By Reuben Abati
“No matter how far the town, there is another beyond it” – Fulani Proverb.
“No matter how far the town, there is another beyond it” – Fulani Proverb.
There
has been so much emotionalism developing around the subject of the recent
clashes between nomadic pastoralists and farmers, and the seeming emergence of
the former as the new Boko Haram, forbidding not Western education this time,
but the right of other Nigerians to live in peace and dignity, and to have
control over their own geographical territory. From Benue, to the Plateau,
Nasarawa, to the South West, the Delta, and the Eastern parts of the country,
there have been very disturbing reports of nomadic pastoralists killing at
will, raping women, and sacking communities, and escaping with their impunity,
unchecked, as the security agencies either look the other way or prove
incapable of enforcing the law. The outrage South of the Sahel is understandable. It is argued, rightly or
wrongly, that the nomadic pastoralist has been overtaken by a certain sense of
unbridled arrogance arising from that notorious na-my-brother-dey-power
mentality and the assumption that “the Fulani cattle” must drink water, by all
means, from the Atlantic Ocean .
It
is this emotional ethnicization of the crisis that should serve as a wake-up
call for the authorities, and compel the relevant agencies to treat this as a
national emergency deserving of pro-active measures and responses. It is not
enough to issue a non-committal press statement or make righteous noises and
assume that the problem will resolve itself. Farmer-pastoralist conflict poses
a threat to national security. It is linked to a number of complex factors,
including power, history, citizenship rights and access to land. Femi
Fani-Kayode in a recent piece has warned about Nigeria
being “on the road to Kigali ”, thus
referring to the genocide that hobbled Rwanda in the 90s as the Hutus and
the Tutsis drew the sword against each other. Fani-Kayode needs not travel all
the way to Rwanda .
Ethnic hate has done so much damage in Nigeria already; all we need is to
learn from history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Ethnic
hate, serving as sub-text to the January 1966 and July 1966 coups, for example,
set the stage for the civil war of 1967 -70. The root of Igbo-Hausa/Fulani
acrimony can be traced back to that season when Igbos were slaughtered in the
North, the Hausa/Fulani were slaughtered in the East and Nigeria found itself in the grip of a “To Thy Tents, O Israel ” chorus. Ethnic hate
also led to the Tiv riots, crisis in the Middle Belt since then, and the
perpetual pitching of one ethnic group against the other in Nigeria ’s
underdeveloped politics. We should be careful.