By Dr. Ugo Egbujo
The truth is the Fulani have practiced a destructive caste system for ages.
The herders are the slaves, living in the wild, unchurched , uneducated.
The cattle owning sedentary Fulani are the lords.
That diabolical social dichotomy has imploded
The Fulani nation is at war with itself.
But rather than keep the war with its tribal confines, the war has spilled out to distant places.
And many politicians are now eager to dress it up as national freedom fighting
At the root is the impracticability of open cross country grazing
And the selfishness of the cattle owning enlightened Fulani in resisting a cultural change which it should lead.
Having realized the imminence of armageddon within, Gumi and company are staring to recast the problem as a national problem and to dress the bandits up as victims of federal marginalization, as militants.
If they are militants they are only militants in Zamfara and other parts of the Muslim north where they were subjugated to mind bending discrimination.
They are not militants in Ondo and Edo and Oyo.
When you call on the Fulani to hold a village meeting they dismiss you as an ethnic profiler, a bigot
But now they want a blanket Fulani amnesty and billions of federal funds in a Fulani herdsmen resettlement commission.
Now we can identify the group by its ethnicity.
The problem the northern elite has is refusal to face reality
Isa Yuguda is asking why cattle rustling blossomed precipitously and denied the Fulani herdsmen livelihood.
He also wants to know why the Federal government forsook the Fulani herdsmen while giving subsidies to farmers.
The truth is that he is deceiving himself.
They are now struggling to be spokesmen for bandits. The same people that ordained the system that pauperised and ostracized their brothers.
Had Yuguda , Mattawalle and Gumi faced the realities of the times and brought their brothers into ranches to work and live like human beings, then a federal inter nation in livestock would have reached them.
But they and other were stuck in the past, arguing cattle right-of-way. They actually wanted to perpetuate the slavery. They didnt want buy or grow feed for the cattle. They were willing to waste the lives of herders to grow the cattle.
The problem in Zamfara, Katsina , Kaduna and many other places is Fulani-on-Fulani violence whose collateral consequences others suffer.
It’s has ordinary economic roots but it has social widespread branches.
Gumi knows that scapegoating christian soldiers or the entire country is gibberish. But these guys love to deceive themselves by not owning responsibility.
The Fulani must bring in their brothers in the wild , mingle and inter marry with them , and humanize them.
Okonkwo is not going to do that for them.