-herdsmen-the-fourth-most-deadliest-terrorist-group-in-the-world, the following: The Fulani herdsmen attacked at 6.00am just after morning prayers in Nimbo, an idyllic village in southeast Nigeria where farmers grow yams and pawpaws. At first the villagers thought it was a joke. The nomadic cattle rearers , who have clashed with farmers over grazing rights in central Nigeria for decades, had never come this far south. But then they saw 20 young men descend from the hills and emerge from the palm tree forest, shooting AK-47 assault rifles in the air and waving machetes. 'We started hearing the sound of gunshots everywhere. They shot so many people,' Kingsley Oneyebuchie, a 31 year-old civil servant, told AFP. At least, 10 people are thought to have been killed and scores of others injured." The big credibility questions, if we compare Punch Nigeria and African Sun Times narrations of what happened in Nimbo village, are : Did hundreds of cattle herders attack Nimbo village or were they twenty?; Did the herdsmen kill 46 people or at least 10?; how could the attackers be identified as herdsmen when they were not accompanied by their cows/cattle?; and what of if the attackers were ordinary criminals who were there to harvest the crops of the villagers?


As Chief Nnia Nwodo observed, Fulani herdsmen no longer carry long canes to lead their herds but AK-47 rifles to ward off machineguns armed cattle rustlers which did not exist before. If plunderers of our national treasury can build high fences around their mansions and employ armed guards to protect them against robbers and kidnappers, why should it be wrong for a toiling Fulani herdsman to protect himself and his cattle with a machine gun against armed cattle thieves? Ironically, in one of the links forwarded by Cornelius, http://www.authorityngr.com/2016/03/the-rise-of-fulani-militants-as-world-4th-terror (3rd March 2016) the article was accompanied with a photograph of a herdsman hanging an AK-47 rifle on his shoulder in front of his herds in the bush. The pipe of the rifle pointed backward and not to the front which indicated that he was not expecting  combat with anybody, human or mammal. Psychologically, readers are wrongly impressed to believe that the rifle carrying herdsman is a terrorist or a Fulani militant, of which none is correct. Further in the link, http:// www.easternradio.com.ng/2016/01/opinion-fulani-herdsmen-named-fourth-deadliest-terror-group-in-the-world, photographs of two herdsmen grazing their cows in the bush, not in a farmland, were displayed without any weapon in sight. What was it that qualified the two Fulani herdsmen in the picture as terrorists? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/glc accompanied its headline: Nigerian Fulani militants named as 4th deadliest terror group in the world with the picture of militarily clothed armed men in a military truck. None of the persons in the truck was identified as a Fulani herdsman and I strongly suspect that the pictured vehicle and persons therein were from Islamic militia invasion of Mali during the crisis there. Citing Global Terror Index, www.independent.co.uk. wrote: The fourth deadliest known terrorist group has been named as the Fulani militant group operating in Nigeria and parts of the Central African Republic.

In 2013, the Fulani killed around 80 people in total - but by 2014 the group had killed 1, 229.

Operating mainly in the middle belt of Nigeria, opposed to the North which is dominated by Boko Haram, the group recorded 847 deaths last year across five states and has also been known to stage attacks in Central African Republic. As much as 92 per cent of their attacks target private citizens reflecting the group's primary concern over the ownership of farmland.

For non-Nigerians, it is worthy to know that middle belt used to be part of Northern Region of Nigeria and in the present six geo-political zone, middle belt is contained in the  North Central Zone. In fact, North as a whole has never at anytime been dominated by Boko Haram even though it was somehow strong in the Northeast until recently. And what is this Global Terrorism Index that has arrogated to itself the right to name Fulani herdsmen terrorists? The GTI is a derivative of the Institute For Economics And Peace based in Sydney, Australia. There is nothing wrong in trying to find relations/connections between economic injustice/justice, peace and wars globally. It is self-explanatory that where there is economic injustice, there can be no peace. However, the Institute For Economics and Peace  would appear to be concerned mostly with the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism for which it has created Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The greatest terrorists on earth, as far as Africa is concerned, are those who help to keep/hide developmental funds stolen from Africa. On 13 November 2007, Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) spoke at a three-day national seminar organised in Abuja by Nuhu Ribabu's led EFCC. He told his audience that between 1960 when Nigeria became independent and 1999 when democracy was restored, a staggering sum of $400 billion was stolen and stashed away in foreign countries by a generation of corrupt Nigerian rulers. He explained, "If you were to put $400 billion bills in a row, you would make a path from here to the moon and back, not once but, 75 times. Think of how different Nigeria would have looked today (if that money had been used to develop the country)," Maria Costa lamented. Since 2015, Nigerians have been informed that between 1999 and 2015, not less than 600 billion dollars have been stolen and stashed away in those countries that usually describe us as underdeveloped and poor. As a result of economic terrorism aided and abated by the developed countries that keep developmental funds stolen from Nigeria, Nigerians are dying in thousands daily because of lack of standard hospitals, bad roads, lack of potable water and many other things that would make life comfortable to live. In this 21st century and with the quality of education claimed by our officials, no Nigerian, whether Fulani or not should engage in nomadic animal husbandry. Without Fulani herdsmen, perhaps, Nigeria would have been a market for the export of Australian beef as if it is not disgraceful enough to be the Chairman of Fuel Importing Countries despite the fact that we are Crude Oil Exporter.


We should be honest and truthful all the time in our dealings with one another. The links posted by Cornelius are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen. On October 1, 2010, there was a bomb blast in Abuja near the Eagle Square. President Jonathan rushed later to the Press to tell the world that the bomb blast that killed eight people was  handiwork of Northerners that did not want him to contest for the 2011 Presidential election on the platform of PDP. At the end, it turned out that the car bomb was detonated by MEND and Okah brothers from Rivers State were behind the dastardly act. While Okah senior was jailed for the crime in South Africa his junior brother's trial is yet to be concluded in Nigeria till today. However, in South Africa, Okah swore to an affidavit that the car bomb was planned in connivance with Jonathan who had wanted to use it to blackmail Northerners who were opposed to his PDP Presidential  candidature in 2011. That is why we should be very careful not to blame Fulani herdsmen when criminals exploit darkness of the night to harvest the crops of the farmers in Nimbo.

S.Kadiri





 




Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 9 februari 2017 02:35
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 10:32:08 PM2/10/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri :

Are you trying to be mischievous?

Re- "However, he never said, rape our wives or women as you preferred to write"

It says so here : Ohaneze : Fulani herdsmen rape our women and wives

Re- "The links posted by Cornelius are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen. "

Although you are accusing the links and not me personally, I should like to be very clear, that mine are not deliberate or wanton acts of misinformation. Unfortunately, since you and I were not in Nigeria or in a position to witness the various atrocities that have been alleged or wrongly reported, as di Buckingham Palace buk pipul ehn di Pastor Lucifer dem sey, no shmoke without fire, so we can only partially rely on these sometimes unreliable links or completely reliable eyewitness testimonies who don't add pepper and salt to their versions...

Through your Sherlock Holmes type of deductive reasoning you have demonstrated significant inconsistencies relating to the death toll figures in the respective reports you have chosen to illustrate what you suggest "are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen", thereby leaving both the partial and the impartial reader uncertain as to exactly which reports are accurate / honest/ believable/ truthful and can be trusted. As a result we must suspend our reservations that the reports/ links are not "based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen." But don't forget that even one death is a death too many...

At the same time, it's not too difficult to discern a certain propaganda element to some of the reports that are eager to identify the Fulani Herdsmen as primarily being Muslim - and that whatever blood shed as Islamic and terroristic - those two words Islam and terror so regularly conjugated and so closely associated by the media as being intertwined, of course with enough repetition those two words Islamic and terroristic are calculated to rhyme psychologically in the popular imagination to the extent that you don't hear the one (Islam) without expecting the other one (terror) - an explosion of gun , bomb, suicide-bomber, immediately after or at least close by or soon to follow. It is in the Islamophobic media's interest to whip up a frenzy by conflating the Fulani Herdsmen’s dilemma ( a paucity of grazing grounds and a search for water for their livestock during their long, several hundred kilometres/ miles trek from the North to the abattoirs and meat markets in the hungry South) to conflate their peaceful struggle with those who deny their cattle grazing privileges/ pasture and water which you say they used to pay for in the past - and now the media say that that the are the world's fourth greatest terrorists.

But what do you have to say about Fulani Herdsmen activities as reported by Human Rights Watch - a fairly reputable organisation : Fulani Herdsmen

I'm waiting for your answer: Same old song

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 10:32:08 PM2/10/17
to usaafricadialogue
Kadiri,

In the face of Fulani herdsmen's publicly stated justification  of such massacres as at Agatu,are  your frenzied efforts at creating a version of truth from another dimension not outdated?

Even the govt on whose behalf you so desperately try to distort reality has never denied these atrocities as committed by Fulani herdsmen but tries to use one measure after another that rapes the collective wealth of the Nigerian people as its own way of helping the murderers further their aims- the failed grazing routes bill, the failed effort to allocate land across the nation to the terrorists  in the name of grazing ranches and the latest being the ridiculous effort to use the Nigerian army as cattle herders.

It is time to withdraw from the inhumane positions you tend to assume in support of a failing govt.

toyin


On 10 February 2017 at 22:36, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Cornelius Hamelberg wrote : In these links, the allegations against Fulani Herdsmen are very serious. He who feels it knows.


I have spent the whole night to peruse the entire links and I am disappointed to observe that you have read the title of the links and not their contents. Otherwise, you would have discovered that there was no single evidence in the texts to support any of the title in the links. In order to avoid repetition, I will only discuss some of your links. 


In http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/02/fulani-herdsmen-destroy-farms-rape-our-wives/ the newly elected President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, was quoted as having said among other things, "The peaceful co-existence between previously peace-loving Fulani herdsmen, who herded their cattle with long canes and our local farmers has been replaced by an era of AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen who kill, maim, rape our people and destroy our farms." This statement was made on February 6, 2017. I checked throughout the whole statements of Chief Nnia Nwodo to find out when and where did AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen kill, maim, rape our (Igbo) people and destroy our (Igbo) farms, but could not find any. I noticed that in the Vanguard headline, the Ohaneze's statement of, rape our people was substituted with rape our wives. The newly appointed Pesident-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, needed to say something to live up to the reputation of the defender of Igbo people's interest and he found it convenient to scape-goat Fulani herdsmen. However, he never said, rape our wives or women as you preferred to write.



In its editorial, http://punchng.com/treating-violent-fulani-herdsmen-as-terrorists, the following, among others, was written, "In their latest atrocity, hundreds of cattle herders descended on Ukpabi Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State last week, leaving a bloody trail. In all, the herdsmen killed 46 people, injuring several others. They burnt down houses and vehicles in the village. Writing on the same event we find in http://africansuntimes.com/2016/05/fulani-herdsmen-the-fourth-most-deadliest-terrorist-group-in-the-world, the following: The Fulani herdsmen attacked at 6.00am just after morning prayers in Nimbo, an idyllic village in southeast Nigeria where farmers grow yams and pawpaws. At first the villagers thought it was a joke. The nomadic cattle rearers , who have clashed with farmers over grazing rights in central Nigeria for decades, had never come this far south. But then they saw 20 young men descend from the hills and emerge from the palm tree forest, shooting AK-47 assault rifles in the air and waving machetes. 'We started hearing the sound of gunshots everywhere. They shot so many people,' Kingsley Oneyebuchie, a 31 year-old civil servant, told AFP. At least, 10 people are thought to have been killed and scores of others injured." The big credibility questions, if we compare Punch Nigeria and African Sun Times narrations of what happened in Nimbo village, are : Did hundreds of cattle herders attack Nimbo village or were they twenty?; Did the herdsmen kill 46 people or at least 10?; how could the attackers be identified as herdsmen when they were not accompanied by their cows/cattle?; and what of if the attackers were ordinary criminals who were there to harvest the crops of the villagers?


As Chief Nnia Nwodo observed, Fulani herdsmen no longer carry long canes to lead their herds but AK-47 rifles to ward off machineguns armed cattle rustlers which did not exist before. If plunderers of our national treasury can build high fences around their mansions and employ armed guards to protect them against robbers and kidnappers, why should it be wrong for a toiling Fulani herdsman to protect himself and his cattle with a machine gun against armed cattle thieves? Ironically, in one of the links forwarded by Cornelius, http://www.authorityngr.com/2016/03/the-rise-of-fulani-militants-as-world-4th-terror (3rd March 2016) the article was accompanied with a photograph of a herdsman hanging an AK-47 rifle on his shoulder in front of his herds in the bush. The pipe of the rifle pointed backward and not to the front which indicated that he was not expecting  combat with anybody, human or mammal. Psychologically, readers are wrongly impressed to believe that the rifle carrying herdsman is a terrorist or a Fulani militant, of which none is correct. Further in the link, http:// www.easternradio.com.ng/2016/01/opinion-fulani-herdsmen-named-fourth-deadliest-terror-group-in-the-world, photographs of two herdsmen grazing their cows in the bush, not in a farmland, were displayed without any weapon in sight. What was it that qualified the two Fulani herdsmen in the picture as terrorists? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/glc accompanied its headline: Nigerian Fulani militants named as 4th deadliest terror group in the world with the picture of militarily clothed armed men in a military truck. None of the persons in the truck was identified as a Fulani herdsman and I strongly suspect that the pictured vehicle and persons therein were from Islamic militia invasion of Mali during the crisis there. Citing Global Terror Index, www.independent.co.uk. wrote: The fourth deadliest known terrorist group has been named as the Fulani militant group operating in Nigeria and parts of the Central African Republic.

In 2013, the Fulani killed around 80 people in total - but by 2014 the group had killed 1, 229.

Operating mainly in the middle belt of Nigeria, opposed to the North which is dominated by Boko Haram, the group recorded 847 deaths last year across five states and has also been known to stage attacks in Central African Republic. As much as 92 per cent of their attacks target private citizens reflecting the group's primary concern over the ownership of farmland.

For non-Nigerians, it is worthy to know that middle belt used to be part of Northern Region of Nigeria and in the present six geo-political zone, middle belt is contained in the  North Central Zone. In fact, North as a whole has never at anytime been dominated by Boko Haram even though it was somehow strong in the Northeast until recently. And what is this Global Terrorism Index that has arrogated to itself the right to name Fulani herdsmen terrorists? The GTI is a derivative of the Institute For Economics And Peace based in Sydney, Australia. There is nothing wrong in trying to find relations/connections between economic injustice/justice, peace and wars globally. It is self-explanatory that where there is economic injustice, there can be no peace. However, the Institute For Economics and Peace  would appear to be concerned mostly with the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism for which it has created Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The greatest terrorists on earth, as far as Africa is concerned, are those who help to keep/hide developmental funds stolen from Africa. On 13 November 2007, Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) spoke at a three-day national seminar organised in Abuja by Nuhu Ribabu's led EFCC. He told his audience that between 1960 when Nigeria became independent and 1999 when democracy was restored, a staggering sum of $400 billion was stolen and stashed away in foreign countries by a generation of corrupt Nigerian rulers. He explained, "If you were to put $400 billion bills in a row, you would make a path from here to the moon and back, not once but, 75 times. Think of how different Nigeria would have looked today (if that money had been used to develop the country)," Maria Costa lamented. Since 2015, Nigerians have been informed that between 1999 and 2015, not less than 600 billion dollars have been stolen and stashed away in those countries that usually describe us as underdeveloped and poor. As a result of economic terrorism aided and abated by the developed countries that keep developmental funds stolen from Nigeria, Nigerians are dying in thousands daily because of lack of standard hospitals, bad roads, lack of potable water and many other things that would make life comfortable to live. In this 21st century and with the quality of education claimed by our officials, no Nigerian, whether Fulani or not should engage in nomadic animal husbandry. Without Fulani herdsmen, perhaps, Nigeria would have been a market for the export of Australian beef as if it is not disgraceful enough to be the Chairman of Fuel Importing Countries despite the fact that we are Crude Oil Exporter.


We should be honest and truthful all the time in our dealings with one another. The links posted by Cornelius are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen. On October 1, 2010, there was a bomb blast in Abuja near the Eagle Square. President Jonathan rushed later to the Press to tell the world that the bomb blast that killed eight people was  handiwork of Northerners that did not want him to contest for the 2011 Presidential election on the platform of PDP. At the end, it turned out that the car bomb was detonated by MEND and Okah brothers from Rivers State were behind the dastardly act. While Okah senior was jailed for the crime in South Africa his junior brother's trial is yet to be concluded in Nigeria till today. However, in South Africa, Okah swore to an affidavit that the car bomb was planned in connivance with Jonathan who had wanted to use it to blackmail Northerners who were opposed to his PDP Presidential  candidature in 2011. That is why we should be very careful not to blame Fulani herdsmen when criminals exploit darkness of the night to harvest the crops of the farmers in Nimbo.

S.Kadiri





 



To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 10, 2017, 10:32:09 PM2/10/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
updated:


Ogbeni Kadiri :

Are you trying to be mischievous?

Re- "However, he never said, rape our wives or women as you preferred to write"

It says so here : Ohaneze : Fulani herdsmen rape our women and wives

Re- "The links posted by Cornelius are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen. "

Although you are accusing the links and not me personally, I should like to be very clear, that mine are not deliberate or wanton acts of misinformation. Unfortunately, since you and I were not in Nigeria or in a position to witness the various atrocities that have been alleged or wrongly reported, as di Buckingham Palace buk pipul ehn di Pastor Lucifer dem sey, no shmoke without fire, so we can only partially rely on these sometimes unreliable links or completely reliable eyewitness testimonies which don't add pepper and salt to their versions...

Through your Sherlock Holmes type of deductive reasoning you have demonstrated significant inconsistencies relating to the death toll figures in the respective reports you have chosen to illustrate what you suggest "are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen", thereby leaving both the partial and the impartial reader uncertain as to exactly which reports are accurate / honest/ believable/ truthful and can be trusted. As a result we must suspend our reservations that the reports/ links are not "based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen." But don't forget that even one death is a death too many...

At the same time, it's not too difficult to discern a certain propaganda element to some of the reports that are eager to identify the Fulani Herdsmen as primarily being Muslim - and whatever blood shed as Islamic and terroristic - those two words Islam and terror so regularly conjugated and so closely associated by the media as being intertwined, of course with enough repetition those two words Islamic and terroristic are calculated to rhyme psychologically in the popular imagination to the extent that you don't hear the one (Islam) without expecting the other one (terror) - an explosion of gun , bomb, suicide-bomber, immediately after or at least close by or soon to follow. It is in the Islamophobic media's interest to whip up a frenzy by conflating the Fulani Herdsmen’s dilemma ( a scarcity of grazing grounds and a search for water for their livestock during their long, several hundred kilometres/ miles trek from the North to the abattoirs and meat markets in the hungry South) to conflate their peaceful struggle with those who deny their cattle grazing privileges/ pasture and water which you say they used to pay for in the past - and now the media says that the Fulani herdsmen are the world's fourth greatest terrorists.

But what do you have to say about Fulani Herdsmen activities as reported by Human Rights Watch - a fairly reputable organisation : Fulani Herdsmen

I'm waiting for your answer: Same old song







On Friday, 10 February 2017 23:12:25 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 11, 2017, 11:01:18 AM2/11/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri,

I know that you are right nearly all of the time.I admit this.

Today, your Honest John words of admonition have come back and are here to bite you :

"We should be honest and truthful all the time in our dealings with one another."

Dylan's words: "But to live outside the law, you must be honest"

So, here are some reports waiting for your acerbic wit :

Amnesty International : Nigeria

Amnesty International Nigeria : Fulani Herdsmen

It seems to me that the title of Achebe's book, three words pinched from Yeats' The Second Coming (not JJ Rawlings' or Buhari's ) are now more than ever pertinent to Nigeria and you must admit whilst leaving any blame on Buhari and the best of his intentions out of it, that the rule of law - including Sharia law and the resultant law and order which is your favourite mantra is largely in abeyance, to the extent that in so many parts of the country people are submitting to lawlessness and disorder.

There's only one word for it : ungovernable !

In spite of Buhari's draconian military and police it's more of

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity."

No doubt, you have perfect explanations for the disorder in Yemen, Libya, Syria and on a much lesser scale Nigeria where - God help us all -that it never gets to that - what is needed is a remedy.

Surely some revelation is at hand...



On Friday, 10 February 2017 23:12:25 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 11, 2017, 4:35:13 PM2/11/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Adepoju, 


In 2013, Goodluck Ebelechukwu Azikiwe Jonathan was President of Nigeria and the President of the Senate was David Mark from Benue State of which Agatu belongs to his senatorial district. Exactly on the 20th of April 2013, there was dispute between resident Fulani and indigenes of Agatu. The resident Fulani had lived in Agatu for many generations and had no other homeland in Nigeria but Agatu. The dispute led to the killing of some prominent leaders of Fulani community in Agatu but the police and the PDP led state government of Gabriel Suswam simply failed to act to resolve the dispute. It was reported that the Sultan of Sokoto visited Benue State three times to mediate peace but his efforts were rebuffed by Governor Suswam and the Senate President, David Mark. My point here is that Agatu crisis is a political one and has nothing to do with herdsmen whether Fulani or not. The onus is, therefore, on you to provide me with evidence where Fulani herdsmen publicly admitted massacres in Agatu or where Fulani herdsmen are caught in camera, in this age of mobile phone equipped camera, massacring people, burning houses, destroying farms and raping women.


Concerning grazing ground, it is absurd that Fulani herdsmen should be allowed to roam around the country in search of grazing ground to feed and breed their cattle. It is a good example of how bad we are in organising anything in Nigeria. If people like you succeed in humiliating Fulani herdsmen out of existence in Nigeria, when next you celebrate your birth day, your guests shall be served plastic beefs and phlegm as vanilla ice cream. Please, never complain then as you now do with plastic rice. 

S.Kadiri 
 




Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 10 februari 2017 23:55
Till: usaafricadialogue

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 11, 2017, 4:35:13 PM2/11/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Professor Maradona is out dribbling himself by asking me : Are you being mischievous? That hypocritical question is premised on my earlier assertion rightly quoted thus, "However, he never said, rape our wives or women as you preferred to write." In order to prove my assertion wrong, the Maradonic professor dribbled thus, "It says so here: Ohaneze: Fulani herdsmen rape our women and wives." The pronoun 'he' that followed the word 'however' in the quoted assertion of mine referred actually to the President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, who according to Vanguard Nigeria online of 6 February 2017, was quoted as having said, "The peaceful co-existence between previously peace-loving Fulani herdsmen, who herded their cattle with long canes and our local farmers has been replaced by an era of AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen who kill, maim, rape our people and destroy our farms." In the entire Vanguard article in question, of which Anayo Okoli, Peter Okutu & Ugochukwu Alaribe were authors, there never was a place where the Ohaneze said, rape our wives and women, but rape our people. A reasonable and not an emotional reader ought to discover that it was Vanguard Nigeria that had deliberately distorted the expression, rape our people, to rape our wives and women. On reading, rape our wives and women, even an ice-cold gentleman Cornelius boiled up to 100 degrees Celsius. Thus, in his 9th February 2017 post he wrote and queried, "And raping our women. Is that not adding insult to injury?" One can see how easy it is to incite someone to hate the supposedly rapist-Fulani herdsmen that never happened. We don't need to be in Nigeria to discern the truth about Fulani herdsmen, we only need to read with logical mind.

S.Kadiri



 




Skickat: den 11 februari 2017 01:51

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 11, 2017, 6:20:57 PM2/11/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Thank you for the links but I will rather have loved to read Amnesty International Reports on weapons and ammunition manufacturers and where do they Export them to. Without weapons and ammunition producers and sellers, there can be no war(s). How can those who plucked out our eyes in the night, come up in the morning to assert that we were born blind?

S.Kadiri 
 




Skickat: den 11 februari 2017 15:44

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 11, 2017, 8:16:09 PM2/11/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Sometimes (not always) Ogbeni Kadiri,

a stickler for detail and extreme logical correctness can be quite exasperating with his pedantry.

My sensitive reading of the Ohanaeze saying that the Militant Fulani herdsmen " rape our people" translates into rape our girls and women, unless Ogbeni Kadiri thinks that the Fulani herdsmen are a bunch of horny homosexuals...

If it is common knowledge and nothing to be proud of, how do we know that the Ohanaeze did not tell the Vanguard reporter that Fulani militants had raped "wives and women"- enough reason for him to flash that news in his sensational headlines? I don't think that the Vanguard reporter would dare to misquote the Ohanaeze or report something that the Ohanaeze had not said in so many words, maybe out of diplomatic politeness or embarrassment. (You know of course that when the Red Army ( Soviet troops) entered Berlin at the end of the Second World War, they raped all the German women others they invited to sex in exchange for cigarettes. Pedantically speaking of course maybe not all, some must have been hiding in the cellars...

What do you have to say about this sad piece of news ( something not to be shouted from the tree tops...

Related Article:</

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 11, 2017, 8:53:53 PM2/11/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

"Why can't we roam this open country? (open country)
Oh, why can't we be what we wanna be?
We want to be free. " (Bob Marley : Rebel Music )

Scouring the net Cornelius Ignoramus just found out that there's a difference between Fulani herdsmen and Fulani militants - although it would seem that there's a degree of overlap in these categorisation e.g. every time a herdsman pulls the trigger (for whatever reason) he becomes a militant ...

The cause of the Agatu massacres as a result of ethnic conflict is heart-rending brining into focus as it does, citizenship rights within the greater Federal Republic of Nigeria

- " The resident Fulani had lived in Agatu for many generations and had no other homeland in Nigeria but Agatu. The dispute led to the killing of some prominent leaders of Fulani community in Agatu but the police and the PDP led state government of Gabriel Suswam simply failed to act to resolve the dispute. It was reported that the Sultan of Sokoto visited Benue State three times to mediate peace but his efforts were rebuffed by Governor Suswam and the Senate President, David Mark. My point here is that Agatu crisis is a political one and has nothing to do with herdsmen whether Fulani or not." ( S. Kadiri)

One would have thought that according to the Nigerian Constitution a Nigerian citizen is free to live or settle down anywhere in Nigeria. (In Sierra Leone you ( a citizen can own land anywhere in the Western area - but then again, the Western area was so liberal that Lucien Genet a Frenchman was mayor of Freetown just before independence

I am forever sympathetic to the cause of the settler (in my birth certificate it says distinctly Father : Theodore Joseph Hamelberg : "British West Indian" - and I still remember the incident of my grandfather Louis Hamelberg who had built his house on Fort Street at the highest point in the inner city of Freetown - the land had been leased and when the period of the lease expired the owner of the land requested that he kindly remove his house from the land or else I know not what. They probably settled the matter out of court because that's where my Better Half and I visited him in 1969 - I may be wrong , in which case I will be soon corrected but at that time his tenant was Donald Smythe Macaulay or some other Macauley...

Since Agatu is is Benue state we will probably hear the last word on the matter from Professor Moses Ochonu when he surely gets round to defending his home turf and his own subject area from unnecessary encroachments.

Similar internecine blood-letting in Plateau state a few years ago - a struggle between foundational indigenes and nomadic cum pastoral Fulani settlers...

Taking up citizenship rights in the larger West Africa:

Africa’s Messy Post-Colonial Era Resonates Today





On Saturday, 11 February 2017 22:35:13 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:
Message has been deleted

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 12, 2017, 6:56:51 AM2/12/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Just for the record although for some strange reason he is not listed here

I remember Lucien Genet well, almost as well as I remember Mr. I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, by sight...


https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Lucien+Genet+%28Sierra+Leone


https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Lucien+Genet+(+mayor+of+Freetown


The other Macauley could only be Judge Donald Macauley (whose mother is nee Hamelberg


____________________________________________________________________________

The Agatu massacre revisited in this forum

Agatu Massacre by Fulani Herdsmen Terrorists : Post Massacre Eye Witness Report.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/USAAfricaDialogue/Agatu$20Massacre$20by$20Fulani$20Herdsmen$20Terrorists$20$3A$20Post$20Massacre$20Eye$20Witness$20Report%7Csort:relevance/usaafricadialogue/wIyh5riLuIQ/ufP79P4AKAAJ

Made this simple enquiry ( have now been through page 1:

Toyin Falola on the Fulani Herdsmen

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Toyin+Falola+on+the+Fulani+Herdsmen&start=0

<div style="margin:0px;text-align:center;color:rgb(0,0,0)

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 12, 2017, 3:36:39 PM2/12/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Once again, I have to bother you with my pedantry - display of useless knowledge or minute observance of petty rules or details - which at present had its origin on your posted link : http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/02/fulani-herdsmen-destroy-farms-rape-our-wives-ohanaeze. The said report, from Abakaliki, in the Vanguard Nigeria was written by Anayo Okoli, Peter Okutu & Ugochukwu Alaribe. Reporting in their own words they wrote: The President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, has said the prevailing activities of the Fulani herdsmen had over the years led to the killing, maiming, raping of Igbo people and destruction of their farms. Thereafter, they quoted President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo verbatim, "The peaceful co-existence between previously peace-loving Fulani herdsmen, who herded their cattle with long canes and our local farmers has been replaced by an era of AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen who kill, maim, rape our people and destroy our farms. Not one of them is ever arrested for illegal possession of firearms. Even those arrested in Nimbo for mercilessly killing our people remain unprosecuted by the Northern dominated law enforcement agents." That was all that the President-General of Ohanaeze, Chief Nnia Nwodo, said. Contrary to the headline of Vanguard Nigeria, the reporters' forewords to the article and the verbatim quotation of the President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo did not contain the expression 'rape our wives.' The main headline that contained the misleading information, rape our wives, is not only sensational but inciting. Rape in whatever form is never a minor or petty (pedantry) thing. The effect of the rape in question caused you to write, "My sensitive reading of the Ohanaeze saying that the Militant Fulani herdsmen 'rape our people' translates into rape our girls and women, unless Ogbeni Kadiri thinks that the Fulani herdsmen are a bunch of horny homosexuals..." Your emotional reading led you to limit and confine, without valid reason, the meaning of rape to sexual intercourse by intimidation or force. But Nwodo's expression of rape of our people was only about the act of despoiling of Igbo communities economically and judicially. I do not think that Fulani herdsmen are a bunch of horny homosexuals as you insinuated, rather I find it unreasonable that a herdsman will abandon his cattle to invade a community in order to rape girls and women. As for the purported behaviour of the Red Army after capturing Berlin during the World War II, it is self-evident that if it were true that they raped German girls and women, they could not have performed that feat if they had  thousands of cows in their company to cater for. With that said, check this link, http://saharareporters.com/2016/05/04/we-dont-want-fulani-herdsmen-to-leave-our-land/

S.Kadiri

      

 




Skickat: den 12 februari 2017 02:07
--

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 13, 2017, 9:45:10 AM2/13/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri,

Let me also be pedantic. I crave your indulgence. Please be patient with me. When it comes to style , if I could, I would much prefer to dribble like Jay Jay Okocha than the Argentinian bull Diego Maradona.

I have been made to realise that this is not a time for more pedantry or bigotry or spitting fire, unnecessarily.

As Fela would say, "This is an African Court !"

The charges are serious : rape

Sahara Reporters: Fulani Herdsmen

He who feels it knows.

If it was - God forbid - my mother, daughter, sister or my dearly beloved wife that had been - God forbid - raped by some Fulani herdsmen over there in Nigeria, methinks that by now I would probably be crying out for their blood or at the very least seething to bring them all to Justice. Now all I can declare is empathy and understanding of the plight of my Igbo brothers, their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters in the danger zone - those that have been raped. Ideally I want to be my brothers' keeper and therefore refuse to go on prevaricating on this very serious matter.

You Ogbeni Kadiri want the whole world to believe that all the reports by the Nigerian military and Police, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the thousands of corpses of Nigerians killed by Fulani herdsmen and Fulani militants, their blood crying out from the earth and the thousands of victims who survived to tell their tale - you want us to believe that the reports by all those who have been badly injured and maimed and the reports from all those who have been raped by Fulani herdsmen/ militants "are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen."? Come again!

Once again we are back to a position akin to when the authorities were first intimated that the Chibok girls had been abducted by Boko Haram - Good Luck Joe was slow to react and in that regard we should not be like him or her - nor should we disbelieve that some of the girls eventually became women, albeit not by rape or mere conversion or forced marriage to their captors.

You will probably concede that from your vantage but less than omniscient point of view the innocent Fulani herdsmen rampage through other peoples' farmlands armed with their deadly AK-47s only for the peaceful protection of their cows and that although they have killed thousands of Nigerians as variously reported - yet you are sure that - yes - they have murdered and are capable of murder but they have not raped anybody's wives or women or at least that the Ohanaeze didn't say that in so many words...

You " find it unreasonable that a herdsman will abandon his cattle to invade a community in order to rape girls and women." But you don't find it equally unreasonable that a herdsman kills men and women? So you believe that the herdsmen have been invading communities? The herdsman doesn't have to abandon his cows - raping, killing and maiming surely doesn't take all day and all night - nor does he have to be worried that in the meantime the cows would all go astray or abandon their shepherd herdsmen and run away...

The media has presented us with many reports and allegations that Fulani herdsmen have committed thousands of murders and have raped women and peoples' wives, which makes your insistence that the Ohanaeze's accusation that the Fulani herdsmen "rape our people" - our people in total - men women children - should not be taken as sexual assault but only in a more general sense of, according to you "the act of despoiling of Igbo communities economically and judicially."

Please bear in mind that every statement, especially the one under our purview, the Ohanaeze's - has a context - a situation - in this case the general mayhem being caused by Fulani Herdsmen on the move and operating in their areas, their communities. Apart from other supporting evidence such as that Enugu men are said to be divorcing their wives on the grounds that they have been raped by Fulani herdsmen/ militants, the only material/ evidence that is at hand and intact and that both of us are addressing/ examining/ scrutinizing at the moment is what the Ohanaeze said. We should bear in mind that he was speaking Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth’s mother tongue perfectly and choosing his words carefully when describing the old era which has changed to a new era, "an era of AK-47 toting and rampaging Fulani herdsmen who" and please note his word progression - in common English parlance " who kill, maim and rape " Kill - maim - rape

We are at liberty to ask him : Ohanaeze, who do they kill, maim and rape? Who?

His answer, still in that continuous sentence flow is "our people ". They "kill, maim and rape". What else do they do ? "and destroy our farms !"

Pedantically speaking, do you Ogbeni Kadiri want to tell us that our women are not our people or part of our people?

Dear Ogbeni Kadiri, it is this tail end of his statement "and destroy our farms" that tallies with the meaning that you seem to have derived from what he said, that when the Ohanaeze accused the Fulani herdsmen " who kill, maim and rape" he only meant (your words) : "the act of despoiling of Igbo communities economically and judicially". Of course we could save ourselves all the speculation as to what he meant by asking him what he meant. I'm sure that having said that the Fulani herdsmen " kill, maim and rape OUR PEOPLE " - i.e. kill out people, maim our people and rape our people, "and destroy our farms" , he did not mean to (your words) : "to limit and confine, without valid reason, the meaning of rape to sexual intercourse by intimidation or force."

However - and this is also significant - the Ohanaeze has been quoted, but it's probable that his words that have been quoted in that Vanguard news article is not all that he said - as often happens with newspaper reporters, perhaps only some of what he said was quoted verbatim and that would explain why he has not issued a statement saying that he had been misquoted or denying that women in his community have been sexually violated by Fulani herdsmen.

Finally, I should like to bring to your attention Victor Jara's Vientos del pueblo .

In Cornelis Sjunger Victor Jara ( Cornelis sings Victor Jara) Cornelis Vreeswijk's interpretation and translation of that song : Folkets vind starts with the words

"Nu våldtas mitt folk igen.
Oss dränka i blod vill dom."

Which I translate as

"Now my people are being raped again.
They want to drown us in blood "


In that song-poem, Jara's use of rape tallies with the interpretation that you want to impose on the Ohanaeze use of the word rape to mean " the act of despoiling of Igbo communities economically and judicially." - but even there - or especially there rape is much more than merely "despoiling (Chile) economically and judicially"


So you could be right - and all the victims and accusers wrong.

In Swedish

Nu våldtas mitt folk igen.

Oss dränka i blod vill dom.

Dom talar om friheten

med svarta handen bakom.

Dom skingrar allt folk som boss,

barn utan mor och far.

Dom tänker påtvinga oss

korset som Jesus bar.


Än döljer dom all sin skam.

Dom döljer den bakom lag.

Men mordet ska bryta fram

och visa sitt rätta jag.

Och många tusen män

ska offra sitt liv för mord.

Och blodet ska strömma igen

och gödsla vår goda jord.


Jag vill ha ett riktigt liv

med mina barn och syskon

och rekonstruera våren

som ligger där och förblöder.

Mig skrämmer ni inte alls,

ni eländets herremän!

Beröva oss hoppets stjärna!

Den ska nog bli vår igen!


Blås, folkets vindar, blås!

Blås åter! och än en gång!

Ni spränger mitt hjärtas lås

och fyller min mun med sång.

Än sjunger han, er poet,

så länge min mun kan andas

och ända till evighet

hans aska med er ska blandas.


Automated Google Translation:


Now raped my people again.
We drown in blood they want.
They talk about freedom
with black hand behind.
They dispels all people who boss,
children without a mother and father.
They're going to force on us
the cross that Jesus bore.

Than hide them all their shame.
They hide behind the law.
But the murder to burst forth
and show their true colors.
And many thousands of men
will sacrifice his life for murder.
And the blood will flow again
and fertilize our good earth.

I want a real life
with my children and siblings
and reconstruct spring
lying there, bleeding to death.
I scare you at all,
You misery gentlemen!
Depriving us the star of hope!
It will probably be ours again!

Blow, the people's attics, blow!
Blow re! and once again!
You blow my heart lock
and fill my mouth with song.
Still he sings, you poet,
as long as my mouth to breathe
and ever and ever
his ashes with you to blend."


My favourite song from that album : Fimpen


I am happy that our foreign minister of Sweden Margot Wallström is very much against sexual violence against women.

Wishing you a nice day !


Ogbeni Hamelberg.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 13, 2017, 4:17:47 PM2/13/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

The charges are serious : rape - Cornelius Hamelberg.


Can you please furnish us with the case file of rape-charges against Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria and in which courts were they arraigned and charged? What are the names of the arraigned and charged Fulani herdsmen? What were their pleas against the charges levelled against them?


You Ogbeni Kadiri want the whole world to believe that all the reports by the Nigerian military and Police, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the thousands of corpses of Nigerians killed by Fulani herdsmen and Fulani militants, their blood crying out from the earth and thousands of victims who survived to tell their tale - you want us to believe that the reports that all those who have been badly injured and maimed and report of those who have been raped by Fulani herdsmen/militants "are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen?"- Cornelius Hamelberg.


Can you please avail us with the Nigerian Military and Police reports in which it was specifically confirmed that Fulani herdsmen killed, maimed, raped and destroyed villages en-route their grazing paths in Nigeria?

What are the names of the human beings behind Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that wrote reports confirming the discovery of thousands of corpses of Nigerians killed by Fulani herdsmen? What are the evidences produced by those organisations to pin those crimes on Fulani herdsmen?


I am neither a Fulani nor a herdsman but I am a human being just as the Fulani herdsmen. The difference between me and your cohorts is that I put myself in position of Fulani herdsmen and figure out how possible it is for them to commit the type of crimes attributed to them in a community where they are extremely in a minority and in the company of their herds. Factually, the Fulani herdsmen breed their cattle for commercial and economic reasons which make it impossible for them to descend on the potential consumers of their products and kill them. If I were a Fulani herdsman driving about 100 cows to graze near a village, will I abandon my cattle at the risk of losing them to cow rustlers (thieves) in pursuit of a woman or a girl to rape? How many Fulani herdsmen accompanied by their cattle would be required to perpetrate the type of horrors attributed to them? I ask this question since I saw only one armed Fulani herdsman with a rifle grazing his cattle in the bush in one of the links posted by you and in another one, there were two Fulani herdsmen armed with wooden rods grazing their cows in the bush and not on farmlands.


It is said in my mother tongue is that, Eni má riré gbà, ètó ni ki o sé réré, which literally translates to, if you want justice for yourself, you must practise justice to others. There were occasions when Fulani herdsmen had trespassed into farmlands but their organisation, Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, had intervened for out of court financial compensations to farmers whose plants had been destroyed by cattle or as in the case of Olu Falae in Ondo State, through court adjudication. Not all Europeans with moustache are Hitler(s); and not all Jews are Shylock(s), therefore, not all Fulani herdsmen are murderers and rapists. It is unjust to condemn Fulani herdsmen on unproven allegations.

S.Kadiri    


 




Skickat: den 13 februari 2017 15:37
--

Ayotunde Bewaji

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 6:02:25 AM2/14/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ogbeni Salimonu Kadiri, alias Ogunlakaiye, good morning. It may not have occurred to you that in civilized society, where the failed policy used by Europeans to steal land in Africa, because communities cannot produce titles to their ancestral land (Jack Goody), cannot any longer be used to empower either state, nations or groups to enter upon, occupy or capture such land without consequences. If any group continues to roam on other people's land, with or without animals, such a group must admit to criminality consequent upon such actions - whether perpetrated by themselves against the people whose land they trespass on or by resisting land owners. The responsibility for the violence occasioned by such unlawful entry must be borne by the perpetrators of the unlawful entry, not the resisting victims of invasion.

Many persons refrain from joining argument with those who continue to defend the indefensible in modern society, because they would not want to antagonize the powers that be, or appear as if they hate anyone, or for some perceived political correctness; but if and when your own family land is occupied by some strange, foreign or unauthorized persons, then you will understand what I mean. If such occupiers were to come with intent to maim and kill, should you object to your ancestral land being taken over temporarily or permanently, then you will know why Nigeria may be in for serious dismemberment if this scourge of roaming herders are not addressed intelligently.

Professor Agozino claimed here that he suggested that the "Northern" business class should embrace Cattle Ranching. Some of us indicated that he was not inventing the idea. When our own Babatunde Fafunwa suddenly started using his Muslim name on becoming Minister of Education, with the Nomadic Education mantra, many of us sniggered at the idiocy of the idea. When we were told that Nigeria went to Argentina or some other South American country to learn what to do with cattle rearing, we roared with disbelief. We believe that there is no need to go anywhere outside of Africa to solve the problem of roaming marauders, as research within the academy in Nigeria and without have made it clear that such unsustainable practices cannot bode well for anyone.

What was the premise on which the River Basin Authorities was built? Why do we have abundance of Rivers and Streams all over Nigeria and claim that grazing land must be accessed by wandering on other people's farms, backyards or public highways? Why can't we copy examples of animal husbandry found in many other African countries? Why must any one be allowed to follow the cattle from Sokoto to Lagos in the 21st Century? What happens to their families left behind? What about their education, health issues, insurance, pension, etc? Must we always be so mean to the poor among us - called Talakawas? What is the genesis of the Palestinian problem - with Jews using their parochial deity as justification for divine land-grabbing? What is the challenge between Modakeke and Ife? What job is Salimonu Kadiri angling for with the regime of PMB in this whole pursuit of the imponderable? Why is it difficult for Ogbeni Salimonu Kadiri to see the incendiary nature of wandering animal husbandry in contemporary society? Are the true Fulani really against proper integration into modern society, or is this a political issue serving the interest of some powerful, faceless, destructive group(s)?

I was based in what was then Southern Zaria, now Southern Kaduna, during my NYSC service year in late 70s. There was a huge irrigation project somewhere in Malali or thereabouts. The expansive Northern Nigeria is blessed with arable, grazing, farming and highly rich soil with rivers and streams such that, but for the selfishness of Northern elites, that takes pleasure in subjecting the masses of their own to poverty and domination, there is no reason for any roaming or wandering animal keepers, hired or owners. Why do we keep barking up the wrong tree? The Nigerian problem is a leadership that is imbecilic in its greed, myopia and absolute inability to appreciate what is called enlightened self-interest. They forget that the troublesome child who says his/her mother will not sleep; he/she also will not sleep! It is Macbeth murdering sleep and not able to sleep anymore. What they fail to understand is that a parasite that is intent on destroying itself kills the host first, thinking that it will survive when the host is dead - Eepa n pa ara re, o ni oun n pa aja.

I did not mean this to be this long. But that you, Ogbeni Salimonu Kadiri, acknowledge that there are roaming "Fulani Herdsmen" logically commits you to admitting that such persons must commit criminal acts - whether they carry only long sticks and long knives or AK47 is immaterial. Someone even suggested that there were traditional routes for Cattle passing from Sokoto to Lagos. Does the fact that you have always passed through my yard make it right for you to continue to pass through it - regardless of the inconvenience you cause or destruction attendant to your passing? What exactly is wrong with being black? What is wrong with being a Nigerian? Is it intellectual incapacity? Is it genetic?

There are countries that have no resources that Nigeria has - Australia, New Zealand, and many African countries - with economies built around agriculture that we can emulate. Even Jamaica bred a special cow which became famous. Why are we this way, and Ogbeni Salimonu Kadiri wants to see the corpses of those killed or the court records of those charged, before he recognizes the explosiveness of the wanton killings taking place on the intrusions of strangers on people's lands? What Ogbeni Salimonu fails to understand is that land disputes never really go away, even if the transient occupiers of positions of power intimidate the poor owners into submission on a temporary basis.

I have not addressed the numerous problems with the position of Ogbeni Salimonu Kadiri. But I hope he will be well served to be sensitive to the sensitivities of those who suffer in the hands of intruders and be respectful of their agonies and not continue to rub salt on their open wounds. There is absolutely no need to even be debating this issue in the 21st Century. When stripped of all the trappings of office, religion and ethnicity, criminals are just criminals! I hope he will be able to decode that. 

Ire o.

Tunde.




Once again, I have to bother you with my pedantry - display of useless knowledge or minute observance of petty rules or details - which at present had its origin on your posted link : http://www.vanguardngr.com/ 2017/02/fulani-herdsmen- destroy-farms-rape-our-wives- ohanaeze. The said report, from Abakaliki, in the Vanguard Nigeria was written by Anayo Okoli, Peter Okutu & Ugochukwu Alaribe. Reporting in their own words they wrote: The President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, has said the prevailing activities of the Fulani herdsmen had over the years led to the killing, maiming, raping of Igbo people and destruction of their farms. Thereafter, they quoted President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo verbatim, "The peaceful co-existence between previously peace-loving Fulani herdsmen, who herded their cattle with long canes and our local farmers has been replaced by an era of AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen who kill, maim, rape our people and destroy our farms. Not one of them is ever arrested for illegal possession of firearms. Even those arrested in Nimbo for mercilessly killing our people remain unprosecuted by the Northern dominated law enforcement agents." That was all that the President-General of Ohanaeze, Chief Nnia Nwodo, said. Contrary to the headline of Vanguard Nigeria, the reporters' forewords to the article and the verbatim quotation of the President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo did not contain the expression 'rape our wives.' The main headline that contained the misleading information, rape our wives, is not only sensational but inciting. Rape in whatever form is never a minor or petty (pedantry) thing. The effect of the rape in question caused you to write, "My sensitive reading of the Ohanaeze saying that the Militant Fulani herdsmen 'rape our people' translates into rape our girls and women, unless Ogbeni Kadiri thinks that the Fulani herdsmen are a bunch of horny homosexuals..." Your emotional reading led you to limit and confine, without valid reason, the meaning of rape to sexual intercourse by intimidation or force. But Nwodo's expression of rape of our people was only about the act of despoiling of Igbo communities economically and judicially. I do not think that Fulani herdsmen are a bunch of horny homosexuals as you insinuated, rather I find it unreasonable that a herdsman will abandon his cattle to invade a community in order to rape girls and women. As for the purported behaviour of the Red Army after capturing Berlin during the World War II, it is self-evident that if it were true that they raped German girls and women, they could not have performed that feat if they had  thousands of cows in their company to cater for. With that said, check this link, http://saharareporters.com/ 2016/05/04/we-dont-want- fulani-herdsmen-to-leave-our- land/
S.Kadiri
      

 


In http://www.vanguardngr.com/ 2017/02/fulani-herdsmen- destroy-farms-rape-our-wives/  the newly elected President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, was quoted as having said among other things, "The peaceful co-existence between previously peace-loving Fulani herdsmen, who herded their cattle with long canes and our local farmers has been replaced by an era of AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen who kill, maim, rape our people and destroy our farms." This statement was made on February 6, 2017. I checked throughout the whole statements of Chief Nnia Nwodo to find out when and where did AK-47 totting and rampaging herdsmen kill, maim, rape our (Igbo) people and destroy our (Igbo) farms, but could not find any. I noticed that in the Vanguard headline, the Ohaneze's statement of, rape our people was substituted with rape our wives. The newly appointed Pesident-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, needed to say something to live up to the reputation of the defender of Igbo people's interest and he found it convenient to scape-goat Fulani herdsmen. However, he never said, rape our wives or women as you preferred to write.


In its editorial, http://punchng.com/ treating-violent-fulani- herdsmen-as-terrorists, the following, among others, was written, "In their latest atrocity, hundreds of cattle herders descended on Ukpabi Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State last week, leaving a bloody trail. In all, the herdsmen killed 46 people, injuring several others. They burnt down houses and vehicles in the village. Writing on the same event we find in http://africansuntimes.com/ 2016/05/fulani-herdsmen-the- fourth-most-deadliest- terrorist-group-in-the-world, the following: The Fulani herdsmen attacked at 6.00am just after morning prayers in Nimbo, an idyllic village in southeast Nigeria where farmers grow yams and pawpaws. At first the villagers thought it was a joke. The nomadic cattle rearers , who have clashed with farmers over grazing rights in central Nigeria for decades, had never come this far south. But then they saw 20 young men descend from the hills and emerge from the palm tree forest, shooting AK-47 assault rifles in the air and waving machetes. 'We started hearing the sound of gunshots everywhere. They shot so many people,' Kingsley Oneyebuchie, a 31 year-old civil servant, told AFP. At least, 10 people are thought to have been killed and scores of others injured." The big credibility questions, if we compare Punch Nigeria and African Sun Times narrations of what happened in Nimbo village, are : Did hundreds of cattle herders attack Nimbo village or were they twenty?; Did the herdsmen kill 46 people or at least 10?; how could the attackers be identified as herdsmen when they were not accompanied by their cows/cattle?; and what of if the attackers were ordinary criminals who were there to harvest the crops of the villagers?

As Chief Nnia Nwodo observed, Fulani herdsmen no longer carry long canes to lead their herds but AK-47 rifles to ward off machineguns armed cattle rustlers which did not exist before. If plunderers of our national treasury can build high fences around their mansions and employ armed guards to protect them against robbers and kidnappers, why should it be wrong for a toiling Fulani herdsman to protect himself and his cattle with a machine gun against armed cattle thieves? Ironically, in one of the links forwarded by Cornelius, http://www.authorityngr.com/ 2016/03/the-rise-of-fulani- militants-as-world-4th-terror  (3rd March 2016) the article was accompanied with a photograph of a herdsman hanging an AK-47 rifle on his shoulder in front of his herds in the bush. The pipe of the rifle pointed backward and not to the front which indicated that he was not expecting  combat with anybody, human or mammal. Psychologically, readers are wrongly impressed to believe that the rifle carrying herdsman is a terrorist or a Fulani militant, of which none is correct. Further in the link, http:// www.easternradio.com.ng/2016/ 01/opinion-fulani-herdsmen- named-fourth-deadliest-terror- group-in-the-world, photographs of two herdsmen grazing their cows in the bush, not in a farmland, were displayed without any weapon in sight. What was it that qualified the two Fulani herdsmen in the picture as terrorists? http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/africa/glc accompanied its headline: Nigerian Fulani militants named as 4th deadliest terror group in the world with the picture of militarily clothed armed men in a military truck. None of the persons in the truck was identified as a Fulani herdsman and I strongly suspect that the pictured vehicle and persons therein were from Islamic militia invasion of Mali during the crisis there. Citing Global Terror Index, www.independent.co.uk. wrote: The fourth deadliest known terrorist group has been named as the Fulani militant group operating in Nigeria and parts of the Central African Republic.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 6:02:37 AM2/14/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Excuse my saying so Sir :

But now you are being ludicrous. As if in the circumstances the rapist leaves his visiting card or fingerprints with his victims.

The traumatised victims can only press charges against an amorphous, unidentifiable group of herdsmen - furthermore the rapes probably take place in the dark , so that the victims cannot see their faces. (You know that over here in Sweden we have to be very careful - the victim can say that it happened in the dark - she was pulled over to some roadside bush or other so she couldn't see the guy who raped her very clearly, but say that he looked dark - which makes all dark-looking people near or far from the scene of the crime , prime suspects). He looked dark ? Black hair? There's one of them living over there - pointing in the direction of where we live)

Even more impossible : "Can you please avail us with the Nigerian Military and Police reports in which it was specifically confirmed that Fulani herdsmen killed, maimed, raped and destroyed villages en-route their grazing paths in Nigeria?"

Since both of us are here in Stockholm shouldn't you be seeking the answers to your enquires from the Nigerian Police and military in Nigeria?

Confirmation! Confirmation. We want confirmation ! We want proof! It's a brilliant move that the government is going to issue Fulani herdsmen with ID cards

Now if it's not Fulani herdsmen doing what they are being accused of, then who is it doing it and wanting the Fulani herdsmen to take the blame and pay the cost?

Re - Ogbeni Kadiri speaking : "I am neither a Fulani nor a herdsman but I am a human being just as the Fulani herdsmen.". Well, I feel a special bonding, closeness to and affection for the Fulani people. When I was six years old my girlfriend was Fulani. Unlike you mother-tongue Yoruba folks, not to mention the Buckingham Palace Englishmen, my first language was Fula/Fulani to the point where my parents could no longer communicate with me and this was up to when I was six years old and this is why I found myself in London with no Fulani speaking person to converse with - my father had taken me there (colonial complex) ostensibly to make a proper Englishman out of me (Mr. Shekoni used to call me "Fulani boy") but back to basics - Fulani herdsmen and the various allegations against them including allegations from he meat consuming ingrates: "when something is not right, it's wrong."

True: Anti-Islam and anti-Fulani herdsmen propaganda is on overdrive, sometimes indistinguishable from incitement and hate-speech, calculated to increase or further exacerbate tensions along what's popularly referred to as North-South fault-lines, especially now that the Jonathans feel that Brother Buhari is now in the saddle which means that "The North" is in not office but POWER!

Pray for us

Cornelius..

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 6:02:58 AM2/14/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri

Isn't there a Yoruba commandment of honour that thou shalt not bear false witness against thy brother.

Have mercy! Please change the headline! I refuse to read any further! Your headline is a bad as some of the anti-Fulani herdsmen headlines, giving as it does the impression that Cornelius Hamelberg is the one - God forbid - who is being charged with rape:

The charges are serious : rape - Cornelius Hamelberg.

A person of malicious intent need read no further, before gleefully spreading the fake news. I'm thinking of poor Julian Assange who has been holed up in the Ecuador Embassy in London for the past four years and five months.

Please ....



On Monday, 13 February 2017 22:17:47 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 1:32:03 PM2/14/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

You are not serious, Cornelius!! The seventh sentence in your post of 13th February 2017, stated emphatically thus, "The charges are serious : rape" and I mentioned your name as the writer in my response. My understanding of that written sentence of yours is that the charges of rape against Fulani herdsmen are serious. Since I am unaware of any rape charges in any Nigerian court against Fulani herdsmen, I followed the quotation of your seventh sentence with questions to you for answer. The questions were : Can you please furnish us with the case-file of rape charges against Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria and in which courts were they arraigned and charged?; What are the names of the arraigned and charged Fulani herdsmen?; and what were there pleads against charges levelled against them? The connection between your seventh sentence and my questions is so direct that even our children in Africa who are still at the age of a black slate and chalk in schools will understand that you were not accused of being a rapist, covert or overt. You intentionally become a bull, seeing only red in my questions and rushed belatedly to gore me instead of answering the questions.


You wrote, "Your headline is as bad as some of the anti-Fulani headlines giving the impression that Cornelius Hamelberg is the one - God forbid - who is being charged for rape." It is incontrovertible that the seventh sentence in your post of 13th February 2017 is what you branded as my headline. Nevertheless, I am consoled by your unconscious admission that all the headlines in your googles, amnesty international and human rights watch concerning Fulani herdsmen are anti-Fulani headlines. Case closed.

S.Kadiri   
 




Skickat: den 13 februari 2017 23:04
--

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 4:45:56 PM2/14/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

You are absolutely right Ogbeni Kadiri: jive as nigger Cornelius is not serious, in fact he was only joking , but he did read further and replied to what you said, but instead of replying to that you chose to reply to the joke but still have not answered my question: Isn't there a Yoruba commandment/ code of honour that thou shalt not bear false witness against thy brother? (Was thinking of The Bro Code - another culture)

Still barking up the same tree: More seriously you are saying that in the absence of any specific charges by name and number, against the otherwise nebulous (some say murderous) Fulani Herdsmen, the accusations/ allegations are useless, meaningless, maybe even nothing but malicious fabrications against them, just as you have previously charged : "The links posted by Cornelius are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen"

In Israel for example, it's not always that the law enforcement / security can furnish the general public with the specific names and addresses of the terrorists - which does not mean that their handiwork, the bloody footage we sometimes see on TV in the aftermath of terrorist attacks "are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies" (BTW , there was a point when I thought that one more attack from Hamas/ al-Aqsa martyrs Brigade/Islamic Jihad etc., the Shin bet would go after the leaders of the military wing of those organisations, just the way that the Nigerian authorities would like to get hold of Abubakar Shekau, the way that Brother Obama went after Osama Bin Ladin (Just imagine, if Osama were still alive, Trump would be talking and tweeting about going after him all day long)

In the case of the Holocaust you had a super sleuth like Simon Wiesenthal who went after specific people.

In the tragic case of the mass rape of Yazidi women, in such difficult - genocidal circumstances ( a terror war situation) the victims have not been able to identify and press charges against all those who sexually assaulted them.

You keep on asking, why should cowboys leave their cows and go chasing and raping vulnerable women? The fact is, shit happens, sometimes not by design. Shit happens often, often following a pattern

Nigerian security has to be more effective in protecting vulnerable sections of Nigerian citizens from the violent crimes being attributed to Fulani herdsmen. Issuing ID cards for Fulani herdsmen is a good move - let us hope that some other perpetrators don't commit crimes in their name and leave Fulani herdsmen ID cards behind, for their identification ( another form of bearing false witness against thy neighbour)

Article 2 of the Bro Code: "A Bro is always entitled to do something stupid, as long as the rest of the Bros are all doing it."

Article 7; A Bro never admits he can't drive stick. Even after an accident.

Article 82 :If two Bros get into a heated argument over something and one says something out of line, the other shall not expect him to say " take it back" or " apologize" to make amends. That's inhuman."

Article 147 : If a Bro sees another Bro get into a fight, he immediately has his Bro's back"

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 4:46:02 PM2/14/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Corrected :


You are absolutely right Ogbeni Kadiri: jive as nigger Cornelius is not serious, in fact he was only joking , but he did read further and replied to what you said, but instead of replying to that you chose to reply to the joke but still have not answered my question: Isn't there a Yoruba commandment/ code of honour that thou shalt not bear false witness against thy brother? (Was thinking of The Bro Code - another culture)

Still barking up the same tree: More seriously you are saying that in the absence of any specific charges by name and number, against the otherwise nebulous (some say murderous) Fulani Herdsmen, the accusations/ allegations are useless, meaningless, maybe even nothing but malicious fabrications against them, just as you have previously charged : "The links posted by Cornelius are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies against Fulani herdsmen"

In Israel for example, it's not always that the law enforcement / security can furnish the general public with the specific names and addresses of the terrorists - which does not mean that their handiwork, the bloody footage we sometimes see on TV in the aftermath of terrorist attacks "are not based on truth or facts, rather they are based on prejudice and lies" (BTW , there was a point when I thought that one more attack from Hamas/ al-Aqsa martyrs Brigade/Islamic Jihad etc., the Shin bet would go after the leaders of the military wing of those organisations, just the way that the Nigerian authorities would like to get hold of Abubakar Shekau, the way that Brother Obama went after Osama Bin Ladin (Just imagine, if Osama were still alive, Trump would be talking and tweeting about going after him all day long)

In the case of the Holocaust you had a super sleuth like Simon Wiesenthal who went after specific people.

In the tragic case of the mass rape of Yazidi women, in such difficult - genocidal circumstances ( a terror war situation) the victims have not been able to identify and press charges against all those who sexually assaulted them.

You keep on asking, why should cowboys leave their cows and go chasing and raping vulnerable women? The fact is, shit happens, sometimes not by design. Shit happens often, often following a pattern

Nigerian security has to be more effective in protecting vulnerable sections of Nigerian citizens from the violent crimes being attributed to Fulani herdsmen. Issuing ID cards for Fulani herdsmen is a good move - let us hope that some other perpetrators don't commit crimes in their name and leave Fulani herdsmen ID cards behind, for their identification ( another form of bearing false witness against thy neighbour)

Article 2 of the Bro Code: "A Bro is always entitled to do something stupid, as long as the rest of the Bros are all doing it."

Article 7; "A Bro never admits he can't drive stick. Even after an accident."

Article 82 : "If two Bros get into a heated argument over something and one says something out of line, the other shall not expect him to say " take it back" or " apologize" to make amends. That's inhuman."

Article 147 : If a Bro sees another Bro get into a fight, he immediately has his Bro's back"






On Tuesday, 14 February 2017 19:32:03 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 14, 2017, 8:28:18 PM2/14/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Ayotunde Bewaji, may Ògún exempt you from its combat. Religion is not like science where empirical evidence is demanded to support a postulation. While a religious person must believe that in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, a scientist would ask where God stood to create Heaven and Earth. Religion is based on belief while science is based on proof. On October 1, 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan induced Nigerians to believe him that the car-bomb blast, near the Eagle square on that day was detonated by "Northerners" who were against him as the PDP candidate for the 2011 impending presidential election. But empirical evidence showed later that MEND was behind the blast that killed eight people. The masterminds of the blast were Okah brothers and Charles Okah swore to an affidavit in South Africa, where he was tried, that Jonathan had ordered for the blast so as to blame it on "Northerners" who were opposed to his 2011 presidential ambition on the platform of PDP. The 84-year old mother of the then Finance Minister and Co-ordinator of the Nigerian Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was kidnapped in 2014, and the honourable minister blamed the kidnapping on fuel importers to whom she had opposed fuel subsidy payments. The kidnappers, who later quarrelled among themselves over the ransom received, were arrested and it turned out that all the kidnappers were criminals from the same ethnic group as Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala that had nothing to do with fuel subsidy claimants. Yes, Ayotunde Bewaji, there have been political arsons, murders and unrest all over Nigeria in the recent past, but no evidence has been produced to implicate Nigeria's Fulani herdsmen, in those satanic politics. If you have one, please produce it for public scrutiny.


Contrary to your insinuation, I have never advocated or approved that Fulani Herdsmen should roam randomly on peoples' farms and legitimate properties. Rather, I have defended their legitimate rights to arm themselves against cattle thieves. The type of weapon each of this Fulani herdsmen carry is incapable of unleashing the type of atrocities being credited to them. If you assert that wanton killings had been perpetrated by intruders on people's lands, the onus is on you to produce evidence against the identified intruders who had committed the crime. It is unjust and primitive to condemn people for crimes not proved to have been committed judicially.


You mentioned land ownership in Nigeria and the encroachments of landless Fulani herdsmen on other peoples' lands. On that I will assert that Nigeria is governed by the most cynical leaders and officials in the world and for whom citizens lives simply do not matter. Land use decree of 1979 that placed the ownership of land in Nigeria under the Federal and State's government ought to have settled the problem of land ownership. Instead of the collective ownership of land by all Nigerians, Nigerian leaders and officials have exploited the Land Use Act to expropriate to themselves lands that were before owned by the entire community collectively, through the issuance of Certificate Of Occupancy to themselves. Although the Constitution says that all the natural and mineral resources of Nigeria belong to all Nigerians and that the Federal government is only tasked with the responsibility to manage the resources for the benefit of all Nigerians, we have seen how Nigerian leaders and officials have stolen oil blocks from our crude oil reserves. Air that we breath is not a product of any individual human being but nature's gift to all of us. The air within the geographical space of Nigeria belongs, naturally to all inhabitants of Nigeria. I want you, Ayotunde Bewaji, to imagine what would happen to the masses of Nigeria, if it were possible for the heartless and selfish Nigerian leaders and officials to in-capsule all the air in the Nigerian space for themselves as they have done with land and crude oil reserves. The rains that fall over Nigeria; the sun that shines over Nigeria; the air that we all breathe in Nigeria; the Rivers that flow in Nigeria and fishes that swim therein; and the geographical land area of Nigeria are not the products of anyone or group of individuals but nature's gift to all Nigerians. Anyone laying personal claim to the ownership of any portion of Nigerian landed property is a thief. Legally and judicially, a farmer owns the crops in his farm but not the land. A herdsman must not graze his herds in a farmland even though the land does not belong to the farmer. That herdsmen still roam about to graze their cattle in the 21st century in Nigeria, shows that Nigeria has the most irresponsible government on the surface of this earth. A government that subsidized miscreants so as to prevent them from bombing crude oil pipes, should be able to liberate Fulani herdsmen from endless wandering in search of grazing ground for cattle that would eventually turn up in the pot of soup of Nigerians. Even farmers in other sectors of agriculture who are major producers of Nigeria's staple food, still work today with primitive equipment i the forms of hoes and cutlasses. 


You, Ayotunde Bewaji asked: What exactly is wrong with being black?; What is wrong with being Nigerian?; Is it intellectual incapacity?; and Is it genetic?.

There is nothing wrong with being black or being a Nigerian, my dear Ayotunde Bewaji. Intellectually, when you look at the Nigerian officials in the ministries, departments and agencies (parastatals), their academic qualifications are far more superior to the problems they are employed, elected, selected or appointed and heavily remunerated to solve. What we are witnessing in all aspects of governance in Nigeria is not intellectual incapacity but rather fake intellectualism leading to fake productions and imaginary economic developments. If the backwardness of Nigeria depends on genetic as you seem to wonder, neither you nor many other Nigerians would have been criticizing our officials and rulers for retrogressive economic and industrial developments in Nigeria. Professional degradation is a plague that affects all segments of governance in Nigeria and how I wish our leaders and officials had imported economic and industrial performance enhancer tablets for their consumptions instead of bleaching creams and Brazilian hair attachments for their wives and concubines.

S.Kadiri      
 




Från: 'Ayotunde Bewaji' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Skickat: den 14 februari 2017 08:28
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity
 

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 15, 2017, 7:26:19 AM2/15/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Re- Ogbeni Kadiri's rationality "a scientist would ask where God stood to create Heaven and Earth" The BBC asked the big question : Why is here something rather than nothing ?

I was looking for Ayotunde Bewaji's rather unique expression "parochial deity" and not surprisingly, found it here .

As Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion famously said, "I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"

Indeed, today, from even thousands of miles away there are people still beating their chests and saying "God gave us the land!" the presupposition/ presumption being that my God the supreme power and authority over everything that exits or does not exist , gave me the land and therefore, deny it who may or who can, it's my land because my God is the Lord of everything in heaven , on earth and indeed everything in between. As the Nobel Laureate in Literature chimed,

" Precious angel, you believe me when I say
What God has given to us no man can take away "

Now what would happen if everybody had their own personal or national deity, to whom they could appeal as an authority when claiming their ancestral lands? Prof Bewaji quotes Jack Goody - who I once heard say exactly that at a seminar at the Institute of African Studies in 1970, with Kwame Arhin sitting besides him - about imperialists stealing African man's land because he had no papers to prove that such lands belonged to him...

Just the other day, I was checking out what Einstein had to say about religion and stumbled on this expression which comes close to the definition of parochial -for others perhaps the antithesis of parochial : in a short extract in which he was speaking about "free will" Einstein said, "I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility."

"as a consequence of senility" - an accusation we had best avoid using when arguing with elders...

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 15, 2017, 7:26:19 AM2/15/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Thank you Cornelius for asking me if there is a Yoruba Commandment against bearing false witness. There is such Yoruba Commandment but of what use will it be to tell a fanatic google-crat and an absolute  believer in google-cracy that everything in the google is true and the only truth? No woman has ever come out to claim she has been raped by Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria, but some bachelors in the social and print media have claimed that "our wives have been raped by Fulani herdsmen." It is an exaggerated lie to claim to have caught the glimpse of an elephant that ran pass at the speed of light.

S.Kadiri 
 




Skickat: den 14 februari 2017 22:30
--

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 15, 2017, 10:31:57 AM2/15/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Dear Ogbeni Kadiri,

I have phoned you twice this afternoon but you must have been out catching some sun or working in your garden

I assure you that I don't believe everything that I read, be it poetry, bible or google. I don't take their words at surface value, be it Noah’s flood or God causing Adam to fall into a deep sleep and whilst in that state taking one of his ribs from him, in order to form Eve.

I can't quarrel with the front page headline of today’s DN : Wallström: Feminist politics has yielded results

I once read in Svenska Dagbladet that I had said that my father was a Catholic priest...

I regard myself as a professional sceptic, but I do have my inner certainties : I'm still in love with the Almighty.

As the opening verses of the Holy Quran tells us:

"1 Alif. Lam. Mim.

2 This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward off (evil).

3 Who believe in the Unseen, and establish worship, and spend of that We have bestowed upon them;

4 And who believe in that which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) and that which was revealed before thee, and are certain of the Hereafter.

5 These depend on guidance from their Lord. These are the successful.

6 As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not.

7 Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom. "

Only yesterday evening I was listening very attentively to the Rabbi saying that taking the Torah teachings to heart should produce some "Transformation" and indeed in that very instant I found myself thinking in the inner recesses of mind, not heart, Miles Davis' "You are under arrest " - we've got you - we've been watching you, we know what you're doing - you got that girl in there, smoking that marijuana ": one phone call - transformation indeed, like transubstantiation, like grass going up in smoke, or like this former chief of staff for sure one of the teachers of the ten commandments and a great orator on the topic "God gave us the land !" Now if he, flesh and blood be like that then God help the congregation ! As Nobel Laureate in Literature sang, " Don't put my faith in nobody, not even the scientist."

In this era of identity politics, tribalism, ethnic chauvinism, religious bigotry etc., I was hoping that your answer to the question is there a Yoruba commandment/ code of honour that thou shalt not bear false witness against thy brother - would address the moot problem of what being a Nigerian means or could mean , what is brotherhood, who is a brother, who is not.

Catch the spirit : some sauce

Cornelius

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 16, 2017, 8:48:21 AM2/16/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri,

What would we do without him - or is he a she?

I asked our good friend Pa Google:What is a fact ?

Re- Perfidy! This mass-reporting of women being raped by Fulani herdsmen , which from your point of view is pure bunkum. But he/ she who feels it knows.

The basis of your certainty is that "No woman has ever come out to claim she has been raped by Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria, but some bachelors in the social and print media have claimed that "our wives have been raped by Fulani herdsmen" - and thereby you too became that which you wrongfully accuse me of being , namely "a fanatic google-crat and an absolute  believer in google-cracy that everything in the google is true and the only truth" - because it seems that for you too Professor Google is the only source of your asserting your " No woman no cry" - that "No woman has ever come out to claim she has been raped by Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria". Otherwise, who told you that no woman has ever been raped by a Fulani herdsman? As the Almighty asked your ancestor Adam, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

Ogbeni Kadiri, you yourself have commanded: "We should be honest and truthful all the time in our dealings with one another."

The fact is that a moral stigma attaches to the poor woman who comes out and says that she was/ has been raped by a Fulani herdsman or some Fulani herdsmen. Think of the Lady types who say, "I be lady, oh - I no be woman - Market woman na woman "

This may be the reason why most wives and other honourable women would feel too ashamed to come out and say that they have been raped. Already, in Enugu men are divorcing their wives on those grounds. It's also possible that for some men who don't want/love their wives any more, the Fulani herdsmen provide the perfect excuse for divorcing their wives - accuse them of concealing the fact that they have been raped by Fulani herdsmen. ( You know that in Sweden too it's only now that women are less afraid to come out and confess to having been raped, because it's less of a moral stigma than before - so rapes cases are being more frequently reported in Sweden these days - not necessarily that there were fewer rape cases in the last century and earlier .)

This remind me of another joke:

A member of one synagogue said to the member of another synagogue," Our wonderful rabbi talks daily with the Almighty!

"How do you know? asked the other man

" He told me !"

"He might have been lying"

" Nonsense - the Almighty wouldn't talk daily with a liar! "

( The literal elements to the joke "talks daily with the Almighty = prayer and supplication

The Almighty talking daily with he liars - through the various scriptures )

But on a more mundane level let us suppose that one thousand women come out and say that they have been raped by Fulani herdsmen and it was variously reported in the Nigerian media, which you Ogbeni Kadiri google joyously everyday - what then would you say ? That they were all liars, ashawoes, "toto-sellers" ?

What future does a Muslim woman have in her community , if she ever comes out and confesses to having been raped (with even four witnesses to testify on her behalf...) As we know, Enugu for example is not under Sharia Law and still some men are divorcing their wives and girlfriends...

I thought that you would like this funny side of truth



On Wednesday, 15 February 2017 13:26:19 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 16, 2017, 4:33:26 PM2/16/17
to usaafricadialogue
I congratulate Cornelius for his efforts in patiently dismantling the efforts of an inhuman strategy of supporting everything identified with the Nigerian govt, even when it is a terrorist campaign agst Nigerians represented by Fulani herdsmen terrorism aided by Nigeria's Fulani led govt.

toyin

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 17, 2017, 2:57:28 PM2/17/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Oluwatoyin's voodoo concoction would appear to have worked effectively on Cornelius who suddenly volte-faced acrobatically to find Fulani herdsmen guilty of murder, arson and rape without any physical evidence.

On Saturday, 4th of February 2017 Cornelius Hamelberg wrote, "Many thanks to Prof Kperogi, for this timely intervention. I'm sure that apart from that ''ignorant and hate-filled preacher by the name of Apostle Johnson Suleiman'' and some members of his congregation, every good-hearted person is with you on this one. Apostle Johnson Suleiman, in the name of Jesus or even in the name of common sense, ought to know better.


The following day, Sunday 5th February 2017, Oluwatoyin Adepoju, in his edited post on this list serve, voodooed Cornelius Hamelberg thus, ''I have a problem with the tone of the Farooq intervention and happy jumping on that by Cornelius.

Tacitly referring to both Cornelius and Farooq, Oluwatoyin wrote, ''Gentlemen, can you please point out to readers your contributions on this subject as Fulani herdsmen set the nation ablaze from the Middle Belt to the South East, contributions worthy in scope and consistency in relation to the long running character of the wanton vampirism Fulani herdsmen have made synonymous with themselves across the nation?

...//... We now have a Christian pastor calling for a response in kind agst those who chose to wash their mouths with the blood of other human beings while the Nigerian govt aided the murderers and your response consists largely in adopting a stance of righteous indignation.'' With that voodoo concoction, Oluwatoyin Adepoju gurgled his mouth to transform Cornelius Hamelberg into a fantastic google-crat and a dogmatic believer in google-cracy. Thereafter, Cornelius began to sing Fulani herdsmen's maiming, killings, rapes and arsons like a doped canary. On me, Oluwatoyin Adepoju's voodoo concoction works like an effigy in the water. That is why I will continue to demand direct or indirect evidence from anyone, especially Oluwatoyin Adepoju and Cornelius Hamelberg, that linked Fulani herdsmen to the maiming, killing, raping and burning down of villages in Nigeria. May I add that it is very insulting to intelligence to refer readers to google links where it is stated that heinous crimes were committed by suspected Fulani herdsmen without any proof. Showing a picture of a rifle carrying herdsman amidst his herds in the bush is not a proof that he has deployed his weapon against innocent people. Political violence in Agatu, for instance, had nothing to do with Fulani herdsmen and I stand to be corrected on that with facts.

S.Kadiri 

 
 




Skickat: den 16 februari 2017 22:20
Till: usaafricadialogue
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 17, 2017, 4:55:29 PM2/17/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri,

At this point, to me you are the forums, school teacher Mr. Gradgrind of the first two chapters of Dickens ''Hard Times"

Ogbeni Kadiri. He who feels it knows.

At this point you also are beginning to remind me of the obduracy - and wickedness

of some of the Holocaust deniers -

of which ilk there are several categories of liars.

They have their annual summit, their Holocaust Deniers Conference in Tehran organised by Satan and his Chief Priests .

There are those among them who say it was not six million who perished in the Holocaust. The deniers come in various grades. There are those who want to reduce the number of Jewish people that perished to less than six million martyrs and there are those who continue counting down even further, to 5 million souls, 4, 3, 2, 1 - the same disciples of Satan, the same anti-Christ people who say that one Jesus of Nazareth was not crucified and about the Holocaust, the worst of them say that the actual number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust was also zero - that it never happened at all, that Hitler was just a bad Jewish nightmare a bad Jewish joke concocted to deceive gentiles. Now wake up Herr Kadiri ! Listen here and listen good - this is about our Nigerian brothers and SISTERS!

I know. Like unbelieving Thomas, your intransigence is understandable: never mind all the media reports about Fulani herdsmen 's wanton rapes and wanton murder , maybe it's the Muslim in you that won't be satisfied with less than four witnesses for each and every rape atrocity committed - and then I doubt that you would even be satisfied by other witnesses' testimonies - you would most probably like to be one of the four witnesses - and even then - I know that you will probably tell us what I already know, have seen and experienced : that some low grade magicians are capable of performing the Indian rope trick - create an illusion for you to see - but the cameras film the same event and lo - you realise that the camera lenses cannot be deceived in the same way that Ogbeni Kadiri's eyes can be deceived. - as in

"and all he believes are his eyes

and his eyes, they're just telling lies" (Licence to kill)

Yesterday, I got back home at 1.30 a.m. after a very informative evening with a West African man of knowledge (an old friend of yours - he sends you his warmest greetings. Tomorrow, after the Sabbath I will phone you and give you his telephone number because he wants to talk to you, before he returns to Africa in six days' time). What he told me was most shocking, left me speechless, he seemed to know what he was talking about - first hand but I could hardly believe my ears. On his authority I have it that it's a well known fact that the Fulani herdsmen from Mauritania through Senegal and all the way to Lake Chad have a culture of rape - he even took it one step to far, some disgusting talk about bestiality which I absolutely didn't want to hear - you can guess the rest - but this would be too hot for the likes of an apologist like you and  for the sake of politeness and maintaining good relations with the Fulani people far too volatile to share this kind of information on the forum - something as unfortunate as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

It was all too unpleasant - disgusting - and I didn’t want to hear more - indeed if it had been an Oyibo that had told me this, I think that I would have definitely punched him - one punch for Madiba.

Talk to you later.

Ogbeni Hamelberg

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 18, 2017, 8:43:04 AM2/18/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri :

Sometime ago. when I marvelled at your prodigious, detailed knowledge (and sometimes, your deeper wisdom) about certain matters, you were beating your chest as you said, "I am a Nigerian !"

 Re- Kadiri and The Fulani : I've been trying to understand what you've been saying recently, your denials about Fulani Herdsmen on the rampage . One can only conclude that if it's not the Fulani herdsmen who have been killing and raping, then some other people must have been doing the killing and raping. You continue to sound mysterious by not telling us who think they are or it could be.

Well, in his search, your fanatical google-crat found this series of articles which also propose that it's not the Fulani herdsmen at all , although I'm sure that you will not agree with either its contents or conclusion - this series of opinions with the macabre title " These are not real Fulani Herdsmen but those trained to soak the baboons and monkeys in blood " parts 1, 2, 3 and 4) written by one Temple Chima Ubochi

Part one

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

I've also checked out a little on this topic Culture of rape : Nigeria - something I didn't know existed throughout my stay in Nigeria

In anticipation of a cogent reply, 

Yours sincerely,

The sceptical Cornelius.



On Friday, 17 February 2017 20:57:28 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 18, 2017, 1:38:32 PM2/18/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Cornelius!! You are a joker which makes it impossible for you to tolerate the truth and recognize facts. From your sentimental and emotional state of mind, you believe that truth is not constant and as such it is bendable. Exhibiting your joking and truth bending ability, you wrote, "Ogbeni Kadiri ..... At this point you are beginning to remind me of the obduracy - and wickedness of some of the Holocaust deniers of which ilk there are several categories of liars." Before Hitler, there were Holocausts against American Indians, Australian and New Zealand aborigins and against Black Africans. Which of these is the greatest depends on our perception. The parents of Norman G. Finkelstein were Auschwitz survivors, yet he had reason to write a book, in 2000, titled : THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY - Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. He wrote, "My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these polices. ....//..... In the face of the sufferings of African Americans, Vietnamese and Palestinians, my mother's credo always was: We are all Holocaust victims." It should be clear to you that not all Fulani are herdsmen and that there are Fulani Professors, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and Administrators permanently resident in many communities in Nigeria. Fulani people have no specific state attached to their ethnic group in Nigeria, rather they belong to the state in which they have permanently been resident for centuries and from generations to generation. Just as it was in Agatu, there has been dispute over if Fulani belong to the communities in which they are resident with the intention to refuse them political representations and rights in the country. In some cases the ensuing fracas have been very bloody between Fulani and others in the (host) community. The weakest link in the dispute between Fulani and their host are the herdsmen who are constantly blamed for attacking communities and perpetrating atrocities. My point is that it is not physically possible to go into combats in the company of cows and as such Fulani herdsmen are just the easiest group to scapegoat for communal mayhem between Fulani and others.


He who feels it knows, you wrote, similarly, I will add that he who sees it feels it too. Thou shall not kill fellow human being should be sacrosanct at all times. We do not need to quantify the number of murders before they are considered horrible acts. I have never disputed that Fulani people might have been involved in interethnic conflicts in Nigeria resulting in the lost of lives and destruction of properties. Fulani have been killed as other ethnic groups in disputes. What I have disputed is the attribution of crimes arising out of such conflicts to Fulani herdsmen. 

Sometimes ago when the discussion of rape came up on this forum, I suggested that having sexual intercourse with a woman that a man is not legally married to should be criminalised in law as a rape. I premised that suggestion on the fact that only the man had the power and urge to forcibly penetrate a woman, therefore it should be explicitly clear in law to a man that mounting a woman with whom one is not legally married to is illegal and criminal regardless of if the woman consents to it or not. Yes, Cornelius, I abhor rape crime as much as you or any other person. Nevertheless it should not be used as a political propaganda to tarnish a group one is opposed to politically. It is only in a fable that an elephant can fly, equally true it is only in a fable that two Fulani herdsmen leading a flock of about a hundred cow would be capable of invading a village, kill men, rape women, burn down houses and escape unapprehend with their flock of cows from the crime scene.

... You know that the camera lenses cannot be deceived in the same way that Ogbeni Kadiri's eyes cannot be deceived...., you wrote. You are smart Cornelius, but you are not clever. In his 1964 book, titled: A curtain of Ignorance - CHINA - HOW AMERICA IS DECEIVED, Felix Greene exposed how American Press and Officials were lying with photographs. He wrote, "We remember pictures longer than we remember words. There are few more effective ways of creating lasting impressions than by visual images - by photographs or cartoons. And by the same token there is hardly a more effective method of creating erroneous images if one should desire to do so." He illustrated the erroneous images where the same pictures were published as slain Viet Cong guerrillas in  South Vietnam and exhausted refugee from Communist China. Edgar Snow, in his 1961 book, The Other Side of the River, showed a photograph that has been used on several occasions to show Communist brutality, though the picture itself was a photograph of one of the Kuomintang street executions which were very common in Shanghai before the Communist took over the city. Pictures can be edited and manipulated to give erroneous impression and those are the characters that I observed in your enormous links. Pictures of a lonely rifle carrying herdsman grazing his cows in the bush is published in association to the headline, Fulani herdsmen rape our wives and destroy our farms. When I express my displeasure at this manipulative information, you indirectly accuse me of wickedness, desiring the killing of our brothers and raping of our sisters. Common Cornelius, the head is not just a hat-shelf good only to hang a cap but to think, logically and reasonably.

S.Kadiri  
 




Skickat: den 17 februari 2017 22:49

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 18, 2017, 6:56:36 PM2/18/17
to usaafricadialogue
Tragic.

It is a crime against humanity to try to cast doubt on the guilt of people who have variously justified their culture of murder as Fulani herdsmen terrorists have done.

It is also infantile to continue to peddle the claim that the terrorists cannot leave their cows to engage in terrorism.

Invoking Finkelstein does not help the case of this ideological supporter of Fulani herdsmen terrorism bcs the Fulani herdsmen are the ones whose enablers try to use cattle rustling as a smoke screen to cover their villainy, as Finkelstein argues the factuality of the Jewish Holocaust is manipulated by right wing Jews.

Nigerians are increasingly taking their security into their own hands agst the govt enabled terrorists.

May God protect us from those who justify the drinking of human blood claiming no one is dying.

toyin



On 18 February 2017 at 17:41, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Cornelius!! You are a joker which makes it impossible for you to tolerate the truth and recognize facts. From your sentimental and emotional state of mind, you believe that truth is not constant and as such it is bendable. Exhibiting your joking and truth bending ability, you wrote, "Ogbeni Kadiri ..... At this point you are beginning to remind me of the obduracy - and wickedness of some of the Holocaust deniers of which ilk there are several categories of liars." Before Hitler, there were Holocausts against American Indians, Australian and New Zealand aborigins and against Black Africans. Which of these is the greatest depends on our perception. The parents of Norman G. Finkelstein were Auschwitz survivors, yet he had reason to write a book, in 2000, titled : THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY - Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. He wrote, "My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these polices. ....//..... In the face of the sufferings of African Americans, Vietnamese and Palestinians, my mother's credo always was: We are all Holocaust victims." It should be clear to you that not all Fulani are herdsmen and that there are Fulani Professors, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and Administrators permanently resident in many communities in Nigeria. Fulani people have no specific state attached to their ethnic group in Nigeria, rather they belong to the state in which they have permanently been resident for centuries and from generations to generation. Just as it was in Agatu, there has been dispute over if Fulani belong to the communities in which they are resident with the intention to refuse them political representations and rights in the country. In some cases the ensuing fracas have been very bloody between Fulani and others in the (host) community. The weakest link in the dispute between Fulani and their host are the herdsmen who are constantly blamed for attacking communities and perpetrating atrocities. My point is that it is not physically possible to go into combats in the company of cows and as such Fulani herdsmen are just the easiest group to scapegoat for communal mayhem between Fulani and others.


He who feels it knows, you wrote, similarly, I will add that he who sees it feels it too. Thou shall not kill fellow human being should be sacrosanct at all times. We do not need to quantify the number of murders before they are considered horrible acts. I have never disputed that Fulani people might have been involved in interethnic conflicts in Nigeria resulting in the lost of lives and destruction of properties. Fulani have been killed as other ethnic groups in disputes. What I have disputed is the attribution of crimes arising out of such conflicts to Fulani herdsmen. 

Sometimes ago when the discussion of rape came up on this forum, I suggested that having sexual intercourse with a woman that a man is not legally married to should be criminalised in law as a rape. I premised that suggestion on the fact that only the man had the power and urge to forcibly penetrate a woman, therefore it should be explicitly clear in law to a man that mounting a woman with whom one is not legally married to is illegal and criminal regardless of if the woman consents to it or not. Yes, Cornelius, I abhor rape crime as much as you or any other person. Nevertheless it should not be used as a political propaganda to tarnish a group one is opposed to politically. It is only in a fable that an elephant can fly, equally true it is only in a fable that two Fulani herdsmen leading a flock of about a hundred cow would be capable of invading a village, kill men, rape women, burn down houses and escape unapprehend with their flock of cows from the crime scene.

... You know that the camera lenses cannot be deceived in the same way that Ogbeni Kadiri's eyes cannot be deceived...., you wrote. You are smart Cornelius, but you are not clever. In his 1964 book, titled: A curtain of Ignorance - CHINA - HOW AMERICA IS DECEIVED, Felix Greene exposed how American Press and Officials were lying with photographs. He wrote, "We remember pictures longer than we remember words. There are few more effective ways of creating lasting impressions than by visual images - by photographs or cartoons. And by the same token there is hardly a more effective method of creating erroneous images if one should desire to do so." He illustrated the erroneous images where the same pictures were published as slain Viet Cong guerrillas in  South Vietnam and exhausted refugee from Communist China. Edgar Snow, in his 1961 book, The Other Side of the River, showed a photograph that has been used on several occasions to show Communist brutality, though the picture itself was a photograph of one of the Kuomintang street executions which were very common in Shanghai before the Communist took over the city. Pictures can be edited and manipulated to give erroneous impression and those are the characters that I observed in your enormous links. Pictures of a lonely rifle carrying herdsman grazing his cows in the bush is published in association to the headline, Fulani herdsmen rape our wives and destroy our farms. When I express my displeasure at this manipulative information, you indirectly accuse me of wickedness, desiring the killing of our brothers and raping of our sisters. Common Cornelius, the head is not just a hat-shelf good only to hang a cap but to think, logically and reasonably.

S.Kadiri  
 



To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 18, 2017, 6:57:04 PM2/18/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Ogbeni Kadiri !

OK, logically and reasonably: The loose-lipped Norman G. Finkelstein is a fink .

Don't waste your time listening to him.

As to your proposal that "having sexual intercourse with a woman that a man is not legally married to should be criminalised in law as a rape", wouldn't it cause more problems than it could solve? Well, as I told you earlier, an hour before the Sabbath ended I had read the beginning of Volume 4, chapters 143 (Honouring Father and Mother) 144 (Honour due to the Teacher, the Scholar, the Aged, and the Priest) and 145 ( Laws Concerning Marriage) in Code of Jewish Law : Kitzur Shulhan Arukh - Rabbi Solomon Ganzfried -translated by Hyman E. Goldin

Let me just quote three items to give you a clue, from " Laws Concerning Marriage"

1. "It is the duty of every man to take a wife to himself, in order to fulfil the precept of propagation. This precept becomes obligatory on a man as soon as he reaches the age of eighteen. At any rate, no man should pas his twentieth year without taking a wife. Only in the event when one is deeply engrossed in the study of Torah, and he is afraid that marriage might interfere with his studies, may he delay marrying, provided he is not lustful"

18. "One who is suspected of having intercourse with a non-Jewess and thereafter she was converted to Judaism, he us not permitted to marry her"

19. "A non-Jew who has intercourse with a Jewess and thereafter he was converted to Judaism, he is not permitted to marry her."

You know better than anyone else in this forum that such your proposal would not see the light of day, would certainly not get a second reading in the Naija senate - the pastors would be the first to oppose such a proposition; the bard sings about " adulterers in churches" - that's where they are and of course the Islamists are going to insist on "wa ma malakat aymanukum!" ( "and those whom your right hand possesses")

I wish that I could bring this exchange with you to a conclusive end with something like these gracious words of appreciation in the final letter from Al-Shaykh Salim al-Bishri al-Maliki, the then head of Al Azhar which concluded his marathon polite exchange of letters (112 letters altogether) with a Lebanese Shia alim, Sayyid 'Abd al-Husayn Sharaf al-Din al-Musawi recorded in the classic Al-Muraja'at .

As you said, we have now flogged this horse/ subject matter to death, but your patience and perseverance in this matter has not been in vain - I must confess that I am now more persuaded than before that there's a lot more to it than meets the eye about these vile accusations against Fulani Herdsmen. We can understand the occasional sporadic clashes that could be inevitable - just as some of the problems the children of Israel experienced during their forty year wanderings in the wilderness getting permission/ not getting permission to pass through other people's lands etc., but the maliciously hysterical media's efforts to give the impression that battalions of Fulani herdsmen armed to the teeth with AK-47's have been invading communities and willy-nilly pillaging , killing and raping women who they find on their way, is nothing less than the evil inclination at work. Of course every imaginable kind of gangsters do their looting, killing and raping whilst they and some of their victims blame it on "Fulani herdsmen" - that's what they do. As said, the Fulani herdsmen are their scapegoats. (Like a young lady who once came up to me, to confide in me that she had been impregnated "by Cornelius" Cornelius? I asked her, " Which Cornelius? " - "Cornelius Hamelberg", she replied. That's my name, I told her. She fainted. That’s what some of these people do, impersonate you. The guy who supposedly impregnated her could just as well have said that he was Cornelius the Fulani Herdsman, as in "We seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel” - Now imagine if she had told me that she had been raped by a guy called Cornelius ! Or she / they had gone around telling people that she/ they had been raped by a guy named Cornelius H - a Fulani herdsman - then by now some of the Enugu guys who are currently divorcing their wives would have turned my ass to grazing grass....

Must go now: better Half is waiting for me to watch Samba on TV

Re- that Finky Norman G. Finkelstein , please don't believe everything that the fink thinks...

I suppose you have some issues with Temple Chima Ubochi's

Part one Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 ?

I'm done with the matter. I see that Nigerian Muse  has not even mentioned " Fulani Herdsmen" , Not a word.

G'nite

Ogbeni C

M Buba

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 5:25:58 AM2/19/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Dear Mr Hamelberg and Mr Kadiri,

As you bravely and graciously close this issue, I thought I should point out that the Fulani flogging does have some redeeming features:

1. We now know that the Fulani are a distinct ethnic group with a distinct culture (and religion(?)). . Not once did I flag a Hausa-Fulani conspiracy in this saga of 'rape' and 'pillage'. In a very ironic sense, the Fulani now have a chance to salvage their language and culture, shocking as this may sound

2. And just as the 'Hausa-Fulani' used to assume political and religious dminesions, the identification of Buhari, the Sultan and El-Rufa'i (among others) with the grazing conflict of the Fulani all over the country is ominously political. (They used to be counted among the Hausa ruling elite.) Only this time, we're dealing with a truly pan-ECOWAS phenomenon. The Fulani, as Mr Kadiri rightly pointed out, are citizens of the state/country in whch they find themselves. Their right to roam, as those of all Nigerians, must be protected, but not at all cost; of course. The middle course is the dialogic approach, and it is 
African and prone to success.

3. Meanwhile, the 30m+ Hausa have disappeared from our geopolitical (forum) landscape, together with their power grab, avarice and fanaticism. (Yet the country is in no better shape!)

4. Hate speech won't stop even if the last Fulani 'herdsman' is expelled from the middle belt, Enugu and beyond. It is a mindset of those who do not wish our country to 'go beyond borders'. 

I may be wrong.

Malami 
--

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 5:26:15 AM2/19/17
to usaafricadialogue
​In the face of Cornelius' concession to Kadiri that the accounts of systemic terrorism by Fulani herdsmen are suspect,  what are we to say to the Fulani herdsmen's public justifications of some of the most heinous of these massacres, such as at Agatu and Southern Kaduna?

What may be a critical response to the fact that there has been no rebuttal from the Fulani herdsmen and their umbrella organization, the Miyeti Allah, headed by some of the most prominent Northern Nigerian Muslims as well as their political enablers in the Northern Nigerian Muslim political class, from the President himself to other figures such as former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and Kaduna state governor El Rufai, even to those massacres they are accused of which they have not publicly justified, such as the Enugu state massacre?

Why have the reactions of the political enablers of the terrorists  at best consisted in efforts to dilute the gravity of these acts of terror by either ignoring them, until forced to comment by outcries by rebels in the political class like Ayoedele Fayose and Femi Fani Kayode, the favorite attitude of Muhammadu Buhari, the Fulani national ruler?

Another approach is to respond by trying to gift lands belonging to other Nigerians to the terrorists by pursuing such kleptocratic constructions as a national grazing bill which would award free land to these private merchants of cows and death, protected by the laws of the country.

Another is to use the Nigerian army to legitimize the grazing bill plan by using the army as a cow herding institution, the army opening and running ranches in different parts of the nation.

A consistent  Sudanese style Janjaweed operation is in full play and some self understood intellectuals are struggling to avoid the implications of what is unfolding before their eyes.

The blending of religion and politics is one of the most deadly cocktails ever and its the worst form of corrosion in Nigerian politics.The Northern Nigerian brand of Islam is toxic to other persuasions. There is no avoiding this fact, demonstrated in the volatile history of the region since the 1950s, a pervasive influence from which no large scale social interaction from that region is exempt, even as commentators like Farooq Kperogi engage in futile efforts to decouple Fulani herdsmen terrorism and Northern Muslim politics as a system, ignoring the history represented by the Fulani achieving their dominance in Northern Nigeria through the colonial initiative represented by the Nigerian wing of the Fulani jihad in which Uthman Dan Fodio employed political populism, religious puritanism and military might in entrenching a politico/religious agenda in the region led by his fellow Fulani.

To the best of my understanding, the only hope Nigerians have to escape from the clutches of the right wing Northern Muslim fanatics, for whom the 2011 Boko Haram resurgence and the Fulani herdsmen terrorist escalation are simply various manifestations, is to undo the 1914 amalgamation of North and South in a restructuring or dissolution of the country.

This brew that shapes the strategies of Northern Muslim politics unifies its politicians in such arrangements as the Northern Governors Forum, which has no counterpart in the South, to the best of my knowledge, representing an ideology that constitutes the most consistently unified bloc in Nigerian politics, while the SE and the SW remain in continuous conflict and the SS seats uneasily between them.

This arrangement is a like a damaged pot from which water is constantly leaking yet not only are some determined not to mend the pot they oppose efforts to remake the pot or break  it  completely and create something new from the shards.

thanks

toyin


--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 5:26:30 AM2/19/17
to usaafricadialogue
With reference to my last summation, I am not arguing that Muslims are necessarily militant, or that all schools of Islam are militant.

I am indicating that the fundamental ideology of Islam, as represented by the Koran and the development of the religion in its foundational years, is significantly, if not essentially militant, as that of Judaism also was.

This militancy, however, my be reinterpreted in non-violent terms by hermeneutic strategies and forms of socialization that differ from the original militant orientation. Such interpretive approaches, though not dominant in Islam,  have been developed from within Islam, such as the ideas of Ibn Arabi on the unity of spirit as manifest in all religions, dramatized in the  famous lines from his Tarjuman al-ashwaq, translated as The Interpreter of Desires:


My heart has become capable of every form: it is a
pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaaba and the
Tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an.
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s
Camels take, that is my religion and my faith.


Such non-violent militancy has also been enabled by the modification of Islam by other cultures, as in South-West Nigeria, Senegal, it seems, and in the West.

thanks

toyin


Tar





On 19 February 2017 at 05:26, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
Edited Again




In the face of Cornelius' concession to Kadiri that the accounts of systemic terrorism by Fulani herdsmen are suspect,  what are we to say to the Fulani herdsmen's public justifications of some of the most heinous of these massacres, such as at Agatu and Southern Kaduna?

What may be a critical response to the fact that there has been no rebuttal from the Fulani herdsmen and their umbrella organization, the Miyeti Allah, headed by some of the most prominent Northern Nigerian Muslims as well as their political enablers in the Northern Nigerian Muslim political class, from the President himself to other figures such as former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and Kaduna state governor El Rufai, even to those massacres they are accused of which they have not publicly justified, such as the Enugu state massacre?

Why have the reactions of the political enablers of the terrorists  at best consisted in efforts to dilute the gravity of these acts of terror by either ignoring them, until forced to comment by outcries by rebels in the political class like Ayoedele Fayose and Femi Fani Kayode, the favorite attitude of Muhammadu Buhari, the Fulani national ruler?

Another approach is to respond by trying to gift lands belonging to other Nigerians to the terrorists by pursuing such kleptocratic constructions as a national grazing bill which would award free land to these private merchants of cows and death, protected by the laws of the country.

Another is to use the Nigerian army to legitimize the grazing bill plan by using the army as a cow herding institution, the army opening and running ranches in different parts of the nation.

A consistent  Sudanese style Janjaweed operation is in full play and some self understood intellectuals are struggling to avoid the implications of what is unfolding before their eyes.

The blending of religion and politics is one of the most deadly cocktails ever and its the worst form of corrosion in Nigerian politics.The absolutist Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity-in the co-opting of its founder's pacifist message by the Roman Empire-and Islam, have been among the most destructive exemplars of this. Christianity's militant culture has been heavily diluted by the Reformation, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions and Western secularism. That of Judaism suffered with the Roman occupation and the dispersal of the Jews but has been revived in the name of Jewish/Israeli  nationalism. That of Islam has remained untouched on account of freedom from fundamental upheavals at the global centres of Muslim power.

The Northern Nigerian brand of Islam is toxic to other persuasions. There is no avoiding this fact, demonstrated in the volatile history of the region since the 1950s, a pervasive influence from which no large scale social interaction from that region is exempt, even as commentators like Farooq Kperogi engage in futile efforts to decouple Fulani herdsmen terrorism and Northern Muslim politics as a system, ignoring the history represented by the Fulani achieving their dominance in Northern Nigeria through the colonial initiative represented by the Nigerian wing of the Fulani jihad in which Uthman Dan Fodio employed political populism, religious puritanism and military might in entrenching a politico/religious agenda in the region led by his fellow Fulani.

To the best of my understanding, the only hope Nigerians have to escape from the clutches of the right wing Northern Muslim fanatics, for whom the 2011 Boko Haram resurgence and the Fulani herdsmen terrorist escalation are simply various manifestations, is to undo the 1914 amalgamation of North and South and create independence for the Christian groups in the North from the Muslim majority in that region through  a restructuring of the nation or dissolution and remaking of new nations from the current nation.

The brew that shapes the strategies of Northern Muslim politics unifies its politicians in such arrangements as the Northern Governors Forum, which has no counterpart in the South, to the best of my knowledge, representing an ideology that constitutes the most consistently unified bloc in Nigerian politics, while the SE and the SW remain in continuous conflict and the SS seats uneasily between them.

This arrangement is a like a damaged pot from which water is constantly leaking yet not only are some determined not to mend the pot they oppose efforts to remake the pot or break  it  completely and create something new from the shards.

This may be seen as the core problem of Nigeria's damaged nationhood, other afflictions, such as corruption, flowing from this absence of a shared national identity.

thanks


On 19 February 2017 at 05:14, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
​Edited


In the face of Cornelius' concession to Kadiri that the accounts of systemic terrorism by Fulani herdsmen are suspect,  what are we to say to the Fulani herdsmen's public justifications of some of the most heinous of these massacres, such as at Agatu and Southern Kaduna?

What may be a critical response to the fact that there has been no rebuttal from the Fulani herdsmen and their umbrella organization, the Miyeti Allah, headed by some of the most prominent Northern Nigerian Muslims as well as their political enablers in the Northern Nigerian Muslim political class, from the President himself to other figures such as former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso and Kaduna state governor El Rufai, even to those massacres they are accused of which they have not publicly justified, such as the Enugu state massacre?

Why have the reactions of the political enablers of the terrorists  at best consisted in efforts to dilute the gravity of these acts of terror by either ignoring them, until forced to comment by outcries by rebels in the political class like Ayoedele Fayose and Femi Fani Kayode, the favorite attitude of Muhammadu Buhari, the Fulani national ruler?

Another approach is to respond by trying to gift lands belonging to other Nigerians to the terrorists by pursuing such kleptocratic constructions as a national grazing bill which would award free land to these private merchants of cows and death, protected by the laws of the country.

Another is to use the Nigerian army to legitimize the grazing bill plan by using the army as a cow herding institution, the army opening and running ranches in different parts of the nation.

A consistent  Sudanese style Janjaweed operation is in full play and some self understood intellectuals are struggling to avoid the implications of what is unfolding before their eyes.

The blending of religion and politics is one of the most deadly cocktails ever and its the worst form of corrosion in Nigerian politics.The absolutist Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity-in the co-opting of its founder's pacifist message by the Roman Empire-and Islam, have been amomng the most destructive exemplars of this.

The Northern Nigerian brand of Islam is toxic to other persuasions. There is no avoiding this fact, demonstrated in the volatile history of the region since the 1950s, a pervasive influence from which no large scale social interaction from that region is exempt, even as commentators like Farooq Kperogi engage in futile efforts to decouple Fulani herdsmen terrorism and Northern Muslim politics as a system, ignoring the history represented by the Fulani achieving their dominance in Northern Nigeria through the colonial initiative represented by the Nigerian wing of the Fulani jihad in which Uthman Dan Fodio employed political populism, religious puritanism and military might in entrenching a politico/religious agenda in the region led by his fellow Fulani.

To the best of my understanding, the only hope Nigerians have to escape from the clutches of the right wing Northern Muslim fanatics, for whom the 2011 Boko Haram resurgence and the Fulani herdsmen terrorist escalation are simply various manifestations, is to undo the 1914 amalgamation of North and South and create independence for the Christian groups in the North from the Muslim majority in that region through  a restructuring of the nation or dissolution and remaking of new nations from the current nation.

The brew that shapes the strategies of Northern Muslim politics unifies its politicians in such arrangements as the Northern Governors Forum, which has no counterpart in the South, to the best of my knowledge, representing an ideology that constitutes the most consistently unified bloc in Nigerian politics, while the SE and the SW remain in continuous conflict and the SS seats uneasily between them.

This arrangement is a like a damaged pot from which water is constantly leaking yet not only are some determined not to mend the pot they oppose efforts to remake the pot or break  it  completely and create something new from the shards.

This may be seen as the core problem of Nigeria's damaged nationhood, other afflictions, such as corruption, flowing from this absence of a shared national identity.

thanks

toyin

Mobolaji Aluko

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 5:26:32 AM2/19/17
to USAAfrica Dialogue, Cornelius Hamelberg

CH:

You wrote that: QUOTE I'm done with the matter. I see that Nigerian Muse  has not even mentioned " Fulani Herdsmen" , Not a word. UNQUOTE

Well, if you put the word "herdsmen" in the Search engine on Nigerianmuse.com, you will be sent to:


and you should find the word(s) that you seek.

And there you have it.



Bolaji Aluko

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 8:32:53 AM2/19/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Mythologists always behave as if their myths are realities. Major reason why Nigeria is still backward industrially and economically in spite of her huge natural and human resources is because many Nigerians including those who claim to be educated cannot differentiate between myth and reality. A while ago I met a highly educated Nigerian Professor in Vincent Oluwatoyin Adepoju's place of abode, London. He told me about thieves who were on a night burgling escapade at a Chemist store in Yaba- Lagos, Nigeria. But instead of carting away drugs from the Chemist's store, the thieves were furiously engaged in sweeping the floor with a bunch of a concocted broom hanging in front of the entrance to the store, till day break when the owner of the store arrived. I asked the distinguished Nigerian Professor if he saw the sweeping thieves himself and he answered negatively but added that he saw their pictures in the Nigerian newspapers. I asked him, how many were the thieves? He said seven. Are you sure, I asked? He affirmed that they were seven. I then pointed out to him that if a thief had been able to sweep with one concocted bunch of broom what were the rest six thieves doing? Instead of answering my question, the learned Profession accused me of having been Europeanized and not believing in African power. A mythologist like Oluwatoyin Adepoju would like to compel me to believe that a Fulani herdsman could ride on the back of his flock to kill, maim, rape and destroy farmlands and disappear from apprehension into thin air. Count me out of that illogical reasoning.

S.Kadiri  
 




Skickat: den 18 februari 2017 23:00
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 8:32:56 AM2/19/17
to usaafricadialogue
The Fulani-Hausa nexus in Nigerian politics is known by the term 'Hausa-Fulani' understood as the integration of the Fulani and the Hausa peoples conquered in the Fulani Jihad of Usman Dan Fodio, with the Hausa language eventually subsuming these  ethnic groups.

Fulani herdsmen's terrorism, on the other hand, is understood as a uniquely Fulani phenomenon on account of the bloodthirsty character in which the traditional Fulani lifestyle of cattle nomadism is being exploited as a military strategy in Nigeria and enabled by Northern Nigerian Muslim politicians, a strategy in which Fulani politicians are prominent.

The most prominent of these enabling politicians is the national ruler Muhammdu Buhari, as demonstrated by  his symblic actions, such as his creation   of a task force agst cattle rustling which he inaugurated in a  ceremony which he presided over in military gear, indicating his military commitment to the cause  of the Fulani as represented by their culturally central  cattle husbandry, while doing nothing about the ocean of Nigerians' blood being harvested by Fulani herdsmen from the Middle Belt to the South East.

 Cattle herding has been prominent for centuries to Fulani cosmology and lifestyle,with the cow being a central figure in the primordial triad of terrestrial creation of the  Fulani man, the woman  and the cow, by Gueno, the Creator. Within this context,  milk is understood as the primary substance of being as demonstrated in the first line of a well known Fulani creation story "In the beginning, there was a huge drop of milk". This fundamental psychological and social orientation continues into the conversion of the Fulani to Islam.

What Nigeria is experiencing is the deployment of the traditional Fulani nomadic cattle herding lifestyle into a form of mobile warfare, creating intimidation further leveraged  by various political strategies. These strategies include efforts at manipulation of national laws and  obfuscation of information by govt stakeholders in the Fulani led govt. These efforts at obfuscation involve providing conflicting responses at various times to the Fulani colonization strategy, at one point ascribing the murders by the herdsmen to the encroachment of farmers on the herdsmen's grazing routes, as if these private business people have paid for grazing routes in the first place, to claims that the herdsmen are not Nigerians.

These efforts at obfuscation seem to be working only on some so called intellectuals from the South, who prefer to split hairs than look down the barrel of the gun raised against them, determined Southern govt sympathizers who are not in a hurry to address something as frightening as terrorism sponsored by the same govt and members of Northern Muslim society a lot of whose sympathies are stamped in terms of an ethnic/religious affiliation.

Various Nigerian peoples, some governors, openly and others perhaps more quietly, and various Nigerian opinion shapers, are mobilizing against this scourge,  taking legal and military action agst this predatory strategy which has escalated sharply with the election of Muhammadu Buhari.

The greatest challenge to addressing the Fulani herdsmen's terrorism problem is the self seeking of many Southern Nigerian politicians, for whom silence or tardy comments are  the preferred response, as they watch their political careers and seek to escape the political tool that is the EFCC, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the central role of this institution being  building and prosecuting claims of crime by members of the political opposition. The major exceptions to this general attitude are Ekiti State governor Ayodele Fayose and former minister Femi Fani-Kayode, people who have refused to surrender to various intimidations by the federal govt.

thanks

toyin





Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 19, 2017, 5:16:50 PM2/19/17
to usaafricadialogue
Edited

Keep it up, Sir Kadiri.

We shall keep reading of what Nigerians are doing agst the terrorists you support by trying to hide their atrocities.

When the Boko Haram escalation emerged in the wake of GEJ's 2011 inauguration, following the Atiku Abubakar threat of violent change for Nigeria bcs a Northern    [Muslim ] candidate was not made PDP Presidential flagbearer, a position certain to lead to the Presidency on account of PDP's dominance at the time, a broad swathe of members of the Northern Muslim elite did everything to address the terrorist challenge in the spirit of denial of responsibility that is Kadiri's trademark as he twists himself into fanatically  shapes to support whatever the govt he supports is supporting, from national ruler Muhammadu Buhari's misogynistic 'my wife belongs to the kitchen' affirmation, to Buhari's support for Fulani herdsmen's terrorism, this contortion of reality in the early years of the Boko Haram escalation reaching a  climax in such declarations by Bamanga Tukur, then PDP chairman, that Boko Haram were freedom fighters, to prominent Northern Muslim blogger Aliyu Tilde urging the terrorists to ficus their attentions on the fed govt.

This was the climate in which the anti-Boko Haram war was conducted in the first two years of the post 2011 elections escalation. The North East remains embroiled in the flames from this romance with terror, the face of which later unraveled from its earlier efforts to portray itself as a Muslim army fighting an infidel government as it regularly bombed churches and government establishments and machine gunned peaceful Christians in packed churches on Christmas on and Sundays but avoided attacking mosques, the move agst fellow Muslims coming  at the end of the romance with the communities in which they were embedded.

We are now faced with the latest manifestation with the  struggle for power represented by the ideological and material enablers of Boko Haram-Fulani herdsmen's terrorism, a tiger some are hoping to ride to victory.

At what point will the overburdened nation break under this war by its own govt agst its citizens?

toyin

On 19 February 2017 at 22:35, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
Keep it up, Sir Kadiri.

We shall keep reading of what Nigerians are doing agst the terrorists you support by trying to hide their atrocities.

When the Boko Haram escalation emerged in the wake of GEJ's 2011 inauguration, following the Atiku Abubakarar threat of violent change for Nigeria bcs a Northern [ Muslim ] candidate was not made PDP Presidential flagbearer, a position certain to lead to the Presidency on account of PDP's dominance at the time, a broad swathe of members of the Northern Muslim elite did everything to address the terrorist challenge in the spirit of denial of responsibility that is Kadiri's trademark as he twists himself into fanatically  shapes to support whatever the govt he supports is supporting, from Buhari's misogynistic 'my wife belongs to the kitchen' to Buhari's support for Fulani herdsmen's terrorism, this contortion of reality in the early years of the Boko Haram escalation reaching a reaching a climax in such declarations by Bamanga Tukur, then PDP chairman, that Boko Haram were freedom fighters, to prominent Northern Muslim blogger Aliyu Tilde urging the terrorists to ficus their attentions on the fed govt.

This was the climate in which the anti-Boko Haram war was conducted in the first two years of the post 2011 elections escalation. The North East remains embroiled in the flames from this romance with terror, the face of which later unraveled from its earlier efforts to portray itself as a Muslim army fighting an infidel government as it regularly bombed churches and government establishments and machine gunned peaceful Christians in packed churches on Christmas on and Sundays but avoided attacking mosques, the move agst fellow Muslims coming  at the end of the romance with the communities in which they were embedded.

We are now faced with the latest manifestation with the  struggle for power represented by the ideological and material enablers of Boko Haram-Fulani herdsmen's terrorism, a tiger some are hoping to ride to victory.

At what point will the overburdened nation break under this war by its own govt agst its citizens?

toyin









On 19 February 2017 at 14:11, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Mythologists always behave as if their myths are realities. Major reason why Nigeria is still backward industrially and economically in spite of her huge natural and human resources is because many Nigerians including those who claim to be educated cannot differentiate between myth and reality. A while ago I met a highly educated Nigerian Professor in Vincent Oluwatoyin Adepoju's place of abode, London. He told me about thieves who were on a night burgling escapade at a Chemist store in Yaba- Lagos, Nigeria. But instead of carting away drugs from the Chemist's store, the thieves were furiously engaged in sweeping the floor with a bunch of a concocted broom hanging in front of the entrance to the store, till day break when the owner of the store arrived. I asked the distinguished Nigerian Professor if he saw the sweeping thieves himself and he answered negatively but added that he saw their pictures in the Nigerian newspapers. I asked him, how many were the thieves? He said seven. Are you sure, I asked? He affirmed that they were seven. I then pointed out to him that if a thief had been able to sweep with one concocted bunch of broom what were the rest six thieves doing? Instead of answering my question, the learned Profession accused me of having been Europeanized and not believing in African power. A mythologist like Oluwatoyin Adepoju would like to compel me to believe that a Fulani herdsman could ride on the back of his flock to kill, maim, rape and destroy farmlands and disappear from apprehension into thin air. Count me out of that illogical reasoning.

S.Kadiri  
 



Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 20, 2017, 6:55:01 AM2/20/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Dear Toyin,

Shalom!

Islam doesn't mean pecae, it means surrender!

The Prophet of Islam (salallahu alaihi wa salaam) 's prophetic career lasted approximately twenty three years (610-632) during all of which time the Muslims were more or less under a state of emergency, before the Hijrah and more or less for another ten years after the promulgation of the Charter of Medina - the constitution of the first Islamic state on planet earth.

Why does a non-believer advocate that the believers apply the mystical ideas of e.g. Ibn Arabi to solve Dunya politics in Islamic countries the world over and Nigeria in particular?

Quest for the Red Sulphur

The Four Pillars of Spiritual Transformation - ibn Arabi

Ibn al-Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination

Circa 1987, when I asked one of the Sunni brethren about Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi's idea (from his book Meccan Revelations - he had fallen in love with a thirteen year old girl etc.) that Sexual union is the highest form of spiritual contemplation clarified here in the section on Ibn Arabi) he told me that the propagator of such ideas was going to go to hell. So Toyin must understand the unlikelihood of the political class adopting Ibn Arabi as their role model.

As you know, it takes two to tango - so , just for balance/ even handedness - and I'm sure that they would appreciate your efforts, what kind of non-militant doctrines would Toyin like to recommend to e.g. President Trump and General James "Mad Dog " Mattis, his Secretary of Defence?

This may also interest you : Dr. Azmayesh : Islam, Extremism, and Democracy

I just read : "Nevertheless the Commonwealth still serves a purpose, as a forum for informal discussion and co-operation between nations of widely disparate cultures and material conditions. That function is served by a host of specialist Commonwealth institutions (the Commonwealth Institute in London, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the Commonwealth of Learning, and so on)" (The British Commonwealth)

Perchance, Toyin would like to communicate his non-violent recommendations to or via some of the appropriate destinations listed above?

‘The Story of God" with Morgan Freeman

Great man : Farid al Arash

Keep on trucking!

Cornelius

Emeagwali, Gloria (History)

unread,
Feb 20, 2017, 6:55:51 AM2/20/17
to usaafricadialogue

"It should be clear to you that not all Fulani are herdsmen and that there are Fulani Professors, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and Administrators permanently resident in many communities in Nigeria. Fulani people have no specific state attached to their ethnic group in Nigeria, rather they belong to the state in which they have permanently been resident for centuries and from generations to generation." Kadiri


This is my understanding of the situation, too. This also  applies to a wide stretch of west African terrain, from Guinea to Mali and beyond.

 
 We must  remember that historically, pastoralists and farmers have often  had a tense relationship, across all ethnic identities,  because of wandering cattle and perceived encroachments on farmland.

Gloria


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 5:00 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Dangerous Criminalization of Fulani Ethnicity
 
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 20, 2017, 6:56:12 AM2/20/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

For reasons best known to Cornelius Hamelberg, he complained that Nigerian Muse has not mentioned Fulani Herdsmen, not a word. Thankfully, Bolaji Aluko, posted a link that debunked his complaint. When a Yoruba native priest asked Oluwatoyin Adepoju, to bring ÒGÚFE to appease the deity, he returned to the native priest with twenty cups, instead of a bearded he-goat because his understanding of the word ÒGÚFE is conflated with ÔGÚN-IFE. His response beneath derails completely from the complaint of Cornelius Hamelberg and the link supplied by Bolaji Aluko. If Oluwatoyin Adepoju had taken time to read through the links, perhaps, he would have been detoxified of his poisoned aversion against innocent Fulani herdsmen.


One of the links carried a title, Nimbo Killings: Ugwuanyi demands answers from security agencies over failure to protect community from Fulani herdsmen. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is the Governor of Enugu State, where Nimbo village is situated. He said among other things, "On Sunday, April 24, (2016) by 7pm, the night before this carnage took place (in Nimbo), I got security information from Uzo-Uwani Local Government Transition Chairman, Hon. Cornell Onwubuya that such an incident was likely to take place in the State. I immediately summoned a meeting of the State Security Council which commenced by 10pm." After listing those who were present at the meeting he disclosed that, "At the meeting we received assurances from the Commissioner of Police in Enugu State, Mr. Nwodibo Ekechukwu that the Area Commander of State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was on ground in Nimbo; That the Anti-Terrorism Unit was at Nimbo; That he was in contact with the Kogi State Commissioner of Police and reported suspected herdsmen grouping at Odolu in Kogi State, preparatory for an attack on Nimbo and Abbi communities; That Police mobile force and Conventional police were already drafted to Nimbo and Abbi Communities; That he was in touch with the Area Commander in Idah, ACP Ikegwuonwu, and had linked him with the Area Commander in Nsukka, ACP Monday Kuryas; Both men, according to the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Nwodibo Ekechukwu, reported that there were no traces of suspected herdsmen in Nsukka or Idah; That he ordered the Area Commander in Nsukka, ACP Monday Kuryas, to redeploy to Nimbo; That the Garrison Commander, Brigadier General Olufemi Akinjobi, on his part assured the meeting that Military was already deployed in Nimbo." Although the Governor did not say when his State Security meeting of 24 April 2016 ended he told media that it started at 10pm and a guess is that such a meeting should have taken, at least, three hours to conclude, which would have been 1am. Five hours later, at 6am on Monday, 25 April 2016 attack on Nimbo started. Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is justified to demand explanation from the security agencies on why they failed to prevent the expected attack on Nimbo despite assurances of readiness to repel such attack if it should occur. Let us now recall that the suspected Fulani herdsmen were grouping at Odolu in Kogi State in preparation for attack on Nimbo and Abbi  Communities. The distance between Odolu, in Kogi state, to Nimbo in Enugu State would take two walking days by foot and may even be longer in a company of cattle. Since there were no traces of suspected herdsmen in Nsukka or Idah, according to reports to the CP by the ACP's, the CP ordered ACP Monday Kuryas to redeploy to Nimbo. Moreover, Garrison Commander, Brigadier General Olufemi Akinjobi had assured the security meeting headed by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi that the military was already deployed in Nimbo. How could Fulani herdsmen have walked on foot from Kogi State undetected to launch attack on Nimbo?  Where were the redeployed military and police to Nimbo when the attacker came? Why was the attack attributed to suspected Fulani herdsmen, when no Fulani herdsman was caught or identified during or immediately after the attack? In a normal society, all the security agents that participated in the meeting with Governor Ugwuanyi on Nimbo before the attack would have been sacked for dereliction of duty if they did not resign voluntarily. There is no evidence that Fulani herdsmen committed the Mayhem in Nimbo and nearby villages if we are to judge from the account rendered by the Governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ogwuanyi.

S.Kadiri
 




Skickat: den 19 februari 2017 14:11
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Cornelius Hamelberg

unread,
Feb 20, 2017, 10:00:38 AM2/20/17
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Oga Kadiri,

Once again you are barking up the wrong tree. Who told you that I complained or was complaining? I did not complain. I was not complaining.

A Soviet cosmonaut once said that he ascended to heaven (up in dimension space) and did not find the Almighty there. So ? I doubt that Mr. Gagarin was intending to find our transcendent God Who is everywhere, up among the stars and beyond, if he could not find Him down here on earth or in his own heart. Obviously, that cosmonaut was searching with the wrong instruments. Of course, you Ogbeni Kadiri are free to arrive or not arrive at any conclusions about someone else’s journey into space or anywhere else.

Last week, I was thinking about my transcendent Almighty as I read Chapter Two of the Book of Jewish Law Shulchan Aruch ( in English) - that even under the blanket or bedsheet, one cannot hide from The Almighty...

I wanted to write "Nigerian muse" but accidentally wrote Nigerian music . Sometimes a search yields unexpected results.

Here is what I was looking for

Just like I said before, I'm through with discussing Fulani herdsmen. I should just like to add that my father's mother (Maud Young - Martinique cum N'dar/ St. Louis Senegal /Bordeaux - had an English father) was possibly Fulani (I shall enquire and let you know)

I should just like to add to what you said earlier, that "not all Fulani are herdsmen and that there are Fulani Professors, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and Administrators" etc. and this is specifically addressed to some of those who from their heights, look down on others, that in France today you will find Fulanis among their sophisticated citizens, some with awesome art collections etc. This must hold true of Nigeria also.

As a teenager in Sierra Leone, what I most remember about the Fulani traders along Pademba Road for example, is that at different times, no matter what day of the week, I would walk down that road and observe some Fulani traders, washing their faces, their hands and then their feet pouring the wtaer from what loked like a tea kettle. Why the should be doing this all the time was a mystery to me, but I kept this to myself. Years of observing this washing of  face, hands and feet  just outside their little kiosks by the roadside led me to the firm conclusion that the Fulani people were obsessed with cleanliness . How was I to know that they must have been doing their wudu ? I knew nothing about Islam, and until this day, have never seen a mosque in Sierra Leone or in Ghana or Nigeria - or  been inside one, in those countries ( But I have been in mosques in Sweden, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco etc)

It all begins with cleanliness. Consider this Ogbeni Kadiri : As Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair said:

"Heedfulness leads to cleanliness,

cleanliness leads to cleanness

cleanness leads to abstinence

abstinence leads to holiness

holiness leads to modesty

modesty leads to fear of sin

the fear of sin leads to piety

piety leads to the Holy Spirit

the Holy Spirit leads to the resurrection of the dead

and the resurrection of the dead comes through Elijah , blessed be his memory, Amen"

( Mishnah-tractate Sotah 9:14 )

For your delight : Kenny Burrell : Elijah

Sincerely,

Ogbeni Hamelberg

( <span style="font-styl

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Feb 20, 2017, 10:00:43 AM2/20/17
to usaafricadialogue
The Co-Opting of Nigerian Security Agencies in Fulani Herdsmen's  Terrorism

The Nigerian security agencies have been subverted by the Fulani leadership of the Nigerian govt and the DSS, leading to no action or tardy action whenever the Fulani herdsmen's terrorism is involved.

The Fulani herdsmen boldly justified the massacre at Agatu in a meeting with high ranking law enforcement officers and walked free till today.

The Fulani herdsmen recently described the massacre in Southern Kaduna as a reprisal for an earlier attack agst thgem, yet these people justifying massacre of Nigerians remain free till today.  The Fulani governor of the state, El-Rufai stated he paid off the herdsmen to prevent another attack, rather than apprehend the murderers.

The most decisive action taken by Nigerian security agencies in this war has been the arrest of South Easterners who mobilized to fight the herdsmen. The herdsmen, by contrast, move freely without any apprehension.

The Nimbo attack demonstrates very clearly the collusion between the Nigerian security agencies and what is correctly perceived as a special interest of the Fulani led Nigerian govt.

Where Fulani herdsmen's terrorism is concerned, the new law is 'see no evil[ done by the terrorists] hear no evil[ that evidences agst the terrorists] and do no evil    [representing action agst the terrorists].


The Relationship Between Sedentary and Nomadic Fulani in the Ongoing Fulani Herdsman's Terrorist Colonization Initiative

The effort to decouple sedentary and nomadic Fulani in the ongoing Fulani herdsmen's terrorist drive is at best simplistic. It is simplistic bcs politicians from the sedentary Fulani give political cover and legitimization to the activities and aspirations demonstrated by  the nomadic Fulani.

Along with this political cover, we must ask-to whom do the cows being herded by the nomadic Fulani belong? Do they belong to the cattle herders who walk long distances in various kinds of weather  with the huge money making merchandise that constitutes a virtual monopoly in beef in Nigeria? The cows can belong only to fellow Fulani, most likely to the sedentary Fulani on whose behalf the nomadic Fulani act. Who is providing the weapons with which the nomadic Fulani carry out the Agatu, Nimbo and other massacres and the large scale rape of the Middle Belt if bot the owners of the cows the nomadic Fulani herd across Nigerian? Who are the heads of the Miyeti Allah, the umbrella organization of the Fulani herdsmen, if not the sedentary Fulani elite?

From the Fulani jihad to the present, Fulani lifestyle operates in terms of  a synergy between sedentary and nomadic Fulani. Their political organization  is better understood in terms of that configuration  and must be fought in that recognition if the parasitic  hold this formation has on the Nigerian polity is to be broken.

Between 'War' and 'Clashes'

The current crisis in Nigeria goes well beyond the tragic, reality denying  euphemism 'clashes'. We are faced with systematic massacre from the Middle Belt to the South East, with recurrent rapes ,destruction of crops and intimidation by Fulani herdsmen, a crisis escalating with the entry of the Nigerian Fulani national ruler Muhammadu Buhari. These are  not random skirmishes between one group and another. No other group in Nigerian history has demonstrated such widespread destruction of lives and property as the Fulani herdsmen terrorists. Apart from Boko Haram Islamic terrorists, no other non-state group is operating at the level of militarization demonstrated by the Fulani herdsmen terrorists, enabling them to successfully take on the army and the police in the few instances these organs of sate have challenged them.  We are faced with an army, not random nomadic elements, a carefully organized military group pursuing a style of warfare mapping the fault lines of Nigerian geo-politics.















 

On 19 February 2017 at 23:53, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

For reasons best known to Cornelius Hamelberg, he complained that Nigerian Muse has not mentioned Fulani Herdsmen, not a word. Thankfully, Bolaji Aluko, posted a link that debunked his complaint. When a Yoruba native priest asked Oluwatoyin Adepoju, to bring ÒGÚFE to appease the deity, he returned to the native priest with twenty cups, instead of a bearded he-goat because his understanding of the word ÒGÚFE is conflated with ÔGÚN-IFE. His response beneath derails completely from the complaint of Cornelius Hamelberg and the link supplied by Bolaji Aluko. If Oluwatoyin Adepoju had taken time to read through the links, perhaps, he would have been detoxified of his poisoned aversion against innocent Fulani herdsmen.


One of the links carried a title, Nimbo Killings: Ugwuanyi demands answers from security agencies over failure to protect community from Fulani herdsmen. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is the Governor of Enugu State, where Nimbo village is situated. He said among other things, "On Sunday, April 24, (2016) by 7pm, the night before this carnage took place (in Nimbo), I got security information from Uzo-Uwani Local Government Transition Chairman, Hon. Cornell Onwubuya that such an incident was likely to take place in the State. I immediately summoned a meeting of the State Security Council which commenced by 10pm." After listing those who were present at the meeting he disclosed that, "At the meeting we received assurances from the Commissioner of Police in Enugu State, Mr. Nwodibo Ekechukwu that the Area Commander of State Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) was on ground in Nimbo; That the Anti-Terrorism Unit was at Nimbo; That he was in contact with the Kogi State Commissioner of Police and reported suspected herdsmen grouping at Odolu in Kogi State, preparatory for an attack on Nimbo and Abbi communities; That Police mobile force and Conventional police were already drafted to Nimbo and Abbi Communities; That he was in touch with the Area Commander in Idah, ACP Ikegwuonwu, and had linked him with the Area Commander in Nsukka, ACP Monday Kuryas; Both men, according to the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Nwodibo Ekechukwu, reported that there were no traces of suspected herdsmen in Nsukka or Idah; That he ordered the Area Commander in Nsukka, ACP Monday Kuryas, to redeploy to Nimbo; That the Garrison Commander, Brigadier General Olufemi Akinjobi, on his part assured the meeting that Military was already deployed in Nimbo." Although the Governor did not say when his State Security meeting of 24 April 2016 ended he told media that it started at 10pm and a guess is that such a meeting should have taken, at least, three hours to conclude, which would have been 1am. Five hours later, at 6am on Monday, 25 April 2016 attack on Nimbo started. Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi is justified to demand explanation from the security agencies on why they failed to prevent the expected attack on Nimbo despite assurances of readiness to repel such attack if it should occur. Let us now recall that the suspected Fulani herdsmen were grouping at Odolu in Kogi State in preparation for attack on Nimbo and Abbi  Communities. The distance between Odolu, in Kogi state, to Nimbo in Enugu State would take two walking days by foot and may even be longer in a company of cattle. Since there were no traces of suspected herdsmen in Nsukka or Idah, according to reports to the CP by the ACP's, the CP ordered ACP Monday Kuryas to redeploy to Nimbo. Moreover, Garrison Commander, Brigadier General Olufemi Akinjobi had assured the security meeting headed by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi that the military was already deployed in Nimbo. How could Fulani herdsmen have walked on foot from Kogi State undetected to launch attack on Nimbo?  Where were the redeployed military and police to Nimbo when the attacker came? Why was the attack attributed to suspected Fulani herdsmen, when no Fulani herdsman was caught or identified during or immediately after the attack? In a normal society, all the security agents that participated in the meeting with Governor Ugwuanyi on Nimbo before the attack would have been sacked for dereliction of duty if they did not resign voluntarily. There is no evidence that Fulani herdsmen committed the Mayhem in Nimbo and nearby villages if we are to judge from the account rendered by the Governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ogwuanyi.

S.Kadiri
 



Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Feb 20, 2017, 1:54:56 PM2/20/17
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Keep on editing Dr.Adepoju.


Mathematically speaking, zero raised to the power (exponent) of a trillion is still zero. You can repeat your slogan of Fulani herdsmen terrorists trillion times, it would not make terrorists out the hard working Fulani herdsmen who are the main source of beef supplies to all Nigerians today. As the late Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, once observed, Slogan is like a perfume, it smells good but it tastes bad. You feel very comfortable with the odour of your Fulani herdsmen's terrorism but try to put yourself in the position of Fulani herdsmen you will discover how distasteful your slogan is.


Bringing up PDP internal strife prior to the presidential election of 2011 in relation to Fulani herdsmen only expose you of being historical aloof. You wrote as if Goodluck Jonathan was not declared the winner of the Presidential election in 2011 and as if to say he won the election without any support or vote from the North even though the name of his Vice was Namadi Sambo. I can't understand the history you are trying to tell. If Goodluck Jonathan did not disappoint Nigerians, especially between 2011 and 2015, he would still be President of Nigeria today. Oluwatoyin Adepoju, please stop pounding yam with a needle in a calabash, that is not how to get pounded yam!!

S.Kadiri    
 




Skickat: den 19 februari 2017 22:38
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages