By Moses E. Ochonu
For the people of Kaninkon
Kingdom in Southern
Kaduna , this was a bleak Christmas. On Christmas Eve and on
Christmas day armed Fulani herdsmen attacked and destroyed Goska village,
killing, maiming, and burning. This attack occurred in spite of the area having
been put under a 24-hour curfew by the state government, an indication of the
brazenness and sense of impunity on the part of the well-armed attackers.
*Nasir el-Rufai |
The attack
is part of a broader genocidal war against the people of Southern
Kaduna , a war that is in its fifth year and has killed thousands
of people in their homes and farms and destroyed the livelihoods of tens of
thousands more. As we speak an estimated 53 villages lay in ruins, some of them
occupied by Fulani herdsmen and their cattle, a forceful annexation that
recalls the similarly forceful displacement in Agatu.
Let’s be
clear: the crisis predates the administration of Governor Nasir el-Rufai, so he
cannot be accused of causing it or of being behind it as some people are
insinuating. However, his utterances and actions in the past and the present
have exacerbated the problem and emboldened the attackers. An ill-tempered man
given to incendiary, inciting, and divisive outbursts, el-Rufai has made
several egregious errors in dealing with the crisis. Some of these errors are
errors of approach, thinking, and mentality. The errors have inspired actions
that have wittingly or unwittingly transformed what was a low level series of
massacres into a full-blown genocide.
To
understand some of the governor’s current failures in dealing with the
killings, you have to understand his past utterances, his incendiary character,
his insensitivity, and his inability to moderate his thinking and resultant
public expressions, all of which offer clues about why he has no credibility or
political capital to solve the problem and why he is widely perceived as part
of the problem, not its solution. Let’s consider the governor’s many problems
in this regard.
El-Rufai
is widely regarded as a Fulani supremacist, and with good reason. On July 12,
2012, he tweeted the following: “We will write this for all to read. Anyone,
soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter
how long it takes.” The governor’s response to the killings in Southern Kaduna has been eerily consistent with this
mindset. In a recent chat with newsmen in Kaduna ,
the governor made three statements that substantiate this Fulani supremacist
statement from four years ago.
First, he
said when he became governor, he traced the attackers to Cameroon , Chad ,
and Niger
and sent a message to them that one of their own, a Fulani like them, was now
governor. This statement displays a spectacularly parochial mentality. A
governor of a Nigerian state was basically making appeals based on ethnic
kinship and brotherhood to a group of foreign killers of people in his own
Nigerian state! In other words, he was appeasing his murderous foreign kinsmen
at the expense of indigenes of his state who are not his ethnic kinsmen but
whose safety and interests he swore to defend. The governor’s shocking
statement indicates that ethnic solidarity trumped his constitutional
obligations to protect Southern Kaduna
citizens from the external threats of foreign Fulani herdsmen.
Second,
the governor told the journalists that the crisis began in the aftermath of the
2011 presidential elections when foreign Fulani herdsmen passing through Southern Kaduna were attacked, with some of them killed
and their cattle stolen. The governor claimed that the ongoing genocidal
killings are revenge for the 2011 attacks.