BREAKING: Sultan Abubakar’s Burden And The Herdsmen Crisis

After my column a fortnight ago, in which I partly decried the status of the Fulani in today’s Nigeria—having regressed from the friendly herders we remembered in the not-too-distant past to whatever they have become now—I thought it appropriate to write about the complicity of Fulani leaders in this decline.......➡️CONTINUE READING THE FULL ARTICLES HERE.

In today’s Nigeria, individuals of Fulani descent have held key positions in the country. Most notably, Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani cattle owner himself, was expected to address the farmer-herder conflict and the increased brigandry attributed to herders decisively during his presidency from 2015 to 2023. It is safe to say those expectations were massively deflated.

His RUGA scheme was poorly conceived and lacked the political will to follow through. It got so bad that on May 25, 2023, as Buhari was packing to leave the villa, Baba Usman Ngelzarma, the president of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) proclaimed that even the cattle breeders “never had it so bad like when Buhari was in government”.

Auwal Gonga, the vice president of the Nigerian chapter of the Tabital Puulaku International, at the same event, proclaimed that “Buhari has never called us as pastoralists, and we are here; we have intellectuals including professors, ministers and he has never contacted us, and that is why they have failed.”

For most Nigerians, it was a missed opportunity to address the problem through the leadership of someone who could, to borrow his own words, “speak a language they could understand”.

Buhari is not the only prominent Fulani leader to pass up the chance to address the problem. Nigerians like General Aliyu Gusau, a former National Security Adviser and now a prominent political kingpin in the bandits-ridden North West, have remained silent while the region burns from this conflict with the Fulani at its heart.

To his credit, the current NSA, Nuhu Ribadu, himself a Fulani man, attended a 2018 conflict resolution summit on the farmer/herder conflict. However, at the event, he made an impassioned speech decrying the marginalisation of the nomadic population of the country, saying that they benefit nothing from Nigeria. That statement is also true of most ethnic nationalities in the country who have gained nothing from Nigeria.

Since he was appointed NSA, though, Ribadu has not publicly deviated from those claims and has not challenged the herders and their militias in a manner that would compel them to rein in the killings attributed to these groups. The Minister of Defence, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar had in 2021 made similar claims, blaming the herdsmen’s violence on injustices done to them, while he was still governor of Jigawa. As minister, though, he has so far failed to address this injustice and end the violence.

Political appointments or otherwise, no single Fulani leader holds greater religious, cultural and symbolic significance than His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar. Therefore, none of their silences and deflections has resonated more than his.

Recently, while speaking at a public event, His Eminence branded social media as “terrorist organisations” that security agencies need to address. He strongly condemned the dangers of social media and the urgency to curtail it. These comments by His Eminence, the Sultan, came in the same week that Fulani militias were accused of killing many people in Plateau and Benue.

The irony is that the leader of Nigeria’s Muslims, who also happens to be the head of the Fulani clan, chooses to point fingers at social media as a terrorist organisation, overlooking the armed Fulani militias and gangs that have allegedly been terrorising much of the country.

Over the last 20 years, Fulani ethnic militias have engaged farmers and the general population of Nigeria in a war of attrition. This is not to mention the heinous crimes the herdsmen have been accused of committing in the North West, where hundreds of farmers, villagers, and travellers have been abducted for ransom, abused, tortured, dehumanised, and murdered. Thousands of women in the region have been violated by these men.

Each time the identities of these criminals are revealed to be Fulani, we see various groups defending their members while reminding everyone of the injustices done to their clansmen.

While as a Fulani man the Sultan seeks to advance the interests of his tribesmen, his position as their leader and as the leader of Nigeria’s Muslim population places upon him a greater responsibility to foster peaceful co-existence. His position obliges him to call his clansmen to order to stop the bloodshed.

While Nigerians have always had a penchant for exaggeration and stereotyping, it is no exaggeration to say that the majority of the bandits in the wild—those killing Muslims in the North West, in Kebbi, Zamfara, Katsina, and other states—are mostly Fulani. If in doubt, ask any survivors of these murderous gangs or look at the hundreds of videos the bandits themselves post on social media or the many interviews the gang leaders grant, in which their identities are not only obvious but are presented by them as justification for their crimes.

Of course, there are Fulani with genuine grievances, whose cattle have been rustled in some of the states in the North West and North Central. They deserve justice because they are also citizens.

Yet, I am not aware of what the Sultan has done in private, away from the flashing lights of the cameras, to call his tribesmen to order.

His Eminence could have exercised the influence of his position to organise outreach programmes and sensitisation campaigns to address the herders, steer them away from crime and encourage the establishment and attendance of nomadic and religious schools. Most crucially, they need to be educated on the realities and dynamics of life in Nigeria today in relation to the herders’ way of life.

The times are changing, and it is increasingly clear that not only the herders but everyone must adapt to live a fulfilled life in which tolerance and respect for all are paramount, one in which the sanctity of life is upheld. The Sultan’s duty, and that of various Fulani groups, is not to attempt to compel the times to devolve into a period that has long passed, but to help them transition. To insist on retaining that way of life, at such enormous cost to all, is suicidal. As the Chinese say, the tree that will not bend to the wind will not last the storm.

Deflecting blame is not a strategy that will serve the Fulani interest.

There is nothing golden about the silence of prominent northern leaders on this bloodletting, nor is there wisdom in trying to deflect attention to something else. The activities of these bandits and militias are tarnishing the reputation not only of the Fulani tribe but of Muslims as a whole, considering the religious dimensions of the situation. In his position, the Sultan should be concerned about the damage being done to the victims, both Muslims and non-Muslims, and the harm being inflicted on the tribe and religion he leads.

His Eminence, the Sultan, needs to decide if he wants his legacy to be as the Sultan who called for order and worked to end this bloodshed, or as the Sultan of the pariah clan? Will his be a song for the Sultan who quelled the madness, or will it be an elegy for the quiet king who watched as his kinsmen burned and ravaged?