A MUST READ FOR NIGERIAN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES LEADERSHIP

REASONS PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI IS IN A TEARING HURRY TO CONDUCT A CENSUS IN MAY 2023?

1. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 stipulates that at least once every ten (10) years the Federal Government should conduct a National Census. The due date for the next census after that of 2006 was 2016, and preparations were commenced, but the Buhari administration stopped them.

2. After more than 17 years of doing nothing regarding the constitutional requirement for conduct of a census, all of a sudden, President Muhammadu Buhari has decided to conduct a national Population and Housing Census in May 2023, a few days before the end of his tenure.

After the deliberate fiasco that the INEC, headed by one of Buhari’s ubiquitous Fulani clansmen, made of the general elections of February-March, 2023, this unusual hurry to conduct a national census is, to say the least, highly suspicious, and does not bode well for Nigeria and the non-Fulani population of Nigeria.

There are several facts which make it necessary to bring pressure to bear on Buhari to postpone the census and let his successor conduct it.

3. In the 2006 census the northern rulers, fearing that the Hausa-Fulani and Muslim population would be shown NOT to be in the majority as they had been claiming, excluded documenting the ethnic and religious identities of Nigerians. However, for the 2023 census, having spread Fulani migrants to the Middle Belt and Southern Nigeria, there is now insistence to enumerate “Groups”, even though the so-called groups are described as Houses and Buildings (NPC SLIDE 9 – Group Listing Methodology).

4. Over the period 2009-2022 Fulani herders have been physically moved and settled in communities in the Middle Belt, South West, South South and South East, to form settlements, where they did not previously exist.

Miyetti Allah, Kautal Hore, Mobgal Fulbe and FUNAM have been very loud in asserting the right of Fulani herdsmen to move, settle, own property (land) and do business (rear cattle) anywhere in Nigeria, without hindrance.

Many of these Fulani settlements have become staging posts for violent attacks on indigenous communities since 2016.

5. At a meeting between Middle Belt Associations and representatives of Yoruba World Congress in Jos in 2019, the South West informed the meeting of a survey they had just conducted which showed that there were 1006 permanent Fulani settlements in the South West, excluding Kwara State.

Academic studies showed that over a period of 20 years to 2019, many Fulani migrants had taken up permanent residence in many of the forests of Yorubaland. It was from these settlements that herdsmen launched attacks on Yoruba villages, leading to the establishment of Amotekun. Many of these settlements are occupied by non-Nigerian Fulanis from Niger, Chad, Sudan, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso etc.

In the 2023 census these settlements would now be listed as new “Buildings” or communities.

6. Between 2003 and 2006 indigenous communities in Southern Borno were attacked, Christian communities and Churches were destroyed by Boko Haram (Cf. Christianity in Crisis, 2006). From 2009 to the present Boko Haram spread their attacks on indigenous communities in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. By 2018 more than three million (> 3,000,000) people had been displaced in these three states. The displaced people are now scattered across Nigeria, and they will not be enumerated as being resident in the areas they have been displaced from.

7. From 2014 Boko Harm, Ansarul Islam, Darul Salam, ISWAP and other terrorist armies, as well as the Fulani herdsmen's terrorist groups have invaded Middle Belt indigenous communities, destroyed them, and displaced millions of the people. These terrorist groups have taken over the ancestral lands of the indigenous people.

The Buhari government has woefully failed to stop the attacks, destruction and displacement of communities. Where most of these displaced people are located now are unknown, and they will not thus be enumerated in the census.

In one of the key documents for the 2023 Population and Housing Census, Group Listing Methodology, it is stated that “Only buildings physically present on ground will be numbered”, and “Demolished buildings will not be assigned a number”. This means that there will be no census in the settlements of the indigenous communities demolished by the Fulani and Islamist terrorist armed groups.
Furthermore, enumerators are instructed to list all new buildings, hence the new Fulani settlements will be numbered and people resident or not resident in them will be counted. This is crucial because many of the settlements violently destroyed by the Fulani terrorist groups have been occupied by Fulani families or migrant groups. These violent interlopers will now be enumerated as the “owners” of the lands and settlements they now forcefully and criminally occupy.

8. In 2018 a Bauchi based Consultancy Company was assigned the responsibility of listing all Fulani Rugas in all states of Nigeria. The main consultants hired other consultants to identify, locate and list Fulani settlements. For each state a document was produced listing the so-called Fulani settlements. An analysis of one of these state lists found that it was arranged Local Government by Local Government, and Ward-by-Ward. It was also found that every Ruga, even of one or two huts, was listed as a settlement, even when located within an existing indigenous community. In this way, there were more “Fulani Villages” in almost all the indigenous communities. It is this horrendous Ruga Listing exercise that Buhari is in a break-neck hurry to validate through the May 2023 Population and Housing Census.

9. Many of the villages and communities violently occupied by the Fulani have been renamed by the Fulani. These villages and towns now bear Arabic, Fulani or Hausa names. The Buhari administration tacitly approved these illegal takeovers and name changes by allocation programmes and projects in the Federal Budgets under the new names. This is very easily verifiable, as members of the National Assembly attested to at a Middle Belt Forum Elders meeting held in Abuja in April 2021.

10. Immediately following the 2023 general elections there have been widespread attacks by Fulani and associated terrorists in Taraba, Benue, Niger, Kaduna and other states. There is no way that the areas under attack would be enumerated or the people counted in the May 2023 census, as the local populations have been violently driven off by the Fulani and Islamist armed terrorist groups.

11. Nigerians need to really rise up to their responsibility for collective survival. There have been no concerted protests over the deliberate and insensitive nepotism by the government of Muhammadu Buhari. Nearly every federal agency or parastatal that has anything to do with documenting the population of this country is headed by a Fulani person: National Population Commission, INEC, National Identity Management Commission, National Communications Commission, NHIS, PENCOM, NSITF, Federal Mortgage Bank and its subsidiaries, National Livestock Projects Department, etc. Right now the National Livestock Transformation Programme of building RUGAs and Grazing Reserves is being vigorously implemented by the Central Bank of Nigeria on the model of a war economy, building Fulani enclave settlements all over Nigeria, with industrial and independent power systems, and other infrastructure, especially roads and bridges to facilitate rapid military movement in so-called or perceived “hostile territories”. Buhari’s census is ALSO to validate Fulani claims to the lands on which these projects are sited as “Fulani lands”.

“Copied “

It shall fail

Interesting...

I read this few weeks ago, make sure you read

That census must not happen