I stumbled upon this article on the web and feel like sharing it. It is long but try and read it. http://nigeriaworld.com/letters/2002/may/291.html
Ethnic nationalism in Nigeria essentially highlights the assignment of cultural meanings to geographical space (and associations between social identity and territoriality). A development that is unfavourable to Fulanis because of their lack of territorial heritage. Fulanis suffer from ur-angst, chronic social insecurity as a group, because of their self-perceived perpetual "condition of foreignness". This is because Fulanis are not spatially concentrated and therefore cannot escape other groups in any geographical space in Nigeria.
The Fulani elite also see ethno-nationalism, which is highly infectious, as a danger as it could give rise to Hausa and Nupe nationalism, for example. This would reverse the Fulani conquest of Hausaland and other territories over which they rule in the North.
So, shari'a is the Fulani response to ethnic nationalism, an alternative instrument of political mobilization. It is not a coincidence that the loudest and most uncompromising protagonists of shari'a in the North are Fulanis: Gen. Mohammadu Buhari (rtd.), Shehu Shagari, Ahmad, Yadudu, etc. It is a logical continuation of the Fulani historical politicization of Islam for power.
Shari'a is also used as an instrument of mobilization of political violence. The 1999 reorganization carried out by President Olusegun Obasanjo ended Fulani control over the Nigerian armed forces. Hence, they needed new ways to generate and deploy violence to advance their interests both in the North and in Nigeria in general.
Shari'a creates a climate of Islamic extremism, and there are no better soldiers on the battlefield than fanatics of an ideological or a religious persuasion. Napoleon, the greatest soldier/statesman in European history, understood the power of moral certitude in his time and said "the moral is to the physical as three is to one". Patton, the great American war hero, went one step further by estimating that moral conviction was five times more important in battle than physical strength.
The Fulani political shari'a has the potential to create a pool of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of zealots who would be willing or better said, anxious, to die for Fulani power, erroneously believing they are giving their lives for their belief in the true Islam. Can't we see the signs coming already, when an Igbo man, who unknowingly drove his vehicle over a fallen copy of the Qur'an, was instantly murdered in broad daylight in Kano last December? And his killers don't even have a guilty conscience. After all, they think they are doing it for Allah! And even now Kano state authorities still refuse to prosecute these barbarous killers.
Shari'a as an instrument of violence means that our people in the North are effectively hostages of the Fulani elite. Whenever they want to forcefully advance a political position, they can arbitrarily unleash violence on Yorubas and non-Muslims in their domain. An example is the genocide committed against Yorubas and Christians in Kano last November.
One could therefore accuse the Fulani elite of blasphemously using Islam as a weapon of political terrorism.
Hausas and Fulanis: The politics of identity
Fulanis invented the dubious identity construct called Hausa-Fulani to deny Hausas a cultural identity independent of Fulanis. Hence a Hausa man is publicly defined as Hausa-Fulani, Northerner, Muslim and Northern Muslim. In every form of identity, the Fulani is there with him. Yet the Fulanis have their Fulbe organizations both in Nigeria and outside the country. When a Nigerian Fulani delegation, which included Buhari and Bukar Ibrahim, attended the World Fulani Congress in Bamako, Mali, in January, they did not take a single Hausa person along.
So much for Hausa-Fulani folk kinship!
The truth is that a creed of racism, that systematically suggests Hausa natural inferiority, is entrenched in the Hausa-Fulani society. And this determines the traditional system of privilege that heavily favours Fulanis in Hausaland.
Why have Fulanis been so successful in subjugating Hausas?
The Fulani establishment suppresses and oppresses the Hausa culture. In fact, it can be said that the war started by Othman dan Fodio two hundred years ago to conquer Hausaland and other territories in the North is being continued right up to the present, but in a cultural form. The adoption of Hausa language by Fulanis also helps in subjugating Hausas by denying them a distinct cultural trait which sets them apart from Fulanis. For example, all major university scholars of Hausa in Nigeria are Fulanis.
The recent banning of the public performance of Hausa music and other forms of cultural expression in Hausaland because they are "un-Islamic" is an act of hostility against Hausa culture. It may be recalled that the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, was scrapped six years ago in the course of a rationalization program. And the decision, of course, was taken by Fulanis who dominate the decision-making process at the university. The significance of that decision was lost on the Nigeria press. It was indeed intended to destroy the scholarship of Hausa people and their culture, which was the priority research field of the centre.
With the denigration of the pre-"Jihad" history of Hausas and the systematic vulgarization of their culture, the only identities in which the Hausa man can feel comfortable is that of an obedient Muslim Northerner or a Muslim Hausa-Fulani in the community of the faithful led by a Fulani Caliph!
This hideous form of politics robs Hausas of their sense of ethno-national pride and is responsible for the observable cultural immobility in Hausaland, to which characteristic social phenomena such as street begging in the region are attributable. And it explains why Hausas lag behind the rest of the country in seeking knowledge. Senegal is 98 percent Muslim, and people go to school there like in South Nigeria. And Muslim Hausas in Ghana are one of the most educated national groups in the country. Yet Hausas are a small minority group there.
Again, one could accuse the Fulani elite of the blasphemous use of Islam as an instrument of cultural repression.
And the Fulani establishment has been successful in maintaining its control over public opinion in the Muslim North because of the international assistance it receives. The Hausa service of VOA, BBC, Deutsche Welle (German foreign broadcasting service) are all part of the scheme.
The project is to enable the Fulani power elite to control the opinion of Hausas and the other affinity ethnic groups in the Muslim North so that national power can be retained by the regional, but especially the Fulani, elite, who in turn will make the country's resources available to these key Western countries. This explains the panicky reaction of the Fulani elite to Sunday Dare's appointment as the head of Hausa Service at VOA. They fear the novel appointment could mark the beginning of the end of that scheme.
Hausa mind reclamation is a critical prerequisite for peace in Nigeria, and this must begin with the de-monopolization of Fulani control over the media information consumed by the general masses of illiterate Hausas and other related peoples, both in the North and South. There is a massive undercurrent of Hausa resentment of Fulani privilege in Nigeria. But this grievance lacks avenues of media expression. The Fulanis know it but for the time being they have been able to deflect it in the direction of others: non-Muslims, Yorubas, etc.
Electronic broadcasting services in the South and the Christian North should introduce Hausa programs for, say, 2 hours daily, to their local Hausa communities. Such broadcasts should be used to promote Hausa culture. It could also give Hausas a forum to articulate their aspirations and possibly vent out their grudges against the privileged status of Fulanis. This could provide fertile grounds for the seed of Hausa nationalism which will then grow into Hausaland.
Our press should change the public perception of ethnicity in the North. We should reject the inconsistent "Yoruba-Igbo-Northerner" terminology in the media and political discourse. There is no logical terminological equivalence between Igbos and Yorubas, on the one hand, and Northerners, on the other. One is a reference to ethnicity and the other to geographical location. By employing this dubious terminology, our press helps the Fulani to ethnicize the "Northern" identity. If Obasanjo is a Yoruba man, then Buhari cannot be a Northerner. He is a Fulani man!
We must stop using the term Hausa-Fulani. Despite the age-old intermingling of the Ijaws, Itsekiris and Uhrobos in Warri, we never employ the terms Ijaw-Itsekiri or Uhrobo-Itsekiri to describe people from the region, despite the fact that there is hardly any family there that does not have multiethnic roots. Governor Ibori of Delta State, for example, is publicly known as an Uhrobo, but his mother is Itsekiri. Nobody would ever think of calling him an Uhrobo-Itsekiri.
Fulani identity should be emphasized. When the press reports about Buhari, Ghali Na'aba, Shagari, M.D. Yussuf, Wada Nas, Rimi, Shehu Musa, etc, their Fulani race must always be highlighted. This will gradually reveal the full extent of Fulani privilege to our peoples in the North. And the realization will dawn on them that that privilege is at their expense.
In the long term, we must decolonize our history and do away with the lie of the "Jihad". No German book describes the Fulani conquest of Hausaland as Jihad. Only the British did in their unholy alliance with the Sokoto Caliphate in the colonial exploitation of Nigeria. And we have inherited this misnomer in our history education.
And our journalists, ethnologists, historians, sociologists and other scholars should brainstorm on other long-term strategies to free the Hausa mind and convince the political class in the South and Christian North to adopt them as an ideology of political action.
The control of the Hausa mind is the source of Fulani power in Nigeria. We must wrest this power from them if we are to rescue our collective fate from Fulani whims.
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