Fwd: Edo_Global. AFIS-- FULANI HAS SOME POWER ONLY IN NIGERIA AND HAVE ZERO POWER EVERYWHERE SCATTERED POOREST AND DESTITUTES IN 15 COUNTRIES EVERYWHERE ==FULANI ARE BORN TO RULE, IGBO ARE BORN TO CRY.[ Questions on the role of the Fulani in Nigeria]
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
From: Ugo Harris Ukandu abuj...@gmail.com [Edo_Global] <Edo_G...@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 21 September 2015 at 17:40
Subject: Edo_Global. AFIS-- FULANI HAS SOME POWER ONLY IN NIGERIA AND HAVE ZERO POWER EVERYWHERE SCATTERED POOREST AND DESTITUTES IN 15 COUNTRIES EVERYWHERE ==FULANI ARE BORN TO RULE, IGBO ARE BORN TO CRY..........I am afraid of jail Tinibu...pics
To: Edo_G...@yahoogroups.com
It is interesting that only gullible Nigeria does Fulani have some political power. In the rest of the 15 or more countries they are scattered and live in Africa, they have zero power and are the most destitute and poorest African tribes in Africa. Maybe other African countries that have not given Fulani power know why, and maybe they have seen how Nigeria have been destroyed by a few minority including the Fulanis.
Fulani saw cunningly and used Nigeria as a gullible stupid nation of cowards and corrupt laden few that loots and steals from the people and nation. This is how few corrupt military people, few corrupt politicians, few families and few tribes looted and turn Nigeria into a basket case that is not working and will never work. Fulani is a small tribe in Nigeria of less than 10 million and because Nigeria is a corrupted entity that's why few can loot and corruptly corrupt the nation and they Fulani too are suffering because they constitutes among the poorest and most destitute of all tribes in Nigeria.
The Fulani, the scattered people of West Africa By TAMBA JEAN-MATHEW | Monday, July 20 2015
http://www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-Fulani-the-scattered-people-of-West-Africa-/-/979182/2799876/-/h3osrr/-/index.html
Fulani girls in West Arica. PHOTO | BBC 
Monday, September 21, 2015In spite of their numerical advantage in West Africa, only a few of the Pulaar-speaking politicians have risen to the very top in their countries. Current exceptions are President Macky Sall of Senegal (who is of a mixed-parentage) and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria. Ethnic groups that cut across Africa’s post-colonial boundaries are a common feature. But perhaps the most widely dispersed community on the continent are the Fulani of West Africa.
They range from Mauritania through Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso to Cote d’Ivoire and across to Benin, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, though they go with different names in different countries.
Accounting for an estimated total population of some 40 million, they form majorities in many West African countries and are interestingly also the only group of people who are easily recognisable at first sight as they bear similar characteristics.
The Fulani are conspicuous because of their light-skinned complexion, slender composure, long and slender noses, unique accent, and curly hair. At birth, many of them are slashed with two traditional marks on either side of the face between the eye and the ear.
Across West and Central Africa, they are classified mainly as Pulaar-speaking people, but with specific names in various countries. In Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal, they are known as the Peulh.
In Gambia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, they are known as Fula, whereas in Niger, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon, they are called Hausa-Fulani. In northern Cameroon, their term of reference is Fulfulbé.
The Hausa-Fulani nomenclature, especially in Nigeria, came through years of assimilation and intermarriage with the Hausa, who are a distinct group. Others say it is a deliberately political construct to beef up their numbers in Nigeria vis-a-vis the southerners.
In Sierra Leone, a mockery is made of the ethnic Fula-speaking people for their lack of an ‘r’ in their speaking vocabulary. Hence, they pronounce words like ‘brother’ as ‘boloda’ and ‘bread’ as ‘blade.’
But virtually every ethnic Peulh or Fula understands the spoken language generally known as Pulaar, albeit of course with slight differences in phonetics or pronunciation.
This is where they are diametrically opposed to other majority tribes like the Serrer in Senegal whose speakers do not understand a word from the other ethnic Serrer speakers living barely 50km apart.
In discussions about the real origins of the Peulh, Fula or Hausa-Fulani, some claim kinship with the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salasie II, who they say was the last monarch in their illustrious pedigree.
The name of the incumbent Rwandan President Paul Kagame also emerges in other contemporary narrations of kinship.
Looking closely at these Pulaar-speaking people, one would easily notice that they bear considerable resemblance to Somalis and/or Ethiopians at the extreme eastern end of the continent.
In Guinea's Futa Djallon region where they are believed to have originated from, the provincial headquarters town of Labé is considered as their natural birthplace.
However, the majority of them are found in the Sahel with some accounts saying they may have originated in the Maghreb from early contacts between the blacks and the Arabic-speaking people.
In Senegal where their concentration is third only after Nigeria and Guinea, the ethnic group is alternately known as Toucouleur, which when literally translated in French means “every colour “.
They are predominantly Muslim and they also happen to be the most nomadic of African communities. To date, there are very few Fulani or Peulh who adhere to Christianity.
Historically, their main occupation was livestock rearing and petty trading in different wares including cowrie shells and kola nuts.
Their staple food comprises meat, milk, millet and sorghum with virtually no spices like pepper.
This sharply contrasts with many other ethnic groups in West Africa and particularly the Kru, a fishing community from Ghana, who are renowned as “pepper birds” and who baptise their children with pepper.
The minority of the Fulani who are dark-skinned will still be recognisable by their accent and curly hair, often bearing resemblance to the dark-skinned Indians.
And like Indians, the Fulani are known for their mainly endogamous system of marriages which they maintain in almost all of the countries of West Africa they occupy.
These are marriages between uncles and nieces and cousins and only in highly exceptional circumstances could one find the Fulani or Peulh marrying into another ethnic group.
Ousmane Baldé, a retired Senegalese school teacher, told the Africa Review that the reason for this was “to ensure that the hard-earned wealth was maintained within the family setting”.
This characteristic of the Fula open them up to accusations of ethnocentricity and even racism.
They make very little effort to learn other languages, which many of them tend to have little mastery of.
While they refer to other non-Pulaar speaking Africans as “black people” they also look down on their own dark-skinned kin as machudor or “slave”, a derivative from the days of old when slavery was practised among Sahelian and Maghreb communities.
But like any other ethnic group, the Fulani have unique family surnames, prominent among them being Ba and Diallo (spelt Bah and Jallow respectively in English-speaking countries).
Others are Barrie, Baldé, Juldé, and Sall.
One of the most illustrious Pulaar-speakers to emerge on the post-colonial African political landscape was the late Diallo Telli, a Guinean who became the first secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity. He later died - reportedly through starvation - while imprisoned by the Sekou Touré regime.
In spite of their numerical advantage in West Africa, only a few of the Pulaar-speaking politicians have risen to the very top in their countries. Current exceptions are President Macky Sall of Senegal (who is of a mixed-parentage) and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.
--THE THIEVES CALLED INYANMINRINSThese thieves and cousins of thieves are running scared.It is Sunday. They say they are Jesus followers. Today is the day of worship.I guess what they read in church today is "HOW TO HATE THY NEIGHBOR".
ShikenaAfisSent from my iPad
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J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of Economics & Willard L. Eccles Professor of Economics and John S. Hinckley Fellow
Department of Economics
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
John Mbaku
Ugo Nwokeji
This sort of stereotyping is simply unacceptable, apart from being misleading and dangerous. Period.
University of California, Berkeley
686 Barrows Hall #2572
Berkeley, CA 94720
Tel. (510) 542-8140
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
"Between Boko Haram and Fulani Herdsmen : Organised Crime and Insecurity in Nigeria" by Bolaji Omitola.
"The Fulani are traditionally a nomadic, pastoralist trading people. They herd cattle, goats and sheep across the vast dry hinterlands of their domain, keeping somewhat separate from the local agricultural populations. They are the largest nomadic ethnic group in the world, and inhabit several territories over an area larger in size than the continental United States.
In virtually every area of West Africa, where the nomadic Fulɓe reside, there has been an increasing trend of conflicts between farmers (sedentary) and grazier (pastoral nomadic). There have been numerous such cases on the Jos Plateau, Bamenda Highlands, Central/Middle Belt regions of Nigeria, Northern Burkina Faso, and Southern Chad. The rearing of cattle is a principal activity in four of Cameroon’s ten administrative regions as well as three other provinces with herding on a lesser scale, throughout the North and Central regions of Nigeria, as well as the entire Sahel and Sudan region.[25
For decades there have been intermittent skirmishes between the Bororo (graziers) and sedentary farmers, such as the Jukun, Tiv, Chamba, Bamileke, and sometimes even the Hausa. Such conflicts usually begin when cattle have strayed into farmlands and destroyed crops. Thousands of Fulani have been forced to migrate from their traditional homelands in the Sahel, to areas further south, because of increasing encroachment of Saharan desertification. Nigeria alone loses 2,168 square kilometers of cattle rangeland and cropland every year to desertification, posing serious threats to the livelihoods of about 20 million people.[25]
Recurrent droughts have meant that a lot of traditional herding families have been forced to give up their nomadic way of life, losing a sense of their identity in the process. Increasing urbanization has also meant that a lot of traditional Fulani grazing lands have been taken for developmental purposes, or forcefully converted into farmlands.[26] These actions often result in violent attacks and reprisal counterattacks being exchanged between the Fulani, who feel their way of life and survival are being threatened, and other populations who often feel aggrieved from loss of farm produce even if the lands they farm on were initially barren and uncultivated.
Fulani in Nigeria have often requested for the development of exclusive grazing reserves, to curb conflicts.[27] All the leading presidential aspirants of previous elections seeking Fulɓe votes have made several of such failed promises in their campaigns. Discussions among government officials, traditional rulers, and Fulani leaders on the welfare of the pastoralists have always centered on requests and pledges for protecting grazing spaces and cattle passages. The growing pressure from Ardo'en (the Fulani community leaders) for the salvation of what is left of the customary grazing land has caused some state governments with large populations of herders (such as Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, Taraba, Plateau, and Kaduna) to include in their development plans the reactivation and preservation of grazing reserves. Quick to grasp the desperation of cattle-keepers for land, the administrators have instituted a Grazing Reserve Committee to find a lasting solution to the rapid depletion of grazing land resources in Nigeria.[28]
The Fulani believe that the expansion of the grazing reserves will boost livestock population, lessen the difficulty of herding, reduce seasonal migration, and enhance the interaction among farmers, pastoralists, and rural dwellers. Despite these expectations, grazing reserves are not within the reach of about three-quarters of the nomadic Fulani in Nigeria, who number in the millions, and about sixty percent of migrant pastoralists who use the existing grazing reserves keep to the same reserves every year. The number and the distribution of the grazing reserves in Nigeria range from insufficient to severely insufficient for Fulani livestock. In countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso where meat supplies are entirely dependent on the Fulani, such conflicts lead to scarcity and hikes in animal protein prices. In recent times, the Nigerian senate and other lawmakers have been bitterly divided in attempts to pass bills on grazing lands and migration "corridors" for Fulani herdsmen. This was mainly due to Southern and Central Nigerian lawmakers opposing the proposal, and Northern Lawmakers being in support.[28] Fulani are involved in Communal conflicts in Nigeria."
The claims of these passages are supported by references linked by the nos visible in the passages.
The abduction of Olu Falae, a central Yoruba politician and and technocrat, ascribed to Fulani herdsmen, is still unfolding.
I would have taken the trouble to marshall evidence from the past 5-10 years and the various efforts to respond to it from various sections of Nigerian society, evidence that demonstrates the problem stems from the insistence on an anachronistic form of animal husbandry by members of a particular ethnic group, but it might not be necessary now for me to devote time to that.
Tt Ogiri
Tt
John Mbaku
Obadiah Mailafia
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Cornelius Hamelberg
As usual, perhaps because he knows no better, Toyin Adepoju has one more axe to grind with another human tribe, this time the Fulani upon whom he heaps his deprecatory comments mostly based on erroneous information (lies)
Fullah, my first language.
Before I factually and sytematically debunk some of his cherished myths about the Fulani of West Africa and Paris,
what does he have to say about the great Usman dan Fodio ?
Moses Ebe Ochonu
Abolaji Adekeye
On 9/24/15, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> As usual, perhaps because he knows no better, Toyin Adepoju has one more
> <https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4VRHB_svSE642SE642&q=The+Fulani>
> information (lies)
>
> Fullah, my first language.
>
> Before I factually and sytematically debunk some of his cherished myths
> about the Fulani of West Africa and Paris,
>
> <https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=hts&oq=&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4VRHB_svSE642SE642&q=Usman+dan+Fodio>
> ?
>
>
> On Tuesday, 22 September 2015 15:56:06 UTC+2, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Ugo Harris Ukandu abuj...@gmail.com <javascript:> [Edo_Global] <
>> Edo_G...@yahoogroups.com <javascript:>>
>> Date: 21 September 2015 at 17:40
>> Subject: Edo_Global. AFIS-- FULANI HAS SOME POWER ONLY IN NIGERIA AND HAVE
>>
>> ZERO POWER EVERYWHERE SCATTERED POOREST AND DESTITUTES IN 15 COUNTRIES
>> EVERYWHERE ==FULANI ARE BORN TO RULE, IGBO ARE BORN TO CRY..........I am
>> afraid of jail Tinibu...pics
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> It is interesting that only gullible Nigeria does Fulani have some
>> political power. In the rest of the 15 or more countries they are
>> scattered and live in Africa, they have zero power and are the most
>> destitute and poorest African tribes in Africa. Maybe other African
>> countries that have not given Fulani power know why, and maybe they have
>> seen how Nigeria have been destroyed by a few minority including the
>> Fulanis.
>>
>> Fulani saw cunningly and used Nigeria as a gullible stupid nation of
>> cowards and corrupt laden few that loots and steals from the people and
>> nation. This is how few corrupt military people, few corrupt politicians,
>>
>> few families and few tribes looted and turn Nigeria into a basket case
>> that is not working and will never work. Fulani is a small tribe in
>> Nigeria
>> of less than 10 million and because Nigeria is a corrupted entity that's
>> why few can loot and corruptly corrupt the nation and they Fulani too
>> are
>> suffering because they constitutes among the poorest and most destitute of
>>
>> all tribes in Nigeria.
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> The Fulani, the scattered people of West Africa By TAMBA JEAN-MATHEW |
>> Monday, July 20 2015
>> http://www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-Fulani-the-scattered-people-of-West-Africa-/-/979182/2799876/-/h3osrr/-/index.html
>>
>> -
>>
>> <http://www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-Fulani-the-scattered-people-of-West-Africa-/-/979182/2799876/-/view/printVersion/-/pk7unnz/-/index.html>
>>
>> Font size: A+
>>
>> <http://www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-Fulani-the-scattered-people-of-West-Africa-/-/979182/2799876/-/h3osrr/-/index.html#>
>>
>> | Reset
>>
>> <http://www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-Fulani-the-scattered-people-of-West-Africa-/-/979182/2799876/-/h3osrr/-/index.html#>
>>
>> | A-
>>
>> <http://www.africareview.com/Special-Reports/The-Fulani-the-scattered-people-of-West-Africa-/-/979182/2799876/-/h3osrr/-/index.html#>
>> Fulani girls in West Arica. PHOTO | BBC
>>
>> September 21, 2015*In spite of their numerical advantage in West Africa,
>> in
>> their countries. Current exceptions are President Macky Sall of Senegal
>>> It is Sunday. They say they are Jesus followers. Today is the day of
>>> worship.
>>> Shikena
>>> Afis
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> On Sep 20, 2015, at 8:08 PM, vincent modebelu <vin_mo...@yahoo.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> vin.....///
>>> ....Born to tell the truth
>>> ....they are listening indeed
>>> ... thick walls will fall
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
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John Mbaku
Jibrin Ibrahim
The Fulani Question in West Africa
Jibrin Ibrahim, Daily Trust, 5th December 2011
Last week, it was reported that at least 5,000 people have fled villages in Benue and Nassarawa states following clashes between nomadic Fulani cattle herders and sedentary farmers. At least five people were reported to have been killed in the fighting. The reports however indicated that there could be far more deaths in remote villages that are difficult to reach. The fighting began when Fulani cattle herders found some of their livestock dead, said Conrad Wergba, Benue state's information commissioner. The cattle herders retaliated by attacking villages of the Tiv ethnic group in both Benue and Nasarawa states. It is a recurring problem throughout West Africa when cattle belonging to the Fulani destroy crops belonging to farmers who in turn kill cattle and attack the Fulanis.
A combination of factors based on climate change and poor governance are at the base of the problem. As the northern part of West Africa dries up due to climate change, the land can no longer support the animal stocks in the Sahel where grazing demands creates further fragility of the ecosystem and pushing the desert southwards. Since the only useful land to herders is south of the desert, they move their herds toward the agricultural areas of the sedentary farmers. Naturally, crops destroyed by animals are a source of tension for farmers who struggle to grow enough food to feed themselves in an unforgiving environment.
The Fulani, also called Peul or Fulbe, are an idiom for a much wider problem because they are found all over West Africa, from Lake Chad to the Atlantic coast, with concentrations in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, and Niger. Given this dispersion of Fulani groups, the Fulani interact with each other as herders and farmers. The typical Fulani are nomads, but after many years of integration with other cultures, and the depletion of their herds to environmental conditions, they sometimes rely on farming for livelihood. The nomads make temporary camps of portable huts, exchanging dairy produce for cereal foods; cattle are rarely killed for meat.
They are victims of the pulse model. The pulse model is used by archeologists to describe the tendency of the Sahara desert to "move" South over thousands of years, having socio-economic impacts on the peoples living in its path. The receding amounts of open water mean smaller "microenvironments" and greater contact between people seeking the same resource. The competition means that the increased contact results in increased conflict.
The conflicts are most serious in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso where many sedentary groups have also been forced to relocate due to the process of desertification. In these countries, the corporate identity established by such groups through years of sedentary is being disturbed by the process of desertification. Movement of the desert southwards is forcing communities to relocate, and this is indirectly causing conflict.
During the colonial era, cattle routes were protected and nomadic groups had secure routes through which they passed. The breakdown of governance in the region has meant that these routes have now for the most part been cultivated and it is becoming impossible to move animals without trespassing cultivated land.
In Ghana, there has been rising tensions between farming communities and nomadic Fulani pastoralists since 2009. These tensions over the years has degenerated into worse forms of homicides, evictions, increased stereotypes among others in most communities of the Ashanti (Agogo and Konongo) Brong-Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and West, Volta and Eastern regions. These regions have conducive vegetations for cattle rearing but have recently been abused by the pastoralists. Peasant communities have risen against Fulani pastoralist threatening to forcefully evict them from their communities. The trigger for increased violence and attempted evictions is the widespread belief that former Fulani herdsmen who have lost their cattle are now engaged in armed robbery. The sudden rise of armed robbery has traumatised Ghanaians and the result is a backlash against the Fulani.
Currently, some district assemblies in East and Central Gonja and Agogo districts have proposed two either the forced eviction of the Fulanis of “pastoralist ID Cards that would allow security agencies distinguish local pastoralists from their rogue brethren who might come in and attack from other districts. Of course the Fulani have refused both discriminatory acts of expulsion or of tagging and dividing them in a context in which no other group is being subjected to this form of identification. Meanwhile, tension continues to grow between the Fulani and their neighbours as insecurity grows.
The issue is becoming a genuinely West African problem because some communities have expelled Fulanis and there have been retaliatory attacks not just in Ghana but also attacks against Ghanaians by Fulani in other West African countries. The tactic of forceful eviction of Fulani pastoralists by sedentary communities is currently spreading in some parts of Plateau State and in Southern Kaduna. It is a dangerous development because it can lead to generalised civil war in many countries in West Africa.
Things are not looking too good for the Fulanis in their historic heartland in Guinea. Guinea is a country with a history of brutal dictatorship which has created deep scars related to ethnic victimization and discrimination. From the 16th and 17th century, the Fulani conquest of the Dialokas has created memories of ethnic oppression. From 1958, the 26 year reign of terror by President Sekou Toure led to the massacre of Fulani leaders and their marginalisation from power. The Fulanis turned from victims to collaborators of power wielders from 1984 to 2009 during the Lanssana Conte dictatorship and there were repetitive massacres and economic spoliation against the Malinke.
Once again, the tables have turned since the election of Alpha Conde to power. Given his radical background in the opposition movement and the fact that he had not been part of any previous regime, there was a lot of hope that Alpha Conde would came down ethnic tensions. Unfortunately, his actions have revealed his beep involvement in ethnic politics. The composition of his government is marked by his Malinke ethnic base and he appeared to have jettisoned the broad ethnic alliance that brought him to power following the first round of the elections when he emerged second to Celou Dallen, the Fulani leader. Currently, he is suspected of pursuing an agenda of establishing a one party state following his insistence that the parties that allied with him to defeat the Fulani candidate should dissolve themselves into his party. In a meeting with political leaders from Fouta Djallon, he publicly declared that there was no need for political reconciliation in the country.
It seems to me that the core problem that is exacerbating the Fulani question in West Africa is the inability of our governments to address the governance of pastoral routes and manage the ecosystem in a way in which farmers and pastoralists benefit from each other rather than fight. ECOWAS has a role in mapping a way forward.
<image2.JPG><image3.JPG>
.![]()
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__,_._,___
Anunoby, Ogugua
What is going on? Does Nigeria owe the cattle Fulani a living as cattle herders? Yes, they are entitled to their choice of a way of life. That choice must not be at the expense of non-members of their community or other communities. They must be responsible for the full costs of that way of life. They must not transfer the costs to others. Not if they do not share the revenue.
They cattle Fulani no more entitled to the subsidization of their way of life than any other Nigerian communities are. Why must they continue to be entitled to graze their cattle grave on other people’s land (including farmland) against the wishes of the landowners and for no charge? Cattle herding is a business. Like every other business, it should cover its costs. The cattle Fulani sell their cattle and keep all the proceeds of sale do they not? Anywhere else, rent will be due from them and paid to landowners for use of their land. Why would they not pay rent for use of land that is not theirs? They must be the only land users who do not pay rent for using other people’s land. Do they pay tax I dare to ask? If so to who?
Life styles change with time. Even elements of culture over time, go out of fashion. The nomadic way of life is an endangered way of life. It is increasingly going out of fashion. The sooner the cattle Fulani realize this the better for them and the safer for the communities they are trespassing on their land.. There are better including more conflict-free ways to raise cattle at this time in human history.
Nigeria and Nigerians, should quit acquiescing at and enabling a disappearing way of life that has become a national security risk in many parts of the country. Their nomadic way of life is becoming more unaffordable.
oa
Fulani girls in West Arica. PHOTO | BBC Monday, September 21, 2015In spite of their numerical advantage in West Africa, only a few of the Pulaar-speaking politicians have risen to the very top in their countries. Current exceptions are President Macky Sall of Senegal (who is of a mixed-parentage) and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.
Segun Ogungbemi
Prof. Segun Ogungbemi
What is going on? Does Nigeria owe the cattle Fulani a living as cattle herders? Yes, they are entitled to their choice of a way of life. That choice must not be at the expense of non-members of their community or other communities. They must be responsible for the full costs of that way of life. They must not transfer the costs to others. Not if they do not share the revenue.
They cattle Fulani no more entitled to the subsidization of their way of life than any other Nigerian communities are. Why must they continue to be entitled to graze their cattle grave on other people’s land (including farmland) against the wishes of the landowners and for no charge? Cattle herding is a business. Like every other business, it should cover its costs. The cattle Fulani sell their cattle and keep all the proceeds of sale do they not? Anywhere else, rent will be due from them and paid to landowners for use of their land. Why would they not pay rent for use of land that is not theirs? They must be the only land users who do not pay rent for using other people’s land. Do they pay tax I dare to ask? If so to who?
Life styles change with time. Even elements of culture over time, go out of fashion. The nomadic way of life is an endangered way of life. It is increasingly going out of fashion. The sooner the cattle Fulani realize this the better for them and the safer for the communities they are trespassing on their land.. There are better including more conflict-free ways to raise cattle at this time in human history.
Nigeria and Nigerians, should quit acquiescing at and enabling a disappearing way of life that has become a national security risk in many parts of the country. Their nomadic way of life is becoming more unaffordable.
oa
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2015 1:06 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Edo_Global. AFIS-- FULANI HAS SOME POWER ONLY IN NIGERIA AND HAVE ZERO POWER EVERYWHERE SCATTERED POOREST AND DESTITUTES IN 15 COUNTRIES EVERYWHERE ==FULANI ARE BORN TO RULE, IGBO ARE BORN TO CRY.[ Questions on the...
Obadiah,
I would not dismiss the academic perspectives completely, but I commend you for bringing a refreshingly non-formulaic approach to bear on the issue at hand. Jibrin Ibrahim wrote a column on this issue a while ago and his perspectives complement yours. One of the things he stressed, if my recollection is right, is the push impact of desertification and the expansion of the Saharan shore. I think that problem is pushing nomadic herding communities southwards, increasing pressure on land in the Nigerian/West African Savannah, and exacerbating clashes between farmers and pastoral Fulani.
I don't think you solve that problem by displacing or forcing sedentary/farming communities to give up land to accommodate the pastoralists. That's why all the talk about creating grazing reserves and grazing routes skirts the main issue and raises the question of who is going to willingly give up their land to build the reserves or to serve as route for the Fulani's cattle? I am from the Middle Belt myself and I can't see any of those people surrendering their lands willingly for the Fulani to occupy or graze their cattle on.
There is also something that Jibo brought up that is pertinent: the fact that increasingly, the livelihood of the Fulani is being threatened by aridity, shortage of grazing land, and increase in agricultural acreage due to increase in population. The result is that many young Fulani have actually left the pastoral economy and have now become mercenaries--fighters and terrorists for hire. Some have even become cattle rustlers, as military operations in the Northwest and cattle recoveries have revealed. This, for me, is the most dangerous dimension of the problem.
The sight of Fulani cattle herders in the bush with AK-47s is a tragic game changer. Clearly, these are not our grandparents' Fulani herders. These new groups have other agendas. I heard from many credible sources that the governor of Nasarawa State hired and armed some nomadic Fulani groups to attack and weaken the Eggon, the single biggest ethnic group in the state whose prominent politicians were/are his rivals. Once armed, these Fulani mercenaries moonlighted by raiding many communities outside the Eggon area and as far as Tivland and the Agata areas of Benue State.
Some of these Fulani gangs are outright bandits, raiding villages for treasure and killing sedentary peoples to make way for herders. There is a method to what is going on--it is not random.
These Fulani groups, whether they are herders or not, are now all armed with sophisticated weapons and no one is talking about disarming them. That is a huge problem. They've become a menacing sight across the country. Initially, they claimed that they carried these weapons to protect their herds from rustlers, but clearly there is now a coordinated agenda on their part of emptying lands that herding and non-herding Fulani can move into. They want to forcefully rebuild their threatened lifestyle on the backs and corpses of communities they regard as infidels and existential threats.
I read somewhere recently that many Fulani mineral prospectors have swarmed the Berom areas that have been deserted or depopulated by the raids of herdsmen. The Fulani, it is said, are now mining the many minerals in these areas and selling their finds directly to the Chinese, a growing, lucrative, underground mineral sector that is now said to be fueling the attacks on berom communities by bands of Fulani gunmen.
I agree about the need for some sort of Enclosure Law, but not the type passed in Europe. The Fulani need to to be told clearly that given the competition for farmlands, changing animal husbandry practices, the expansion of the Sahara, etc, their nomadic herding lifestyle is no longer sustainable and has become unsuitable to the imperative of peace and national cohesion.
They also need to be educated that sedentary herding and a fixed cattle economy is actually much more lucrative than a nomadic one that brings herders into constant conflict and is actually a decaying enterprise. Already, span>
Moses Ebe Ochonu
John Mbaku
Anunoby, Ogugua
Lawlessness should never be allowed to “escalate” much less “beyond what security can control”. Not in a country of equal citizenship and laws.
That cattle Fulani way of life is no longer sustainable. See the many problems associated with it? What needs to happen is for the cattle Fulani to be progressively weaned off their dying way of life. This should have started many years ago. Their nomadic way of life thrives because it has been politicized as it should not have been. Remember the wanton wastefulness Jibril Aminu called “nomadic education?
The cattle Fulani should be charged rent and taxes which usually are effective behavior/life style change instruments, if they will not adapt/change as human beings all through history have had to do to survive. The lawlessness of the cattle Fulani has become a problem in many parts of the country. If only government, politicians, and the police and other public safety authorities will do their job.
oa
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Mobolaji Aluko
Moses Ebe Ochonu
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Anunoby, Ogugua
The problem it seems to me is not the structured shipment of cattle but the life style of the cattle Fulani and their rejection of a less itinerant (walkabout) way of life. The modes of transportation suggested have been available to them to them for many, many years now.
oa
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 11:33 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Fulani girls in West Arica. PHOTO | BBC Monday, September 21, 2015In spite of their numerical advantage in West Africa, only a few of the Pulaar-speaking politicians have risen to the very top in their countries. Current exceptions are President Macky Sall of Senegal (who is of a mixed-parentage) and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria.
kenneth harrow
did they arm themselves because they felt more desperate?
the two conflicts, among zillions, that are well known to all include darfur, where the sedentary people were mercilessly attacked after bashir armed them and used their grievances to destroy the sedentary farmers; and senegal's border dispute with mauretania where the cattle people who used to cross between senegal and mauretania, and raised cattle along the river, were attacked by the moors and driven out of the country. the moors who attacked combined racism, religious fundamentalism, and economic greed to attack the senegalese--fulani.
the consequences, as most people know, were disastrous for all the moors in senegal, who were ethnically cleansed and chased out of the country, and vice versa.
ugliness on the border.
makes you hate national borders as part of the same thinking and processes as racial differences.
ken
-- kenneth w. harrow faculty excellence advocate professor of english michigan state university department of english 619 red cedar road room C-614 wells hall east lansing, mi 48824 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
Ugo Nwokeji
Farooq A. Kperogi
"The Fulani were a small landless group of austere mystics who bade their time to capture power in a well-orchestrated coup d'état. It soon came to be called a "Jihad" and a "revolution". Some of them took the flag to Ilorin. The story of the betrayal of the Ore Ana Kakanfo by Alimi is history.
I come from the Middle Belt and no doubt harbor my own biases. What I can tell you, however, that what is happening in Jos Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa, Taraba, Benue, Kogi and other places has no precedent in history, The Fulani have become the armed mobile wing of the New Jihad, a Jihad of conquest, subjugation and humiliation." Obadiah Mailafia
There are two historical and sociological inaccuracies in the above excerpt that I simply can't ignore. The notion that the rise of the Alimi ruling dynasty in Ilorin is a direct outgrowth of the Usman Danfodio Jihad is one unregenerate historical fallacy that has invidiously outlasted its shelf life, thanks to repeated mentions and lack of sustained rebuttals.
Insights from the late Professor Abdullahi Smith’s writings (which are distilled from translations of the travel notes of Arab travelers who witnessed events in nineteenth-century “Nigeria”) tell us that the Ilorin jihad wasn’t a direct offshoot of the Usman Dan Fodio jihad. Alimi, the progenitor of the current ruling family in Ilorin, was an itinerant Fulani preacher in Yoruba land whom Afonja volitionally invited to Ilorin. Afonja wanted Alimi to be his spiritual guardian (or “Alfa”) to ward off what he thought were the machinations of the Alaafin of Oyo with whom he was locked in long-drawn-out supremacy battles. After settling in Ilorin, many of Alimi’s Yoruba students from different parts of Yoruba land decided to follow him to his new home. In time, Alimi grew so popular that Afonja feared that he would eclipse him, so he asked Alimi to leave. It was Alimi’s students, most of whom were Yoruba, that fought and defeated Afonja.
This upheaval was coeval with, perhaps even inspired by, but was by no means the direct consequence of, the Usman Dan Fodio jihad. There is no greater evidence for this than the fact that Alimi and his disciples were not given the “flag” of the Sokoto Jihad until after at least three visits to Sokoto. They weren’t given the flag because they weren’t directly connected to the Sokoto jihad. They had to convince the people in Sokoto that although they were not affiliated with the original jihad, they had established a Muslim state in Ilorin, which deserved the recognition and blessing of the emergent epicenter of what would become the Caliphate.
Second, the notion that “The Fulani have become the armed mobile wing of the New Jihad, a Jihad of conquest, subjugation and humiliation” is an unhelpful conflation of ethnicity and religion that is not grounded in the wispiest shred of sociological evidence. Such a conflation assumes that a Fulani is invariably a Muslim and that his actions and inactions are, ipso facto, animated by Muslim expansionist impulses. That’s an intensely problematic assumption.
Many, perhaps most, Fulani herders who have sanguinary confrontations with farmers in the Middle Belt and elsewhere are neither Muslims nor Christians, and those that are Muslims aren’t affiliated with nor are they inserted into the currents of global Islamic expansionist consciousness. They are simply cattle herders who clash with farmers irrespective of the ethnicity and religious identity of the farmers. They have perennial clashes with Hausa Muslim farmers in the extreme north. They also clash with (Muslim) Yoruba farmers, and so on. (Recall Buhari’s wrongheaded intervention in the bloody clashes between Fulani herders and Yoruba farmers in the Oke-Ogun area of Oyo state, who are mostly Muslims, sometime in October 2000?).
In my part of Borgu, which is over 90 percent Muslim, clashes between farmers and pastoral Fulani habitually escalate into the kind of sanguinary fury that drenches the land with blood. Interestingly, Christian missionary evangelization has been more successful with Christianizing Fulani cattle herders in Borgu than it has been with sedentary ethnic groups in the area (See, for instance, Paul A. Burkwall’s 1987 MA thesis titled “Application of the Homogeneous Unit Principle as an Initial Strategy for Christian Ministry to the Fulbe with Particular Reference to Church Growth among the Korakube Fulbe of Nigeria and Benin.”)
The pastoral Fulani’s primary loyalty isn’t to any religion; it is to his cattle. I know the average northern Nigerian is experientially programmed to appropriate social realities from religious lenses, but you’re doing a disservice to public intellection to conflate the aggressions of the pastoral Fulani with the nineteenth-century Fulani jihad—or with global Jihad. That’s a wild interpretive stretch. As several scholars who have studied the pastoral Fulani have pointed out, the pastoral Fulanis’ allegiance is first to the welfare and fertility of their cattle before anything else. Attributing Jihadi motivations to what is essentially an existential imperative is profoundly unsociological.
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Moses Ochonu
Sent from my iPad
Samuel Zalanga
Moreover, just reflect on what happened in Jos under Governor Jang. Surely, the governor has done some good things but is that the kind of exemplary leadership that one would expect from the Middle Belt? I visited a part of Jos that was predominantly Muslim and realized that the roads were neglected. I know this has to do with the religious tension but this can easily become a vicious circle.
One critical way of showing a viable alternative to the current system where Middle Belt people feel marginalized is to demonstrate when they are in power that they will govern differently (justice, fairness, inclusiveness and accountability) and anyone who cares would have to acknowledge that. I have heard many people express their disappointment with governor Jang. His government became what some political scientists call "personal rule." His son became very powerful in the government. It became at some point like a family affair. And all this happened in spite of Governor Jang claiming that he is an ordained minister. How about that? I feel sad that many of the problems of lack of accountability and of the weak being oppressed by the powerful that are common in the broader Nigerian society are also common among Middle Belt people, who see themselves as victims.
But as Moses documented in his book "colonialism by proxy" to me, what happened during that period shows how even Black people can dehumanize each other. They do not need Eurocentrism to do that. IN one part of the book, Moses quoted a traditional chief working with the colonial officer, asserting during a visit to one of the administrative outpost, "Ga Shanun Mu Su na Zuwa" i.e., when he saw the local people coming to see the traditional ruler and the colonial officer and often based on films I watched of those days, the local people will bow down, the traditional ruler said "There are our cattle coming" when he saw them. The colonial officer documented that. It is terrible to hear that and when I read it, I felt that simply because I am Black, it is no guarantee that I am inherently incapable of dehumanizing another person who is Black and Nigerian.
I am a minority and I am saying this out of experience. The Chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Bauchi State at one point was a minority person and will fit the Middle Belt categorization. But when he was given large sums of money by one of the past governors of Bauchi state, CAN lost any relevance it terms of holding the government accountable.
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