The Gulf Between Nigeria's Muslim North and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North Led Fed Govt to Settle Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation

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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Jul 1, 2019, 1:55:40 AM7/1/19
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The poster of the Facebook update represents views likely to be encountered from the Muslim North, in my view, while most of the commentators represent views likely to come from the South.


There has been a sustained & largely uninformed campaign against pastoralism. In response, the government decided to initiate the Ruga Settlement programme to settle them. Now there is a new campaign to frustrate stop it. So what do they want?

Comments
  • Mohammed Mohammed Haruna
    Mohammed Mohammed Haruna Heads you lose, Tails you lose. It seems Prof.
  • Joe Attueyi
    Joe Attueyi Well if we are being honest with each other: The root problem is that the FG’s emotional trust bank account with most (?) many (?) non Fulani citizens of Nigeria is basically empty. 

    There is absolutely no way they can sell this RUGA plan south of the    Niger. 

    Either they start replenishing that trust account ( which is not a short term thing) or find a solution that does not exacerbate already existing tensions. 

    That is why I suggest the FG clearing sambisa forest and building the infrastructure that will turn it into animal husbandry economic park. 

    That way you kill two birds with the same stone. Convert that forest into useful purposes while eliminating the unnecessary ethnicity altercations that may lead to internecine warfare among our people
    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
    Write a reply...

  • Ibrahim Dan-Halilu
    Ibrahim Dan-Halilu Some people feel it's not the responsibility of the FG to do so. It's states that should resettle them since they are indigenous to some states. The FG approach seems to accommodate all pastoralists regardless of their nationality, which has the implication of harbouring citizens of other countries without proper documentation and no benefit to the FG since they will not pay taxes. Ideally, the Ruga Settlements should be backed by law enacted by the National Assembly rather than putting the cart before the horse. You cannot create a policy framework out of nothing.
    • Sesugh Akume
      Sesugh Akume Ibrahim Dan-Halilu, thank you. You speak my mind. Below are some concerns I personally have which include these you've stated here. I didn't want to make mine long so said only a little, but you've said it all. 
      No proper documentation, porous borders, free movement including of arms. How is this going to be mitigated?
    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
    Write a reply...

  • Sesugh Akume
    Sesugh Akume Let me speak for myself:

    In my ancestral home are IDPs from attacks by the herders. They can't go home because A, it's not safe up to now; B, there's no home to go to. They've been destroyed, homesteads, farmlands, etc. Others have been taken over by     grazing cattle. I'm of the opinion that these ones ought to be resettled, rehabilitated, and reintegrated first before talking about cattle settlements in their communities.
    I also know that there's ample land especially in the far northern Nigeria, I see vast tracks of land for kilometres with no human activity at all. I find it difficult to understand why the pilot projects has to start in my home. 
    I'm also of the opinion that cattle as any other business is private. If people want land for animal husbandry why is the FG allotting land and not they negotiating and getting it to run their businesses? Will this be done for me if I run into piggery too? Or I have to resort to violence then piggery can also be given special, exclusive attention?
    Recall the presidency statement that it's better for us to give up our land than to lose our lives. What precisely does this statement mean?
  • Jonathan Ishaku
    Jonathan Ishaku Prof. I thought a statement from the Fulani herdsmen through Miyetti Allah renouncing violence apologizing for the blooshef or generally showing remorse for the killings as a precondition would have smoothen the process. Unfortunately, Miyetti Allah still appears to exhibit a sense of entitlement which the government hasn't even publicly deprecated. In the circumstances, it appears the government is creating havens for armed adversaries within victim communities. Prof. you can't sincerely be surprised by the murmurings!
  • Eric C. Ona
    Eric C. Ona Livestock business is a lucrative business. The people in the business should buy lands and have ranches, just like farmers buy land to farm. Its not the government's role to impose something that would benefit a particular tribe at the expense of other tribes.
  • Chigozie Paul Amadi
    Chigozie Paul Amadi You have enough land in the North. Use it instead of provoking poor farmers, raping and killing indigenous people.
  • Uka Ugwa
    Uka Ugwa It's crystal clear to me, now. Thiese cattle ranch/colony and Ruga nonsense are like the government of the day, in its sworn craze, proposing to build model markets (in the capacity of Alaba, Otu Nkwo, Ariria, Ladipo, Tejuosho and the many more) throughout Nigerian regions, beyond, through Niamey and up to Cassablanca, to accommodate and sustain the llivelihood of migrant Igbo merchants and their trades. With state fund? This is an unattainable conquest, especially in my terrain, the Caliphate must be told. Tame your herds and the herdsman to your stead, NOW!
  • Jide Ojo
    Jide Ojo So you think it is proper to use taxpayers money to build for people who probably have never paid any tax to the system? They are business men like everyone else. Tje government can support them by making a loan scheme available but to use state's resources for the benefit of few is notjing but corruption. Will ruga users pay rent to the government?
  • Abubakar Atiku Nuhu-Koko
    Abubakar Atiku Nuhu-Koko Miyetti Allah is an unknown phenomenon to the cattle pastoralists. Miyetti Allah is just like any one of those ubiquitous so-called elitist urban-based socio-cultural groups that go around with politicians in search of greener pastures from government treasuries period.
  • Nk Lee
    Nk Lee Nigerians underrated Buhari, fighting his way back for second tenure is to unleash the Islamic fury in him to subdue the entire Nigeria to Islamic religion.
  • Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju very interesting



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Femi Segun

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Jul 1, 2019, 11:40:56 AM7/1/19
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Still on this issue. Please let all informed minds read and digest this post. In the Social Sciences, we call it participant observation. 

How Fulani converted Ruga settlements in my community to emirate —Obasanjo’s ex-aide

Published June 28, 2019
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Eniola Akinkuotu, Abuja

A former Senior Special Assistant to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan Asake, has said the new move to create Ruga settlements in some parts of the country is nothing but an attempt to ‘Fulanise’ the country.

Asake, who was a member of the seventh House of Representatives between 2011 and 2015, said this during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday.

He said the term ‘Ruga’ was a Fulani word and it was thus hypocritical of anyone to say when it is implemented across the nation, it would not be exclusive to Fulani.

READ ALSO: COZA: Don Jazzy, Toke Makinwa, Daddy Freeze, others hail Busola Dakolo for speaking up about rape experience

Asake, who is from southern Kaduna, said in 1987, the then government of Kaduna State approved Ruga settlements in the old Kachia Local Government Area which now comprises Zangon Kataf, Chikun, Kajuru and Kachia Local Government Areas.

He, however, said over time, the Fulani began to expand these settlements and today, some of them are being converted to Emirates.

Asake, who is a leader of the Middle Belt Forum, said, “I’m from Zangon Kataf Local Government Area in Kaduna State. We have what was established in 1987 as the Kachia grazing reserve in the then old Kachia LG which comprises Zangon Kataf, Chikun and Kajuru and Kachia Local Government Areas of today.

“That grazing reserve has been changed to Laduga. Laduga is actually a Fulani word and no indigene is there. The land has been taken over from the indigenes. And that place is now a big town, with big hospitals and roads.

“In fact, the last voter registration exercise there, two registration machines were put there. Today, they have a district head and they are asking for an emirate. It is just a model of what will happen tomorrow in this country when these settlements are established. You will have state constituencies in the state assembly established all over the country strictly for Fulani.”

Asake said the Ruga initiative must be rejected because government’s ultimate plan is to take over ancestral land from indigenous owners and give it to a particular people.

He hailed socio-cultural groups in the South, especially Afenifere and Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo for rejecting the idea

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Femi Segun

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Jul 1, 2019, 11:41:11 AM7/1/19
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Thanks for sharing this. How voluntary is this programme, when inducement and force are being used to make  people to give up their ancestral lands? How voluntary is this scheming when herdsmen are allowed to roam with AK-47 and destroy people's farmland and in the process, their livelihood without anyone getting punished or prosecuted according to the Constitution which the President swore to protect without favour or discrimination? I put a question to Oga Jibo some months ago and I am restating it here: Are these Fulani herdsmen superior to the farmers whose land they are destroying? One of the commentators raised a pertinent question above, but no response.  Let me just issue a note of warning here. History is replete with political miscalculations that have grave consequences. Land and religion are too emotive issues that people are prepared to lay down their lives to defend. When the conflagration that the PMB led Government and his  willing accomplice starts, the consequences might be more than what we all bargain for. Let's thread carefully. Pastoralism is a private business, why all the hues? Or is it part of the economic policy of the Federal Government? 

On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 6:55 AM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jul 4, 2019, 2:36:07 AM7/4/19
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But we heard from the Kperogi analysis on this forum that not all Fulani pastoralists are Muslims.  Was he lying?   He listed at least 8 Fulani identities which are now being homogenized and lumped together in a knee- jerk reaction of fear.  If that claim is true how could there be a threat of emirates all over the country?

Could a specific event in the Kaduna hotbed be generalised for the country?

OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


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Date: 01/07/2019 16:45 (GMT+00:00)
To: 'Chika Onyeani' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria's MuslimNorth  and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North Led FedGovt to Settle  Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation

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Still on this issue. Please let all informed minds read and digest this post. In the Social Sciences, we call it participant observation. 

How Fulani converted Ruga settlements in my community to emirate —Obasanjo’s ex-aide

Published June 28, 2019
KINDLY SHARE THIS STORY    
File copy

Eniola Akinkuotu, Abuja

A former Senior Special Assistant to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan Asake, has said the new move to create Ruga settlements in some parts of the country is nothing but an attempt to ‘Fulanise’ the country.

Asake, who was a member of the seventh House of Representatives between 2011 and 2015, said this during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday.

He said the term ‘Ruga’ was a Fulani word and it was thus hypocritical of anyone to say when it is implemented across the nation, it would not be exclusive to Fulani.

READ ALSO: COZA: Don Jazzy, Toke Makinwa, Daddy Freeze, others hail Busola Dakolo for speaking up about rape experience

Asake, who is from southern Kaduna, said in 1987, the then government of Kaduna State approved Ruga settlements in the old Kachia Local Government Area which now comprises Zangon Kataf, Chikun, Kajuru and Kachia Local Government Areas.

He, however, said over time, the Fulani began to expand these settlements and today, some of them are being converted to Emirates.

Asake, who is a leader of the Middle Belt Forum, said, “I’m from Zangon Kataf Local Government Area in Kaduna State. We have what was established in 1987 as the Kachia grazing reserve in the then old Kachia LG which comprises Zangon Kataf, Chikun and Kajuru and Kachia Local Government Areas of today.

“That grazing reserve has been changed to Laduga. Laduga is actually a Fulani word and no indigene is there. The land has been taken over from the indigenes. And that place is now a big town, with big hospitals and roads.

“In fact, the last voter registration exercise there, two registration machines were put there. Today, they have a district head and they are asking for an emirate. It is just a model of what will happen tomorrow in this country when these settlements are established. You will have state constituencies in the state assembly established all over the country strictly for Fulani.”

Asake said the Ruga initiative must be rejected because government’s ultimate plan is to take over ancestral land from indigenous owners and give it to a particular people.

He hailed socio-cultural groups in the South, especially Afenifere and Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo for rejecting the idea

DOWNLOAD THE PUNCH NEWS APP NOW ON

 

On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 6:55 AM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
The poster of the Facebook update represents views likely to be encountered from the Muslim North, in my view, while most of the commentators represent views likely to come from the South.


There has been a sustained & largely uninformed campaign against pastoralism. In response, the government decided to initiate the Ruga Settlement programme to settle them. Now there is a new campaign to frustrate stop it. So what do they want?

Comments
  • Mohammed Mohammed Haruna
  • Joe Attueyi Well if we are being honest with each other: The root problem is that the FG’s emotional trust bank account with most (?) many (?) non Fulani citizens of Nigeria is basically empty. 

    There is absolutely no way they can sell this RUGA plan south of the    Niger. 

    Either they start replenishing that trust account ( which is not a short term thing) or find a solution that does not exacerbate already existing tensions. 

    That is why I suggest the FG clearing sambisa forest and building the infrastructure that will turn it into animal husbandry economic park. 

    That way you kill two birds with the same stone. Convert that forest into useful purposes while eliminating the unnecessary ethnicity altercations that may lead to internecine warfare among our people
  • Ibrahim Dan-Halilu
    • Sesugh Akume
      Sesugh Akume Ibrahim Dan-Halilu, thank you. You speak my mind. Below are some concerns I personally have which include these you've stated here. I didn't want to make mine long so said only a little, but you've said it all. 
      No proper documentation, porous borders, free movement including of arms. How is this going to be mitigated?
    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
    Write a reply...

  • Sesugh Akume
  • Sesugh Akume Let me speak for myself:

    In my ancestral home are IDPs from attacks by the herders. They can't go home because A, it's not safe up to now; B, there's no home to go to. They've been destroyed, homesteads, farmlands, etc. Others have been taken over by     grazing cattle. I'm of the opinion that these ones ought to be resettled, rehabilitated, and reintegrated first before talking about cattle settlements in their communities.
    I also know that there's ample land especially in the far northern Nigeria, I see vast tracks of land for kilometres with no human activity at all. I find it difficult to understand why the pilot projects has to start in my home. 
    I'm also of the opinion that cattle as any other business is private. If people want land for animal husbandry why is the FG allotting land and not they negotiating and getting it to run their businesses? Will this be done for me if I run into piggery too? Or I have to resort to violence then piggery can also be given special, exclusive attention?
    Recall the presidency statement that it's better for us to give up our land than to lose our lives. What precisely does this statement mean?
  • Jonathan Ishaku Prof. I thought a statement from the Fulani herdsmen through Miyetti Allah renouncing violence apologizing for the blooshef or generally showing remorse for the killings as a precondition would have smoothen the process. Unfortunately, Miyetti Allah still appears to exhibit a sense of entitlement which the government hasn't even publicly deprecated. In the circumstances, it appears the government is creating havens for armed adversaries within victim communities. Prof. you can't sincerely be surprised by the murmurings!
  • Eric C. Ona Livestock business is a lucrative business. The people in the business should buy lands and have ranches, just like farmers buy land to farm. Its not the government's role to impose something that would benefit a particular tribe at the expense of other tribes.
  • Chigozie Paul Amadi You have enough land in the North. Use it instead of provoking poor farmers, raping and killing indigenous people.
  • Uka Ugwa It's crystal clear to me, now. Thiese cattle ranch/colony and Ruga nonsense are like the government of the day, in its sworn craze, proposing to build model markets (in the capacity of Alaba, Otu Nkwo, Ariria, Ladipo, Tejuosho and the many more) throughout Nigerian regions, beyond, through Niamey and up to Cassablanca, to accommodate and sustain the llivelihood of migrant Igbo merchants and their trades. With state fund? This is an unattainable conquest, especially in my terrain, the Caliphate must be told. Tame your herds and the herdsman to your stead, NOW!
  • Jide Ojo So you think it is proper to use taxpayers money to build for people who probably have never paid any tax to the system? They are business men like everyone else. Tje government can support them by making a loan scheme available but to use state's resources for the benefit of few is notjing but corruption. Will ruga users pay rent to the government?
  • Abubakar Atiku Nuhu-Koko Miyetti Allah is an unknown phenomenon to the cattle pastoralists. Miyetti Allah is just like any one of those ubiquitous so-called elitist urban-based socio-cultural groups that go around with politicians in search of greener pastures from government treasuries period.
  • Nk Lee Nigerians underrated Buhari, fighting his way back for second tenure is to unleash the Islamic fury in him to subdue the entire Nigeria to Islamic religion.



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    Moses Ebe Ochonu

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    Jul 4, 2019, 4:28:48 AM7/4/19
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    I had no idea that Jibo was one of the propagandists for the now suspended Ruga Fulani settlement scheme. Thanks for posting this, Toyin. Oh well, what is new--he's always been the chief propagandist for his Fulani kinsmen--killer herdsmen he considers victims and endangered, an alternate narrative removed from our terrestrial reality. 

    They say they want to solve "herders-farmers" crisis but why the clear land grab on behalf of Fulani herders? Why is there nothing in the plan to resettle the hundreds of thousands of people in IDP camps in many Middle Belt states and communities destroyed by the killer herdsmen who have now forcefully taken over these communities and converted them to their own conquered Ruga? Why is there nothing in the plan for farmers and for keepers of other domesticated animals? If you're truly interested in solving the crisis, why is there nothing in the plan to disarm the heavily armed, roving Fulani militias who have left a trail of death and destruction and have already confiscated and cleansed vast swathes of land in the Middle Belt for their herding kinsmen? 

    This disastrous administration consistently infantilizes Nigerians. First cattle colonies. It didn't fly. Then Ruga. Now it's rejected and suspended. Will they come to their senses and embrace the consensus on ranching or will they revise, rebrand, and resubmit their Ruga/cattle colonies?

    And by the way, why not simply commandeer the vast, "empty" landmass in the Northwest and parts of the Northeast that Northerners are always bragging about, lands where the Fulani herdsmen have ancestral and natal roots, to implement Ruga, if you must have Ruga? With technology the state of Israel turned their deserts into fertile, cultivable land, so spare us the excuse that these regions are arid. Let the North put its money where its interests are and invest in modern land regeneration technology for their Ruga Fulani settlement scheme. There, they'll be among their kinsmen, with no tension or complaints of land grab.

    To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/VI1PR04MB449325B20FF60064322823DFA6FB0%40VI1PR04MB4493.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.

    Ibrahim Abdullah

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    Jul 4, 2019, 1:53:44 PM7/4/19
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    Jibo is NOT a Fulani. He is Hausa from Kabo, Kanu ; a Christian Hausa by upbringing not a Muslim. 

    Cornelius Hamelberg

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    Jul 4, 2019, 1:54:17 PM7/4/19
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    Hi Everybody!

    These are the most pertinent questions yet posed on these latest developments. Posed by Professor Falola’s watchman, Crown Prince Professor Moses Ochonu, the dynamic, the zealous, the ever-diligent crown prince in Falola’s earthly kingdom of historians and political scientists. But who is going to answer even the rhetorical questions which are meant to be answered? Who is sane enough and sufficiently or suitably qualified to answer them, without any of the usual bias, the ethnic-religious baggage, and past history which sometimes clouds or at least influences some of our partisan perceptions?

    These questions provoke and promote the need for more serious inquiries into these matters and not some times off-the-cuff, reflex or ritual responses spontaneously dictated by predictable identity politics.

    From me it’s just another aside and even without taking sides, an aside it has to be when Nigerians are all fired up (as usual) engaged, enraged, learned, big grammar, maybe even Buckingham Palace English, the “my brain is bigger than yours “syndrome, denigratory, abusive, vituperative daggers drawn, much foaming at the mouth, ink and sometimes blood flowing from their pens, embroiled in this or in the other kinds of crisis, the critical perennial national issues such as corruption, the lootocracy, democracy, idiocy, crazy-demo, prosperity preachers of Christianism, endemic Islamophobia, the North-South, East-West, Christian-Muslim interface, the inevitable ethnic palavers and now this burning issue that just won’t go away or stay where it belongs or should belong: The cattle issue, the famous Fulani Cattle, John Pepper Clark’s Fulani Cattle and the source of everyone’s beef, no one disputes their final destination.

    This discussion has been raging for some time now, even before Biko Agozino’s proposal, by itself by no means original – certainly not the first of its kind, started being roasted, toasted, bandied around, turned on its head, fumigated, modified, and now it seems we are all back to square one: The Ruga plan has now been finally laid to rest – although not necessarily forever, for we may be speaking too fast or too soon when “the wheels still in spin“ and the plan may resurrect or be resurrected, there might even be a change of Government, by the people, for the people so that the horns may rear their beautiful heads once again and roam the land like free-range chicken, the perennial Naija stomachs satisfied, so that the owners of those stomach cemeteries continue to rub them in satisfaction as we used to do in Ghana after a satisfying meal and thanking God, mutter, “Mami!”

    It’s beef eating Nigeria and not Hindu India that we’re talking about (the only holy cows that have ever existed in Nigeria were privileged humans, not related to any of the horned bovine species - keeping true to what in Nigerian parlance is usually meant by the expression “holy cows” in the socio-economic dimension, cows who may freely practice corruption with impunity, ironically because they are holy, untouchable, protected by some local higher power ranging from elected corrupt or corrupted politicians to ( as recent history has shown) the equally corrupt, corruptible and corrupted Judges sometimes sitting on the benches of the Naija judiciary.

    Of both man and beast the territorial and constitutional reality is that every Nigerian human being is free to roam or to settle anywhere in Nigeria and to wail just as a true wailer wails (Rebel Music)

    “Oh, why can't we roam this open country?
    Tell me why can't we be what we wanna be?
    We want to be free,,,,”





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    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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    Jul 4, 2019, 1:58:57 PM7/4/19
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    These people, the right wing Fulani, do not consider other Nigerians as equals in the Nigeria project.

    Hence the country has suffered Atiku's threat of violent change bcs  a Muslim Northerner, himself, was not made PDP 2011 Presidential candidate.

    Hence Buhari could declare in 2014 that if what happened in 2011 [when he justly lost the Presidential election, having no foothold in the South]  happens in 2015, the 'dog and the baboon will be covered in blood.'

    Hence Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation will openly own up to and justify the massacres of Nigerians, and such Fulani elite as the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emire of Kano, the urbane ex-central bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who are the patrons of the group will maintain the silence of identification, as the group continues to flex muscles, with no apprehension from the Fulani led govt. 

    A terrible situation.

    toyin




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    Farooq A. Kperogi

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    Jul 4, 2019, 3:50:11 PM7/4/19
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    You beat me to it, Professor Abdullahi! I was going to point that out. Because of his name, a lot of people mistake Jibrin "Jibo" Ibrahim for a "Hausa-Fulani Muslim." He is not. He is a Hausa Christian from Kano. Nothing in his physical features, for those of us who know him, suggests the presence of even the remotest tincture of Fulani blood in him. His father converted to Christianity and paid the ultimate price for it. Jibo used to be critical of the traditional institutions in the North because his father was a direct victim of its inhumane viciousness. Today he sings the praises of the same institution that murdered his father in cold blood for exercising his liberty of conscience. He has also become a knee-jerk, pro-regime conservative ideologue, even if he does it without any intellectual stamina. He wants to be accepted by the mainstream and strains hard, mostly too hard, to "belong." I call this the paradox of the extremism of the margins. People who are on the gaunt fringes if an identity tend to go to ridiculous extremes to justify being admitted to the mainstream--much like the zeal of the convert. Or maybe it's just protective mimicry, that is, blending in with one's immediate surrounding so as not to stand out like a sore thumb. I don't know. But it's distressing nonetheless.

    Farooq


    Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
    Twitter: @farooqkperogi
     

    Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

    Nnaemeka, Obioma G

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    Jul 4, 2019, 3:50:13 PM7/4/19
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    CALL FOR TRIBUTES IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR MOLARA OGUNDIPE


    We, African women and scholars of African studies, gender studies and literary studies, are in mourning. We mourn the passing of our Big Sister, Professor Molara Ogundipe--teacher, mentor, scholar, pioneer, feminist, friend. Our grief is profound; our applause is loud, very loud. In celebration of our sister's life of achievements, the Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS) is compiling an anthology of tributes. Please send your tributes  (poetry and prose) to 

    Obioma Nnaemeka,  nnae...@iupui.edu


    https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2019/06/20/molara-ogundipe-frontline-nigerian-feminist-dies/​

     


    Obioma Nnaemeka, PhD
    Chancellor's Professor
    President, Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS)
    Dept. of World Languages & Cultures   Phone: 317-278-2038; 317-274-0062 (messages)
    Cavanaugh Hall 543A                          Fax: 317-278-7375
    Indiana University                               E-mail: nnae...@iupui.edu
    425 University Boulevard                   
    Indianapolis, IN 46202  USA













    Jibrin Ibrahim

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    Jul 4, 2019, 6:18:44 PM7/4/19
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    Toyin Falola

    Farouk can say anything he wants about me. False allegations is his profession. I find it unacceptable that he would make false allegations about my late fathers life. How low is he ready to go.




    Professor Jibrin Ibrahim
    Senior Fellow
    Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja
    Follow me on twitter @jibrinibrahim17


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    Ibrahim Abdullah

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    Jul 4, 2019, 6:19:41 PM7/4/19
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    Farooq:
    My name is Abdullah, not Abdullahi. Moses has this extreme idea of labeling-he sees ethnicity everywhere! He is on record to have invented me as an Igbira and a minority in Sierra Leone. Truth is that am not Igbira nor a minority in Sierra Leone. I was never raised in an ethnic context even though my dad is Hausa—Keffin Hausa—-and my mom Fulbe—her dad is from Senegal but born in Sierra Leone. I was born in Sierra Leone and I speak Yoruba and Hausa. 

    Sent from my iPhone
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    OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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    Jul 4, 2019, 6:20:06 PM7/4/19
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    Thank you for this correction.  Notwithstanding it highlights how perception influences reality and our actions and comments.

    OAA



    Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


    -------- Original message --------
    From: Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
    Date: 04/07/2019 18:55 (GMT+00:00)
    Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorth  and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt to Settle  Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation

    Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (ibdu...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
    Jibo is NOT a Fulani. He is Hausa from Kabo, Kanu ; a Christian Hausa by upbringing not a Muslim. 


    On 4 Jul 2019, at 07:45, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:


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    Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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    Jul 5, 2019, 1:34:04 AM7/5/19
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    Farooq's reference to Jibrin's father was unfair.

    Truly, these are issues of life and death and  cyberspace debates on these subjects  can have significant effects on physical world outcomes, as is becoming increasingly clear from the Arab Spring to the recent COZA and RUGA controversies in Nigeria.

    At the same time, however, it is vital not to draw blood unnecessarily in debate, to leave space open for conviviality by practicing sensitivity, cordiality and mutual dignity.

    thanks

    toyin

    Virus-free. www.avast.com

    Virus-free. www.avast.com

    Farooq A. Kperogi

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    Jul 5, 2019, 1:35:14 AM7/5/19
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    As someone who takes exception to his name being spelled in any variant other than "Farooq," I understand where you're coming from. Most people have an emotional investment in how their names are spelled. My apologies. It won't happen again.

    But how can you not be a "minority" in Sierra Leone when you don't come from any of the major ethnic groups from there?

    To Professor Jibrin "Jibo" Ibrahim, I got the information about the murderous religious persecution of your dad from a friend of yours in Kano in the 1990s. Someone else shared the same information with me many years later. My apologies if this information is false. But many people in your erstwhile radical Marxist constituency repeat this falsehood. (I say "erstwhile" because you are now an unapologetic, out-and-out, reactionary status quo defender, except that you do such an astonishingly poor job of being one.) 

    Maybe you're being mistaken for someone else. Or it's the unusualness of your being a Hausa Christian from Kano that inspired the falsehood. Nevertheless, accept my sincere apologies.

    Now, let me piggyback on Professor Abdullah and also say to you that my name is not "Farouk"; it's Farooq. Thank you.

    Farooq

    Farooq:
    Comments
        • Joe Attueyi

      OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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      Jul 5, 2019, 1:35:36 AM7/5/19
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      Moses: 

      Can you plz highlight the differences between  colonies ( so called),  the Ruga and your favourite ranching.  If the FG establishes ranches all over the country f ( say in Ogun State for example) for Fulani pastoralists with financial assistance from govt. would that be acceptable given the fact pastoralists are Nigerians operating a key industry irrespective of who the President is?

      Your revelation if the ethnicity if Jibrin Ibrahim to those to whom it was previously unknown now explains the unwarranted attacks on his position by a few in the forum. Fulani intellectuals are not supposed to disappear from view because some people dislike  the  person of one of their own serving as President.  Neither are they supposed to carry the can for some of their win any more than Agbetuyi can be asked ti carry the can for the excesses of members of the OPC to which he is not affiliated in any way.

      OAA



      Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


      -------- Original message --------
      From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
      Date: 04/07/2019 09:35 (GMT+00:00)
      To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
      Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorth  and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt to Settle  Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation

      Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (meoc...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
      I had no idea that Jibo was one of the propagandists for the now suspended Ruga Fulani settlement scheme. Thanks for posting this, Toyin. Oh well, what is new--he's always been the chief propagandist for his Fulani kinsmen--killer herdsmen he considers victims and endangered, an alternate narrative removed from our terrestrial reality. 

      They say they want to solve "herders-farmers" crisis but why the clear land grab on behalf of Fulani herders? Why is there nothing in the plan to resettle the hundreds of thousands of people in IDP camps in many Middle Belt states and communities destroyed by the killer herdsmen who have now forcefully taken over these communities and converted them to their own conquered Ruga? Why is there nothing in the plan for farmers and for keepers of other domesticated animals? If you're truly interested in solving the crisis, why is there nothing in the plan to disarm the heavily armed, roving Fulani militias who have left a trail of death and destruction and have already confiscated and cleansed vast swathes of land in the Middle Belt for their herding kinsmen? 

      This disastrous administration consistently infantilizes Nigerians. First cattle colonies. It didn't fly. Then Ruga. Now it's rejected and suspended. Will they come to their senses and embrace the consensus on ranching or will they revise, rebrand, and resubmit their Ruga/cattle colonies?

      And by the way, why not simply commandeer the vast, "empty" landmass in the Northwest and parts of the Northeast that Northerners are always bragging about, lands where the Fulani herdsmen have ancestral and natal roots, to implement Ruga, if you must have Ruga? With technology the state of Israel turned their deserts into fertile, cultivable land, so spare us the excuse that these regions are arid. Let the North put its money where its interests are and invest in modern land regeneration technology for their Ruga Fulani settlement scheme. There, they'll be among their kinsmen, with no tension or complaints of land grab.

      On Thu, Jul 4, 2019 at 1:36 AM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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      OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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      Jul 5, 2019, 1:35:36 AM7/5/19
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      Oga Cornelius.

      I have pointed out the implications of your penultimate paragraph in one post: Fulani herdsmen are constitutionally supposed to be less Nigerian than others who hypo critically devour their products.

      I have tried to answer Oga Moses questions in another post no matter the repercussion for sticking out my neck seeing that my position is not popular even among intellectuals who should muster the courage to rire above ethnic considerations when it comes to such volatile issues 

      OAA





      Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


      -------- Original message --------
      From: Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelberg...@gmail.com>
      Date: 04/07/2019 18:55 (GMT+00:00)
      Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorth  and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt to Settle  Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation

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      Hi Everybody!

      These are the most pertinent questions yet posed on these latest developments. Posed by Professor Falola’s watchman, Crown Prince Professor Moses Ochonu, the dynamic, the zealous, the ever-diligent crown prince in Falola’s earthly kingdom of historians and political scientists. But who is going to answer even the rhetorical questions which are meant to be answered? Who is sane enough and sufficiently or suitably qualified to answer them, without any of the usual bias, the ethnic-religious baggage, and past history which sometimes clouds or at least influences some of our partisan perceptions?

      These questions provoke and promote the need for more serious inquiries into these matters and not some times off-the-cuff, reflex or ritual responses spontaneously dictated by predictable identity politics.

      From me it’s just another aside and even without taking sides, an aside it has to be when Nigerians are all fired up (as usual) engaged, enraged, learned, big grammar, maybe even Buckingham Palace English, the “my brain is bigger than yours “syndrome, denigratory, abusive, vituperative daggers drawn, much foaming at the mouth, ink and sometimes blood flowing from their pens, embroiled in this or in the other kinds of crisis, the critical perennial national issues such as corruption, the lootocracy, democracy, idiocy, crazy-demo, prosperity preachers of Christianism, endemic Islamophobia, the North-South, East-West, Christian-Muslim interface, the inevitable ethnic palavers and now this burning issue that just won’t go away or stay where it belongs or should belong: The cattle issue, the famous Fulani Cattle, John Pepper Clark’s Fulani Cattle and the source of everyone’s beef, no one disputes their final destination.

      This discussion has been raging for some time now, even before Biko Agozino’s proposal, by itself by no means original – certainly not the first of its kind, started being roasted, toasted, bandied around, turned on its head, fumigated, modified, and now it seems we are all back to square one: The Ruga plan has now been finally laid to rest – although not necessarily forever, for we may be speaking too fast or too soon when “the wheels still in spin“ and the plan may resurrect or be resurrected, there might even be a change of Government, by the people, for the people so that the horns may rear their beautiful heads once again and roam the land like free-range chicken, the perennial Naija stomachs satisfied, so that the owners of those stomach cemeteries continue to rub them in satisfaction as we used to do in Ghana after a satisfying meal and thanking God, mutter, “Mami!”

      It’s beef eating Nigeria and not Hindu India that we’re talking about (the only holy cows that have ever existed in Nigeria were privileged humans, not related to any of the horned bovine species - keeping true to what in Nigerian parlance is usually meant by the expression “holy cows” in the socio-economic dimension, cows who may freely practice corruption with impunity, ironically because they are holy, untouchable, protected by some local higher power ranging from elected corrupt or corrupted politicians to ( as recent history has shown) the equally corrupt, corruptible and corrupted Judges sometimes sitting on the benches of the Naija judiciary.

      Of both man and beast the territorial and constitutional reality is that every Nigerian human being is free to roam or to settle anywhere in Nigeria and to wail just as a true wailer wails (Rebel Music)

      “Oh, why can't we roam this open country?
      Tell me why can't we be what we wanna be?
      We want to be free,,,,”






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      Ibrahim Abdullah

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      Jul 5, 2019, 3:23:45 AM7/5/19
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      Farooq:
      Nigerian categories don’t define Salone politics—majoritarian vs minoritarian duality is not an issue in Salone politics. 

      Sent from my iPhone
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      Moses Ochonu

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      Jul 5, 2019, 3:48:56 AM7/5/19
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      Yinka,

      Ruga is the latest rebranding of the widely panned and ridiculed cattle colonies ideas. As for ranching, the consensus is clear. You say “if the federal government establishes ranches all over the country...” That is where you got it wrong. Under the ranching solution, the federal government is not establishing ranches. The land use act vests the power to allocate land on governors, so it is governors, or state governments, who will give out land for ranching purposes. People interested in establishing ranches, either as individuals or a groups of investors are supposed to acquire land from states with the approval of host communities to build ranches. Ranching is a business, just like any other, whose investors acquire land from states to build their businesses.

      Sent from my iPhone

      Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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      Jul 5, 2019, 4:00:45 AM7/5/19
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      My view is that even if Fulani herdsmen or their representatives offer to buy land at any cost for ranches anywhere in Nigeria apart from those Northern states where they are ancestral to, they should not be given.

      Why?

      They have become a terrorist force organized under the leadership of Miyetti Allah, led by some of Nigeria's most elite Fulani, figures now revealed to be  ethnic supremacists, working in alliance with the government of Nigeria's Fulani President as they pursue a nation wide jihad.

      They should ranch their cows in their states of ancestral concentration and transport the meat by trucks to the Middle Belt, the South and locations like Southern Kaduna which they have been tormenting.

      The practically incessant bloodletting at their hands through systematic terrorism and their expansion into kidnapping and banditry make them a dangerous presence that no one should accommodate as settlers in their environs.

      Toyin









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      Toyin Falola

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      Jul 5, 2019, 4:01:06 AM7/5/19
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      Moses:

      It is far more complicated, I think. Ranching is not being interpreted as taking care of cattle, but as a device for ethnic colonization and land grab. Writing from Ibadan, the way people speak is that if established, they will eventually be converted to autonomous local government.

      I still think that the win-win solution is for cattle feeds to be produced in the South and transported by rail to the North. This way, everyone will benefit—land owners will have access to money; and pastoralists will have access to grass. Shortage of underground water will later create problems as there is a trade-off for all policies.

       

      Meanwhile, the federal government must work harder to change the narratives and orientation, become transparent, and ensure security.

      TF

      Farooq:

      Farooq:

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      Still on this issue. Please let all informed minds read and digest this post. In the Social Sciences, we call it participant observation. 

      NEWS

      How Fulani converted Ruga settlements in my community to emirate —Obasanjo’s ex-aide

      Published June 28, 2019

      KINDLY SHARE THIS STORY    

       

      File copy

      Eniola Akinkuotu, Abuja

      A former Senior Special Assistant to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Jonathan Asake, has said the new move to create Ruga settlements in some parts of the country is nothing but an attempt to ‘Fulanise’ the country.

      Asake, who was a member of the seventh House of Representatives between 2011 and 2015, said this during an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday.

      He said the term ‘Ruga’ was a Fulani word and it was thus hypocritical of anyone to say when it is implemented across the nation, it would not be exclusive to Fulani.

      READ ALSO: COZA: Don Jazzy, Toke Makinwa, Daddy Freeze, others hail Busola Dakolo for speaking up about rape experience

      Asake, who is from southern Kaduna, said in 1987, the then government of Kaduna State approved Ruga settlements in the old Kachia Local Government Area which now comprises Zangon Kataf, Chikun, Kajuru and Kachia Local Government Areas.

      He, however, said over time, the Fulani began to expand these settlements and today, some of them are being converted to Emirates.

      Asake, who is a leader of the Middle Belt Forum, said, “I’m from Zangon Kataf Local Government Area in Kaduna State. We have what was established in 1987 as the Kachia grazing reserve in the then old Kachia LG which comprises Zangon Kataf, Chikun and Kajuru and Kachia Local Government Areas of today.

      “That grazing reserve has been changed to Laduga. Laduga is actually a Fulani word and no indigene is there. The land has been taken over from the indigenes. And that place is now a big town, with big hospitals and roads.

      “In fact, the last voter registration exercise there, two registration machines were put there. Today, they have a district head and they are asking for an emirate. It is just a model of what will happen tomorrow in this country when these settlements are established. You will have state constituencies in the state assembly established all over the country strictly for Fulani.”

      Asake said the Ruga initiative must be rejected because government’s ultimate plan is to take over ancestral land from indigenous owners and give it to a particular people.

      He hailed socio-cultural groups in the South, especially Afenifere and Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo for rejecting the idea

      DOWNLOAD THE PUNCH NEWS APP NOW ON

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      On Mon, Jul 1, 2019 at 6:55 AM Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:

      The poster of the Facebook update represents views likely to be encountered from the Muslim North, in my view, while most of the commentators represent views likely to come from the South.

       

       

      There has been a sustained & largely uninformed campaign against pastoralism. In response, the government decided to initiate the Ruga Settlement programme to settle them. Now there is a new campaign to frustrate stop it. So what do they want?

      Comments

      ·         Image removed by sender. Mohammed Mohammed Haruna

      Mohammed Mohammed Haruna Heads you lose, Tails you lose. It seems Prof.

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      ·         Image removed by sender. Joe Attueyi

      Joe Attueyi Well if we are being honest with each other: The root problem is that the FG’s emotional trust bank account with most (?) many (?) non Fulani citizens of Nigeria is basically empty. 

      There is absolutely no way they can sell this RUGA plan south of theNiger. 

      Either they start replenishing that trust account ( which is not a short term thing) or find a solution that does not exacerbate already existing tensions. 

      That is why I suggest the FG clearing sambisa forest and building the infrastructure that will turn it into animal husbandry economic park. 

      That way you kill two birds with the same stone. Convert that forest into useful purposes while eliminating the unnecessary ethnicity altercations that may lead to internecine warfare among our people

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      o    Image removed by sender. Jibrin Ibrahim

      Jibrin Ibrahim Please note that it is a voluntary programme restricted to the six states that have said they want it.

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      Joe Attueyi Jibrin Ibrahim 
      So why is it in Benue who have vehemently rejected it?

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      o    Image removed by sender. Joe Attueyi

      Image removed by sender. Benue community rejects Ruga settlement, vows to challenge decision in court

      <div class="m_1818995634969716342gmail-m_-83

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      Moses Ebe Ochonu

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      Jul 5, 2019, 8:29:24 AM7/5/19
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      Oga Falola,

      It's quite unfortunate. I do not blame people who are skeptical and are constructing their narratives based on worst case scenarios of future Fulani colonization. Not only have they seen that ethnic colonization agenda unfold in some parts of the Middle Belt (Kajuru is the latest example), they see a government unabashedly dedicated to protecting and privileging the transhumant Fulani over autochthonous farming communities. It is the rampage of the herders' murderous militia and the Buhari government's mollycoddling of them that has caused this climate of suspicion in the Middle Belt and South over any proposal the federal government presents. The government has destroyed trust and actively engendered legitimate suspicion and distrust.

       In that sense, the government is a victim of its own disastrous and blatant advocacy for the Fulani to the exclusion of farmers and people displaced by killer herdsmen. The Buhari government had a window of opportunity when there was a clear national consensus on ranching being the solution to the outmoded and disruptive transhumance of the Fulani herdsmen. Instead of going that route, Buhari, probably egged on by the many Fulani supremacists around him, decided to adopt a maximalist approach that portrayed the Fulani as the victims and people who are being massacred on their ancestral lands and their lands being forcefully confiscated by herders as villains who, to quote the former minister of defense and a former IGP, caused the herder massacres in Benue and other parts of the Middle Belt by "blocking grazing routes" of the Fulani herdsmen. Accordingly, the government tried to force or blackmail people in the Middle Belt and the South to give up their lands or face more terror, with Femi Adeshina, Buhari's spokesman, infamously saying in the wake of one of the killer herdsmen massacres in Plateau that it was better to give up your land to the herdsmen militia than die. 

      They wanted cattle colonies by any means necessary. It was dead on arrival as it spooked people in the Middle Belt and the South who rightly feared that it would be a land grab by other means and create de facto Fulani enclaves that would exacerbate the conflict and serve as a future base for claim making. The government still would not give up and, pushed by extremist advisers, fanatics, and by his own well known Fulani irredentism, Buhari and his provincials came with Ruga. Now Ruga was been rested because people were ready to challenge its implementation with their lives.

      The point I'm making is that what the maximalist, inconsiderate, insensitive, all-or-nothing, and imperial approach of Buhari and his extremist advisers has done is to decimate the previous consensus around ranching. Now, as you say, people in your natal Ibadan are even opposed to ranching. This is what happens when you want to use power to go for people's jugular and forcefully cause them to bow to people they regard as interlopers. They will withdraw the previous concession/compromise they offered to you regarding ranching, which you arrogantly rejected because you insisted on all or nothing.

      To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/4602A721-F7C1-475F-8650-B7CA7B227A16%40austin.utexas.edu.

      Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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      Jul 5, 2019, 8:30:29 AM7/5/19
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      Wisdom-

      'I still think that the win-win solution is for cattle feeds to be produced in the South and transported by rail to the North. This way, everyone will benefit—land owners will have access to money; and pastoralists will have access to grass. Shortage of underground water will later create problems as there is a trade-off for all policies.' Any  water problems can be addressed through good engineering. 

      but they wont agree.

      Their supremacist mentality wont let them see reason unless Nigerians force them to see reason.

      This is possibly the defining struggle of Nigeria during the Buhari Presidency.

      No cabinet. Yet....

      toyin




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      Salimonu Kadiri

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      Jul 6, 2019, 4:32:08 AM7/6/19
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      ​Thank you Ibrahim Abdullah for being a true Nigerian, a true African and, above all, a true human-being. It should not matter if Jibrin Ibrahim is a Fulani and a Muslim when considering if his actions are good or bad. Unluckily for us, we have intellectuals who are convinced that a Fulani who saves a child from drowning in a river is a Fulani child kidnapper. What a calamity it becomes when it turns out, as you have now proved, that the person who saved a child a child from drowning is not a Fulani but simply a human being?
      S. Kadiri


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      Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria's MuslimNorth and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North Led FedGovt to Settle Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation
       

      Ibrahim Abdullah

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      Jul 6, 2019, 7:15:35 AM7/6/19
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      The arrogance of ignorance makes Moses and his ilk numb when confronted with their straight jacket ethnic stereotype. They are above “I made a mistake”; “am sorry”; “my bad”. 

      Sent from my iPhone

      Moses Ebe Ochonu

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      Jul 6, 2019, 9:37:47 AM7/6/19
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      Ibrahim Abdullah,

      Do the Fulani and Hausa not share kinship? Is there not a history of the two ethnicities commingling and in many places forming a new hybrid, hyphenated ethnic identity through intermarriage, cultural, linguistic, and political mixing? I am told you taught at ABU so you should know this very well. Is that not why we use the term, Hausa-Fulani, which very few self-identified ethnic Hausa or Fulani people object to? If you take out Adamawa and parts of Taraba, and of course the Bororo transhumant Fulani, how many people of "pure" Hausa or Fulani heritage remain in Northern Nigeria today, despite how they want to identify? So, if I say Jibo is advocating for his kinsmen, is that not technically correct in the Northern Nigerian identitarian alchemy?

      The only thing I got wrong is your own Igbirra heritage, which a mutual friend of ours told me. I take your word about your Sierra Leone-Senagal Hausa and Fulbe heritage and I apologize for mischaracterizing your identity. When I made this assertion several years ago, if my recollection is correct, you did not say I was wrong. In fact you played it off by making light of it, which I took as a confirmation. If you had corrected me then, I would have apologized to you. I'm not afraid to apologize when I'm wrong or I cross a line. I don't see why you're dredging it up now. Nonetheless, I apologize. Let's focus on the issue at hand.



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      Moses Ebe Ochonu

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      Jul 6, 2019, 11:08:22 AM7/6/19
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      From Charles Ogbu's Facebook wall. The Ruga "suspension" directive raises even more suspicion and question. Clearly, they want to implement cattle colonies or Ruga by all means necessary and will repackage and try to implement it under the different guise as the directive clearly states. They are unaware or do not care that, as Oga Falola reports, the national attitude outside the North is hardening not only against Ruga but also against the previous compromise of ranching. They're underestimating the volatility of this issue.


      Please read this document and pay rapt attention to paragraph 1 where they clearly blamed unilateral implementation of their devilish Ruga program by the Agricultural ministry as reason for the suspension. If my reading comprehension skill hasn't gone rusty, the logical deduction from this is that Ruga was never suspended. What was suspended is UNILATERAL IMPLEMENTATION. of Ruga by the ministry of Agriculture. 

      Now, they want to repackage and smuggle it into the LIVESTOCK TRANSFORMATION PROGRAM under the leadership of Osinbajo as chairman of National Economic Council (NEC) and our own governor Dave Umahi as Chairman of the technical committee of the same NEC. 

      As I stated in my previous post on this:
      https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157642793304255&id=608949254
      We must not fall for the so called suspension of the Ruga program. That is a typical case of Taqyya (Subterfuge) which is permissible in Islam. Buhari and his handlers have no intention of giving up on Ruga. They will certainly be back because their target is Southern land, if not, they wouldn't have cancelled a program they claimed is VOLUNTARY simply because Southern States rejected it. They would have gone ahead with the 12 Northern States they claimed already accepted it. 

      Now more than ever, we need to remain even more vigilant than we have ever been. Do Not Trust Your Governors To Resist Them because they can't and even if they can, they won't for obvious reasons. 

      Eternal vigilance remains our only means of resisting these Barbarians.

      Twitter@RealCharlesOgbu

      No photo description available.

      On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 9:36 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
      And, by the way, I forgot to add that telling me that Jibo is a Christian is a bit presumptuous on your part. What makes you think I didn't know this. Jibo and I have been friends on Facebook for more than six years. You think that I have not seen his family photos, events, and timelines to know that he is a Christian, even if a non-practicing one? Even if we were not friends on Facebook, don't we have mutual friends? And lastly, you may not even be aware that Jibo and I have met physically, spending about four days together in Calabar at the scholar's retreat organized by Tony Elumelu's foundation. I study Northern Nigeria. I am from Lugardian Northern Nigeria. I grew up and went to school in Borno, Adamawa, Kaduna, and Kano. I should know that there are many Hausa and Fulani Christians in every part of the North. My brother married a woman from Kebbi State whose family is comprised of both Christians and Muslims. I know many of Hausa and Fulani Muslims personally as well as non-Hausa and non-Fulani Christians from the North's Muslim-majority states. How can Northern Nigerianist not know about Wusasa? And in terms of the Kano-Jigawa axis, is that not what Shobana Shankar's book is about? I had Hausa Christian friends in BUK. Your presuming that I thought of Jibo as a Muslim reflects your own ignorance of my epistemological repertoire on Northern Nigeria. It is patronizing and presumptuous.

      Moses Ebe Ochonu

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      And, by the way, I forgot to add that telling me that Jibo is a Christian is a bit presumptuous on your part. What makes you think I didn't know this. Jibo and I have been friends on Facebook for more than six years. You think that I have not seen his family photos, events, and timelines to know that he is a Christian, even if a non-practicing one? Even if we were not friends on Facebook, don't we have mutual friends? And lastly, you may not even be aware that Jibo and I have met physically, spending about four days together in Calabar at the scholar's retreat organized by Tony Elumelu's foundation. I study Northern Nigeria. I am from Lugardian Northern Nigeria. I grew up and went to school in Borno, Adamawa, Kaduna, and Kano. I should know that there are many Hausa and Fulani Christians in every part of the North. My brother married a woman from Kebbi State whose family is comprised of both Christians and Muslims. I know many of Hausa and Fulani Muslims personally as well as non-Hausa and non-Fulani Christians from the North's Muslim-majority states. How can Northern Nigerianist not know about Wusasa? And in terms of the Kano-Jigawa axis, is that not what Shobana Shankar's book is about? I had Hausa Christian friends in BUK. Your presuming that I thought of Jibo as a Muslim reflects your own ignorance of my epistemological repertoire on Northern Nigeria. It is patronizing and presumptuous.

      OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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      Jul 6, 2019, 2:08:30 PM7/6/19
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      Moses:

      Thanks for the clarifications.  If Benue based herdsmen apply for land for ranching (as indeed other states ) with assistance from federal government backed loans would you support such a scheme as a way out of the impasse?  I mean there were historically tied Fulani to most states of the federation if not all.

      Second, someone made the allegation that some Fulani after living in southern Kaduna for a generation (more than 25 years) applied for the creation of an emirate.  They cited this event as evidence of colonisation agenda nationwide which must be resisted.  As a historian and PROFESSOR of HISTORY ( as opposed to a grammarian or professor of Geography do you see anything wrong in this??  Is this not a vindication of processes of History that has been going on for millenia, at least since the hominids roamed the earth?





      OAA

      From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
      Sent: Friday, July 5, 2019 8:42:10 AM
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      Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorth and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt to Settle Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation
       
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      Yinka,

      Ruga is the latest rebranding of the widely panned and ridiculed cattle colonies ideas. As for ranching, the consensus is clear. You say “if the federal government establishes ranches all over the country...” That is where you got it wrong. Under the ranching solution, the federal government is not establishing ranches. The land use act vests the power to allocate land on governors, so it is governors, or state governments, who will give out land for ranching purposes. People interested in establishing ranches, either as individuals or a groups of investors are supposed to acquire land from states with the approval of host communities to build ranches. Ranching is a business, just like any other, whose investors acquire land from states to build their businesses.

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      OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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      What I find troubling is that it is not the northern majority the Hausa that are mainly at loggerheads with Buhari and the Fulani; its the northern minorities who are minorities just like the Fulani.  The Hausa are so accommodating of their minorities.  Its like the southern minorities giving Johnathan a hard tim in office instead of the situation in which many southerners of diverse situation embracing him but for party affiliation.

      If I were a Hausa man and in politics I would work with others to ensure no northern minority rules Nigerian again in view of the bickerings with which they threaten the very fabric and foundations of the country.  You can hate the Hausa for this stance but you cant outvote them to put an alternative northern minority in power.  I think this last resort to bock ethnic as an interim measure will sanitise northern politics and restore stability to the country.


      From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
      Sent: Friday, July 5, 2019 8:09:25 AM
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      Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorth and Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt to Settle Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation
       
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      Farooq:
      Nigerian categories don’t define Salone politics—majoritarian vs minoritarian duality is not an issue in Salone politics. 

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      Moses Ebe Ochonu

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      And as for the question you asked, Yinka, if Fulani herders approach the Benue State government to acquire land for ranching and they secure a loan from the FG or a bank to finance it, of course I would support it, and so would the Benue people. That is precisely the point of the Benue anti-open grazing and ranching law. It seeks to promote ranching. For passing that law, Miyetti threatened and then attacked several parts of the state and killed hundreds and destroyed several communities, with the security services doing nothing to protect Benue people, with Buhari telling the Benue people to "go and live in peace with your neighbors (the killer herdsmen)" and the minister of defense and IGP saying that the Benue ranching law and the "blocking of grazing routes" were responsible for the armed herdsmen massacres in the state..

      On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 5:16 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
      Yinka,

      Please read what I have been writing on this list and what others before me have been saying: the North is the not the South. Ethnicity has little or no political purchase in the North. The primary, consequential idiom of political identity is religion.

      And it is not true that Hausa people in the north do not oppose Buhari. If your assertion is right then why did Buhari and his people have to rig the 2019 election in many Hausa-dominated states of the Northwest?

      And, as I stated in my earlier post, the distinction between the Hausa and Fulani was not sharp and was muted until the Fulani banditry and kidnapping in Zamfara, Katsina, and other states brought it to the open. This is a recent phenomenon, and I've been saying that it is one of the most profound, if largely ignored, legacies of the Fulani ethnic preponderance in kidnapping and banditry.

      And your comment on Hausa not allowing Northern minorities to rule Nigeria is ignorant. It is also the usual majoritarian, imperialist, supremacist posturing of the big three ethnic groups. Who told you that the Hausa allowed Northern minorities to rule? What the heck does that even mean? Are you talking about the military era when leaders were not elected? I don't know of any Northern minorities that have have been elected to "rule" Nigeria in the "democratic" era.

      At any rate, your post left me very confused. I am not even sure I fully understand your drift. Are you suggesting that Northern minorities are the problem of Nigeria and that Hausas are their imperial lords who should keep them in check for the sake of Nigeria's stability? If that is your point, then I'd like to thank you for exposing yourself as a hater of Northern minorities, and a closetted supporter of ethnic cleansing and ethnic political exclusion. What exactly is your problem with Northern minorities? Are you so enamored with Buhari that you hate whoever does not support him?

      You alluded to Kajuru. Has the Ruga in Kajuru not earned the Fulani an emirate, thanks to Nasir el-Rufai? Do you know about an emirate called Wase in Plateau state. Do you know how it started? There are are examples of Rugas or Fulani settlements in precolonial and colonial Northern Nigeria that have morphed, rather forcefully, into emirates with backing from the powerful Northern Hausa-Fulani establishment. Is that not one of the reasons that people in both the Middle Belt and the South are suspicious of the Ruga idea?

      Anyway, You left me scratching my head with your post.

      Moses Ebe Ochonu

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      Jul 6, 2019, 11:38:07 PM7/6/19
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      Yinka,

      Please read what I have been writing on this list and what others before me have been saying: the North is the not the South. Ethnicity has little or no political purchase in the North. The primary, consequential idiom of political identity is religion.

      And it is not true that Hausa people in the north do not oppose Buhari. If your assertion is right then why did Buhari and his people have to rig the 2019 election in many Hausa-dominated states of the Northwest?

      And, as I stated in my earlier post, the distinction between the Hausa and Fulani was not sharp and was muted until the Fulani banditry and kidnapping in Zamfara, Katsina, and other states brought it to the open. This is a recent phenomenon, and I've been saying that it is one of the most profound, if largely ignored, legacies of the Fulani ethnic preponderance in kidnapping and banditry.

      And your comment on Hausa not allowing Northern minorities to rule Nigeria is ignorant. It is also the usual majoritarian, imperialist, supremacist posturing of the big three ethnic groups. Who told you that the Hausa allowed Northern minorities to rule? What the heck does that even mean? Are you talking about the military era when leaders were not elected? I don't know of any Northern minorities that have have been elected to "rule" Nigeria in the "democratic" era.

      At any rate, your post left me very confused. I am not even sure I fully understand your drift. Are you suggesting that Northern minorities are the problem of Nigeria and that Hausas are their imperial lords who should keep them in check for the sake of Nigeria's stability? If that is your point, then I'd like to thank you for exposing yourself as a hater of Northern minorities, and a closetted supporter of ethnic cleansing and ethnic political exclusion. What exactly is your problem with Northern minorities? Are you so enamored with Buhari that you hate whoever does not support him?

      You alluded to Kajuru. Has the Ruga in Kajuru not earned the Fulani an emirate, thanks to Nasir el-Rufai? Do you know about an emirate called Wase in Plateau state. Do you know how it started? There are are examples of Rugas or Fulani settlements in precolonial and colonial Northern Nigeria that have morphed, rather forcefully, into emirates with backing from the powerful Northern Hausa-Fulani establishment. Is that not one of the reasons that people in both the Middle Belt and the South are suspicious of the Ruga idea?

      Anyway, You left me scratching my head with your post.

      On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 1:57 PM OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

      Ibrahim Abdullah

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      Hausa-Fulani is an invention! It really does not exist except as an invented political category. The affinity between Hausa and Fulani has to do with one supplanting the other politically in 1804. Intermarriage is all over Nigeria/Africa; linguistically Fulbe is West Atlantic; Hausa Niger-Congo. Really strange to hear you say folks identify themselves as Hausa-Fulani—never seen or heard that. My dad is Hausa; my mom is Fulbe; but we were not raised thinking or talking ethnic: the idea that we are Hausa-Fulani has never ever crossed our mind. 

      So your our mutual whatever is wrong to tell you that am Igbira. And I never taught at ABU—I was denied a job at ABU by the head of the history team, Y.B. Usman who identified himself as Bakatsine. I taught at Unillorin but that has nothing to do with the issue here. 

      Fixation with ethnicity gets us nowhere! And assuming that folks are xy because of their names is as misleading as it is insulting. 

      Sent from my iPhone

      Farooq A. Kperogi

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      Hausa is NOT a Niger-Congo language. It's an Afro-Asiatic language of the Chadic subphylum. The Fulani, on the other hand, speak a Niger-Congo language of the West Atlantic subphylum.

      As many linguists have noted, Fulani people are linguistically more like most ethnic groups in southern and central Nigeria than they are like the Hausa since most ethnic groups in southern and central Nigeria also belong to the Niger Congo language family.

      Farooq


      Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
      Twitter: @farooqkperogi
       

      Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.

      Farooq:
      Comments
          • Jibrin Ibrahim
            <di

        Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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        Jul 7, 2019, 11:00:21 AM7/7/19
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        I have met people from the Muslim North giving credence to the Hausa-Fulani designation.

        I understand it as a staple of Nigerian ethnic identity.

        Perhaps those who are better informed could help us understand it better but its not realistic to claim it does not exist.

        toyin

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        Farooq A. Kperogi

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        Jul 7, 2019, 11:53:44 AM7/7/19
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        For what it's worth, here is what I wrote about the "Hausa-Fulani" identity in a January 9, 2016 column:

        Saturday, January 9, 2016

        Is There Such a Thing as “Hausa-Fulani”?

        By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
        Twitter: @farooqkperogi

        A reader of this column repeatedly challenged me to justify calling President Muhammadu Buhari a “Hausa-Fulani.” He said he expected me to never give my stamp of approval to the label, which he correctly said was invented, or at least popularized, by the southern Nigerian press. I promised to write on the topic but never got round to doing it.

        Then, a few weeks back, I had cause to exchange thoughts on this issue with Marxist scholar and Daily Trust columnist Professor Jibrin “Jibo” Ibrahim, of the Center for Democracy and Development, who is from Kano. Professor Jibo thinks there is a distinct identity that can legitimately be called “Hausa/Fulani.” "In 1903 the British conquered a Caliphate where a Fulani ruling dynasty was ruling the Hausa people and they made a compact with that dynasty. So yes, there are distinct Hausa and Fulani people, well many are mixed, but there is a political category called Hausa-Fulani that draws from the jihad of 1804," he said.

        I disagree, not least because he invoked colonial conquest as the social and political basis for the legitimacy of his claim. But, then, why did I call President Buhari “Hausa-Fulani” if I disagree with Professor Jibo? Well, when we interviewed Buhari in 1999 at the Weekly Trust, I distinctly recall him telling us that he loved the label “Hausa/Fulani” because it perfectly encapsulates the tapestry of his identity; his father, he said, is Fulani and his mother is half Hausa and half Kanuri. Besides, although he is ethnically Fulani patrilineally, he is culturally and linguistically Hausa. What better label can capture this ethnic and cultural coalescence than “Hausa-Fulani,” he asked. Well, I like to respect and call people what they call themselves.

        But many northern intellectuals, including the late Dr. Yusufu Bala Usman, Professor Jibo’s former teacher, resent (in the case of the late Dr. Bala resented) the label “Hausa-Fulani.” As someone who studies the rhetorical construction of identities, I also think “Hausa-Fulani” as an overarching ethnic category for people who live in Nigeria’s far north is meaningless. And here is why.

         It isn't only in Hausa land that Fulani dynasties ruled over, merged with, and became culturally indistinguishable from their non-Fulani hosts. You can find examples of that sort of cultural and ethnic alchemy in Nupe land and in Ilorin, yet we don't have fossilized hyphenated identity labels for these people. In other words, there are no "Nupe-Fulani" or "Yoruba-Fulani." So why should there be "Hausa-Fulani"?

        I admit that the cultural and ethnic melding of the Hausa and the Fulani people (whose languages are not only mutually unintelligible but also, in fact, belong to different language families) is on a scale of intensity that is unexampled anywhere in Nigeria—perhaps in Africa—, but that doesn't, in my opinion, justify the appellative hyphenation many of us have become fond of.

         In most Nigerian cultures, descent is traced patrilineally. I am Baatonu because my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, etc. are—or are thought to be—Baatonu; the ethnic identity of my matrilineal lineage is immaterial to the determination of my ethnic identity. Nor are my contemporary associational, cultural, or linguistic identities factored in in determining my ethnicity. A person who is patrilineally Hausa is Hausa irrespective of the amount of Fulani blood in him or her, which makes the hyphenation of "Hausa" and "Fulani" pointless.

        What I have described above is broadly true of most African societies. (Certain matrilineal Ghanaian societies are notable exceptions here). That's why the Luos of Kenya regard President Barack Obama as a Luo. Although he is culturally American and has no connection with the Luo cultural and linguistic universe, except on a vicarious and symbolic level, he is seen as "authentically" Luo by the Luo in Kenya and elsewhere. The Luo would most certainly have never had this much emotional investment in Obama's “Luoness” had he been Luo only on his mother’s side.

        So the hyphenation of ethnic identities on account of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic commingling is an anthropological anomaly on the African continent. Although the "Hausa-Fulani" label has come to stay, it can't be justified historically, linguistically, or anthropologically. In its present form, it was invented by the southern Nigerian press, which lacked the historical and sociological resources to make sense of the ethnic complexity of Nigeria's (far) north. So they manufactured a convenient, if problematic, label. Professor Jibo disputes this. “[John] Paden's book on Ahmadu Bello draws attention to the formation of a Hausa-Fulani political identity in Barewa College way back in the 1920s,” he said.

        But that doesn’t really say much. We talk of a “Hausa-Fulani” identity today not because some barely mature high school students with vague, inchoate ideas about identity thought it into being; we do because the label enjoys repeated media mentions and validation. In his classic book titledImagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson tells us that the emergence of identities in Europe was enabled by the symbolic power of “print capitalism,” by which he means newspapers and books. That was why Buhari, an enthusiast of the “Hausa-Fulani” label, told us in 1999 that one of the greatest, if unintended, favors that southern newspapers have bestowed on the far north was their invention and popularization of the Hausa-Fulani label.

        Nevertheless, one of my quarrels with the label is its notorious imprecision. For instance, the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was and still is often called a “Hausa-Fulani” by the southern press even though he was Gere, a minority ethnic group in Bauchi.

        Another problem with the label is that it erases the identity of millions of ethnically and culturally “unmingled” Fulani people in Nigeria’s northeast and elsewhere. Former super permanent secretary Malam Ahmed Joda once told us at the Presidential Villa (when I worked there) that the first time he left his native Yola to Lagos in pre-independence Nigeria, he couldn’t speak a word of Hausa, but that Yoruba people in Lagos couldn’t wrap their heads around that. It made no sense to them that a Fulani man couldn’t speak Hausa since both identities have been conflated and made to seem indistinguishable in the popular media.

         The examples are legion, but the point is that "Hausa-Fulani" is an inexact, endlessly kaleidoscopic identity label that even includes non-Hausa-speaking Kanuris and all Hausa-speaking northern Nigerian Muslims who are ethnically neither Hausa nor Fulani. 

        Corrigendum:
        An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was born of a Shuwa Arab father and a Fulani mother. For Tafawa Belewa's real ethnic identity, read this: Gere: Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa's Real Ethnic Group.
        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: @farooqkperogi
        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


        To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTQNXfRctn4ds%2BGJ_Ro6eV2sbMzYGKMTHFJJdA1CAny1AQ%40mail.gmail.com.

        Moses Ebe Ochonu

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        Jul 7, 2019, 11:55:03 AM7/7/19
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        No, Hausa-Fulani is a compound ethnic category that is historically accurate and is a new but established identity evolution that began in the 18th century and was consolidated by the Jihad and the process it set in motion. Identities evolve due to historical and sociological factors. They are not static. In fact many urban Fulani in Nigeria identity as Hausa-Fulani because that is what they are. They speak Hausa and most do not speak Fulfulde. And most have some Hausa blood in their ancestry. Same goes for Hausa people, who are comfortable with the term Hausa-Fulani because it reflects who they are or have become due to the commingling I wrote about. 

        The linguistic commingling that I referred to is the adoption of Hausa by the settled Fulani. No one is suggesting that the two languages have merged or are even compatible. Even in Adamawa and parts of Taraba, where the Fulbe speak Fulfulde as a first language, they also speak Hausa as a second language, which cannot be said for Hausa, as most of them do not speak Fulbe. And yet, the overwhelming majority of rulers, the aristocracy, and the institutions are Fulani. It is this hybrid of Fulani rulers, clerics, and settled commoners who speak Hausa and who have intermarried extensively with the Hausa to the point that most people self-identify as Hausa-Fulani to reflect that reality that I was referring to. 

        By the way, two facts: it is Murray Last's the Sokoto Caliphate which actually first asserted "Hausa-Fulani" identity or made the historical sociological case for it. It is NOT a political invention as you wrongly asserted. Its latter day political appropriation is precisely that--political. But because something is political or politicized doesn't mean it is not real or that it is ahistorical or inaccurate. It may interest you  to know that the current president, Muhammad Buhari, in an interview, declared that her prefers the term Hausa-Fulani precisely because as he put it he's a Fulani man who speaks Hausa, was socialized in Hausa culture, and does not speak Fulfulde.

        Identity is extremely important in Northern Nigeria--in Nigeria as whole. It is the basis for exclusion and inclusion in many realms. It is the basis for political and economic claim making. It is even the basis for citizenship struggles debates. Even more importantly, ethnicity is what grounds people and gives them certainty in a chaotic, unstable, and fast evolving world. Identity issues have moved to the forefront of political, cultural, and economic debates across the world, so one would not be a good social science and humanities scholar if one ignored it. 

        Identification and identity politics are at the root of most consequential political decisions and debates at the national, local, and global levels. Even in the west, it has become the number one issue. And I don't want to hear the outmoded and hackneyed Marxist dogma that denies ethnic and other cultural categories of belonging and identification and crudely reduces everything to economic substructures. We've already had that debate on this list. Marxism, especially doctrinaire Marxism and its uncritical application to Africa, is part of our problem. It encourages escapism and ideological generalizations, arrogantly tells Africans who proclaim ethnic identities that they have false consciousness and have been indoctrinated by their elites. More importantly, such Marxist views on ethnicity have no bearing on lived reality and prevent pragmatic problems solving.

        Please count me out of your Marxist escapism regarding ethnicity and identity.

        To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/C0057423-5516-45B2-8B4C-8AE7A8D58BEE%40gmail.com.

        Ibrahim Abdullah

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        Jul 7, 2019, 1:36:55 PM7/7/19
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        Historically accurate or not reading Farooq suggests how problematic the notion of HF is. I just gave you my personal history and family experience—which straddles two nation-states in West Africa. And there are millions of Africans like me who grew up outside ethnicity. That is why folks had problems placing me when I schooled in ABU; or when I did graduate work in Ibadan; or when I taught at Illorin. An Ibrahim Abdullah who spoke clear English and fluent Yoruba was unthinkable. Now this has nothing to do with Marx; it has everything to do with history as lived experience. There is just no single single story. 

        Sent from my iPhone

        On 7 Jul 2019, at 16:41, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

        Saw that after I posted my response. Thanks! 

        Sent from my iPhone

        Moses Ebe Ochonu

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        Jul 7, 2019, 1:36:56 PM7/7/19
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        Farooq,

        My objection to the word "invention" when it comes to Hausa-Fulani identity and label is that 1) it is not faithful to or respectful of the choice of many Northern Nigerians who embrace the label as a descriptive for their complex identity; 2) in many instances the argument about invention ignores the historical circumstances that produced an actual Hausa-Fulani identity; and 3) it ignores the fact that Hausa and Fulani are also invented ethnic categories, as are Idoma, Yoruba, Ijaw, Tiv, and many other ethnic categories. The fact of their invention does not however reduce their power and realness in lived experience and in the meanings that they confer on people who use those labels to mark their sense of belonging. In fact, as we know, all ethnic categories are inventions, some more recent than others. The problem is that when some people rail against the inventedness of certain ethnic categories they only do so because they do not like those invention or think that they do not describe them, and of course they also do not willing to extend the discourse of invention to the ethnic labels that they prefer, which are also, properly speaking, invented. Such is the case of our friend Ibrahim Abdullah here. He is uncomfortable with Hausa-Fulani because his father self-identified as Hausa and he probably wants to follow that example despite his mother being Fulbe. Moreover, he is Sierra Leonean and cannot relate to Northern Nigeria's distinctly intense history of commingling between the Hausa and the Fulani. On the other hand, your article shows that Jibo is comfortable with Hausa-Fulani. Most Hausa and Fulani people (except for the Fulani in Adamawa, Taraba, and parts of Gombe) do not object to Hausa-Fulani and as you pointed out have even appropriated it proudly for themselves, despite its external politicization.

        Ibrahim Abdullah

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        Jul 7, 2019, 2:14:53 PM7/7/19
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        You will never get it: that not all those you boxed in labeled packages are actually belonged. My mom’s dad is Fulbe from Senegal but her identity exists outside the Fulbe mode—she is Sierra Leone and am eastender from Freetown. I don’t carry any ethnic tag and I am Nigerian as well as Sierra Leone not Hausa-Fulani. I have never seen myself as such and those who try to box me in always find it difficult to do so. Agents of history are active players in their own history. That is not Marx! 

        Sent from my iPhone

        Moses Ebe Ochonu

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        Jul 7, 2019, 2:14:53 PM7/7/19
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        Ibrahim Abdullah,

        There may be millions of you with complex identities that straddle multiple ethnicities and nations, but people like you are a minority in Africa and even in Sierra Leone. Do not extrapolate your experience, which is more of the exception than the norm, to hundreds of millions of Africans, who identify strongly with one or other ethnic group. More importantly, do not insinuate that there is something wrong with that simply because you grew up "outside ethnicity" or because of your personal history and those of others like you. Even in your native Sierra Leone, your story and socialization are not normative by any means. I have followed most of the Sierra Leone-centered discussions on this list as well as those on other forums and they tend to be framed by the ethnic factor, albeit not to the same degree as Nigeria's because we are a bigger country with many more ethnic categories than SL. The fact remains that ethnicity is the primary, most powerful idiom of identity in Africa and this identity is of immense consequence and meaning to African people. It is not, as we were told in college by our Marxist professors, a result of elite manipulation. Yes, that story does not apply to all Africans, but it would be wrong and self-absorbed for Africans without a firm rooting in ethnicity or who were not socialized into a particular ethnic identity to generalize their unique circumstances to other Africans.

        To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/B8F8584F-9214-441E-99C5-EDFA32A13D9E%40gmail.com.

        Cornelius Hamelberg

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        Jul 7, 2019, 3:23:58 PM7/7/19
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        Cornelius Ignoramus has been trying to unravel what is meant what we must otherwise only take literally as another Kperogian hyperbole and nothing more scientific than that when he says of Professor Jibrin ibrahim’s looks:

        “Because of his name, a lot of people mistake Jibrin "Jibo" Ibrahim for a "Hausa-Fulani Muslim." He is not. He is a Hausa Christian from Kano. Nothing in his physical features, for those of us who know him, suggests the presence of even the remotest tincture of Fulani blood in him”

        Well, some of us know all about Lombroso and in this case, in which I harbour no ill-will, it’s possible that the DNA reveals what the outer skin and the physiognomy conceals, and I’m saying this with reference to what Farooq Kperogi says the DNA test he took consequentially reveals about his own ancestry

        I know for a fact that there is a high rate of divorce among the Hausa. I read a few studies on this, but that’s beside the point. One would expect that with so much inter-marriage over the recent centuries people including the Hausa and Fulani who come fro the same genetic pool that’s geographically Northern Nigeria’s would share similar physical features. ( West African sepia?) The Berbers are said to range in hue from Blue Black skins to the blue-eyed & blondes….My younger brother Ola, (same mother and father) says that every time he arrives at Lungi Airport, the passport control hustlers always on the lookout for a quick buck, identify him as Fulani and enquire from him when is he going to return to the Futa Jallon in Guinea Conakry, where he rightly belongs?

        Before the learned professor starts get ting carried away, Let me assure him that I’m only here to learn and to grab some wisdom wherever it’s available.

        I suppose that there may be some truth to this “The Secret to eternal happiness”

        Wisdom comes in many shapes and forms: Sadhguru on fools (and ignoramuses)


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        Moses Ebe Ochonu

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        Jul 7, 2019, 3:25:37 PM7/7/19
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        Ibrahim Abdullah,

        I think you are the one who refuses to get it. Identity is a personal exercise. It is up to an individual how they want to identify. It is your choice to identify simply as Sierra Leonian and Nigerian and not to stress your ethnic identity or to stress your patrilineal or matrilineal identity over others. Others with your kind of story make definitive ethnic identity choices and do not erase or disavow their ethnic identity. Make your choice and exist outside of ethnic identity. That is your story and your choice. The mistake you constantly make is to assume that most Africans are like you or that they've made the wrong choice when they identify with a particular ethnic identity. 

        In purely demographic terms, you and others like you are a minority in Africa. Most Africans identify first with their ethnicity before they do so with their nations. Some stress both identities equally. They are not wrong. Neither are you and others like you who insist on a non-ethnic identity. To each his own. That is the essence of identity. In fact identity does not even have to be fixed to origin, lineage, and ancestry. In many cases it comes down to the choice of the individual and what aspect of their story they want to emphasize. If you don't belong to an ethnic box, good for you. 

        I have never called you an Hausa-Fulani person, so I don't know what the fuss is about. My problem is your demonization of ethnic identities and your insistence on applying your unique identity of deliberate ethnic erasure to other Africans, who have decided, for reasons I outlined earlier, to identify with particular ethnic groups. Fine, you don't belong to an ethnic box. Why insist that Africans who choose to belong to one are somehow inferior or that they've done something wrong, or that their identity is a fake, invented one while your non-ethnic one is real. You mentioned Sierra Leone. Is Sierra Leone not an invented identity? Are Hausa and Fulbe not invented ethnic categories? You should know this. And yet their inventedness do not detract one bit from their realness and their consequential power to shape people's sense of belonging and ethnic solidarity, among other functions.

        Farooq A. Kperogi

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        Jul 7, 2019, 3:26:54 PM7/7/19
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        Moses,

        It was normative for people in the far North to object to and even be offended by the label "Hausa-Fulani." I know you know this more than I do because you lived most of your life in the far north. The late Bala Usman and his proteges wrote copious articles to dismiss the sociological and nomenclatural utility of the label. That was why we were shocked when Buhari accepted the label when we interviewed him in 1999. The interview panel included Kabiru Yusuf, our editor-in-Chief at the time, who traces patrilineal descent from the Sullubawa Fulani clan in Katsina but who is culturally and linguistically Hausa. He hated, probably still hates, the "Hausa-Fulani" label. He described himself as a Hausa-speaking Fulani because his mother is, in fact, Songhai from Niger Republic. He probably has no Hausa stemma in him. 

        Another member of the panel was Isyaku Dikko, the editor of the paper, who embodies all the phenotypical stereotypes of a Fulani person but who still insists on being called Hausa because he said ethnic identity isn't genetic but cultural. I mentioned him in this January 12, 2019 column titled "Miyetti Allah, Presidential Endorsement and Politics of Fulani Identity". Throughout the period I practiced journalism in northern Nigeria, I didn't come across any educated person in the far North who didn't resent the "Hausa-Fulani" label. That was why Buhari's embrace of it was newsworthy, but it inspired A LOT negative responses from readers at the time. In fact, each time I made reference to "Hausa-Fulani" in my Daily Trust columns, I always received strong push backs from Hausa and Fulani readers. As the first paragraph of the column I shared here shows, it was a Hausa man from Zaria who continually challenged me to justify deploying the term "Hausa-Fulani" to refer to Buhari. He was offended by it. (As I pointed out in the column, I call Buhari "Hausa-Fulani" because he once told me and other editors from Weekly Trust that he loved the term at a time when most Hausa-speaking Muslim northern elites were offended by it.)

        Nevertheless, over the years, I've been sensing a shift in attitude toward the term in the far north. Many people, especially from the younger generation, are now increasingly embracing it. It's just like the term "core North," a phrase the southern media popularized during Obasanjo's administration. It was initially robustly resisted by the elites of the far north. It was interpreted as intentionally designed to drive a wedge between the north-central states and the rest of the north since the notion of a "core" presupposes the existence of a periphery, which people outside the "core" would find offensive. Nevertheless, in the last few years, people in the northwest, and some parts of the northeast, have been self-identifying as "core northerners." This is what Alberto Melucci calls "the power of naming." The power of naming in Nigeria belongs to the southern press. It is the single most important reason we call a people "Hausa-Fulani" and call a region the "core north." But as a self-conscious category of ethnic identification, "Hausa-Fulani" is still problematic.

        Farooq



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        Ibrahim Abdullah

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        Jul 7, 2019, 3:52:32 PM7/7/19
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        Thanks Farooq for problematizing HF. Moses is so incensed wit majority-minority binary and ethnic that he continues to invent it even where there is no basis for it. It takes far more than a few postings to understand post-colonial Salone. 

        Sent from my iPhone

        Farooq A. Kperogi

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        Jul 7, 2019, 11:08:52 PM7/7/19
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        Unfortunately, here's where we depart, Ibrahim. The discourse of the binaries between Nigeria's ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities is an abiding, consequential reality in Nigeria. Moses didn't, doesn't, and can't invent it.

        Your personal location outside of this discourse does not efface its reality.

        Farooq
        Farooq:
        <span class="gmail-m_2563430903252534752m_-2384587388294978075gmail-m_-2898845481319601437gmail-m_-7610141423397069947gmail-m_-5635143735963052328gmail-m_1714762704588522519m_4243275451753699764m_1818995634969716342gmail-m_-8393786711262279001gmail-m_5835757503790906301gmail-_9zc gmail-m_2563430903252534752m_-2384587388294978075gmail-m_-2898845481319601437gmail-m_-7610141423397069947gmail-m_-5635143735963052328gmail-m_1714762704588522519m_4243275451753699764m_1818995634969716342gmail-m_-8393786711262279001gmail-m_5835757503790906301gmail-_19kl gmail-m_2563430903252534752m_-2384587388294978075gmail-m_-2898845481319601437gmail-m_-7610141423397069947gmail-m_-5635143735963052328gmail-m_1714762704588522519m_4243275451753699764m_1818995634969716342gmail-m_-8393786711262279001gmail-m_5835757503790906301gmail-_1n9q"

        Moses Ebe Ochonu

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        Jul 7, 2019, 11:08:52 PM7/7/19
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        Farooq,

        Thanks for mapping the shifting attitude towards Hausa-Fulani. There is definitely a tension between its recent provenance in the political discourses of the Southern Nigerian press (its political invention as it were) and the historical reality/validity of Hausa-Fulani as a hybrid identify formation. I don't know whether the objection to it stems from its politicization or a desire for a more certain, more precise primordial identity on the part of the objectors. It is interesting that the objection to the term has not been against its historicity per se but mostly against its failure to fix people in a particular, singular ethnicity (Hausa or Fulani). People who object to Hausa-Fulani are in most cases insisting on one or the other between Hausa and Fulani. This is fine by me (despite the fact that, as Jibo said, outside of the roving herdsmen and the Adamawa-Taraba axis, most people are mixed) because, again, identity should always be about what individuals and groups choose to be called rather than what's in their blood or their heritage. And so in fact those in Northern Nigeria who desire a more precise label of Hausa or Fulani are acting in line with the identity norm in Africa/Nigeria. Which is why I told Ibrahim Abdullah that he and others like him who "grew up outside ethnicity" are outliers and a minority.

        To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPq-FWsqvB9%3DjnuJ1f-_k7s7AaxTYn4R%3DNoONoExUZr-6gUbAQ%40mail.gmail.com.

        Cornelius Hamelberg

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        Jul 7, 2019, 11:09:05 PM7/7/19
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         Professor Ibrahim Abdullah


        Sabr!

        As we say in Sierra Leone, “rest assured “that in any altercation between you and any upstart, I will always be on your side, to lend some moral support.

        A complementary to Don Kperogi’s not so mystifying “The Far North” could be “Down South” or “The Deep South”, without confusing the unaware that the later does not necessarily refer to a William Faulkner category. If he were to start referring to e.g. one of the lost tribes of Israel in Anambra as “The Far East”, that would probably only add to the general confusion.

        In Shierra Leone colonial parlance (and I heard this for a while, from assorted British Oyibo who were family friends (the Redferns, the Normansells) not to mention the City Hotel’s Freddie Ferrari – at a time when – like Hong Kong and China, (smile) the former British colony was unequally divided between the Colony (the City civilisation of Freetown and the Western Area) and what the Oyibos sometimes referred to as the pastoral life “up country” or “the Bush”. Graham Green gives a good idea about the latter in his best book, “The Heart of the Matter”


        To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/4E669ACF-A462-4BB7-B89D-A8792E569867%40gmail.com.

        Ibrahim Abdullah

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        Jul 8, 2019, 9:00:29 AM7/8/19
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        You seem to be talking past me! Binaries and dualism shape and define citizenship/indigenship which is at the heart of the Nigerian reality. But the issue cannot be reduced to those binaries and dualism when they are essential and ideologise in the service of parochial agendas. 

        Sent from my iPhone

        OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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        Jul 8, 2019, 9:01:06 AM7/8/19
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        Abdullah:

        I actually admire your multi-nationality;  this was what my constitutionally ebforced linguistic proposals for federal law makers as ethno- national balm is all about. And I have been on this for more than twenty years.  This was why I was so enthusiastic about the language apps.  Its a humble beginning to a long journey.  You are one of the minority real Nigerians ( by way of a necessarily true oxymoron.)  Very soon my Igbo,  Hausa  and Arabic linguistic skills will overtake those of my Spanish Japanese and Chinese skills.  And thats how things should be for the average Nigerian if the challenge is taken up by the national education curriculum.


        Sixteen tongues; as promoted by the one at the crossroads!

        May your tribe grow-in Nigeria!

        OAA



        Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2019 6:10:02 PM
        To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
        Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorthand Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt toSettle Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation
         
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        Historically accurate or not reading Farooq suggests how problematic the notion of HF is. I just gave you my personal history and family experience—which straddles two nation-states in West Africa. And there are millions of Africans like me who grew up outside ethnicity. That is why folks had problems placing me when I schooled in ABU; or when I did graduate work in Ibadan; or when I taught at Illorin. An Ibrahim Abdullah who spoke clear English and fluent Yoruba was unthinkable. Now this has nothing to do with Marx; it has everything to do with history as lived experience. There is just no single single story. 

        Sent from my iPhone

        On 7 Jul 2019, at 16:41, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

        Saw that after I posted my response. Thanks! 

        Sent from my iPhone

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        OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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        Jul 8, 2019, 9:01:23 AM7/8/19
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        Moses:

        I know what Im saying.  The very first elected chief executive of independent Nigeria was not Hausa but northern minority.  I know because I served in Tafawa Balewas state and visited the local government named after him.  He secured the post with majority Hausa votes.  He probably would have gone to a second  term if not murdered by coupists.  Yes religion is a crucial factor and thats why both 1966  coups threw  up Christian leaders. Both military and civilian leaders in the north had more preponderance of minorities.  Buhari's group among northern minorities was favoured over Christian minorities because of religion and the role the Fulani played in Islamizing the North the major religion in the North.  But that does not mean a Christian minority from the North cannot rule Nigeria.  After all the North voted in Jonathan a southern Christian minority for that matter.

        If the actions and utterances of the northern Christian minority are to provoke unending rancour with  the majority populace as well as muslim minorities rather than be bridge builders how are we going to achieve that eldorado?  War will not solve a problem that peace cannot.


        Democracy waits!  If Nigerians have not digressed by trying to solve their problems by violent military coups (violence begets violence  (and thats why Nigeria had extended military regimes) we would have perhaps have had a minority Christian leader by now.  They  wont be able to impose minority Christian values on the north but by a series of negotiations  (which is what politics is) and adroit political skills would be able to promote understanding in modern politics in the North.

        OAA.

        Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2019 10:22:38 AM
        To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
        Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Gulf Between Nigeria'sMuslimNorthand Largely Christian South : Debate on Plan by Muslim North LedFedGovt toSettle Fulani Herdsmen on Lands Across the Nation
         
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        Hausa-Fulani is an invention! It really does not exist except as an invented political category. The affinity between Hausa and Fulani has to do with one supplanting the other politically in 1804. Intermarriage is all over Nigeria/Africa; linguistically Fulbe is West Atlantic; Hausa Niger-Congo. Really strange to hear you say folks identify themselves as Hausa-Fulani—never seen or heard that. My dad is Hausa; my mom is Fulbe; but we were not raised thinking or talking ethnic: the idea that we are Hausa-Fulani has never ever crossed our mind. 

        So your our mutual whatever is wrong to tell you that am Igbira. And I never taught at ABU—I was denied a job at ABU by the head of the history team, Y.B. Usman who identified himself as Bakatsine. I taught at Unillorin but that has nothing to do with the issue here. 

        Fixation with ethnicity gets us nowhere! And assuming that folks are xy because of their names is as misleading as it is insulting. 

        Sent from my iPhone

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