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Fulani Expulsion: Beyond Hysteria By Jonathan Ishaku
Plateau State is hitting the headlines once again. The story this time is the alleged expulsion of some Fulani nomads from Wase Local Government Area. Curiously, it is only the Northern based newspapers, including the Daily Trust, that are in a feeding frenzy over the story. This is not surprising; since the subjects of the deportation are said to be Fulanis and the “offending” state is Plateau State, our northern defenders are out with the sword (the pen), pretending that the deportation breaches some fundamental section of the Nigerian constitution. Other disinterested newspapers are wiser; fellow Nigerians are routinely evacuated from the streets of Lagos and Abuja to their originating home-states in their hundreds and nobody has ever cried foul.
Both Mohammed Haruna and Is’haq Moddibbo Kawu in their respective columns of May 13, 2009 and May 14, 2009 in the Daily Trust lamented the lack of interest by other media in this story which their newspaper broke and has since orchestrated. Haruna, a rather imaginative fellow, came out with the theory that sometimes in May 2009, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State and some officials of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) secretly met with Lagos-based editors to forge a conspiracy to demonize Islam and Muslims in this country as terrorists. He attributed the source of the information to one Dr. Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, the purported leader of the so-called Supreme Council of Shariáh in Nigeria (SCSN). You will recall that it is this same Dr. Datti (a man of dubious qualifications on such matters) that raised the alarm against the inoculation of Muslims against polio some years ago, claiming that it was a Western ploy to decimate the population of Muslims.
This reckless alarm set the global eradication of polio many years back and earned Nigeria a harsh reprimand from the international community. If Haruna chooses this fellow as a dependable source of information, one has no quarrel with him as it is within his right to do so. But it speaks volume that a credible journalist will do so.
Howbeit, Haruna is wrongheaded in his conspiracy theory and he does harm to the credibility of other media professionals, especially those operating within the progressive Lagos-based media, who he portrayed as unconscionable. These colleagues have the prerogative of determining the news value of stories without anyone’s prejudgment or pontification, not even from a veteran of one-sided conflict reporting like our esteemed Haruna.
My ideological colleague and fellow veteran of the NEPU/PRP struggle, Mallam Is’haq betrayed an unusual intellectual slip by jumping on the Daily Trust bandwagon. He came close to grasping the critical issue at stake in the expulsion saga but inexplicably backed out probably in deference to his Fulbe kiths and kin. He also did betray these same sentiments in his comments on last year’s sectarian violence in Jos North.
Writing in his column under the title “Jonah Jang’s expulsion of the Fulani,” he said: “that most commentators have also not spoken out for the Fulbe nomads doesn’t surprise me; afterall, most of our commentators come from farming background and for them, the pastoralist is an exotic type, who frequently enters the farm and then precipitates clashes with farming communities.” Had Is’haq applied his intellectual, rather than emotional, energy along this line of thinking he would have unraveled the issues behind the expulsion of the Fulanis from Wase because he had already put his finger on it: the tension between pastoralists and farmers in Nigeria.
Rather he chose to follow the common refrain of the Trust columnists which is the alleged ethnic and religious chauvinism of Governor Jang. Even when sufficient evidences were adduced, including press conferences by the local chief and local government chairman, to confirm that the action emanated from the local authorities in Wase who were alarmed at the possibility of the breakdown of law and order in the community upon the influx of the nomads, the columnists at Daily Trust continued to promote the fallacy of Jang’s complicity.
Says Is’haq: “To give the ETHNIC CLEANSING (his capitalization) some air of respectability, Wase LGA Chair, Abubakar Mohammed Badu, was press-ganged to tell the press, that “the deportation was not done on religious, ethnic or political basis but for security of the local government.” I doubt if Is’haq knows the chairman personally; whatever is the case, however, this is a gratuitous insult. How is Is’haq more Muslim, more Fulani or more courageous than Alhaji Abubakar? What gives the writer the impression that he is superior to other mortals simply because he has the privilege of a column? If Alhaji Abubakar is being press-ganged to say what he said, WHO then is press-ganging Is’haq to write what he writes in the Daily Trust? It is indeed sad that Nigerian journalism permits such abuse to the extent that an elected official could be heaped insults simply because he refused to feed somebody else’s prejudices.
But like I said earlier Is’haq could have unraveled the cause of the expulsion had he permitted his intellect rather than emotion to rule him. This cheap recourse to frame all controversies and conflicts along ethnic and religious lines does great injury to our national unity and peaceful co-existence. The journalist’s responsibility is to provide the public with information and not to regurgitate prejudices on the pages of newspaper. The phenomenon of Fulani pastoralists-farmers clashes, especially at the start of the rainy season in this country is not new.
The tension that arose in Wase had nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. The Muslims and Fulanis in Wase form the local community that cried out against the invasion of their farmlands by the Fulani nomads. As confirmed by the Wase council boss who is a Muslim and Fulani, it is fellow Muslims and Fulani that raised security concern against the migrants. What has been established from the report of the chairman is that upon confronting the migrants they agreed to move out; thereupon the authorities merely provided assistance in term of logistics. The stories about forceful ejection were an embellishment of a jaundiced press.
Nigeria has always grappled with the conflict between pastoral Fulani and farmers. In December last year at Yardanko in Katsina State, Fulani pastoralists had a bloody clash with Hausa farmers during which four Fulanis were killed; the issue of ethnicity or religion was not raised. In Adamawa State a clash between Fulanis and local farmers at Bali left a casualty of 30 dead. Fifteen people were killed in a similar clash in Karaye Local government Area of Kano in 2005. Oyo and Kwara States have witnessed incessant Fulani-farmers clashes. Since a couple of years now, the southeast has also witnessed such clashes. But in all these incidents, the issue of religion or ethnicity has never been raised. According to studies carried out on this subject, the clash between pastoralists and farmers has an international dimension. A report carried out by ICE Case Studies notes that: “The sedentary farmers in Niger [Republic] - the Hausa and the Djerma-Songhai - from the arable, southern tier and the herders - including the Fulani, Tuareg, Kanouri, and Toubou tribes - are the main actors in this conflict. The rapidly growing populations, the competition for meager natural resources, the recurring droughts and locust infestations, and the increased availability of firearms are all factors that lead to conflict between the two distinct groups.”
In fact the emerging problem of land conflict is now linked to global warming and climate change. Arable land is getting scarcer while demand for grazing areas is on the increase. This is what has given rise to migration to grazing area as perhaps was the case of Wase. This inevitably leads to communal tension between the migrants and the farming communities. When such migrations do not take cognisance of communal land holding and local sensitivities, they appear as invasion. When they take place in the form of transportation in 14 trucks and without the knowledge of the emir or chief, they appear as provocation.
What should a responsible government do in such circumstances? Fold its arms and watch till violence break out? Where are the people (drawing from the discredited National Assembly Ad Hoc Committee report) who allege that the Jos North crisis would have been averted had the State government acted on security reports about the premeditation of violence and the inflammatory preaching in mosques prior to the November 28, 2008 local government polls? Should the local and state government have stayed action in Wase till violence actually breaks out?
For those who talk about constitutional rights, they should tell the public where invasion of farmlands are permitted in the Constitution. Or should it be different where Fulanis are concerned? Or should it be different where Plateau State is concerned? If harmless beggars can be evacuated from the streets of Lagos and Abuja to their home-states in Kano and elsewhere, what special rights do these menacing migrants in Wase have over them? Even as this controversy rages on the pages of Daily Trust, May 15, 2009 edition of paper carried a news item that the Lagos State government has given a two-week ultimatum to Kogi State to “evacuate her indigenes who are physically challenged” from the streets of Lagos. Are we expecting to witness a barrage of condemnation of the Lagos State Governor from the columnists of the Trust? Don’t the disabled enjoy same constitutional rights in the Nigerian Constitution? Or is it different because those to be evacuated are “indigenes” of Kogi and not Fulanis? Why is it that the Lagos State’s use of the term “indigene” has not attracted similar censure as it would have been had it been Plateau State?
Methinks the National Assembly should sit up to address the fundamental challenges posed by global warming and climate change in this country rather than always get itself worked up by a carefully orchestrated hysteria by a section of the media.
Mr. Ishaku is a Jos based journalist and can be reached on jishaku2@yahoo.co.uk |