Bola A. Akinterinwa
Seeking to discuss a Fulanisation Scheme that has not been officially or formally launched, raises one fundamental question: is there any official Fulanisation Policy or Scheme under President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB) in Nigeria? The thrust of this column, Vie Internationale, is that neither PMB nor his government has come into the open to say that there is such an agenda. However, on the basis of the various actions of PMB and his administration, it is hypothesised and argued here that such an agenda necessarily exists, especially on the basis of deductive methodology. The hypothesis is justified with some empirical pointers.
More importantly, the hypothesis is further justified by PMB’s attitude of indifference, when allegations of such acts of Fulanisation are publicly raised before the eyes of PMB. This is an acquiescence on the basis of which we believe that PMB cannot but have a Fulanisation agenda, and an exegesis of which is carried out here, with emphasis on the manifestations, and the foreign policy dimensions.
Additionally, the exegesis is considered a desideratum because the agenda, denied or not, is not only creating much animosity between and among the peoples of Nigeria, it is also seriously threatening national cohesion. Fulanisation agenda has the potential to precipitate a new civil war in the country. A new civil war is not always limited to the domestic level, but generally also extended to the external level. Put differently, the battle fields can be geo-politically located within Nigeria, but mercenaries can come from outside. Aiding and abetting, especially in terms of funding, supply of arms and propaganda, can have international character. This is why every war always has a foreign policy dimension.
Thus, what really should we understand by PMB’s Fulanisation agenda or scheme? Why is the alleged agenda strongly resisted by the general public, particularly by southerners in Nigeria? Why is PMB consciously turning deaf ears to public hostility to the agenda? What are the foreign policy implications before and after Fulanisation? And, perhaps more importantly, what will happen if the issue of Fulanisation leads to a second civil war?
Fulanisation and Manifestations
Many well-placed Nigerians have been showing great concerns about the alleged Fulanisation agenda. First, Mr. Bichi Obadiah, the Bauchi CAN Legal Representative, has raised the question of Sharia in the country. As he explained it, ‘in fact, Sharia Commission has been created and Area Courts have been abolished and replaced with Sharia Courts… The provision of Sharia Courts and Sharia Commission without corresponding ecclesiastical Courts and Commission to attend to the yearning of Christian citizens, has served as (an expression of) great marginalization, discrimination.’
Second, apart from the foregoing religious manifestation, there is the alleged intrinsic demographic fraud. For example, Hon. Jonathan Asake, National President of the Southern Kaduna People Union (SOKAPU), strongly believes that PMB has a Fulanisation agenda, the purpose of which is to sub-plan indigenous communities in Nigeria and then bring the Fulani communities in, to change the demography of the country.
In his words, ‘it is a sad situation in our beloved country, Nigeria, and unfortunate that our founding (fathers) will wake up and see the mess that is going on in the country that we found ourselves. They will be heartbroken particularly by the spate of insecurity that has engulfed the country’ (vide Amos Tauna, “There is Fulanisation Agenda in Nigeria -SOKAPU President Alleges,” Daily Post, 22 February, 2021. More disturbingly, Hon. Asake not only complained about cases when a governor could have the effrontery to tell the general public that it is a right for the killer Fulani to carry an AK-47 to defend themselves, but also about asking “where is the right of other citizens that are being killed? Do they also have the right to carry AK-47 to defend themselves?” Apparently, it is right for the bandits and the cattle herders to carry prohibited weapons but not right for all others that are law abiding. This is one major problem that requires being attended to.
More interestingly, Hon. Asake also recalled the situation in his community and some other communities in Southern Kaduna. He said ‘youths and vigilantes are being killed and when they respond by taking up machetes, sticks, bows and arrows to defend their communities against these killer Fulani herdsmen, they are oftentimes arrested and thrown into detention.’
With this type of development, he believes that ‘there will be hunger in the land and when there is hunger in the land, there will be anger …, there will be a strike and people have to rise up and fight whatever thing that is making them hungry.’
And perhaps most disturbingly on the issue of negotiations with bandits and insurgents, and particularly on the issue of amnesty, Hon. Asake has it that ‘Sheikh Gumi is going round engaging the Fulani terrorists… His argument has been that amnesty was granted to the Niger Delta militants and that amnesty should be granted to the Fulani who are kidnapping, killing people and displacing many communities.’ In his eyes, this should not be so. Comparing the Fulani killing, on the basis of their herd, with the Niger Delta militants, on the basis of their complaints against the pollution and degradation of their natural environment, should not be done on the same platform. They are quite dissimilar in nature, objective and manifestations.
As argued by Hon, Asake, ‘Niger Delta militants were agitating for their environmental rights. Their environment was degraded as a result of oil exploration activities in their region and while this oil is being exploited, the Niger Delta youths do not have jobs that are being given to them by government.’ Additionally, he said the Niger Delta people are fishermen and could not go to the farm, they agitated so that they will get the attention of government… [T]he kidnapping they were doing was mostly of expatriates working for foreign companies in an effort to get attention from the international community, but the Niger Delta militants never went into communities to kidnap their poor people or extort money from their people.’
Consequently, in his eyes, ‘anybody trying to compare the Fulani herdsmen with the Niger Delta militants is being mischievous or is part of the agenda (Fulanisation) that is being played out.’ What is noteworthy about the long quotations is not simply to suggest that there is a hidden Fulani agenda of government, but that the purpose of the agenda is to change the demographic character of the polity. This is why insecurity in Nigeria has been difficult to understand and why it has the potential to remain in Nigeria for quite a longer time to come.
Third, there is the apparent policy of protection of terrorists in the governance of Nigeria, especially from the time of President Goodluck Jonathan, who once told the people of Nigeria that there were Boko Haram agents and sympathizers in his government. Admittedly, if there were and there are still such criminals in government, why is it that this problem has not been officially taken up and also seriously addressed?
Besides, and perhaps more inquisitively, it has again been publicly alleged that Government, and particularly the military instrument of governance, is aiding and abetting boko haramism. While former President of Nigeria, Chief and General Olusegun Obasanjo has also publicly said that there is a Fulanisation agenda under PMB in Nigeria, many others have simply corroborated that the military are actually aiding the agenda in different ways.
More recently, retired Navy Commodore Kunle Olawunmi has said that the so-called bandits are actually terrorists but, for various reasons not declared, they have always been called bandits, who are well known and are never arrested for prosecution. As he explained it in a television interview, ‘in April this year (2021), the Government said they had arrested 400 Bureau de Change-related people that were sponsoring Boko Haram. They told us. Try them, we know them. Why can’t this government, if not that they are partisan, bring those people out for trial? They have not been brought to book. In fact, the policy is that of strategizing to grant them state pardon, probably with the ultimate objective to integrate them into the Nigerian military, and by so doing, empowering them to later do more to assist in the enforcement of the Fulanisation agenda.
And true enough, Commodore Olawunmi also made it clear that the invasion of the Nigerian Defence Academy on Tuesday, 24th August, 2021, could not have happened without the collaboration of insiders in the Academy. He recalled his experience as a member of the military intelligence team in 2017. In his words, ‘I can’t come on air and start mentioning names of people that are presently in government that the boys we arrested mentioned. I was the Commandant of Defence Intelligence College and I know that at that time, there were things I cannot say. If you term them terrorists, it carries a lot of weight, and you can be reprimanded for that’ (Daily Sun, Thursday, August 26, 2021, p.8). The point being made here is that there are terrorists in the government of PMB but little or no effort is made to deal with them. Rather than call them terrorists, they are simply referred to as ‘’unknown gunmen,’ whereas they are terrorists allegedly under government’s official protection.
Fourth, the observations of General Theophilus Y. Danjuma and Dr. Malaifa Obadiah, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, are also noteworthy. General Danjuma pointedly accused the Nigerian military of complicity in the killing of innocent Nigerians. In fact, he told Nigerians to take arms and defend themselves, on the basis of legitimate self-defence.
The revelation by Dr. Obadiah is particularly most critical. In a live television interview on 8 October, 2020 at about 8.45 am, Dr. Obadiah declared, on the basis of his own personal integrity as an Oxon PhD degree holder and as a Central Banker who is not required to talk carelessly, that he had the opportunity of meeting with some repentant Boko Haram Commanders, who had revealed that a currently serving Governor is one of the Commanders of Boko Haram. Dr. Obadiah said the game plan of the Boko Haram is in two phases. The first phase is to neutralize the rural areas. The second one is to annihilate the cities through house-to-house killing of prominent people. More disturbingly, he said that a war, currently in the making, will be declared in 2022. The main purpose of the war is to ensure continuity of stay in power of the Fulani. Thus, whatever policy agenda PMB may want to come out with cannot but be looked at suspiciously and rejected.
In fact, Chido Nwakanma sums up the problem when he wrote on ‘’RUGA Two Years Later’’ in his column, Public Sphere, in ThisDay on May 30, 2021 that ‘the bullying and avariciousness of RUGA are clearing cobwebs that have blocked the sights of political leaders of Southern Nigeria. They can see the manipulations and intent of persons with whom they thought they were on the same journey. The Igbo proverb speaks of two persons who set out on a ghost-hunt only for one of the parties to realise that he was the target of the hunt.’
Buharimania and Foreign Policy Dimensions
However, the targeting of the hunt continued on Thursday, 19th August, 2021, when PMB complicated the controversy by approving 368 grazing routes in 25 States. The approval is not only in conflict with the laws already enacted in some constitutive States of Nigeria, that have proscribed open grazing, because of the belligerent and criminal operational mania of herding in Nigeria. It also raises the fundamental question of Buharimania.
Buharimania is the attitudinal disposition and style of PMB’s governance, either as a military dictator or as an elected president. There is no difference in his dictatorial and democratic toga. It is essentially about doing things in his own unique way. He decides to do what he wants to do, while allowing everyone to think freely, comment freely and frolic around with one’s perception of his administration. He bothers less whether or not his image is negative or positive. This is why his official policies indisputably lend greater credence to the allegations of a Fulanisation agenda. He first came up with the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA) agenda. Ruga, ordinarily speaking, is the Fulani word for human settlement. As a policy, RUGA cannot but imply more than a grazing area, but also the inclusion of an area for human settlement. This is why the PMB administration says it is a policy that would ‘create reserved communities where herders will live, grow and tend their cattle, produce milk and undertake other activities associated with the cattle business without having to move around in search of grazing land for their cows.’
This policy, by implication, requires the availability of free land or non-titled land, but which cannot be said to be in existence. For there to be available land, the Federal Government will have to seek a special understanding with the State Governors on whom the authority over land is legally vested. But rather than seek to negotiate, PMB opted for manu militari intellectualism in addressing the problem. Even though the RUGA policy was conceived by Brigadier Shehu Yar’ Adua, a Fulani, under the administration of General Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba, the policy could not be implemented as a result of the vehement public opposition to it. But PMB still undertook to enforce the policy, surely not as President of Nigeria, but apparently as a Fulani and a cattle herder himself, on May 21, 2019.
The problem became sharpened when the Arewa Youths, acting under the umbrella of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), also gave all the southern leaders an ultimatum of 30 days to accept the RUGA project in peace and 30 days for PMB to implement the RUGA policy. The implication is that if the southerners do not accept the policy in peace, they will accept it by force and Fulani herdsmen’ criminality will continue with impunity. PMB has not been able to enforce the policy, not even with the ultimatum, because ‘what is behind six is more than seven,’ to borrow from one Yoruba axiomatic saying.
This is one reason for the RUGA agenda to be suspended in August 2019 (“FG Suspends RUGA,’’ The Punch, 3 July, 2019). Put differently, in Nigeria, it is the development of the culture of herding with AK-47, maiming and killing of the titled owners of farm lands and the conscious protection of this abnormality by Government that is currently generating heated controversy in the country. Some people are aggrieved that Government is using state funds to promote private businesses like cattle grazing. Why is open grazing the business of Government when other private businesses operate on the basis of rule of law of the country without Government assistance, people have asked?
Another school of thought is more concerned about why the Fulani should, in a modern- day setting, still believe that Nigeria is the private property of the Fulani and that they have the right of domination. In fact, many others believe that the response to the Fulanisation agenda should not be the reciprocal use of violence, but simply by opting out of the Nigerian Federation. Why should this be so when cultural diversity is a great asset in the conduct and management of international relations? At this juncture, several foreign policy issues are relevant for further reflection.
First, the controversy raises the issue of federal powers versus state powers: which is superior and under what context? The legal principle of lex posteriori derogat lex anteriori on the same subject matter is also necessarily raised. The grazing law that was majorly applicable in the former Northern region was replaced with the 1978 Land Use Act. For PMB to be searching every nook and cranny for a new legal justification cannot but raise more questions than answers: how will the Foreign Service Officers explain this legal contradiction? How do they justify the quest to impose Fulanisation, or one ethnic domination over other ethnic groups? Will they say the situation is far from the truth? How will they also justify the legality of the use of AK-47 by bandits and terrorists and the illegality of the use of the same weapon by victims of terrorist attacks in the same political setting? How do they explain the international funding of terrorism and banditry in Nigeria when Dr. Obadiah has made it clear that the insurgents are very sophisticated and have unbelievable good network?
Without scintilla of doubt, the Yoruba South West has not shown any readiness to condone the Fulanisation policy. Other southern communities have also stated non-admissibility of open grazing. All the southern governors have officially banned open grazing in southern Nigeria, arguing that the 1978 Land Use Act vests directly the right over land on the Executive Governor of each State. In fact, the Oodua People’s Sovereign Movement (OPSOM), recently established, has declared that it will ‘apply the instrumentalities of the law, media and intellectualism to fight what is considered illegality and a subtle attempt at land grabbing in favour of certain part of the country’ (ibid., p.23). The certain part of the country referred to, is undoubtedly the North.
In terms of foreign policy, which type of lie will be more suitable to tell the international community on whether the situation of insecurity in Nigeria is under control or not? How well can Nigerian diplomats defend national unity abroad? Some observers have posited that the Fulani insurgents are generally spoilers and belligerents wherever they live. What is obvious, however, is that in the war allegedly in the making in Nigeria, it will not be sour but sweet in execution, because the scenarios are most likely to be completely different, and because a war that is planned for, should not be compared with a war that is imposed. The differences are made clear in international history.
Put differently, unlike before when the 1967-1970 war was largely fought between the North and South West alliance, on the one hand, the new war is not likely to have such type of alliance, but a war clearly between the South and the North, which may not include the Middle Belt. In this regard, the international community is most likely to give active support to the southerners because of its fervent belief in human rights, right of self-determination, opposition to use of force in dispute management and peaceful resolution of conflicts. And perhaps most interestingly, the international community is vehemently opposed to the sponsoring of terrorism, which has become the hallmark of the Fulani herdsmen, who are engaged in forceful acquisition of land that are lawfully titled.
The Fulani erroneously believe that there is terra nullius in Nigeria, especially in Southern Nigeria. They do believe that nothing could happen to them by using force to acquire land that does not belong to them. This is the problem that PMB is openly condoning. While the truth about climate change may be a good reason to seek accommodation of the concerns of the Fulani brothers, the mere fact that they still say they are born to rule and that the Fulani herdsmen have the right to do so as Nigerians is already a knotty problem.
Additionally, even though it is also argued at the same time that the violent herders are foreigners and not Nigerians, it is very strange to have the Government defending foreigners to come to Nigeria and graze in any part of Nigeria, without their preparedness to comply with the laws of their host state. Which type of African unity is that? Why should free movement of people and right of establishment be promoted to the detriment of the security interest of the local people? True, Nigeria’s break-up is indeed a matter of when. The Fulani herdsmen cannot, and should not be allowed to operate on the basis of the rule of jungle justice and still be wrapped up in the expectation to rule peacefully.
Seeking to rule peacefully in a chaotic environment is problematic. Fulanisation, as an agenda, is what will eventually disintegrate Nigeria. PMB’s belief that Nigeria is indivisible and indissoluble is ideologically archaic: a group of people put pen to paper and says that Nigeria is indivisible and indissoluble. Another set of people is prevented from reviewing it, because the Constitution says Nigeria is indivisible and must therefore remain so. This is, at best, very myopic. Not knowing that countries that have sovereignly existed before Nigeria became independent have been disintegrated by war or peacefully and not knowing that Nigeria’s case cannot be different, especially if governance continues to be driven by hidden agenda, is a critical error of judgment. PMB must therefore, not only stop the governance of Nigeria by hypocrisy, as Fulanisation, now or in the distant future, cannot succeed and can only waste lives, but must also make haste slowly in the execution of his agenda. The likely scenario in the event of another civil war is that Northern Nigeria may have the support of the Arab and Islamic States. There may not be another North-South West alliance against the South East again. Southern Nigerians may have the support of Christians worldwide. The bottom line is that the whole world is now more resolved to fight terrorism, regardless of its origin. Most terrorist acts, if not all, have Islamic dynamics.
