Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Fulani and Fake News

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 13, 2019, 11:47:38 AM6/13/19
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This thread is going along interestingly familiar routes again.  The advocates of ethnic purism seeing another enactment of Afonja in Ifewara others pointing to a nuanced ethno-national blend in the context of the new Nigeria; the Ifewara indigenes are caught in between.  Yes its real.

One thing that cannot be re-enacted in this day and age is a seizure and Islamization of the Ifewara throne by the Fulani.  It would not have happened in the prototype citation of Olofin had Nigeria been in existence then!. So for a moment letsthank God for the existence of Nigeria today.  In the days of Afonja of Olofin might was right; today the Law is the might.

Even if what happened in my ancestral home happens again today in any Yoruba kingdom and reinforcements of the Fulani burn a whole city down that doesn't mean the Nigerian state will reward them with the possession of the city as we refused in our own example even before the creation of Nigeria.

The Nigerian Constitution guarantees citizen in any part where an ethnicity migrates and are absorbed. The Adimula of Ifewara is only being a true Nigerian. His forebears had practised the same convention even before the creation of Nigeria.

I have taught in the North and know northerners behave reciprocally towards southerners particularly the well travelled Igbo before the current politicization of every discourse by sit at home ethnic jingoist.  If a particular YorubacOba makes Fulani chiefs outnumber local chiefs to the extent of dictating who rules that is also part of acculturation.  It means they have fully converted to Yoruba culture.  They cannot then choose to Islamize the polity in a hurry.  If they do so further down the line it means original inhabitants have migrated an masse and left the town for new migrants. Africans have done this for hundreds of years before Islam.  


If GO. Adeboye and his wife build resorts to attract Ifewara indigenes to come back and they refuse and the Fulani like the place more for whatever reasons whose fault is that?


OAA.



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-------- Original message --------
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 13/06/2019 10:57 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Fulani and Fake News

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That is precisely my point, Oluwatoyin. It is the violence. Even as I am writing this response, the youth and the Hausa-Fulani folks are clashing and several houses are being burnt, mostly belonging to the gold miners. The ruling Oba (the Adimula of Ifewara) and surrounding village Baálès (Chiefs) have not helped the situation either, and it is all for their constant quest for personal financial gains and for ignoring the people's need for protection. Neither the people nor the settlers have been helped. 

I hope that answers your question.

MOA




On Thursday, June 13, 2019, 4:24:44 AM GMT+1, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:


 'But few go to this place. I'm not even sure if the General Overseer himself frequents the place - maybe once a year or even less. It's like a paradise in the wilderness. Sporadic violence has veiled the beauty from people's eyes.  Hopefully, with a new state government in place, some of these conflicts should be resolved. ' 

is it the violence that keeps people away?

On Thu, 13 Jun 2019 at 03:57, 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
But, Prof., beware of dismissing any piece of news coming from the homeland these days even if some fellows from home are denying them. It's a volatile situation right now. Denials sometimes also have their own political undertones. It all depends on who is denying what - if you know what I mean. You just have to sift through and extract truths from what folks call "Ìròhìn òkèèrè" - often fraught with truths, exaggerations and blatant lies.

Permit me to intervene a bit here. . .

I am also familiar with the Ifewara conflict.  I think I am fairly close to that community, having a medium-size farmland there, plus the fact that one of our workers here is from there. I have also spent some time the last few days finding out what has actually precipitated these constant conflicts. The Ifewara problem has been age long! The town is a cultural and linguistic confluence. It's a community caught between Ile-Ife and Ilesa, although physically closer to Ilesa. Yes, violence has been on-going there for the last three days but there has always been clashes among the native Ifewara people (comprising the major town of Ifewara - home of RCCG's G.O. Pastor Enoch Adeboye - plus some seven or so smaller villages) and the Hausa-Fulani settlers. Anything could trigger violence there, and in the last three years, we've had major confrontations leading to nothing less than half a dozen merciless killings, mostly hatching with machetes. However, the main bone of contention is always in gold mining. That area is a huge nucleus of gold deposit, and so is a hub for illegal gold mining activities of the Hausa-Fulani folks making it difficult for farmers to do their farming (I have first-hand information on this aspect). Of course, there are Yoruba gold traders that capitalize on the situation, ironically getting the crumbs sold to them by Hausa-Fulani miners. Most Yoruba there are farmers but 100% of the Hausa-Fulani dwellers are gold miners.

Compounding the problems, and to be fair to the Hausa-Fulani community of Ifewara, is the fact that the monarch of Ifewara has provided vast landed properties to the Hausa-Fulani folks and he even made one rich Fulani gentleman one of his major chiefs. The latter in turn used his position to bring in miners north of the Niger to the extent that it is believed that today the actual population of Ifewara is more of Northerner migrants than the indigenous Ifewara people (I don't have a way of confirming that fact), and that has been a major fight between the Ifewara people and their Oba. If it were to be in the US, the new generation Hausa-Fulani should claim being native to Ifewara, having been born there. The folks speak Yoruba with native fluency and the vast majority live peacefully there.

Sadly, the constant conflict has forced the beauty of the area to be oblivious to the world. Ifewara is beautifully hilly, an extension of the Yoruba Hills. Most farms (cocoa, plantains, palm trees, cassava, and more recently, moringa, kokoyams, pineapples, etc) are on hilly slopes. Entering Ifewara from Ile-Ife is an ultra-modern resort area built by Pastor Adeboye on the hill (I think it's called Mount Horeb or Mount Carmel - one of the popular mountains in the Bible). It is breathtaking! For those who have been to Southern California, it is a resort that looks like homes in Malibu, Burbank, North Hollywood, etc). It has hotel accommodations, cafeteria, a huge visitors' welcome center, spacious parking areas, even folks can rent individually built gazebo-like single room "huts" for prayer during the day (N1000/day). Adeboye's wife also has a huge school on the eastern end of the town. But few go to this place. I'm not even sure if the General Overseer himself frequents the place - maybe once a year or even less. It's like a paradise in the wilderness. Sporadic violence has veiled the beauty from people's eyes.  Hopefully, with a new state government in place, some of these conflicts should be resolved.

It's my half a penny viewpoint.

Michael O. Afoláyan







On Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 9:21:31 PM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:


At 1 am, someone woke me up (as if I sleep!) that the Fulani, about 600 of them, had overrun the city of Ifewera, close to Ilesa. and I should wake up call some state governors.  I took it seriously, trying to reach Pastor Adeboye who is from there. I was told that the churches are full of people. I could not sleep.

It turns out not to be true.

All of us must exercise caution. If something is not true, we should not be party to it. What people now call “Fulani” is becoming an accumulation of those they don’t like—Yoruba thieves, Igbo kidnappers and criminals are now calling themselves Fulani.

Now, Falola is APC!!!!!!

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7222 (fax)

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OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 13, 2019, 12:54:43 PM6/13/19
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EDITED. Olofin should read Ilorin. Typo prompter error



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------
From: OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Date: 13/06/2019 17:01 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Fulani and Fake News

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This thread is going along interestingly familiar routes again.  The advocates of ethnic purism seeing another enactment of Afonja in Ifewara others pointing to a nuanced ethno-national blend in the context of the new Nigeria; the Ifewara indigenes are caught in between.  Yes its real.

One thing that cannot be re-enacted in this day and age is a seizure and Islamization of the Ifewara throne by the Fulani.  It would not have happened in the prototype citation of Ilorin had Nigeria been in existence then!. So for a moment lets thank God for the existence of Nigeria today.  In the days of Afonja of Ilorin might was right; today the Law is the might.

Jibrin Ibrahim

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Jun 13, 2019, 3:25:20 PM6/13/19
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You no de fear, I said this and got insults, the gang will have no choice now but to characterise Toyin Fall as an ideologue of Fulani Jihad and conquest of Christian territory.

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

Toyin Falola

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Jun 13, 2019, 3:51:49 PM6/13/19
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In a future constitution, the country has to take seriously the issue of citizenship. From the historical records the Fulani had been living in what we call the southwest before the 18th century. In Ilorin, the vast expanse of areas like Saki, Igboho, etc the people we call Fulani are, if the constitution is well written, Yoruba. In Ibadan thousands of people we call Hausa are Yoruba.

And there is considerable hybridity that we overlook. Professor Ogbechie who is on this list was born at Ibadan by the daughter of one of Ibadan kings. It is a bad constitution that calls an Ibadan citizen an Igbo.

We must be truthful. If the herdsmen do something we must be specific. How someone who is kidnapped knows who a Fulani is must be interrogated. The kidnapper can be from Mali.

In contemporary data in the diaspora, Africans who are caught in fraud call themselves Nigerians! They are not from Nigeria!!

Why the truth is necessary is to get at the root of a problem. The Fulani, like the Yoruba, are not homogeneous.
TF

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Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jun 13, 2019, 3:52:11 PM6/13/19
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Jibo:
You mean the Gang of Four? Why don’t you combat them? You’re a tested Guerilla fighter and rugged combatant. 
Bon chance!

Sent from my iPhone

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jun 13, 2019, 9:27:27 PM6/13/19
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In my post, I mentioned Dakingari as the Governor of Kebbi State. It is Atiku Bagudu, not Dakingari.

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 7:49 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
Oga Falola,

I hope you don't inadvertently provide a crutch for denialists, Fulani supremacists, and rationalizers of Fulani expansionist violence. The existence of fake alarms and fake news does not obviate the real, homicidal rampage of armed Fulani herdsmen and bandits across the country. It would be a disservice to the victims of this violence if we allow incidents of false panic and mischaracterizations to deny or muddy the real threats that Fulani bandits and criminals pose to the country.

Note that in the early days of Boko Haram, there was a similar tendency to attribute to the terrorist group attacks across the country that were carried out by other groups, including in places where Boko Haram did not have a cell. That, however, does not mean that Boko Haram does not exist or that it has not killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people while destroying critical infrastructure, occupying territory, and threatening Nigeria's sovereignty.

In fact as we speak, many communities in Southern Kaduna, Plateau State, Nasarawa State, Adamawa, and Benue States have been forcefully occupied by armed Fulani herdsmen in a de facto expansionist occupation. With the double-standard being deployed by Buhari and his pro-Fulani security services, there is no chance of reversing this brazen annexation of ancestral lands by the armed herdsmen and bandits. So there is a real, territorial Fulanization going on, in addition to the political and symbolic Fulanization so brilliantly analyzed by Adunni Adelakun in her PUNCH column.

Many parts of Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto States are effectively occupied by well-armed Fulani bandits. So rampant is this Fulani banditry that the Northern objection to depicting the violence by the ethnic name of its perpetrators has collapsed. In Northern social media and discursive circles, the violence is now being called by its ethnic name. The immediate past Zamfara Governor and his deputy both publicly blamed the insecurity in the state on Fulani bandits; in a fit of  silly, impotent anger the former governor, Abdulazeez Yari, even threatened to forcefully remove Fulani herdsmen from the state. He alleged that  the bandits and the herdsmen were working together as ethnic kinsmen.

All the kidnappers and bandits publicly paraded by the police and in some cases interviewed on camera are Fulani. When a prominent Muslim cleric (a Fulani himself  and, according to reports, a leader of Buhari's Muslim prayer warriors) was kidnapped and a huge ransom paid for his release he said publicly when asked that his kidnappers are Fulani. Many other Hausa-Fulani kidnap victims, themselves speakers of Fulfulde or people who, as Hausa speakers, can recognize Fulfulde-accented Hausa have testified publicly that their kidnappers are Fulani who spoke Fulani amongst themselves in their camps and spoke Hausa to outsiders. 

I have personally listened to several recorded ransom negotiations, including the recorded call between the kidnapped UBEC Chairman and those trying to raise his ransom. In the recordings I've heard, the kidnappers clearly speak Hausa (in one case English because the victim was Yoruba) with a clear Fulani accent. There was even one hilarious one in which the bandits kidnapped the wife of another Fulani kidnap kingpin and the ensuing phone conversation between them clearly indicates that the Northern kidnap problem is a Fulani franchise. The person who forwards these recordings to me on Whatsap is himself Fulani, a titleholder in a prominent emirate. By the way, here is what this same Fulani friend of mine wrote on his Facebook page several days ago: "Your uneducated kin cannot constitute a dominant criminal nuisance to the entirety of Nigeria's 200 ethnic nationalities and expect your pastoralist way of life to endure much longer! The leadership of NOMADIC FULANI need to understand this truth!!!"

I've gone to this length to demonstrate to you that even in the North, your type of narrative of dis-emphasizing the Fulani ethnic factor has given way to a stark, if reluctant, acknowledgement of the growing, spreading menace of Fulani banditry. This has happened because the North, the Muslim North is now arguably the biggest victim of Fulani banditry.

 All of this is not to critique your caution about spreading false alarms and fake news, but to state that the invocation of fake news, if the proper caveats and qualifiers are not emplaced, can now be a huge gift to deniers, escapists, and pro-regime Fulani supremacists who do not want to acknowledge the rampant problem of Fulani banditry. 

Personally, I won't post or spread things until I've verified them from multiple sources, although recently I posted on the widely reported presidential approval for state police only for the presidency to deny that the president "approved" state police. All of Nigeria's major credible publications had reported the approval. One can never be too cautious in this age of fake and manufactured realities. But a program of caution should not preclude an acknowledge of the mortal danger posed to Nigeria by marauding hordes of armed Fulani bandits, kidnappers, and expansionists. One should also stretch the caution in the opposite direction so that one does not validate the rhetoric of those who say with a straight face that Fulani herdsmen are being victimized by all other ethnic groups rather than being aggressive, violent, homicidal, marauders.

Finally, on the question of citizenship, I agree that a constitutional amendment regarding it is important, as are other constitutional amendments dealing with devolution, resource control, and a truly federal structure. But here is my additional point here. In the north, religion, not ethnicity, is the idiom of identity or identification. You coauthored a book on religion and politics in Nigeria, so this is something you already know. The implication of this, as Matthew Kukah demonstrates in his own book, is that it is easier in the Muslim North for a Hausa speaking Yoruba and Afenmai Muslim to be accepted as a citizen of Kano and to access the privileges and benefits of such citizenship/indigeneship (I actually know so many and one of them was my college classmate and was on Kano State scholarship) than it is for a Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, or Kaduna Hausa speaker like myself who is a Christian, or even more tragically, for a Kano or Jigawa Hausa-Fulani Christian to do the same. 

In fact as we speak, there is a controversial case of Justice Esther Asabe, a full-blooded indigene of Kebbi State, whose appointment as Chief Judge the Governor, Dakingari, has refused to confirm despite the NJC strongly urging him to do so. The judge has now petitioned the NJC after working in an acting capacity for two years, alleging that the governor's refusal is hinged on her religion. 

I say all this to point to the fact that merely doing a constitutional amendment to redefine citizenship will not solve the problem of citizenship (and the rights derived therein) in the North since such a constitutional effort would only deal with ethnicity but not the ingrained idea in the north (not in the South) that Christian indigenes (and Christians in general) in Muslim-majority states are inferior and slaves who deserve only crumbs and are not entitled to the rights of full citizenship like their Muslim co-indigenes.

By the way, Muslim indigenes of Plateau state have complained of the reverse problem, so this is not just a problem of majority Muslims oppressing minority Christians. It is a problem of how identity, belonging, political solidarity, and rights were configured and understood in religious terms from colonial times--how the politics of claim making, representation, inclusion, and exclusion were defined as coterminous with the way one worshipped God. That has remained the preeminent identity locus in Northern Nigeria to this day. This is a fundamental divergence from the South, where ethnicity and ethnic solidarity trumps religious affiliation. In advancing constitutional amelioration of the citizenship question, this divergence should be acknowledged so that what might work in the South is not assumed to provide an efficacious remedy for the problem of citizenship in the North.

Those of us who study Northern Nigeria know that a constitutional redefinition or clarification of citizenship will only partially deal with the citizenship question there. 

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jun 13, 2019, 9:27:30 PM6/13/19
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Oga Falola,

I hope you don't inadvertently provide a crutch for denialists, Fulani supremacists, and rationalizers of Fulani expansionist violence. The existence of fake alarms and fake news does not obviate the real, homicidal rampage of armed Fulani herdsmen and bandits across the country. It would be a disservice to the victims of this violence if we allow incidents of false panic and mischaracterizations to deny or muddy the real threats that Fulani bandits and criminals pose to the country.

Note that in the early days of Boko Haram, there was a similar tendency to attribute to the terrorist group attacks across the country that were carried out by other groups, including in places where Boko Haram did not have a cell. That, however, does not mean that Boko Haram does not exist or that it has not killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people while destroying critical infrastructure, occupying territory, and threatening Nigeria's sovereignty.

In fact as we speak, many communities in Southern Kaduna, Plateau State, Nasarawa State, Adamawa, and Benue States have been forcefully occupied by armed Fulani herdsmen in a de facto expansionist occupation. With the double-standard being deployed by Buhari and his pro-Fulani security services, there is no chance of reversing this brazen annexation of ancestral lands by the armed herdsmen and bandits. So there is a real, territorial Fulanization going on, in addition to the political and symbolic Fulanization so brilliantly analyzed by Adunni Adelakun in her PUNCH column.

Many parts of Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto States are effectively occupied by well-armed Fulani bandits. So rampant is this Fulani banditry that the Northern objection to depicting the violence by the ethnic name of its perpetrators has collapsed. In Northern social media and discursive circles, the violence is now being called by its ethnic name. The immediate past Zamfara Governor and his deputy both publicly blamed the insecurity in the state on Fulani bandits; in a fit of  silly, impotent anger the former governor, Abdulazeez Yari, even threatened to forcefully remove Fulani herdsmen from the state. He alleged that  the bandits and the herdsmen were working together as ethnic kinsmen.

All the kidnappers and bandits publicly paraded by the police and in some cases interviewed on camera are Fulani. When a prominent Muslim cleric (a Fulani himself  and, according to reports, a leader of Buhari's Muslim prayer warriors) was kidnapped and a huge ransom paid for his release he said publicly when asked that his kidnappers are Fulani. Many other Hausa-Fulani kidnap victims, themselves speakers of Fulfulde or people who, as Hausa speakers, can recognize Fulfulde-accented Hausa have testified publicly that their kidnappers are Fulani who spoke Fulani amongst themselves in their camps and spoke Hausa to outsiders. 

I have personally listened to several recorded ransom negotiations, including the recorded call between the kidnapped UBEC Chairman and those trying to raise his ransom. In the recordings I've heard, the kidnappers clearly speak Hausa (in one case English because the victim was Yoruba) with a clear Fulani accent. There was even one hilarious one in which the bandits kidnapped the wife of another Fulani kidnap kingpin and the ensuing phone conversation between them clearly indicates that the Northern kidnap problem is a Fulani franchise. The person who forwards these recordings to me on Whatsap is himself Fulani, a titleholder in a prominent emirate. By the way, here is what this same Fulani friend of mine wrote on his Facebook page several days ago: "Your uneducated kin cannot constitute a dominant criminal nuisance to the entirety of Nigeria's 200 ethnic nationalities and expect your pastoralist way of life to endure much longer! The leadership of NOMADIC FULANI need to understand this truth!!!"

I've gone to this length to demonstrate to you that even in the North, your type of narrative of dis-emphasizing the Fulani ethnic factor has given way to a stark, if reluctant, acknowledgement of the growing, spreading menace of Fulani banditry. This has happened because the North, the Muslim North is now arguably the biggest victim of Fulani banditry.

 All of this is not to critique your caution about spreading false alarms and fake news, but to state that the invocation of fake news, if the proper caveats and qualifiers are not emplaced, can now be a huge gift to deniers, escapists, and pro-regime Fulani supremacists who do not want to acknowledge the rampant problem of Fulani banditry. 

Personally, I won't post or spread things until I've verified them from multiple sources, although recently I posted on the widely reported presidential approval for state police only for the presidency to deny that the president "approved" state police. All of Nigeria's major credible publications had reported the approval. One can never be too cautious in this age of fake and manufactured realities. But a program of caution should not preclude an acknowledge of the mortal danger posed to Nigeria by marauding hordes of armed Fulani bandits, kidnappers, and expansionists. One should also stretch the caution in the opposite direction so that one does not validate the rhetoric of those who say with a straight face that Fulani herdsmen are being victimized by all other ethnic groups rather than being aggressive, violent, homicidal, marauders.

Finally, on the question of citizenship, I agree that a constitutional amendment regarding it is important, as are other constitutional amendments dealing with devolution, resource control, and a truly federal structure. But here is my additional point here. In the north, religion, not ethnicity, is the idiom of identity or identification. You coauthored a book on religion and politics in Nigeria, so this is something you already know. The implication of this, as Matthew Kukah demonstrates in his own book, is that it is easier in the Muslim North for a Hausa speaking Yoruba and Afenmai Muslim to be accepted as a citizen of Kano and to access the privileges and benefits of such citizenship/indigeneship (I actually know so many and one of them was my college classmate and was on Kano State scholarship) than it is for a Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, or Kaduna Hausa speaker like myself who is a Christian, or even more tragically, for a Kano or Jigawa Hausa-Fulani Christian to do the same. 

In fact as we speak, there is a controversial case of Justice Esther Asabe, a full-blooded indigene of Kebbi State, whose appointment as Chief Judge the Governor, Dakingari, has refused to confirm despite the NJC strongly urging him to do so. The judge has now petitioned the NJC after working in an acting capacity for two years, alleging that the governor's refusal is hinged on her religion. 

I say all this to point to the fact that merely doing a constitutional amendment to redefine citizenship will not solve the problem of citizenship (and the rights derived therein) in the North since such a constitutional effort would only deal with ethnicity but not the ingrained idea in the north (not in the South) that Christian indigenes (and Christians in general) in Muslim-majority states are inferior and slaves who deserve only crumbs and are not entitled to the rights of full citizenship like their Muslim co-indigenes.

By the way, Muslim indigenes of Plateau state have complained of the reverse problem, so this is not just a problem of majority Muslims oppressing minority Christians. It is a problem of how identity, belonging, political solidarity, and rights were configured and understood in religious terms from colonial times--how the politics of claim making, representation, inclusion, and exclusion were defined as coterminous with the way one worshipped God. That has remained the preeminent identity locus in Northern Nigeria to this day. This is a fundamental divergence from the South, where ethnicity and ethnic solidarity trumps religious affiliation. In advancing constitutional amelioration of the citizenship question, this divergence should be acknowledged so that what might work in the South is not assumed to provide an efficacious remedy for the problem of citizenship in the North.

Those of us who study Northern Nigeria know that a constitutional redefinition or clarification of citizenship will only partially deal with the citizenship question there. 

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 2:52 PM Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Toyin Falola

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Jun 13, 2019, 9:38:56 PM6/13/19
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It is preciseness that I am calling for, so that more innocent people who have co habited don’t kill one another. If they are Fulani, the information must be correct. And not all Fulani are herders.
And we must prevent revenge killings which will take the form of genocide. 
The subtext of my intervention is peace as the situation is now getting out of hands.
The president must see this as an emergency.





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Toyin Falola

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Jun 13, 2019, 10:06:05 PM6/13/19
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If leaders of thought and peace don’t emerge right away, grounds for genocide are in the making.
The narratives are now moving away from cattle.


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KALE OYEDEJI

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Jun 14, 2019, 8:49:41 AM6/14/19
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Talking to somebody I trust, I was informed that the clam of Fulani herdsmen taking over Ikire/Ife road is fake news and the video was not genuine.

'Kale Oyedeji

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 14, 2019, 8:49:56 AM6/14/19
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Moses.

From my own experience in the North I know that both language and religion are the most cardinal indexes of citizenship up there. In most places in the world its language which demonstrates the extent to which the individual has bought into the host culture and is regarded as equal citizens.

Your narrative of arrests and interrogation by police at least falsified Toy in Adepijus mantra that Buharis government (with the connivance of Mr President himself) gives cover to the Fulani bandits and herdsmen)

The question is where do we go from here?   Not all Fulani herdsmen are terrorists as Toy in Adepoju constantly implies roping you into this mutual belief.  It is a cardinal principle of justice that all cannot be punished for the sins of a part.

It is also a fact as TF maintains that there are bandits from other ethnicities roaming the countryside falsely labelled and falsely identifying themselves as Fulani.

The fact that some Fulani bandits drove people from an area and forcefully occupy the place does not mean they will keep the booty in the long run.  It's like the candidate falsely declared winner of a governorship election.  It does not mean he will keep the post for the duration of the term. That had been proven conclusively in the current dispensation.  

Where Fulani and other groups have co-existed in an area for centuries I know this will prove a harder but to crack.  For instance it would be impossible for nonYoruba- mixed Fulani in Ifewara to go to a predominantly Yoruba area and forcibly drive them from their land  occupy the place while the rest of the Yoruba nation looks on.  So thats me acknowledging that there can be an abuse of the socialuzation process.  The answer cannot be to drive the Fulani away from the town because Fulani- Yoruba citizens will pose a problem.

Yes there are Fulani ethnic supremacist all over the country without prejudice to the other law abiding Fulani as there are among the Igbo and Yoruba.  How is that problem to be solved in your view?  You once spike if the freedom of speech rights of everyone.  So should such supremacists be deprived of their rights till Buhari leaves state house since its obvious they are only opportunists taking advantage of their kin in power.  But Buhari will not be in power forever.  A natiin outlasts the individuals in piwer at any given time.  From what you have said of the North in particular the whole nation will have to determine what caveats to out in place when the next Fulani leader is elected and the requisite constitutional amendments put in place.  For all we know Buhari himself might not be enjoying the tremendous strain his kinsmen are putting him under.


OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Date: 14/06/2019 02:37 (GMT+00:00)
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Fulani and Fake News

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Oga Falola,

I hope you don't inadvertently provide a crutch for denialists, Fulani supremacists, and rationalizers of Fulani expansionist violence. The existence of fake alarms and fake news does not obviate the real, homicidal rampage of armed Fulani herdsmen and bandits across the country. It would be a disservice to the victims of this violence if we allow incidents of false panic and mischaracterizations to deny or muddy the real threats that Fulani bandits and criminals pose to the country.

Note that in the early days of Boko Haram, there was a similar tendency to attribute to the terrorist group attacks across the country that were carried out by other groups, including in places where Boko Haram did not have a cell. That, however, does not mean that Boko Haram does not exist or that it has not killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people while destroying critical infrastructure, occupying territory, and threatening Nigeria's sovereignty.

In fact as we speak, many communities in Southern Kaduna, Plateau State, Nasarawa State, Adamawa, and Benue States have been forcefully occupied by armed Fulani herdsmen in a de facto expansionist occupation. With the double-standard being deployed by Buhari and his pro-Fulani security services, there is no chance of reversing this brazen annexation of ancestral lands by the armed herdsmen and bandits. So there is a real, territorial Fulanization going on, in addition to the political and symbolic Fulanization so brilliantly analyzed by Adunni Adelakun in her PUNCH column.

Many parts of Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto States are effectively occupied by well-armed Fulani bandits. So rampant is this Fulani banditry that the Northern objection to depicting the violence by the ethnic name of its perpetrators has collapsed. In Northern social media and discursive circles, the violence is now being called by its ethnic name. The immediate past Zamfara Governor and his deputy both publicly blamed the insecurity in the state on Fulani bandits; in a fit of  silly, impotent anger the former governor, Abdulazeez Yari, even threatened to forcefully remove Fulani herdsmen from the state. He alleged that  the bandits and the herdsmen were working together as ethnic kinsmen.

All the kidnappers and bandits publicly paraded by the police and in some cases interviewed on camera are Fulani. When a prominent Muslim cleric (a Fulani himself  and, according to reports, a leader of Buhari's Muslim prayer warriors) was kidnapped and a huge ransom paid for his release he said publicly when asked that his kidnappers are Fulani. Many other Hausa-Fulani kidnap victims, themselves speakers of Fulfulde or people who, as Hausa speakers, can recognize Fulfulde-accented Hausa have testified publicly that their kidnappers are Fulani who spoke Fulani amongst themselves in their camps and spoke Hausa to outsiders. 

I have personally listened to several recorded ransom negotiations, including the recorded call between the kidnapped UBEC Chairman and those trying to raise his ransom. In the recordings I've heard, the kidnappers clearly speak Hausa (in one case English because the victim was Yoruba) with a clear Fulani accent. There was even one hilarious one in which the bandits kidnapped the wife of another Fulani kidnap kingpin and the ensuing phone conversation between them clearly indicates that the Northern kidnap problem is a Fulani franchise. The person who forwards these recordings to me on Whatsap is himself Fulani, a titleholder in a prominent emirate. By the way, here is what this same Fulani friend of mine wrote on his Facebook page several days ago: "Your uneducated kin cannot constitute a dominant criminal nuisance to the entirety of Nigeria's 200 ethnic nationalities and expect your pastoralist way of life to endure much longer! The leadership of NOMADIC FULANI need to understand this truth!!!"

I've gone to this length to demonstrate to you that even in the North, your type of narrative of dis-emphasizing the Fulani ethnic factor has given way to a stark, if reluctant, acknowledgement of the growing, spreading menace of Fulani banditry. This has happened because the North, the Muslim North is now arguably the biggest victim of Fulani banditry.

 All of this is not to critique your caution about spreading false alarms and fake news, but to state that the invocation of fake news, if the proper caveats and qualifiers are not emplaced, can now be a huge gift to deniers, escapists, and pro-regime Fulani supremacists who do not want to acknowledge the rampant problem of Fulani banditry. 

Personally, I won't post or spread things until I've verified them from multiple sources, although recently I posted on the widely reported presidential approval for state police only for the presidency to deny that the president "approved" state police. All of Nigeria's major credible publications had reported the approval. One can never be too cautious in this age of fake and manufactured realities. But a program of caution should not preclude an acknowledge of the mortal danger posed to Nigeria by marauding hordes of armed Fulani bandits, kidnappers, and expansionists. One should also stretch the caution in the opposite direction so that one does not validate the rhetoric of those who say with a straight face that Fulani herdsmen are being victimized by all other ethnic groups rather than being aggressive, violent, homicidal, marauders.

Finally, on the question of citizenship, I agree that a constitutional amendment regarding it is important, as are other constitutional amendments dealing with devolution, resource control, and a truly federal structure. But here is my additional point here. In the north, religion, not ethnicity, is the idiom of identity or identification. You coauthored a book on religion and politics in Nigeria, so this is something you already know. The implication of this, as Matthew Kukah demonstrates in his own book, is that it is easier in the Muslim North for a Hausa speaking Yoruba and Afenmai Muslim to be accepted as a citizen of Kano and to access the privileges and benefits of such citizenship/indigeneship (I actually know so many and one of them was my college classmate and was on Kano State scholarship) than it is for a Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, or Kaduna Hausa speaker like myself who is a Christian, or even more tragically, for a Kano or Jigawa Hausa-Fulani Christian to do the same. 

In fact as we speak, there is a controversial case of Justice Esther Asabe, a full-blooded indigene of Kebbi State, whose appointment as Chief Judge the Governor, Dakingari, has refused to confirm despite the NJC strongly urging him to do so. The judge has now petitioned the NJC after working in an acting capacity for two years, alleging that the governor's refusal is hinged on her religion. 

I say all this to point to the fact that merely doing a constitutional amendment to redefine citizenship will not solve the problem of citizenship (and the rights derived therein) in the North since such a constitutional effort would only deal with ethnicity but not the ingrained idea in the north (not in the South) that Christian indigenes (and Christians in general) in Muslim-majority states are inferior and slaves who deserve only crumbs and are not entitled to the rights of full citizenship like their Muslim co-indigenes.

By the way, Muslim indigenes of Plateau state have complained of the reverse problem, so this is not just a problem of majority Muslims oppressing minority Christians. It is a problem of how identity, belonging, political solidarity, and rights were configured and understood in religious terms from colonial times--how the politics of claim making, representation, inclusion, and exclusion were defined as coterminous with the way one worshipped God. That has remained the preeminent identity locus in Northern Nigeria to this day. This is a fundamental divergence from the South, where ethnicity and ethnic solidarity trumps religious affiliation. In advancing constitutional amelioration of the citizenship question, this divergence should be acknowledged so that what might work in the South is not assumed to provide an efficacious remedy for the problem of citizenship in the North.

Those of us who study Northern Nigeria know that a constitutional redefinition or clarification of citizenship will only partially deal with the citizenship question there. 
On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 2:52 PM Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Ashafa Abdullahi

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Jun 14, 2019, 8:50:23 AM6/14/19
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Fulanization & Islamizatiin by Dr Ayo Owoade:

I will be the last person to deny that kidnappers are on rampage however, seeing it as an act perpetrated by Fulanis or as an agenda to Islamize Nigeria is where the narrative start to get ethnic and religious undertone.
We should see criminals as criminals instead of using the calamity to generate unnecessary sentiments.  
In the last few years,  more than a dozen of my colleagues in PH have been victims with ransom paid. About six weeks ago, two of my colleagues were kidnapped on East-West road in daylight while on official duty with one of their police escorts killed. 
Night life in PH has practically disappeared.  But we see and referred to perpetrators of this horrendous act as criminals, not Ijaw or ikwere or Kalabari kidnappers or people with 'Christianisation' agenda. 
In 2015 when ijaw/ ilaje boys were on rampage around Lagos, kidnapping school children in Epe, ikorodu and arepo Turkish school,  we treated them as criminals and no tribal or religious agenda attached to it.
Why do we now have double standard in treating criminals operating in north west axis of the country by stigmatizing their tribe and assumed religion. 
In our desperation to run our beloved country down, we even have to import videos and pictures from troubled and war torn neighboring countries to push ourselves to despicable intolerant level.
The Fulanisation and Islamization agenda being championed by some of our politically spent and expired leaders, who are the greatest beneficiaries of our lopsided system, and who unfortunately, have lost out and become politically vulnerable, and who are now exploiting the opportunity to become tribal warlords,  do not in any way have facts to back it up. The first reason being that we have more southerners living and striving in the Hausa / Fulani traditional enclave than we have the latter in the southern part of the country. If there is anything close to that, it is the southerners that are making more inroad into northern territories. There are more southerners with physical assets and flourishing business in the north than northerners presence down south. Also, the just concluded election in Abuja is a clear example of how southerners are making there presence felt within the northern political landscape.
The islamisation agenda being championed by these leaders is something they either never really reflected on or they are just being mischievous about it  and I am going to use my immediate environment to drive home my point. I moved into this estate 12 years ago. As at mid 2007 when I came in, there were about 4 or 5 mosques along this road to Ajah with less than 10 churches but as at today, I still see those 5 mosques but the number of churches have gone up geometrically. When I drive along lekki epe road, and indeed any other part of Lagos, I  see more of Christianity footprint than Islam. Likewise Lagos ibadan Express way, lagos badagry Express way, abule egba Santo otta ifo ewekoro, abeokuta road, sagamu ore Benin Express way, Ibadan ilesha akure  owo Benin road, gbongan osogbo ikirun inisha erinle offa ajase ipo road, omuaran egbe kabba lokoja road, Ibadan oyo ogbomoso ilorin road. Even my village,  ilorin, with 99% Muslim natives, is not spared in this modern Christianity tsunami. I am sure there are more churches in ilorin now than Muslim worship centers. The outlook is not different in other parts of the north, we have more churches springing up everywhere. The south south and south east of the country also have their own share of rapid expansion of churches, while the number of mosques in those regions would hardly be up to 100. In contrast  ilorin alone, which is a Muslim town has more than 100 churches. 
These are facts that are verifiable and one continues to wonder the sources of misinformation being propagated by these divisive ethnic and religious bigots. The only conclusion one can deduce from their utterances is that these criminal elements ravaging the north who are being branded as Fulani jihadists seem to be working for these expired leaders. Because I  may not know how to Islamize a society but common sense tells me that it cannot be achieved by committing genocide against your own people who are predominantly Muslim and using the few converts on your side to blow up the so called ‘infidels ‘ within your vicinity. This definitely does not add up. 
In fact if there is any group of people that requires reawakening,  it is the Muslims in this country.  Most of the land being used for building churches in the northern and south west part of the country are sold off by Muslims. I wonder how many Christians will in good faith sell their land for mosque to be erected on it. They are the ones being aggressively overrun by the other faith,  yet the predator is claiming to be the prey. It is looking like a winning tactics now but like any other thing built on falsehood,  it will definitely collapse in not too distance future. 
For those of us who are genuinely concerned about the level of insecurity in the country,  we need to be careful not to sail in their wind. It is important to channel our collective effort to help government in subduing this menace otherwise, the gravity of the precarious situation will be lost if it is anchored on tribal or religious sentiment just to score cheap political blackmail.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1730046D-D5A5-4E3C-9325-9FB0446CA97C%40austin.utexas.edu.

Femi Segun

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Jun 14, 2019, 12:16:36 PM6/14/19
to 'Chika Onyeani' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
I find it so nausearing for people to be trying at all cost to deny what is as real as the noon day. Naming and shaming were used in the past to bring people to a sense of contrition and possibly deter others. The rationalisation of evil is what is festering and making it worse in Nigeria. While one should not generalise, as it is not every Fulani person who kidnaps, the fact remains that  majority of the people  who are involved in this heinous act  of kidnapping for ransom in the Southwest are Fulanis. Blocking the road with cows and using that as a decoy to kidnap as it happened at the airport road, Akure this past Sunday (reported in the punc of Monday 10th June, 2019) is one evidence of this. What are we gaining by trying to explain this away? The forceful occupation of ancestral lands of people that Prof Moses Ochonu referred to cannot be denied. What has the government done to undo this? Or is it an official policy of the state? Are we defending this and calling people names because we have not been directly affected? Oga Jibo has formed this habit of labeling people who dare to disagree with him with all manners of uncharitable names, the latest being that such people, perhaps including me, are gangs. This is intellectual arrogance at its worst. How will you feel if some Ijaw of OPC boys move over to Kano and take over  your family property and the state look the other way? Will you still maintain this ambivalent and non-challant position? How long shall we continue to feel so un-empathetic to the victims of the marauding criminals? How long shall we tolerate the inefficiency of a government that has failed in the performance of the first duty of the state: protection of lives and property? Are we truly crusaders for democracy or just opportunistic champion of convenience?
I am shaking my heads in disbelief on how low we have sunk in thinking less of our fellow country men and women, that we think we can dispense with without a whimper. I have said it before, when pushed to the world,  people will ultimately rise up to defend their ancestral land and at that point, the so called federal might,  might not be able to save the government.


To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGzQHaoWBVjm5Sa-nqOErsrdkP9pjLgXyFhB_7jJg2xQ2gBCfA%40mail.gmail.com.

Michael Afolayan

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Jun 14, 2019, 12:16:55 PM6/14/19
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"The Fulanisation and Islamization agenda being championed by some of our politically spent and expired leaders, who are the greatest beneficiaries of our lopsided system, and who unfortunately, have lost out and become politically vulnerable, and who are now exploiting the opportunity to become tribal warlords,  do not in any way have facts to back it up." (Dr. Ayo Owoade)

Right there, any rational reader would see this article as jaundiced. Everyone knew it was Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo who first brought about the issue of "the Fulanization and Islamization agenda," right? Why then should Dr. Owoade find it fit to spew the insult of "politically spent and expired leaders" on him? I am almost 100% sure the author of this article (Owoade) is not in the same political side with Obasanjo, and if I'm wrong, kindly correct me. While some of Owoade's points are well taken, insulting Obasanjo does not help the situation. It's in poor taste. A good idea badly presented would be construed as a bad one altogether. In all these conversations relating to the prevailing social and political events at home, we need to caution ourselves with the kinds of language we employ. Caution, after all, is the grandson of wisdom, as the wise Victor Hugo has cautioned us!

Michael O. Afolayan
(Absolutely no political affiliations)





Toyin Falola

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Jun 14, 2019, 1:04:46 PM6/14/19
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Moses:

 I have received many abusive messages from those calling for the creation of Oduduwa Republic.

The federal government must see this as its number one mission.

It is painful to read about the situation, if correct, and how murder is described in ways that are too barbaric to talk about. It is also painful to know that  primordial rules can trump the evolution of collective citizenship in the 21st century.

TF

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

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512 475 7222 (fax)

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From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of moses <meoc...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, June 13, 2019 at 8:27 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Fulani and Fake News

 

Oga Falola,


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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Jun 14, 2019, 4:17:48 PM6/14/19
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The following comments from Olayinka Agbetuyi exemplifies those remaining pockets of Southern Nigerians  determined to avoid a horrible reality.  

"Your narrative of arrests and interrogation by police at least falsified Toy in Adepijus mantra that Buharis government (with the connivance of Mr President himself) gives cover to the Fulani bandits and herdsmen)" OA

What has Buhari done about Miyetti Allah which has been justifying massacres by Fulani herdsmen since 2015? Is his response to the systematic, community decimating, land occupying terrorism of Miyetti Allah not efforts to gift them Nigeria's resources, from cattle colonies to 100B?  


"  Not all Fulani herdsmen are terrorists as Toy in Adepoju constantly implies roping you into this mutual belief.  It is a cardinal principle of justice that all cannot be punished for the sins of a part."

I make pains to clarify that I refer to right wing Fulani using Fulani nomadism as launching pad for terrorism. I have stated that the Fulani are being led astray by bad leadership but this man keeps trying to muddy a  clear argument with unfounded allegations.

This man, in the face of a publicly developing, well publicized narrative unfolding since 2015,  once challenged me to provide  evidence that Miyetti Allah and other Fulani organisations had been owning up to and justifying terrorism. I did so. He made no response to my meticulous demonstration. 

He prefers to pretend that these publicly verifiable realities  do not exist.

It is suicidal to avoid a deadly reality as it looms.

toyin


On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 at 20:03, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com> wrote:
Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation has consistently owned up to and justified massacres by Fulani herdsmen militia.

These people have decimated and occupied communities in the Middle Belt.

Nigeria's Fulani led govt and security agencies reinforce these justifications by the terrorists and refuse to question talk less bring to book their spokespeople who openly declare they are above being addressed by the police and are able to demand 100B from the nation.

This follows the govt's efforts to gift them with Nigeria's land with in the form of cattle colonies and grazing routes across the nation.

Yet some argue that the idea of a 'Fulanisation agenda' is a fiction.

The govt is largely a Northern Muslim govt, yet some seem to think that Islamisation means forcing people to become Muslims or the dominance of no of mosques over no of churches outside the Muslim North. Even when the Muslims invaded and ruled Spain, they were a minority but they were dominant. Its a qs of political dominance, not no of mosques vs churches in the SW.

In the face of people like Umar Lambo declaring that Benue belongs to the Fulani by right of conquest, one recognizes the existence of right wing Fulani, distinguishing this dominant, extremist group from level headed Fulani but some say recognizing such ethnic identities is equal  to describing all Fulani as terrorists.

Ohanaeze has never even supported the effort of MASSOB to seize a radio station about two years ago, yet Miyetti Allah openly runs a terrorist group yet some are refusing to address the implications of a group headed by the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano being a terrorist sponsor. 

toyin




To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/589F3608-0C62-4C68-BF6B-B384CB2E7C34%40austin.utexas.edu.

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jun 14, 2019, 4:18:30 PM6/14/19
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Yinka,

My plea is simple. We should not allow the incidence of false alarms, mischaracterizations, and wild, dangerous generalizations peddled by some paranoid people to lead us to deny the tragic killings perpetrated by armed Fulani bandits and terrorists, groups that have been collectively labelled the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world; the preponderance of the Fulani demographic in the rapidly spreading menace of kidnapping and banditry; the forceful ethnic cleansing and occupation of ancestral territories in the Middle Belt by marauding armed herdsmen; the indifferent, apathetic, and rationalizing attitude of president Buhari to this problem; the clear double standards of Buhari's security chiefs siding with herdsmen and justifying their rampage as revenge and as legitimate protest of the "blocking of grazing routes" while tagging peaceful IPOB agitators for self-determination as terrorists; and the reality of Fulanization, metaphorical and actual.

Additionally, do not be so sure that the de facto territorial annexations in the Middle Belt will be reversed. After all, the President's spokesman, Mr. Adeshina said it is better for people to surrender their lands and territories to the armed herdsmen than be killed. 

Also, do not be so sure that annexation or occupation will not lead to political usurpation. Go and ask the Adara people of Southern Kaduna. Governor Nasir el-Rufai, who publicly admitted paying the armed herdsmen who have laid waste to the Southern Kaduna hinterland, has waged a war of attrition against them, imprisoning their leaders and spokespeople, and, in a coup de grace, he has created an "emirate of Kajuru" for the Fulani people there, causing the proclamation to be hurriedly gazetted against the vehement objection of the late traditional ruler of the Adara people (the one who was kidnapped and murdered by Fulani bandits) and the Adara people. 

Today, the Adara people are slaves in their own ancestral land, forcefully colonized and annexed to an invented Fulani emirate that came into being a few months ago on the orders of el-Rufai. That area has been ravaged by armed Fulani groups, creating thousands of Adara IDPS, emptying Adara villages of people, and thus creating a fait accompli for the forceful implementation of the "Kajuru emirate." Why has Buhari not called el-Rufai to order on this brazen project of forced Fulanization? Your guess is as good as mine. What happened to the Adara can happen in many places in Nigeria. You rule it out at your own, and our own collective, peril. One could even say that that, precisely, is el-Rufai's point in doing what he did--to make it serve as an example of what happens if you want to protect your ancestral land against the bandits and if you don't give up your agricultural land to herdsmen as Adeshina proclaimed.

By the way, Kebbi State Governor, Atiku Bagudu, has sacked Justice Elizabeth Asabe Karatu, the Christian Acting Chief judge whose appointment he refused to ratify despite the recommendation of the NJC and who was confirmed as substantive Chief Judge by the State's House of Assembly in January. He has appointed a Muslim Judge, Ambursa, to replace her.  I guess her petitioning to the NJC was the last straw for the Governor.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAN_y-4r-gX0emqqPt9qds9rqp8Aom1wevbM7wjNFwExOMPcfqg%40mail.gmail.com.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

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Jun 14, 2019, 4:18:46 PM6/14/19
to usaafricadialogue
Miyetti Allah Fulani Socio-Cultural Organisation has consistently owned up to and justified massacres by Fulani herdsmen militia.

These people have decimated and occupied communities in the Middle Belt.

Nigeria's Fulani led govt and security agencies reinforce these justifications by the terrorists and refuse to question talk less bring to book their spokespeople who openly declare they are above being addressed by the police and are able to demand 100B from the nation.

This follows the govt's efforts to gift them with Nigeria's land with in the form of cattle colonies and grazing routes across the nation.

Yet some argue that the idea of a 'Fulanisation agenda' is a fiction.

The govt is largely a Northern Muslim govt, yet some seem to think that Islamisation means forcing people to become Muslims or the dominance of no of mosques over no of churches outside the Muslim North. Even when the Muslims invaded and ruled Spain, they were a minority but they were dominant. Its a qs of political dominance, not no of mosques vs churches in the SW.

In the face of people like Umar Lambo declaring that Benue belongs to the Fulani by right of conquest, one recognizes the existence of right wing Fulani, distinguishing this dominant, extremist group from level headed Fulani but some say recognizing such ethnic identities is equal  to describing all Fulani as terrorists.

Ohanaeze has never even supported the effort of MASSOB to seize a radio station about two years ago, yet Miyetti Allah openly runs a terrorist group yet some are refusing to address the implications of a group headed by the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emir of Kano being a terrorist sponsor. 

toyin




On Fri, 14 Jun 2019 at 18:04, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/589F3608-0C62-4C68-BF6B-B384CB2E7C34%40austin.utexas.edu.

Malami buba

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Jun 14, 2019, 10:50:07 PM6/14/19
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“By the way, Kebbi State Governor, Atiku Bagudu, has sacked Justice Elizabeth Asabe Karatu, the Christian Acting Chief judge whose appointment he refused to ratify despite the recommendation of the NJC and who was confirmed as substantive Chief Judge by the State's House of Assembly in January. He has appointed a Muslim Judge, Ambursa, to replace her.  I guess her petitioning to the NJC was the last straw for the Governor.”

According to the Leadership Newspaper (June 15, 2019), Atiku Bagudu submitted the Ag. Judge’s name four times to the Assembly for confirmation. The Assembly refused to confirm Justice Karatu because of an alteration in her certifcate, and that this information was communicated to the NJC. 


LEADERSHIP Newspaper (@LeadershipNGA)
Bagudu Swears-in New Acting Chief Judge leadership.ng/2019/06/15/bag… pic.twitter.com/lA8sDJJhzq


Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jun 15, 2019, 7:33:32 AM6/15/19
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Malami,

The report you quoted is wrong. I suspect it is sponsored damage control. Please read this story from Ja'afar Ja'afar's DailyNigerian, see link below, which clearly confirms, with quoted evidence, that Justice Karatu was confirmed by the state assembly and that a letter to that effect was forwarded to the governor. Permit me to quote the relevant part:

On January 17, 2019, the Kebbi State House of Assembly also confirmed Mrs Karatu as substantive chief judge of the state, but the governor refused to act on the Assembly’s confirmation.

In a letter to the governor, referenced KBHA/LEG/001/XI and entitled RE: APPOINTMENT AND REQUEST FOR CONFIRMATION OF JUSTICE ELIZABETH ASABE KARATU AS CHIEF JUDGE OF KEBBI STATE, the speaker of the state House of Assembly Abdulmumini Kamba conveyed the Assembly’s approval.

“Reference to your submission dated, 6th November, 2018, I am glad to inform you that at an Executive Session held on Thursday, 17th January, 2019, the Hon. House resolved and confirmed Justice Elizabeth Asabe Karatu as the Chief Judge of Kebbi State,” the three-paragraph letter read in part.




Malami buba

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Jun 15, 2019, 9:08:46 AM6/15/19
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Moses, 
I wasn’t quoting. I attached the Leadership link. And a more detailed rebuttal  than the Leadership’s of June 15, 2019 appeared in a newsreport by Premium Times of June 14, 2019, with quotes from the governor and the speaker of the assembly. 

So, three national dailies, three versions of the (same) story - all in a day’s work! 

Who knows?

Malami

Ibrahim Abdullah

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Jun 15, 2019, 10:40:12 AM6/15/19
to 'Malami buba' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Interesting documentation on sources and reconstructing the present/past!

Sent from my iPhone

> On 15 Jun 2019, at 12:23, 'Malami buba' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Moses,=20
> I wasn=E2=80=99t quoting. I attached the Leadership link. And a more detail=
> ed rebuttal than the Leadership=E2=80=99s of June 15, 2019 appeared in a n=
> ewsreport by Premium Times of June 14, 2019, with quotes from the governor =
> and the speaker of the assembly.=20
>
> So, three national dailies, three versions of the (same) story - all in a d=
> ay=E2=80=99s work!=20
>

Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Jun 15, 2019, 10:40:37 AM6/15/19
to USAAfricaDialogue
Malami,

There is a saying in journalistic circles that no story is true until it has been denied by official governmental sources. In other words, official denials are usually a confirmation of the veracity of a story. It's not a matter of three dailies giving three different versions. It is a matter of one publication, DailyNigerian, quoting/publishing the letter confirming the confirmation of Justice Karatu as substantive chief judge (the very letter transmitted to the governor from the HOA), while the two other publications published rebuttals--basically statements and claims--from officials of the executive and legislative arms of Kebbi State. You can choose what you want to believe, but I'd rather believe an official letter from the State Assembly to the governor acknowledging that a sitting was held on a particular date at which the judge was confirmed. I refuse to believe the after-the-fact, damage control denials and rebuttals of embarrassed government officials. It's not a question of this paper says this and that paper says that. Only one paper has published the actual missive from the HOA to the governor confirming the confirmation of Justice Karatu. That paper is DailyNigerian. The state government has not denied or challenged the authenticity of the letter of confirmation the paper published. To believe the rebuttals now you have to suspend belief and cast aside the House of Assembly letter to the governor saying clearly how and when Justice Karatu was confirmed.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/C6E1E9A0-1669-442C-889D-7E21B70C4E10%40aol.com.

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Jun 18, 2019, 10:00:49 AM6/18/19
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Toyin, Femi Segun and Moses. 

I rest my own case with this observation from my late college president to the college assemly congregation during the George W. Bush second term election in the US where it was felt that due to the Tallahassee affair Kerry was robbed of victory as the US president.  He nullified the aggrieved assemly by stating  that 'here in the US we are different from other nations because we believe there will always be a next time.'

What was he saying?  Even the US with a long established tradition of presidential democracy don't always get it right.  We don't however because of that resort to killing opponents just because we feel  the system has been rigged against us.  We prepare very well the next time bearing in my  the just exploited loopholes t ensure it never happens again.  That is democracy is a necessarily continual  learning  process

And what happened the very "next time'?  America produced the first Black ethnic minority  leader in the Wes!  And the rest as they say is history.  I suggest Nigeria do the same.  And we have been here before when Ibrahim Babangida imposed his devious endless transition on the nation humiliating every leader that tried to unseat him by exposing the skeletons in their cupboards and arresting civil society leaders who spoke the truth to power like the late Gani Fawehinmi until one day as he came out of detention with his familiar mat he gave the parable of the snake which frustrated the peoples attempt to kill it because only one person at a time was being sent in to kill it.  That was the clarion call to the concerted effort that unseated Babangida on June 12 1993.

Nigeria can do it again!  In the very next election (for which preparations must start now) Nigerians must resolve the ethnicity problem when it comes to the nations  No 1 executive position (Moses, Edwin Madunagu, Adesina Afolayan and others are of the view the system as it is, is not conducive  to the health of the nation and ought to be rethought.  I have maintained since 1998 that in one fell swoop the same formula should be applied to the chief executive position in the state as well ( this could have averted the Kebbi CJ affairs)


OAA

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2019 2:44:27 PM
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Fulani and Fake News
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Malami,

There is a saying in journalistic circles that no story is true until it has been denied by official governmental sources. In other words, official denials are usually a confirmation of the veracity of a story. It's not a matter of three dailies giving three different versions. It is a matter of one publication, DailyNigerian, quoting/publishing the letter confirming the confirmation of Justice Karatu as substantive chief judge (the very letter transmitted to the governor from the HOA), while the two other publications published rebuttals--basically statements and claims--from officials of the executive and legislative arms of Kebbi State. You can choose what you want to believe, but I'd rather believe an official letter from the State Assembly to the governor acknowledging that a sitting was held on a particular date at which the judge was confirmed. I refuse to believe the after-the-fact, damage control denials and rebuttals of embarrassed government officials. It's not a question of this paper says this and that paper says that. Only one paper has published the actual missive from the HOA to the governor confirming the confirmation of Justice Karatu. That paper is DailyNigerian. The state government has not denied or challenged the authenticity of the letter of confirmation the paper published. To believe the rebuttals now you have to suspend belief and cast aside the House of Assembly letter to the governor saying clearly how and when Justice Karatu was confirmed.


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