Ilorin and the crisis of Fulani identity



By Femi Awoniyi

In the Ilorin matter, a word is so sensitive that one side of the conflict avoids using it (See Daily Trust and Weekly Trust reports on gamji). It's a word that won't cross the lips of Emir Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, Abubakar Olusola Saraki, Alfa Babatunde Belgore and other defenders of the status quo in the town.

The word is "Fulani". None of these men have ever come out to say: Yes, I am Fulani or that Ilorin belongs to the Fulanis. They only claim they are not Yoruba, and that the controversial town "belongs to the North".



This willful obscurantism or fuzziness of language is to mask the real issue involved, which is ethnicity in the politics of Fulani-traditionally ruled domains.



Fulanis often adopt identities (North, Muslim North, Hausa-Fulani) that they share with others and which don’t single them out in the Nigerian polity, and they employ these different identities in different contexts. The Fulani traditional rulership has constructed a social identity around Islam in such a way as to deny Hausas and other peoples in the Fulani-ruled communities an independent ethnic identity, and by so doing arrogate their political representation.



Fulani elite are no ‘mere’ actors in the Nigerian polity. They depart from the premise of a natural entitlement to power and position far greater than that of other Nigerians - and they have played a much more important role than their demographic strength would deem equitable in our politics. Fulanis have produced four rulers since independence (Ahmadu Bello (de facto), Murtala Mohammed, Muhammadu Buhari and Shehu Shagari) and have exercised considerable influence over all others, including the present one.



Is anybody aware that Tunde Idiagbon was a Fulani? Indeed, he was. Two Fulanis (head of state and his deputy) once ruled Nigeria!



Through this ingenious identity politics, Fulani leaders convey the impression that race and ethnicity don’t matter in their domains because their common religion is greater than any differences.



But race and ethnicity matter between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi and Rwanda (even though they are both adherents of Roman Catholicism), between Arabs and Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and between light-skinned Arabs and their dark-skinned compatriots in all of Muslim Arabia. In fact, in the Arab world, while dark-skinned people are treated like a citizenry apart, those with "Negroid" facial features among them (and there are many of them) are the underprivileged of an already underclass.



Ilorin by focusing on ethnicity in a Fulani-ruled domain threatens to bare Fulanis as actors by themselves and for themselves for the first time in independent Nigeria. And Bida is a potential Ilorin as are Kano, Zaria, Katsina and many other towns in the North.



The desperate actions of Fulani leaders over Ilorin are a sign that they recognise the dramatic nature of the agitation of the Yorubas. The Fulani elite are aware that ethno-national consciousness is the only countervailing cultural force capable of weakening religion as a binding agent in their domains, leading inevitably to a sweeping change to the popular perception of its trado-religious institution of power.



The folks kinship between Fulanis and Hausas in Kano, Katsina and Zaria, for example, is not closer than that between Fulanis and Yorubas in Ilorin. The extent of social intercourse and cultural unity among Fulani and the two peoples is very similar: intermarriage, Islam, common language and local cultural mores etc.



The utterances of people like Saraki ("I am Abubakar Olusola Saraki, but that has not made me a Yoruba man. I speak Yoruba because it is my mother's tongue" make nonsense of an ‘Hausa-Fulani’ identity.



That a man can claim in public, with gusto, that the fact that his biological mother comes from an ethnic group does not make him a member of that same group reveals one thing: the paternalistic, condescending attitude of Fulani elite to other peoples in their domains, a sense of cultural superiority. It is similar to the caste system in India. A child from a high-caste father and lower-caste mother defines himself by dissociating himself from his mother’s group.



The desperate behaviour of Saraki (one day, he says Ilorin is 80 percent Yoruba and the next he swears that there are not more than 1,000 of them there) can be attributed to the awareness that a politicised Yoruba ethnic consciousness will destroy his political influence in Kwara.



What ethno-nationalism in Nigeria (of which the Ilorin agitation could be considered a part) does essentially is to highlight 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. They cannot lay primary or native claim to any part of Nigeria. This lack of ethno-national options could be said to be responsible for the hostile attitude of Fulani scholars to the notions of "nations" and "race" in our political discourse and their attempt to disparage claims based on ethno-national interests.



Yoruba agitators in Ilorin face a formidable adversary in Fulani elite who will stop at nothing to preserve their privileges.



Sulu-Gambari has been preparing for the resurgent Yoruba struggle right from his inception of office, convinced of its inevitability. He has married the daughter of Shehu of Bornu, co-founded the Arewa Consultative Forum, co-sponsors the Arewa People’s Congress, thereby seeking sundry allies for the final showdown.



The Fulani traditional ruler has even provoked a Muslim-Christian crisis in the town to divide his supposed subjects. He openly called for the eviction of Christians from Muslim areas in Ilorin, in July 1999, thereby causing tension between the two religious groups. This action eventually led to the riots in Oja-Gboro, a suburb of the town, where 14 churches were set ablaze by rampaging Muslim youths in December of the same year.



And, nationally, we have seen the efforts made by the Fulani elite to recover grounds it perceived to have lost since President Olusegun Obasanjo came into power and his alleged attempts to isolate them. Chief among these is the introduction and promotion of the Sharia.

Sharia amounts to clearing the deck for an aggressive reassertion of Islam as the chief agent of cultural unity in the Fulani-ruled Muslim North, in particular, and the whole Muslim North, in general.



A careful reading of the Weekly Trust and Daily Trust reports will reveal an attempt to portray the Ilorin conflict as one between Islam and ‘Idolatry’. The following quotes should suffice:



"The Ilorin Emirate Chief Forum through its secretary general, Alhaji Salihu Woru Mohammed, responded to Gani Admas threat (sic). The Forum, in a statement, said Ilorin was founded and envisioned to be a bastion of Islam, and that the emir of Ilorin symbolize (sic) the Islamic identity of all Ilorin people, including members of the Afonja family who he said have produced great Islamic scholars. To attempt the unattainable ambition to revert Ilorin to Egungun or idol worshippers is not only an insult but a blasphemy The appellation Emir simply means leader of the faithful. The ruler of Ilorin is different from Obas who are custodians of Ifa, Sanga, Agemo, etc, the statement said."

These Fulani are very crafty. Something is very admirable about them. Such a small minority holds so much power in Nigeria. And these people are not above wiping out an entire village as seen in Jos. Anyway of keeping control.

However, the Fulani in Nigeria are much different from the Fulani in other countries. The Fulani are much more peaceful in a sense.

MaziUche0:

These Fulani are very crafty. Something is very admirable about them. Such a small minority holds so much power in Nigeria. And these people are not above wiping out an entire village as seen in Jos. Anyway of keeping control.

However, the Fulani in Nigeria are much different from the Fulani in other countries. The Fulani are much more peaceful in a sense.

Who told you Fulani is a small minority. Well get informed that Fulanis are migrant and they are in all the west and central african countries, and abouts 40% of Northern Nigerians have Fulani Blood in there genes

HAH:


Who told you Fulani is a small minority. Well get informed that Fulanis are migrant and they are in all the west and central african countries, and abouts 40% of Northern Nigerians have Fulani Blood in there genes

Fulani are a minority. You can have a small amount of Fulani blood in you but that does not make you a Fulani. A Fulani in the Senegambia region will not consider those mixed bloods as Fulani, but Hausa. Only the people whose paternal side was Fulani can consider themselves Fulani!

i understand whats happening here because im mixed with hausa fulani yoruba nupe and kanuri.

like the niger town of Bida there are LOTS of people who speak yoruba and have yoruba first names but are actually fulani, nupe, etc. For 100s of years they have been mixing because of islam.

Among the Yorubas there are also LOTS of fulanis who deny their fulaniness and see themselves as yorubas and not fulani.
It goes both ways some nupes see themselves as yorubas, some bini see thselves as yoruba also.

The city of ilorin is complicated but if Nigeria were to break - the Emir of ilorn himself will probably join the yorubas.

i dont call myself either tribe - saraki should have just kept quiet like most of us do.

Fulani are not minority. I even heard they are more than Hausa.

Jarus:

Fulani are not minority. I even heard they are more than Hausa.

The Fulani are a minority. Do not confuse them with the people of mixed blood. Full blooded Fulani are a minority. These are the ones who never mixed with the Hausa. Different from the Uthman dan Fodio Fulani who settled in the Hausa cities.

.

its not really the fulani persay because the migrant ones such as these ones in kwara


are harmless and arent die hard islamic extremist-

the fulanis such as

use islam as a tool to opress.

what really gets me is that quote about "removing the emir of ilorin will be going back to idol worshipping"

MShittu:

I'm beginning to think that the Fulani, and not the Hausa, are like this nation's Illuminati. I think that they are the people that control this nation, and only through their suppression or complete removal shall we experience true liberation.
Or maybe I'm just paranoid,

I agree with you.

But I actually admire the Fulani. They are very intelligent and they use Islam to bind people. These people really know the power game in Nigeria better than any other group.

Ahmadu Bello outsmarted both Awolowo and Azikiwe who were both went to college abroad.

.

MShittu,

If only it was that easy!

The Fulani are ruthless. They would cut down anyone who tries to take away their power. As you seen in Jos, they are not above wiping out a village or even an entire ethnic group. They do not care.

MShittu:

Lemme draw out whats in my mind at the moment
-Nigeria's north=Uneducated
-Fulani elites=Super-rich in the North
-Nigerian government=Corrupt, only interested in getting money
THEREFORE
The Fulani elites bribe the gov't to keep the North uneducated, so that they can mobilize Northerners to kill, using misinterpreted verses from the Qur'an, as they please.
SO
We need to get em out of the country
And I mean with, like, immediate effect

This seems pretty much 100%. But I don't think we need to actually shovel anyone out of the country, we just need to play the right sort of game and totally remove their hands from the levers of power (eg removing all service chiefs and replacing Danbazau with an Igbo man); we need to completely eject them from NNPC (Barkindo and Rilwan Lukman). . . etc etc

. . .And when they push IBB and zoning as a front, we need to defeat them at all costs. Next year will bring a new dawn, but it is a gradual process that takes courage and intelligence.

Well if they possess so much political power and leverage, its probably going to be a long time before we can pry the power out of their hands.

in order to do that it needs to be an Hausa, kanuri or maybe northern yoruba. a muslim so it wont be seen as an attack on islam.

One of the reason

The calculation is based on the fact that Sambo is younger than the two and may be accepted as a greenhorn to the electorate and more trust worthy to Jonathan for the 2015 election.

Sources however said that the Sambo option is facing some challenges as he is an Hausa, not a Fulani and is from a state that is not known to be a strong Fulani stronghold.

A source said, “The Fulani are not comfortable with Sambo.

“Kaduna State, where he comes from, is not a Fulani state.

“It is made up of Hausa, Christians and other minority states.

“You cannot compare Kaduna, for instance, with the likes of Sokoto, Katsina, Kano or even Plateau States, where there is a mix of both the Hausa and Fulani.

“That is exactly the problem with the Sambo option.

“Those people in the core North would prefer a candidate from a state where there is a mix than one they cannot hold.”

You guys have to reconcile how the fulanis left their enclave in arabialand and with the aid of islam
have colonise most africa with specifically what is happening in nigeria. They have used their arabic religion
as a ruse to enslaved and now colonise most of Africa. The ones i feel sorry for are the black muslims who don't even realise how much the arabs detest them but only use them to perpetuate their political hegemony under the guise of some blasted religion. I can only feel sorry for those black african muslims who, to the milleu tone of "Allahu akbar" are willing to send their fellow black africans on an august visit to their maker, for some foreign religion

Its only we blacks that imports our religion.  we kill each other to go to an arabic heaven where we 'll still be treated as a second class citizens, never mind the promised 72 virgins.Everything that makes us people of colour are compromised i.e, lang., culture, belief, values, history ati bebelo, etc etc etc just so that we can be reincarnated in an arabic heaven.

we africans still have a long way to go..

If we can educate the Muslim masses, I believe we can achieve peace. I don't see Islam as being the problem, I see its manipulation for wrongful use by power-hungry elites as the problem. Take away those elites, and you can educate the people. Educate the people, and there'll probably be no problem
But thats what I think.

The Fulani did not originate from Arabia. 

They are from West Africa. Now these people originated from Senegal known as the Senegambia region. They are related to the Woloof people in which Akon is a member of these people. They are a minority in every West African country they reside, exception is Guinea when they make a plurality of the people.

However, the Fulani wield so much power and are actually feared by many groups. Uthman dan Fodio was one of the first Fulani to lead his people out of obscurity when he conquered the Hausa States. After he did that, the history of West Africa would change.

These people led jihad across West Africa. Even against fellow Muslims! They attacked the Mandinka, Yoruba Woloof, Hausa, Kanem-Bornu Empire and other people. These people are ruthless as they come.

The interesting thing is the Uthman dan Fodio learned more about Islam from the Tuareg who were once feared across North Africa. Even the Arabs mentioned the ferocity of the Tuareg in battle.

Jarus:

Fulani are not minority. I even heard they are more than Hausa.

We learn new things everyday. I always thought they are minorities.

And they are also far more educated and brilliant. Yar'adua, Buhari, Shagari, Ahmadu Bello, Sanusi, Buhari etc are all fulani

Jarus:

And they are also far more educated and brilliant. Yar'adua, Buhari, Shagari, Ahmadu Bello, Sanusi, Buhari etc are all fulani

NOT ALL infact most are illiterate.

Babangida is half Fulani from kano.

Jarus:

And they are also far more educated and brilliant. Yar'adua, Buhari, Shagari, Ahmadu Bello, Sanusi, Buhari etc are all fulani

Am not sure that Yar'adua and Buhari are not HAUSAS.

It is said that the resaon for the north calling for the replacement of Sambo as Vp is because he is a full blooded Hausa man which the fulanis are almost completely against. I don't believe a Hausa has ever been president of nigeria.

Ilorin is bring sold to the North by the Sarakis.
Most Kwara inhabitants are Yorubas with little mixed Fulanis.
Except for geogrpahic location,I see no reason why Kwara should be called
North.It has more with SW than with North.

The biggest wayo of the Fulani is the term Hausa-Fulani.There exists Yoruba-Fulani and Etsako-Fulani as well.

The power of fulanis and the caliphate was broken by nzeogwu in 1966 , without nzeogwu the fulanis would have continued their conquest may be till another delivere comes the way of nigerians

I think you should stop attacking the fulas elites all the time. It is true that they have done wrong things but if you keep attacking them, they will find a way to justify their actions. They would say for instance that they are persecuted and that the only way they can survive is by being ruthless and united even when doing the worst attrocities. If Nigeria is the way it is, most nigerians are accountable for it.

Omarbah:

I think you should stop attacking the fulas elites all the time. It is true that they have done wrong things but if you keep attacking them, they will find a way to justify their actions. They would say for instance that they are persecuted and that the only way they can survive is by being ruthless and united even when doing the worst attrocities. If Nigeria is the way it is, most nigerians are accountable for it.

Eff them, they mama, and papa. When fulanis learn to stop attacking people than thats wen they will not be attacked. Look at people that have intimacy with cows. You think we dont know you're fulani, huh? Omar "Bah". You are probably from Sierra Leone with that last name. Everyone one says the same thing about fulanis,its not a coincidence.

@Andre Uweh,
Buhari and Yar'adua are full blooded, 100% Fulani. Does someone need to be told that.
I forgot to also add that Atiku is also Fulani.

Some Fulani people would never mix with another group. These full blood Fulani will only mix with another full blooded Fulani

Yar'Adua was 100% Fulani and Atiku was 100% Fulani. You know a real Fulani when you see one, because they are able to speak the Fulani language.

"Fulani" who cannot speak Fulani are sometimes not considered Fulani. There language unites them as well, because it connects them with their brothers all across West Africa, from Senegal to Cameroon.