₦airaland Forum

abuja nigeria

port harcourt nigeria

ancient walls of kano

might as well promote a true african nation

morpheus24:
As for the comments on the "Nigerian spirit" . The reason Nigerians don't get into the business of other Africans per say is because they are too busy trying to sort themselves out to pay attention to any other countries problems. That is the Nigerian spirit you are obviously talking about.

can you elaborate on that? nigerians basically have no time hating other africans living in their country and definitely dont label any bad!

@rsa

lagos is a jungle.be carefull when you come.i recommend abuja for you.

south africa is nice but the hate against other africans especially nigerians is the thing bringing the country down. if only south africans can have the nigerian spirit!

to futher ahow you how complex kwara is,some of the prominent people you might have errrorneously belived were yoruba are not. let me give you a small list


1.TUNDE IDIAGHBON-FORMER NUMBER TWO MAN = FULANI

2.JUSTICE MUSTAPHA AKANBI-ICPC = KEMBERI FROM BORNO

3.JUSTICE ALFA BELGORE-FORMER CHIEF JUSTICE = FULANI FROM BONSA IN PRESENT DAY KEBBI

4.GEN. MOHAMMED ABDULLAHI-FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF = HAUSA SETTLERS IN JOS

5.LATE GEN. ADISA- FORMER WORKS MINISTER = BERIBERI FROM BORNO

6.THE GAMBARIS = ACTUALLY FULANI FROM WUMO IN SOKOTO

7.THE SARAKIS = ARE ACTUALLY FULANI FROM A PLACE CALLED ARBAJI IN SUDAN

8.TOYIN SUBAIR-HITV = FULANI

9.AKANBI ONIYANGI-FORMER DEFENCE MINISTER = FROM SUDAN THROUGH MAIDUGURI THEN LAGOS THEN ADANLA IN KWARA AND FINALLY ILORIN

you should also know that ilorin is presently dominated by (regardless the yoruba names they bear) fulani,hausa,nupe,yoruba,kemberi,kanuri,tuareg arabs,tapa,kanike and gobir who have inter married amongst them selves but have found it easier communicating among themselves through yoruba and as such answer yoruba names like some tribes in the core north who communicate in hausa and bear hausa names.

am sure you are amazed by some of the names on the list right? just do a little research!

you might also need to read this



Gambari, Kolade And Okonjo-Iweala Are Birds Of The Same Feather In My Book

By

Dr. Wumi Akintide

wumione@aol.com





There is something common to these three distinguished Nigerians and public servants. They all serve in high visibility jobs in the Foreign Service of Nigeria. Agboola Gambari and Okonjo-Iweala as one time Foreign Affairs Ministers and Christopher Kolade, the former MD of Cadbury Nigeria PLC, as the Nigerian High Commissioner to the UK. I call them birds of the same feather because they have all raised higher the bar of public probity and accountability in Nigeria by exercising the courage and the judgment to say “No, thanks” to some gratuitous appointments they have been offered on a platter of gold by the Nigerian Head of State in what some have always seen as national assignments that cannot be turned down, even if they go against the individuals sense of honor and integrity. You have to wond er, as I do, why our leaders are ever so notorious for putting the cart before the horse in their decision-making process, more often than not.



I can tell you that President “Go Slow” like his dictatorial and self-centered predecessor, President Obasanjo did not, at all, do his home work or give some thoughts to what might be public reactions and resentment, especially in the Delta area, to his nomination of Ambassador Agboola Gambari as Chairman of the Delta Summit. I could care less about Yar Adua’s attempt at damage control by getting his naive Vice President to publicly admit that he got the President into the mess and quagmire by suggesting the name of Agboola Gambari to receiving the Presiden's approval to go ahead and have the foreign minister seek for the release of the Agboola Gambari from the UN without adequate consultation with his constituents in the Delta area.


If the President, the VP and the Foreign minister have exercised judgment they would have realized that some of the statements credited to Agboola Gambari on the late Saro Wiwa, was bound to come back to haunt the ambassador. I do not blame Agboola Gambari who already had more than enough on his plate, at the UN to covet the thankless job from our own neck of the woods in the Delta area of Nigeria. Gambari doing that could be likened to the proverbial hunter that arried an elephant on his head, but was still interested in digging a hole for a cricket with his feet because he was just too greedy. If you know Agboola Gambari as much as I know him, you will appreciate he is not that kind of person.



Was Agboola Gambari eminently qualified to do the job and do it well? You have got to give a resounding ‘yes” to that question if you know Agboola’s profiles and track record as much as I do. But is he the only Nigerian erudite or juggernautthat could be tapped for that job with the reality on the ground. The clear answer to that has to be a “no” all things considered. I don’t care about what critics may be saying today about Agboola Gambari. The truth is that he did not seek or canvass for the job but the Northern power brokers who canvassed and supported the appointment with their collaborators the VP and few of his cohorts from the Delta area, may have had their own agenda for going for Agboola Gambari. As far as I am concerned and based on what I know, Agboola Gambari was as much a victim and a pawn in their chess game because they thought they could use him again as agent provocateur to do their dirty work.



But in doing so the power brokers forgot that Agboola Gambari has got his own name and reputation to protect as a world- acclaimed diplomat. Born with the silver spoon in his mouth as a Fulani prince of the Ilorin Emirate which is ranked number 4 in order of importance in the Uthman Dan Fodio Caliphate, Agboola has a lot of clout, leverage and reservoir of goodwill not only in the North, but the whole of Nigeria. He was born to a Yoruba mother and a Fulani father who was the Emir of Ilorin. Agboola is married married to a Yoruba woman. He is therefore tempramentally acceptable to both the North and the South and he speaks fluent Yoruba and Hausa in addition to one or two foreign languages. Agboola Suleiman Gambari, as a Fulani by birth, has a lot going for him as a Nigerian. He is a hardworking, intelligent and educated northerner who is far more qualified and exeperienced and probably better connected and far more influential that President “Go Slow” himself, if the truth must be told. If Agboola lives long enough, he could one day aspire to the presidency without any question. He has had an amazing career and profiles which will be difficult to match or surpass by any of his fellow northerners.

@deepzone
just thought this might do you a bit good,pay attention to the highlighted parts






Ilorin and the crisis of Fulani identity

By

Femi Awoniyi

Speyer, Germany



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.

@deepzone

and your basis for arguement is what? you dont know you dont know period

the gambari family are fulanis who have been ruling the emirate of ilorin since the fulani jihad and if i may add gambari is a fulani name not hausa,not arab and definitely not yoruba

as for saraki you may do well in reading the mans profile and family lineage instead of sitting there and assuming,i suppose you think the name saraki is also yoruba or arab abi?

Nigeria1@:
i did not see my name on the list, no worry my name would be on the list very soon. But Adenuga, Ibru, should be on that list.

and why should their names be there?

gadogado:
@kev-d
@Arnold1

Who are the people of the middle belt closer to in terms of culture,economics,religion,history are they closer to the north or the south
note that in ilorin and lokoja, they have emirs not eze's or obas, what is an emir and the history behind it??
benue if im not mistaken have similar cultures to people in taraba,plateau. correct me if im wrong!!!



Nigeria 2 USA 1 (go naija, win the olympic soccer gold)

in terms of culture the benue people have a funny mix drawing from both south and north,
in terms of religion,the benue people are christian which means closer to south,
in terms of history,the benue people were also republican in nature like the easterners(note that things like traditional chiefs were created by the british)
there is no emir in benue both a tor-tiv and ochi'idoma
the benue and plateau man dont have similar cultures neither does the benue and taraba man,in any case the plateauman is also considered a middle belter so also is the southern taraba man

and for those saying gambari and saraki are yoruba yoruba because they have yoruba names should know that saraki is actually fulani,it is his grand mother that is yoruba from ogbomosho,gambari is also fulani,some of you should understand that because of the mix of culture in kwara you find fulanis bearing yoruba names and speaking the language fluently and vice versa

@uche2nna

remind me apart from biafra any other serious agitation from any body

how come you didnt end up like the abacha sons

na wah for una, one,that is a toy gun and two,we all as kids growing up have done one or two funny things like that so why should the president's son's case be different? haba you guys be a bit objective!

the summary of every thing said and done here is that the south is lazy, or how else do you call a man who keeps blaming his neighbour for his woes?

some of your responses show a lot of ignorance!

some one suggested separating the country and said the hausa north should go with the tivs while the central north should be seperate, pray the so called minority tribes are kwararafa tribes (that is hausa children from slave mothers) apart from the tivs who are actually later day migrants,so if there is anything middle belt it is actually the tivs(read about the tiv riots of 1957,the umbc,the tiv jukun crisis e.t.c) and if there is any tribe inthe north that is completely distinct from the hausas it is the tivs and beroms.

some else said northerners are lazy!, thats funny,cause no one has denied that the northerners are farmers,so i ask is it the one who sits and fights over oil he never planted that is lazy or the one that actually farms that is lazy?, well i guess if the oil runs dry we will know the answer

@wirinet

thats about the only intelligent thing anyone has said on this thread

its funny how when it comes to the north its referred to as north and when its south it is south south,south east and south west,the benue and kano man are as different as the oyo and abia man but alas the educated south doesnt know this, only about 0.1% of the north actually benefits from the niger delta oil (or do you think that without oil the poor suya man will be affected)

lets face it the niger delta people were also once parasites (before oil). northerners now are parasites along with the easterners and westerners. and as we have oil parasites so do we have food parasites and vat parasites.

@post

you guys like making a big issue out of nothing,a lot of hausas and other tribes get dragged out of the various police stations illegally across the country, its sad that when its an ibo man you guys bring in political intonations, an igala man was killed in ekiti,a tiv man killed in kano,a yoruba man kiled in abia,an ijaw man mained in taraba,a jukun man robbed in rivers, so what?

@dblock
let me help you shout in there ears

nothing is wrong with nigeria

nothing wrong with that

abeg help me ask them

i support the president on this, rascality should never be encouraged though i feel something should be done in the niger delta

the problem with nigeria is over sabi sabi which of course is also being exhibited on nairaland

@poster
stop being a hypocrite

can you remember who occupied these post during obasanjo:
energy
power
senate president
sss dg
finance
national planning
nnpc
energy commission

these are the positions you listed and under obasanjo they were all occupied by southners

a tale of two thieves

well quit talking and start proving it

so says bill

uncle

smart guy