₦airaland Forum

Nigeria
Usman dan Fodio, founder, Sokoto Caliphate
Nana Asma’u, scholar, author, and pioneer of women's education, Sokoto Caliphate
Umaru Yar'Adua, former President of Nigeria
Shehu Shagari, former President of Nigeria
Muhammadu Buhari, former Nigerian Head of State
Ahmadu Bello, first Premier of Northern Nigeria
Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President of Nigeria
Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, Nigerian politician and the brother of former Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua
Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Father of Nigeria and first Nigerian prime minister
Vice-Admiral Murtala Nyako, current Governor of Adamawa State,former Chief of Naval Staff
Ibrahim Gambari, Under Secretary-General/Special Adviser - Africa in the UN; former Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Professor Jibril Aminu, pioneer cardiac surgeon, former minister of education and petroleum.
Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi ,central bank Governor of Nigeria
Aliko Dangote,Richest person of African descent.
Mohammed Shata, Former Internal Affairs Minister
Fatimah Tuggar Visual Artist

Nigeria: A Historical Record of Hausa-Fulani Jihad in Nigeria


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAq7fm0BaX0

Boko haram the caliphate army.

Fulani Oligarchy and the death of Bola Ige

By

Femi Awoniyi

Speyer, Germany

Bola Ige was one of a very few number of our politicians in the South who have been able to cut through to the core of our dilemma: the Fulani politics of power supremacy. He was no rabble-rouser who indiscriminately lumped more than 150 diverse peoples who inhabit the north of our country together as "these Northerners".


Bola Ige had a clear vision of a democratic Nigeria where no ethnic or racial group will dominate our polity, and his activities in the Obasanjo government have been geared towards this goal.



Fulanis hated Bola Ige for he understood the mechanism of their dominance in Nigeria. He’s therefore held responsible by the Fulani power elite for what they perceive as the "anti-North" policies of the government. Of course, the President makes no policies against the North, but the interest of the Fulani Oligarchy is deceitfully called the "interest of the North" by Fulanis.



The vitriolic media campaign against him by Fulani politicians and intellectuals (and their lackeys in the Muslim North), which began as soon as he was named a minister in the Obasanjo government, has no precedence in our political history. The virulent attacks on the person of the politician was only a precursor to his physical elimination.



Unfortunately, many of his contemporaries in Yoruba politics did not understand that he was already advancing the same struggle they claim to lead. And Bola Ige himself obviously underrated the enormity of the danger he represented to the racial and power supremacist Fulani Oligarchy hence the feeble attention he paid to his personal safety and that of his family.



The professional way in which Bola Ige’s elimination was carried out shows that his detractors far beyond Yorubaland were the perpetrators of his demise. The mode of his murder shows that it had nothing to do with the machete and dane gun thuggery of the Akande-Omisore rift. It should also be remembered that unknown persons had twice broken into his Abuja office and destroyed documents in the past one year.



The logic of his elimination marks out the Fulani elite as prime suspects.



Nigeria must not be misled by the hypocritical condolence visit of M. D. Yussuf, the Fulani chairman of Arewa Consultative Forum, to the Ige family in Ibadan or by the statement issued by the organisation warning against the imposition of emergency rule on Oshun State.



We must refuse to be deceived by the feigned kind comments of some Fulani politicians on Bola Ige, because they are presently revelling in schadenfreude, joy over misfortune that befalls one’s enemy.



The real killers of Bola Ige must be unmasked, Yorubas must refuse to accept any Dele Giwa-style deadlock in this case.



If the Fulani elite were indeed behind with this assassination and if they get away with it, they will very soon kill again. And they will have enough camouflages. They could send a hitman to kill Works and Housing Minister Tony Anenih and pin it on the Aihkomu-PDP dispute in Edo State. The Ishan man after all is perceived as a strong back-watcher of Obasanjo.



There is panic in the Fulani Oligarchy over the style of Obasanjo’s governance. It is afraid that if the President completed two terms in office, its hold on Nigerian politics would be neutralised for ever. Hence, they might even take the desperate step of eliminating him so that power would fall back to a fellow Muslim Northerner. They have done this before. In 1966, they instigated mutiny in the army that led to the brutal murder of General Aguiyi Ironsi.





Fulanis and the rest of us in Nigeria



The Fulani establishment has been the driving force of our politics and has unequivocally set its agenda for the past 41 years.



Fulanis depart from a premise of greater entitlement to power in Nigeria than the rest of us. This attitude is inspired by racist-supremacist instinct similar to the Tutsi natural resentment of Hutu leadership in Burundi and Rwanda or the Tuareg rebellion against African rule in Mali and Niger from the 1960s to as recent as the mid-1990s.



The Fulani establishment could build alliances like ‘Hausa-Fulani’, ‘Muslim North’, ‘North’ or ‘Nigerian Muslims’, their game-plan has been always to secure Fulani supremacy in our polity. This politics requires that "external" enemies must always be found against which to define the common identity they seek to share with their chosen allies. Therein lies the danger of perpetual crisis in Nigeria.



And Fulani politicians are superior to their counterparts in the rest of Nigeria. Fulanis have been shaped by thousands of years of battle with the harsh forces of nature to be more clever, more canny, more aggressive, to have sharper instincts of survival and sense of perception. And our leaders do not understand them. Imagine fighting against an enemy you do not know well!



An example of our faulty perception of the North and Fulani politics is provided by the speech delivered by Chief Abraham Adesanya at the "first Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene memorial Lecture", organised by Gamji Members Association (GAMA), in Kaduna on 15 August. In the speech, which after a critical reading would make a Yoruba look foolish, the Afenifere chief said:



"You have invited me, the leader of Afenifere and leader of the Yoruba to be your special guest of honour. History will record that this is the first time in Nigerian political history whether ancient or modern when a descendant of Oduduwa will be honoured in such an environment so closely and so warmly associated with a descendant of Othman Dan Fodio."



Chief Adesanya speech writers elevated Dan Fodio to the rank of Oduduwa, placing a Fulani man who died less than 200 years ago on the same level of the mythical cultural hero of Yorubas.

They also chose an event in honour of Okene, an Igbira man, to seek dialogue with the Fulani power establishment. Yet Okuns and Igalas, both Yoruba poeples, have been living with Igbiras for thousands of years, far, far long before Fulanis first appeared as destitute nomads in our horizon.



We have overindulged the insensitivity of the Fulani elite and thus have emboldened them to act with impunity in Nigeria.



The Fulani Oligarchy has fought the popular clamour for fundamental changes in our polity almost to a standstill. The governors of the southern states have abandoned their call for state police, although it is the most logical solution to the problem of crime in Nigeria. On resource control, they have told us that people do not have any claim to resources for "merely sitting on them". They have cowed the proponents of a Yoruba traditional leadership institution in Ilorin with the threat of imported violence.



Yet against our loud protestations they have introduced an autonomous judicial space in Nigeria with sharia. And, to boot, they have a local police to enforce the Islamic penal code (Islam was the chief weapon in the Fulani conquest of Hausa country and culture, and their other fiefdoms in the North, and sharia amounts to an aggressive reassertion of the religion as the chief agent of cultural unity in the Fulani-ruled North and the Muslim North as a whole). They claim they have the right to practise their religion the way it suits them, but we have no right to adopt measures we consider appropriate to safeguard our lives and properties.



The Fulani Oligarchy in its traditional form is an outdated system that resists social progress. It is a system that inculcates subordination and acquiescence and these have come to characterise the society and polity of the Fulani-ruled Muslim North.



Nigeria will not move forward until the Oligarchy is defeated like in Cameroon. Yet we are disadvantaged in the battle against this force of backwardness because our leaders are too given to in-fighting, too self-centred, too prone to being satisfied with little achievements. Our scholars are busy fighting for better conditions of service instead of enlightening their people, our popular intellectuals are confused ideologues, our prominent social critics keep quite to avoid being labelled tribalists. Gani Fawehinmi is a tribalist, Professor Peter Ekeh is a tribalist, Tiv generals are tribalists etc. Fulani intellectuals and journalists use the label so often that it seems only Fulanis because of their facial features transcend ethnicity and tribalism.



Fulani supremacist politics is comprehensive. Their few newspapers have well-programmed content. Their few intellectuals pursue an ideological objective: the Fulani supremacy in our politics, and they are very effective in working for their race in Nigeria. They co-ordinate with their traditional rulers, politicians, top civil servants, military officers, both serving and retired. Arewa has successfully mobilised into its membership almost all the prominent retired military and police officers in the whole North. This kind of co-ordination is lacking in the South.



Bola Ige’s death marks a turning point in the struggle for a peaceful, stable Nigeria, free from the choke-hold of Fulani power supremacy. A general in this war has fallen and his demise has dire implications for the nation.



The message of Bola Ige’s death is that we must be ready to do an all-out battle with the idea of Fulani supremacy in Nigeria. We must stop shying away from a fight. Our politicians must seek allies in the North, we must undercut the influence of Fulanis in its regional politics. Our journalists must become conscious of this evil idea of Fulani supremacy in our land, our students must be sensitised to it. Our civil servants, policemen, military men and women, the whole of the civil society must be awaken to this obnoxious ideology of racial superiority. Only this encompassing mobilisation can defeat the Fulani Oligarchy which is the hinderer of our progress in Nigeria.



Fulanis are not invincible. Southerners must only stop lumping all Northerners together for condemnation for our problems. The South must reach out to the North. Kanuris and Yorubas, for example, are related peoples. All ethnological studies of Nigeria since the beginning of the 20th century have always pointed this out. Why can’t Yoruba intellectuals help to make political capital out of this? Why can Southern Christians not reach a strategic consensus with the Christian North, not against Islam but against Fulani-inspired political Islam?



Until the politics of Fulani supremacy is correctly recognised for what it is; a cancer in our nation, we will not be able to move forward.



----------

Bola Ige: Eulogy



"The great man understands the essence of a problem; the ordinary leader grasps only the symptoms. The great man focuses on the relationship of events to each other; the ordinary leader sees only a series of seemingly disconnected events. The great man has a vision of the future that enables him to place obstacles into perspective; the ordinary leader turns pebbles in the road into boulders."



- Henry Kissinger, October 1981, on the difference between great and ordinary leaders





The American doyen of diplomacy was speaking of Anwar Sadat, extolling the leadership quality of the Egyptian leader who had just been murdered by Muslim extremists. While Sadat’s fellow Arabs were rejoicing over his death, for daring to make peace with Israel the world mourned a great leader of vision. Of course, events since then have shown that Sadat had a far greater foresight than his critics.



Bola Ige confounded many in the tail end of his life.



When he joined the Obasanjo presidency in 1999, his detractors in Afenifere shouted: Ige has jumped ship like Akintola! But Bola Ige unlike Akintola, led by his sharp instincts and powerful sense of insight, only broke rank in order to explore the road ahead so that he could point the way forward for his Yoruba people and Nigeria.



When he said "no need for sovereign conference", his people shouted: What a betrayal. They didn’t read between the lines. He never said there was no need for a national conference or a constitutional reform.



An ardent supporter of resource control, the court case on littoral rights of states he initiated as Federal Justice Minister caused consternation in our compatriots in the South-South, but luckily the politics of the case was not lost on his friends in the region. For it was the first step in the constitutional struggle to confer primary sovereignty over resources in a geographical space on those who inhabit it.



He recognised that reality is not a thing, but a process that is always changing. And he believed that there could be more than one way to a desired goal. The Oduduwa Republic illusionists who dominate Afenifere did not understand him, they believe rather in the big-bang solution.



Ige’s death is the greatest tragedy that has befallen Yorubas since Egbe omo Oduduwa was founded about 50 years ago, the beginning of modern Yoruba nationalism.



He was no hopeless romantic who espoused lofty ambitions with belligerent rhetoric without much of a thought of how to achieve them.



He wanted the best for Nigeria and he was a believer in black redemption. That he was an exponent of Yoruba interests didn’t make him a tribalist like his Fulani detractors labelled him. Ethnonational politicking is the logic of the reality imposed on all of us in Nigeria by the antics of the Fulani Oligarchy.



Harry Truman once wrote that "Many are indispensable, but no one is irreplaceable". The unfillable vacuum created by Ige’s death in Yoruba politics has proved the American soldier-statesman wrong.



………………………………………….

Femi Awoniyi is a journalist and he lives in Germany

Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: The Realities of Regionalism

By Nicole Lancia

In Africa, colonial administrations and imperial occupations carved up boundaries that divided territories inhabited by indigenous societies and brought together a diversity of ethnic communities within unitary administrative structures. In Nigeria, between 1914 and 1915, British colonial administrators created three regional territories that explain ethno-genesis and later ethnic tensions: the Northern region occupied by Hausa/Fulani, the Eastern region inhabited by the Ibo, and the Western region of the Yoruba. Within this divisive colonial structure, ethnic tensions emerged between these unequally developed groups primarily in the 1950s. The colonial tripartite division of Nigeria prevented a Nigerian nationalistic movement, manipulating geographical boundaries to reinforce separation between ethnic groups and transforming ethnicity into an identity by which to gain political power; this structure along with other administrative decisions emphasized ethnic nationalism and regional politics, resulting from significant uneven development within each region. The colonial division of Nigeria that reinforced ethnic groups, the rise of ethno-political consciousness, and the development of ethnic/regional political parties demonstrated that the British administration intentionally prevented the rise and success of Nigerian nationalism, instead promoting regionalism as a means to gain political power.

The hyper-federalism of the Nigerian state by British colonial officials highlighted ethno-genesis and the tensions between majority and minority ethnic groups; furthermore, it reinforced ethnic/ regional boundaries and marginalized minority ethnic groups, encouraging groups to compete as interest groups vying for political power. The Nigerian State is composed of various ethnicities, but the existence of multiple nationalities does not by itself constitute a political problem; in the process of modernization, the interests of ethnic groups elevate to the political realm (Ethnicity and the Nigerian State). In “Ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa,” Welsh asserts that “the precipitation of ethnic identities becomes incomprehensible if it is divorced from colonial rule” (479); similarly, ethnicity is not a “natural cultural residue but a consciously crafted ideological creation” (480). These two statements directly apply to colonial Nigeria as they discuss the relevant connection between colonialism and ethnic or cultural identity, the former creating and manipulating the latter. British colonial administrators implemented policies through this tripartite structure with the intention of producing a Nigerian federation presiding over three regional governments with legislative power (Cooper 69). This tripartite division perpetuated ethnic divisions between the Northern Hausa/Fulani, Eastern Ibo, and Western Yoruba and between the majority and minority ethnic groups; it strengthened these ethnic identities as interest groups fighting for political representation and power. In support of this point, Cooper states that “instead of allowing a wide-variety of interest groups to make claims on the Nigerian state, the federal system focused power on the three regions,” ignoring the concerns of unrepresented minority ethnic groups (70). The existence of these three politically-dominant ethnic groups conveyed the contribution of colonialism to ethno-genesis and its effect on the individual ethnic identities of the various peoples within Nigeria.

Colonial structures ignored and marginalized minority ethnic groups within Nigeria, as they were not recognized as one of the three main peoples. Osaghae states that ethnic minorities are usually defined in contradistinction to major groups with whom they co-exist in political systems (3). The terms “majority” and “minority” evolved only after the creation of the three regions in the 1940s, which mobilized the main regions to unify and push the minorities to the periphery (5). This rise of hegemonic nationalism and use of exclusionary politics by the majority groups inhibited the minorities from demonstrating political participation beginning in the 1950s. The majority versus minority conflict as a subset within the larger ethnic divisions between the Hausa/Fulani, Ibo, and Yoruba indicated that British colonial administrators desired to exclude certain ethnic groups from political participation and maintain ethnic tensions to prevent a rise of Nigerian nationalism.

The growth of ethnic nationalism among the Ibo, Yoruba, and Hausa/Fulani illustrated that Britain’s vision of a Nigerian federation sparked uneven sociopolitical and economic development in each region and introduced competitive politics, which preserved ethnic conflicts. Nigeria emerged in 1914 as a composite political unit and, as a result, westernizing influences impinged unevenly upon the people of Nigeria; as Cooper points out, the three regions were not equivalent: “the north was the most populous, but had the weakest educational system,” ruled by a Muslim elite; the west was the wealthiest as the capital city Lagos lay within its borders; the east possessed the best educated population (69). Coleman describes two manifestations of regional tension arising from uneven development: the struggle between the Yoruba and the Ibo and the rivalry between the north and southern provinces (331).

Because of the early advantages of the Yoruba in “educational and professional attainments,” the group’s monopoly over political activity centered in Lagos. Until the 1930s when the Ibo-led National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) emerged, the Yoruba held an overwhelming majority of higher positions in the African civil service (Coleman 331). Because of the densely populated, infertile rural area where the Ibo resided, the Ibo expanded territorially and migrated to urban centers for work. By the end of World War II, Ibo clerks and laborers constituted a sizable minority group in every urban center of Nigeria and the Cameroons (Coleman 332). As a consequence of the comparative lack of opportunity in the east, the Ibo embraced Western education and Christian missions; by 1945 the educational difference between the Yoruba and the Ibo had been closed. However, the Ibo strove to assert themselves politically, which incited Yoruba-Ibo competition and tension. The tensions between the Muslim north and the Christian south deepened with the north’s growing recognition of the division. More importantly, rigid structures in the north produced a delayed movement toward nationalism due to the prevalence of Islam, the lack of an uprooted Western-educated class, and the 1922 Clifford and 1946 Richards Constitutions (Coleman 354; Nmoma 315). Since the Muslim community was linked with an authoritarian political structure, the Muslim elite, or Filanin gida, were anti-nationalist and opposed to sociopolitical reform. The most striking feature of the northern situation involved the inactivity and silence of the Western-educated class, or ma’aikata; in other areas, this group had been responsible for leading nationalist activity, but the ma’aikata were recruited into the native administrations and thus, did not experience the abuse and prejudice characteristic of some European officials in the African civil service (355). Furthermore, the Hausa/Fulani never developed a revolutionary mindset against inequality; from the lack of exposure to abusive behavior and unequal treatment, they became “accommodationist rather than revolutionary,” delaying any rise of nationalism in the north (357).

The fact that Nigeria had not one but two constitutions also exacerbated ethnic conflict. The Clifford Constitution (1922) created a legislative council, from which the north was excluded, with the first-ever African elected members in British Africa. From 1922-1939, the British did not involve Northern Nigeria in political affairs, which enabled Southern Nigeria to become, for a temporary period, more politically advanced (Nmoma 315). The Richards Constitution (1946) stated the Nigeria must allow for “unity in diversity” within separate regions and legislatures; this separation of powers served to prevent single ethnic group domination and present territorial politics as the only viable option for political advancement, with each region united by a history of advantages and disadvantages.

As ethnic consciousness resulting from colonialism motivated the majority ethnic groups to develop regional political parties which stimulated inter-ethnic tensions, ethnic politics inevitably became the main deterrent to Nigerian nationalism. In each region, a party dominated by members of the majority ethnic group obtained office and provided services and patronage for the group (Cooper 69). The Hausa/Fulani led the Northern Political Congress (NPC) and the Northern Elements’ Progressive Union (NEPU); in the east, the Ibo formed the NCNC, a party for Nigerian unity; the Yoruba developed the Action Group (AG), a regional political party dedicated to strengthening ethnic organizations in the west and cooperating with other organizations for self-government for Nigeria (Coleman 364; Cooper 69). The NPC, formed in the 1950s, desired to designate power to a conservative coalition of young educated elements and moderate elements (360). Its motto became “one north, one people,” which illustrated its regional objective. NEPU, on the other hand, rejected the notion of regional separation and assumed the reputation as the “radical wing” of northern politics (Coleman 364). The NPC ultimately won the northern 1951 elections since the unifying element among northerners was common opposition to the NEPU due to its working alliance with the NCNC, the symbol of potential southern domination (Coleman 359).

The NCNC based its foundation on anti-British nationalism and its powerful urge for self-transformation motivated it to initiate Nigerian nationalism. Coleman states that poor soil and overpopulation were also factors in Ibo gravitation toward a Pan-Nigerian objective; the wide dispersion of clerks and laborers fostered among the Ibo a consciousness of the potentialities of Nigerian unity and the strength of unification around nationality (338). After the formation of organizations such as the Egba Society (1918) and the Yoruba Language Society (1942), the Yoruba created the Action Group (1951) whose goals included: “encouragement of all ethnical organizations in the Western Region” and “cooperation with all other nationalists…as a united team toward the realization of self-government for Nigeria” (Coleman 350). The Action Group leaders demonstrated that the only avenue to power, given the situation within Nigeria at that time, was a regional political party who opposed the threat of Ibo domination (350). In response, the NCNC employed tribalism among the non-Yoruba to undermine the predominantly Yoruba Action Group, however, “the victory of the Action Group over the NCNC in the 1951 elections in the west was the triumph of regional nationalism” (351). It is clear that while organizations such as NEPU and NCNC aimed at Pan-Nigerian unity, the success of the AG and NPC exemplified the inevitable necessity for regional politics as the ultimate structure of government in Nigeria.

Examining the impact of the British tripartite division of Nigeria, from ethno-genesis to its effects on uneven development to the failure of Nigerian nationalism and success of regionalism, illustrates that within such a diverse nation-state, regionalism was intended, supported, and necessary in order to advance politically and socially. Due to ethnic and regional tensions resulting from uneven socioeconomic development in the Hausa/Fulani north, Ibo east, and Yoruba west, ethnic consciousness influenced the formation of regional political parties and was the main deterrent to Nigerian unity. Hyper-federalism in diverse Nigeria cut across territorial and ethnic boundaries only to allow the majority ethnic group of each region to dominate and minority groups to become marginalized, excluded from the political realm. Most importantly, British colonialism shaped the way the ethnic groups developed and acted upon their ethnic consciousness; each region employed ethnic politics, idealistically striving for Nigerian unity while realistically forming regional political parties: a successful means to gaining political control over a situation imposed on them as well as paving a path toward success in a system determined for them.

Works Cited:

Coleman, James S. Nigeria: Background to Nationalism. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960.

The Nigerian presidential election was all over bar the shouting or the rioting. Incumbent Goodluck Jonathan was getting an excess of 90% of the vote in some states in the south, in suspiciously high turnouts, while putting up a reasonable showing in the north, where main challenger Muhammadu Buhari was expected to be strong.

As the outcome became clearer – as if it was ever in doubt that an incumbent president would be defeated in Nigeria – the violence kicked off in northern cities like Kano, Kaduna, Gombe, etc, ostensibly in protest that Buhari didn’t win.

The reports on the violence follow the same pattern – supporters of Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), are protesting against what they saw as rigged elections. The riots are in the predominantly Muslim north, so religion comes in handy as a convenient explanation. But Nigeria is way too complicated for readymade explanations of Muslims rioting in the north because a southern Christian (Jonathan) won an election. To understand Nigerian complexities you need to delve into history a bit.

In most of pre-colonial northern Nigeria before the 1800s, Islam was predominantly practised by the kings of the Hausa city-states, the Shehu of Bornu, etc and itinerant Fulani clerics and teachers. Most of those kings were only Muslim in name and allowed their subjects to practise African traditional religions. Their subjects were predominantly indigenous Hausa people (there are hundreds of other ethnicities in the north), while the Fulani were mainly nomadic migrants. There were two types of Fulani, the pastoralist that usually reared cattle and the urbanised that were literate in Arabic. They constituted the minority in most of northern Nigeria.

The dynamics in northern Nigeria were transformed from 1804 when a Fulani cleric Usman Dan Fodio launched his jihad in the Hausa city-state of Gobir. Dan Fodio and his followers conquered most of northern Nigeria, with the exception of the Bornu Empire in the northeast, and came within the northern outposts of the Oyo Empire in the southwest of modern-day Nigeria. Dan Fodio’s jihad set up the Sokoto Caliphate also known as the emirate system, putting Fulani emirs as the rulers of each city-state, such as Zaria and Kano, with Sokoto as the spiritual home. It established a theocracy in the region with Islam as the template for governance, but with a minority ethnic group – the Fulani – providing the ruling class and the religious leaders.

The legacy of this merger of religion and politics would continue to reverberate in Nigeria two centuries later.

When the British conquered northern Nigeria they found a system of government in place that allowed them to rule the region at little cost. A Fulani aristocracy was at the top of the hierarchy, literate in Arabic and using Islam as an instrument for legitimising their dominance over the Hausa majority, with the Fulani Sultan of Sokoto known as the Amir al-Muminin (Commander of the Faithful). The British decided to keep the emirate system intact and introduced “indirect rule” in which the emirs retained political control over their kingdoms with the few British colonial officials as overseers and “advisers”. The emirate system was deployed to serving British imperial interests.

With British conquest in southern Nigeria came Christian missionaries who built a few schools. However, in northern Nigeria the British recognised that western education and possible conversion to Christianity would challenge the supremacy of the Fulani aristocracy and threaten the “indirect rule” system. So a conscious decision was made to curtail Christian missionary activities and the spread of western education in the north.

By independence in 1960, there were significantly higher numbers of educated southern Nigerians, in comparison with northern Nigerians and the few northerners with western education tended to be from the ruling Fulani dynasties.

Northern Nigeria also had a culture of sending the children of the poor to religious schools to learn about Islam. They are known as “almajiris” – an Islamic term for someone who leaves his home in search Islamic knowledge. In reality these children become street urchins, begging and being reliant on alms from mosques, and the Muslim requirement for every wealthy Muslim to give generously to charity (zakat).

In a society that was not penetrated by western education, where a minority Fulani controlled access to political and religious power and the wealth that flowed from it, an army of poor youths (almajiris) reliant on the beneficence of the powerful, are easily subject to manipulation to further certain political goals.

The alliance of the British colonisers and the Fulani aristocracy was threatened by the increasingly militant independence movement in the south of Nigeria. To prolong colonial rule, the British, in typical divide and rule mode, sold independence as a matter of southern/Christian domination of the north. The Fulani aristocracy used instability to delay the independence movement in the 1950s by instigating riots by the almajiri in cities like Kano in 1953. This would be the first time southern Nigerians would be attacked in northern cities and it wouldn’t be the last.

The attacks usually followed the same patterns. Something would have gone against the wishes of the Fulani aristocracy. They would then use their control of over mosques, where the religious leaders are usually Fulani, to orchestrate orgies of violence by almajiris, with carefully selected targets – usually southern Nigerians/Christians. But the targets are not exclusively southern/Christian. They are sometimes fellow northerners/Muslims who have acted against the interests of Fulani aristocrats – like Dr Bala Muhammad who was lynched by almajiris in the 1980s and vice-president Namadi Sambo, whose house in Zaria was burnt yesterday. As traditional and political power in northern Nigeria is usually in the hands of Fulani aristocrats, they are also capable of controlling the deployment of security forces to quell any violence. Usually, the police and the army tend to go missing when the rampaging mobs hit the streets. This helps feed the suspicion that they are ordered not to act. The intention of the violence is usually to send a message that they would make Nigeria ungovernable if you messed with them.

Practically all outbreaks of violence in northern Nigeria, including the massacres of Igbos that preceded the civil war, have been as a result of acts that threatened the plans of Fulani oligarchs. The trigger for the pogroms against Igbos in 1966, was the coup in January 1966 led by Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, in which the most powerful Fulani aristocrat of that era Ahmadu Bello, the premier of Northern Nigeria, was killed.

There have been several inquiries after violent riots in northern Nigeria. They usually expose the fact that the riots were carefully planned and orchestrated and there was nothing spontaneous about them. Some inquiries have fingered one or two emirs, some imams, etc as being involved in the planning of the riots. But the inquiries are usually shelved with no action taken on the recommendations and none of the plotters is ever charged.

So who should really be surprised that when Buhari, a Fulani, lost the election, almajiris would go on the rampage? Apart from this being standard operating procedure, Buhari was going around warning that there would be “consequences” if the elections were rigged. His running-mate Tunde Bakare threatened that it will be the “wild, wild north if PDP rigs”.

books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1592213200,

FULANI ARISTOCRACY

by

Patrick Onigbo Olu

Ikeja – Lagos

In the North, the legacy of the Sokoto Caliphate and its Islamic traditions bore handsome fruits for the Fulani aristocracy as the great – grandsons and direct descendants of the conqueror of the Hausa, Nupe, and Ilorin – Yoruba state walked back into supreme and expanded power in Northern Nigeria.



As the minority ruling group was in full control in the Northern Region while in the Southern Region, there were fresh political ethnic majorities in power. Today, those who exercise national power do so from minority positions, Indeed, of the three groups that attained national power in the early politics of the decolonisation decade of the 1950s namely Yoruba, Igbo, and Fulani, the only group that still retain power at the national level is the Fulani aristocracy which was not a demographic majority in the first place.



Consequently on the above, reaches, some controversial conclusions.:

· It no longer makes goods academic sense to rate the Igbo as a majority power bloc in the past bellum era of Nigeria political history.

· Not could one say of the Yoruba that they constitute an effective power bloc despite producing the present Head of State.

· Inspite of the views in the South to the contrary, the majority Hausa have never been an independent power bloc in the north, as they have only exercised as much power as their Fulani overlords have allowed them.

· It is not far to rate many so-called minority ethnic groups as minor power-holders in modern Nigeria politics. In relative terms, many ethnic groups in the Benue – Plateau complex have itched towards greater control of national power than the Hausa majority (witness: Langtang Mafia).



Above all else, contends that the Fulani aristocrats, more than other ethnic power in Nigeria, have through strategic thinking and strategic planning (twin-virtues in power schemes that are absent in others), steadily insinuated (themselves) back into handsome amount of power-holding by strategically locating themselves into the major engine of power, exploiting the shallowness of their major rivals for power. In the post-colonial Nigeria, the Fulani Hegemony with the British were able to create and nurture political bankruptcy among the political elite.



After examining in insightful details, the long-hegemonies of Atlantic minorities over their majority neighbours, which chronicles the coming of the Fulani to the geographic space that later become Nigeria.



Given the desertification of the Sahara region, many of the populations that were indigenous to the Sahara fled to other areas, eastwards and southwards (West Africa). These nomadic Nubians, who are escaping from drought, then took over the agriculture – based civilization of the Kush in the upper Nile Valley.



In West Africa, the most famous of this nomadic group escaping the desicating Sahara that went on a conquering escapade is that of the Fulani. The political history of what historians label as the Western and Central Sudan, in the two centuries before the onset of European conquest and colonization, was dominated by the rise of Fulani hegemonies in a political revolution of an unusual character. Most probably resulting from their itinerant herding occupation that compelled them to rely on, and negotiate for, the trans human resources of diverse agricultural communities on whom they depend on seasonal basis, the Fulani were the first self-conscious ethnic group in West Africa, possessing vast networks of relationship among themselves and maintaining political ties with the rulers of the host communities.



Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the Fulani were transformed from pagans in a dramatic political revolution that had two main features. First, they virtually established an ethnic aristocracy, whereby they expected to and in several instances did actually occupy the highest political offices in any (country) in whose politics they participated. Second, through the instrumentality of Islam, to which they have become converts, and in cooperation with networks of fellow Fulani, they overthrew the rulers of several existing agriculture – based states, replacing them with theocratic Islamic regimes that they control.



The standard pious explanatory scheme that is offered by Dan Fadio scholars in legimising the Fulani Jihad which began in 1804. He places the power-matrix at the foundation of this Jihad and perhaps subsequent religious zealotry which admittedly, has served the hegemony well, even in present day Nigeria.



The overthrow of Habe (Hausa) rules in the long – established Hausa states in the Central Sudan. Although, it all started as a religious campaign in which Hausa generously used, the outcome was unmistakably to lead to the subjugation of the indigenous Hausa population to a theocratic and immigrant Fulani aristocracy. Despite the cracy for Nigeria historiography to engage in tarik – style eulogies of every pre-colonial, Africa conqueror, and therefore to see the Sokoto caliphate in glorious light, there is good evidence to suggest that its governance was clear retrogression from a Moroccan invasion of 1591 which had plunged the Western and Central Sudan into a power vacuum that the nomadic Fulani were then filling their conquests. In the North, there is few real Hausa in any position of authority.



The Sokoto Caliphate was significantly lacking in any conception of the responsibility of providing security in its region of operation, for its citizens and subjects. Instead, it created insecurity particularly by engaging in slavery and the slave trade, inflicting state-sponsored terrorism on several communities, especially on the so-called pagan districts of the Benue region and in Adamawa. Whatever the theological justification for the 1804 jihad and despite the apparent puritan motivations of Dan Fodio in stirring up this revolution its outcome was one in which an aristocratic ethnic minority terrorized a whole region with force of arms rather than by religious persuasion. The Hegemony sponsored inter-tribal wars and influenced religious violence.



Lord Frederick Lugard, described by historians as a Fulaniphite, posited the claims on the terror visited by the Fulani jihadists on their Hausa hosts. The population of the North – described some 60 years ago (in the 1850s) by a Historian Barth as the densest in all of Africa – had by 1900 dwindled to some 9 million owing to inter-tribal war, and above all, to the slave raids by the religious zeal which had promoted the Fulani jihad . In 1900 the Fulani Emirates formed a series of separate despotism marked by the worst forms of wholesale slave-raiding, spoliation of the peasant, inhuman cruelty and debased justices, Lugard who wrote that Fulani, established the firm framework of northern (Fulani) advantage over the south in the political arrangement of his amalgamated country. But this inhuman cruelty and debased justice, many have been sign-posts of an emergent hegemony which, his now grown in sophistication.



The Fulani aristocracy has grown in sophistication in the exercise of power since the British arrived on their territory of conquest some ninety year ago. Many of the political abuses in the Sokoto Caliphate before the arrival of the British can easily be to their status as power holders. But they have now been in power for almost two hundred years and their areas of influence is virtually now coterminous with modern Nigeria. Today, using tools historically attributed to elite managers of political power who emphasize convert rather than overt influences and who exercise power in a latent rather (than) manifest manner, the Fulani aristocracy has been able to subordinate governance in Nigeria (including military rule) to its authority, and the Sultan of Sokoto has by now acquired a quantum of power and influence that his forebears could not have dreamt of. What Head of State of Nigeria whether military or civilian – would dare to stay in office for the first six months without going to Sokoto to pay homage to the Sultan?



The Basis of Fulani Hegemony

The crux of the mater on the devices used by a minority ethnic group (the Fulani) to effectively stay in power and expand its influence to such an unprecedented level in post – colonial Nigeria.



Organizational Abilities:

An important source of power of the Fulani aristocracy is that common tool of every successful ruling minority that its rival lacks, is its organizational abilities. In the particular case of the Fulani aristocracy, it has so many of its ethnic stock involved in organizing for power in a coordinated manner, and with such continuity across time, that no other group in Nigeria can match.



Although, it has strong clan divisions, its various fractions share a common need to stay in power for their collective survival. But there is much more to Fulani success than his common denominator of ruling minorities. The scholar underscores three contrapuntal principal deployed by the Fulani aristocracy in organizing for power.



Islam vs Christianity

By right of conquest, the ruler of the Sokoto Caliphate was also its Islamic authority. The tradition continues in post-colonial Nigeria. As such, the ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the Islamic region in Nigeria rest in Sokoto. Since the leadership of Sokoto Islamic establishment, is pre-dominantly Fulani, the aristocracy’s self-interest naturally dictates the fortunes of Islam. Up to the present, the Fulani aristocracy has used every bit of its political power to promote the versial formal membership of the Organization of Islamic Conference (IOC) under Babaginda; Nigeria’s controversial formal membership of D-8, a group of developing Islamic countries under the Abacha regime; Ghadafi’s ‘invasion’ of Nigeria to open a mosque in Kano where he declared Nigeria an Islamic state, and so on.



Given this masterful use of which the hegemony has put, Christianity in the North has become, much more than a mere profession of faith: it is a political statement of freedom from Fulani control. Not unexpectedly, the Fulani aristocracy has fought the Christian North with all the political means at its disposal. The expansion of this confrontation to the whole of Nigeria, and the subordination of normal constitutional processes to the invidious distinction between Christianity and Islam, portends one of the greatest dangers to Nigeria’s survival. Fulani aristocracy has not refrained from using confrontation method to win its goal, even when they endanger the survival of Nigeria.



This explanation may throw light on the battles that attend the shift in power. The prize at the center has been won and is being closely-guarded by the Fulani aristocracy. It will then mean that if the prizes are broken – up and shared, the Fulani hegemony will collapse.



Northern Nigeria vs Southern Nigeria

The Fulani aristocracy has been most successful in pushing for common Northern institutions and in enhancing the Northern share of vital national sources. In doing so, it has orchestrated the difference between the North and South. For the Fulani aristocracy, the integrity of the North is a matter of its life or else its demise. There are two principal reasons why this is so: first, as now constituted, there is no state or local government area in Northern Nigeria in which the Fulani make up a majority. If emphasis were to switch from Northern Nigeria to the states, the minority Fulani would be politically endangered in any democratic process in which each community seeks its ethnic folk to represent it.



Second, it is only by acting as spokesman for the whole of the North, against the South, that the Fulani aristocracy can justify its existence.



Hausa Nationalism vs Fulani Interests:

Ultimately, the stability and tenure of the Fulani aristocracy rest on the quietude of Hausa nationalism. There is no subject in which it has invested more of its remarkable talents for ideological formulation than in persuading the Hausa that what is good for the Fulani is also good for them. Any act of separatist nationalism that encourage the Hausa to seek their own autonomy as a district ethnic group would be most threatening to the Fulani aristocracy. Whereas the Fulani aristocracy has shown good political sense by dealing with Christians from various parts of Nigeria, North and South, but it is most uncomfortable with the notion of a Christian Hausa apparently because it is subversive of good orderliness in the Fulani – Hausa hierarchy and has therefore behaved harshly towards Christian Hausa.



Military vs Democratic Rule

For the Fulani hegemony perhaps more than any other tool, military governments have been useful in ensuring the reign of the aristocracy. As a book written by late Mr. Ikoku: Inside Out reveals, Ibrahim Tahir, one of the leading torch-bears of the hegemony, told late Ikoku in detention about his regrets over Shagari’s trumpeted plan to give the South a “presidential chance” which led to the Buhari – Idiagbon coup, to protect the “sanctity” of Fulani rule.



Military rule, has shielded the Fulani from harassment from local vested interests. As in the history of the aristocracy in many other regions of the world, Fulani aristocracy would benefit from the subversion of democratic Nigeria. What followed the (1983) presidential election must be understood to be one of the most mysterious and troubling in modern Nigeria history. Shehu Shagari was “overthrow” in a military putsch headed by two army generals who were not only fellow Fulani but were well-know to be close to the president. Was it carried out as a pre-emptive measure to prevent others from overthrowing a government headed by a Fulani aristocrat, thus (signaling) possibility of a new power-holding ethnic bloc? (Although most southerners mistaken Idiagbon for Yoruba, he was thoroughbred Fulani from Ilorin).



The Fulani Strategic Resolve

(1) It now seems fairly clear, that the Fulani aristocracy has decided that the free-floating democracy is dangerous for its survival and has used considerable resources to disrupt democratic processes. eg impeachment saga meant to remove Obasanjo.



(2) As the only viable corporate power bloc in modern Nigeria politics, it has for now at least considered its disadvantageous to allow power-sharing arrangements among Nigeria’s political regions, and is apparently satisfied that it will continue to retain the top position of presidency or else control whoever takes up this position.



(3) Military rule has been particularly beneficial to the Fulani aristocracy, since under its regimes its members have occupied strategic positions on the economic and government, at will.



(4) The federal principle is all but dead, as the state are dictated to from the top, as military rule which appears preferable to the Fulani aristocracy for whom genuine state bases of federalism could prove troublesome.



Jan 2003

Joe boy is returning Nigeria to the 1960 era where we had regional governments.
Watch out.
PDP will not have majority anymore.
This is the plan watch as it plays out.
Everything has been planned.
Joe boy will be president but  the senate and the house of reps will have people from different parties in there.
West-AC
South south-PDP
North-PDP,ANPP and CPC will share the states.
East-APGA/PDP
This is the new Nigeria.

Am asaba in delta state to see my family what am seeing on ground is crap with all the money allocated to the state the street roads are not tarred.

Some places have no transformer they are in perpertual darkness my people,mosquitoe everywhere.

They sell fake drugs like there is no tomorrow.

Even the people are complaining well when i get home i will give more info.

My obodo oyibo shoe don cover with brown dust.

I weep for delta state.

The commissioners are not happy with the governor,the people are not happy with governor .

So please if you are happy with the situation in delta state please write it because i would show you picture of this contraception  called delta state.

The governor goes on tv to lamblast the civil servants for not voting for him.

The man is embarrassing everyone.

You have just shown how fed up you are is ur name na so dumb piece of sh*t.
Listen to yourself what you have said does it make sense at all.
Am sure you are not a bonafid deltan ewu fake deltalite.
Please will real deltalite stand up.

Na so you have just shown you are an hungry man willing to sell your birth right for peanuts.
You are a disgrace if this is how you and your principal are willing to win an election by giving money inducement to garther votes.
Your man has been in power for how long 3.5yrs but still needs to bribe people to vote for him,Your thick skull should know he has failed as a governor for bribing people at all.

I do not give a toss pot if you belive what i write or not it is upto you.
My own is to put it out there for everyone to see.

Real life experience from yesterday.

PDP is a THIEF.
Submitted by Vindave (not verified) on January 7, 2011 - 12:26.
Sahara Reporters was not misleading anybody. Are you saying that they were not saying the truth? I voted at Federal Government College Warri yesterday.

There were two polling units inside the school side by side. In my unit (03/013) 53 of us were accredited only 51 voted. Unit 03/012, 44 people accredited the 44 voted. total votes casted was 95. We insisted that the result be counted and announced. The result was being counted and DPP was leading suddenly the PDP thugs came in their number, grabbed the 2 ballot boxes and jumped into one of the two toyata hiace buses they came with. They even tried to force the police sargent (Sgt Edna Obi) who was peacefully cordinating the center into their vehicle with the 4 youth corpers. The vehicle registration number is AX-734-ABN, White toyota Hiace bus. Later one of the Anti Crime police came with two hilux pickup loaded with their armed police mobile men together with some elderly INEC officials in their Honda CRV Jeep. While they were interviewing the angry voters who just lost their votes to the identified PDP thugs, one of the PDP House of Assmbly Aspirant - Mr. Vincent came with some of the thugs again and started beating people up in the glaring eyes of the armed police officers who supprising jumped into their vehicles and hurriedly drove away living the Youth Corpers, the INEC officios to their fate. We have to use our vehicle to escape two of the INEC officials that were abandoned by their own men and one of the voters also quickly escaped the Corpers with his 3 series BMW cars, as he zoomed away leaving behind his car rear bumper that was forcely re
moved by some of the thughs that were chasing the corpers. It was a show of shame. That is just one of the many incidence I witness yesterday. I don't want to mention how a pdp man Hon Omovie was using forcing people at Edjeba to vote for PDP with Pump action gun.

Then we have animals who fail to reason and see the true light.

INEC is on its way to declaring Uduagha Governor.

WW3

The begining of the end.

My guys this is simple logic if you belive you have done the right thing why deploy army think am well because this na word i yarn so.

Security agents are pouring in from neigbouring states to forestall a breakdown of law and order as INEC is preparing to conclude the announcement of the election results.
They know what is about to happen.
Pure mayhem and anarchy  

me i dey go stand near one bank chap chap with my otapiapia

Please look at the result,the same old trick,how can the votes of Warri north be more than that of Uvwie,Sapele and Oshimili south put together. INEC & PDP deliberately disenfranchised eligible voters in urban areas with high voting population so as to declare ridiculous results from riverine and rural areas.It is shameful and disgraceful,we can never get it right.

The candidate of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) in the Delta rerun governorship election, Chief Great Ogboru, has stormed INEC's office in Asaba to protest the release of the results. He is asking for forensic analysis of the ballot papers before the official results are released. His supporters are carrying placards protesting the conduct of the election, and this has effectively put on hold the announcement of the remaining results. With five more local government left to be announced, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan (PDP) is all but set to win the rerun governorship election in Delta State. He is maintaining a wide lead over Ogboru.

Official results from 19 LGAs show Uduaghan leading Ogboru comfortably, with a vote count of 203,949 to his rival's 89,817. The result of Ugheli North, where another candidate, Ovie Omo-Agege (RPN) comes from, was cancelled by INEC for violence and ballot-snatching.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/delta-update-protests-halt-results/84620/

Warri North: DPP 470, PDP 37,139. PDP taps into their World Bank and wins hands down here.

Ogboru has stormed INEC office in Asaba to protest the release of the results.
Result announcement on hold.
Now the game begins pikin wey no wan make im mama sleep im 2 no go sleep.

Now make we sidon look as na part 2 of the movie called delta state rerun we wan watch so.

Guy why are you sounding ignorant 

We should not worry people have videos clips of the rigging they are scared but hopefully they will put them on youtube but not on there real name.
The truth will come out with video proof.
This one no be dem say you will see life proof.
At the moment am scrounging the internet for videos.

my brother they where moving the ballot boxes into car telling the people around to keep quite because they are fighting somewhere close by,they did not count the votes at all they just put the box in the car and drove of.
kia man don suffer.
As jona want am no so e go get am.

u dey c my brother na watine me just watch just now me bow o dem do remove am c level.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB6z4W7qRoI

u want prove see video of rigging.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB6z4W7qRoI

i dey go bed this one don pass rubbish.

my brotherman tire oooooooo

They are afraid to say the result because they know what will happen but what they forget is they are only postponing their waterloo.
In the morning the cock will come home to rooste.