The Tide newspaper of Monday, February 3, 2020, carried the following news items, “Group Claims Fulani Ownership of Land From Sokoto To Atlantic” (Page 5). A little known Fulani group: Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) was quoted as giving a notice of a planned conquest of the entire territory from Sokoto to the Atlantic Ocean. President of that group is said to be one Badu Salisu Ahmadu who was quoted as saying that “any attack on a single Fulani is an attack on all. Any such attacks must be countered with triple measure.”
Badu Salisu Ahmadu was reacting to a recent killing in Plateau State by armed Fulani herdsmen, different from 2018 Benue massacre by same herdsmen. He was said to be quite unapologetic about the killings and claiming that the Fulani had been attacked before. A more audacious aspect of Ahmadu’s outburst is the claim of the existence of a Fulani Strike Force, ever ready for acts of brigandage.
There is a growing suspicion across the country that apart from being treated as over-pampered babies, the Fulani ethnic group in Nigeria, tacitly claims to be above the law. This can be a dangerous precedent if such frame of mind is allowed to go with impunity.
Being an old hand in intelligence and security operations, one finds it difficult to believe that the nation’s security network can remain blind to the provocative audacity of a group of “sacred Nigerians.” On a flashback, between February and June 1966, utterances and actions similar to what FUNAM is doing currently, were put together and sent to appropriate quarters as highly classified reports. Strangely, similar silence and attitude as currently prevailing, were the experiences of that time, until massive and organised slaughters began soon after.
Unfortunately for the history of Nigeria, some of the radical zealots of 1966 spoiling for blood, are today seeing what they were unable to see in the past years of madness. It would not be difficult to figure out that there had been some standing agenda in some quarters, hiding under the cover of politics and patiently waiting on the wings for an opportunity to drive home such hidden agenda.
The fact that a patriotic and noble effort to place Nigeria on the path of sanity, was tagged as an effort at ethnic domination, took the nation back to what we sought to escape from.
Today, the nation is paying gradually for the folly, myopia and mendacity of the clever counter plot of 1966. Those who would not want their hidden plots and wrong doing to be brought to light would go to any length to destroy what stands on their way.
For a group that calls itself Fulani Nationality Movement to claim that Plateau-Benue and the rest of Nigeria is an indigenous territory of the Fulani people, is not only a provocative statement but a hate speech. Is such claim not capable of making other ethnic groups to be on their guard? Especially when such arrogant claim is accompanied by acts of impunity and brigandage, are other Nigerians expected to sit and stare when dangers are looming?
Or would anyone deny the existence of dangers when FUNAM is threatening to carry out an old mandate of their fore-fathers? Does the utterance of the president of FUNAM not remind Nigerians of the mandate of Late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sarduana of Sokoto: “The new nation called Nigeria should be an estate from our great-grand father, Othoman Dan Fodio…?
Are the “Minorities of the North” not serving as willing tools” and “the South as conquered territories”? Are we not seeing ruthless prevention of a change of power? Where these old mandates are not being accomplished via political and military measures, are the antics of Fulani Nationality Movement, herdsmen and Boko Haram terrorists, not parts of the game plan? Who is fooling who?
Specifically, one would have expected the sponsors of hate speech bill and the nation’s security apparatus to swing into action, to see that FUNAM does not plunge Nigeria into avoidable state of insecurity. It would be fool hardly to regard the utterances and activities of the Fulani Nationality Movement as jokes. If the movement could go to the extent of having a Standing Strike Force ready for possible slaughter, coupled with what Fulani herdsmen had done in the past, then only fools would call them jokers. Surely, they are not!
Known predominantly as herdsmen, the facts that they now go with sophisticated and prohibited firearms, cannot be justified on the ground of protecting themselves from cattle rustlers. They have been known to rape and kill women in farmlands, such that farmers are now afraid to go to farms for fear of herdsmen. Much have been said over this issue that definite actions to check the impunity of herdsmen should have been taken to avert worse security problems. Must we sit as danger looms?
With deadly weapons and perhaps sympathy of powerful groups and authorities, some people may think that they have a monopoly of violence but this is not always so. Justice remains the most valid weapon.