Fulani Attacks In Nigeria Re-explained - The Need To Conquer

Charred Remnants Of A House in Nandu Village -March 2019

In Middlebelt Nigeria, it has become the norm for tens of thousands to be forcibly displaced, with properties, crops and livestock worth billions of Naira destroyed, at great cost to local and state economies.

4 am. March 16 2019- Fulani herdsmen invaded Nandu Village in Sanga LGA Kaduna State Nigeria, killing 10 including children. They set 30 homes ablaze and made sure their harvested crops where charred. Motor bikes and grinding machines belonging to the villagers were also not spared. It seemed they wanted to ensure the villagers were completely paralyzed and full of fear to attempt returning home.

The morning after, the villagers who ran for their dear lives returned to estimate the damage. Tears flowed as the loss was irreparable. Innocent children were amongst  the casualties. A mother lost 3 children and would not be consoled. She is currently nursing a bullet wound to her chest.

There were indications that the week earlier the community had an altercation with a Fulani herdsman.  Our correspondent gathered that a Nandu girl was raped and killed by the herdsman and community sought revenge by burning down the home of the herdsman.  In another incident, a local farmer was involved in a fight with a herdsman. He claimed his farm was been trampled upon. The Fulani boy was humiliated in the fight that ensued. He promised to be back with his folks to seek retaliation. While men slept, the attack came to pass. Such is the life, non-Islamic indigenous people now have to live with. If you mess with the Fulani man or his cattle, you should be ready to pay. They are Demi gods of wherever they find pastures for their livestock. They are seldom arrested for any crimes. The Fulani man enjoys government protection.

SUPPORT KADUNA RELIEF EFFORTS

Click this link to donate to relief efforts bit.ly/2TYtToD. 

Or PayPal http://hhands.org/donate.html

In Nigeria use this link: bit.ly/2FuSjfU

Share---

It is pertinent to note that herders migrating into the savannah and rain forests of the central and southern states, are moving into regions where high population growth over the last four decades has heightened pressure on farmland, increasing the frequency of disputes over crop damage, water pollution and cattle theft. In the absence of mutually accepted mediation mechanisms, these disagreement increasingly turn violent.

Charred Remains of A Nandu Villager

Professor Yusufu Turaki, Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion, Church and Society at Jos ECWA Theological Seminary in Nigeria attempts to explain the reason for Fulani attacks. 

And while the British did put a stop to slavery and other things, they created hostility between the Muslim and the non-Muslim groups by taking the Hausa-Fulani Muslim rulers and placing them over the indigenous non-Muslim population

"What has happened in the last six or seven years is that, while they used to live in peace with their hosts, the indigenous ethnic groups, the Fulani have armed themselves and with sophisticated weapons. They have started to invade indigenous areas that do not belong to them historically, attacking and destroying villages, killing and chasing people off their ancestral lands and settling there themselves. And they do so with impunity. There is no government authority that has stopped them going around killing people. Nobody has arrested them"

"Here you have indigenous people who have surrendered the protection and security of their communities to the government, which has the constitutional right to protect and secure their wellbeing. But what the government has failed to do is to protect them against Fulani harassment, attacks, invasion and killings. So the law-abiding citizens of Nigeria look up to their government to protect them, to secure them, but unfortunately the government has failed."

Slave Trading

A little lesson in history is always necessary in understanding and resolving conflict. 

"In the 14th century, Islam was introduced in northern Nigeria, in Hausa land. The Hausa people embraced Islam but did not practise pure Islam. They mixed it with Pagan practices.

So Usman dan Fodio moved into the area to purify Islam. He staged a successful jihad and overthrew Hausa rule and became the new ruler in Hausa land.

The Fulani and Hausa traders who had settled in the Middle Belt and other parts of the region heard his call and some left for Sokoto to join him. Upon return, they brought the jihad flags with them and started a jihad among the neighbouring ethnic groups in the Middle Belt.


It changed the relationship, previously characterised by peaceful trading, between the indigenous non-Muslim population and the Fulani-Hausa Muslims. From now on the Muslims saw the non-Muslim areas as fertile ground for raids and slave trading.

Professor Turaki goes no to say: "Although the British put a stop to Islamisation, to slave raiding and trading and slavery, after they left Nigeria in 1960, the Fulani-Hausa Muslim rulers still had this idea that Usman dan Fodio had when he started conquering the non-Muslim areas – to Islamise them.

And while the British did put a stop to slavery and other things, they created hostility between the Muslim and the non-Muslim groups by taking the Hausa-Fulani Muslim rulers and placing them over the indigenous non-Muslim population, authorising them to collect the heavy taxes that the British had imposed. This was the way in which the British governed the whole of the protectorate.

Today, with the British gone and upheaval all over the world, especially with the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East, the Islamic ‘revival’ against the West, especially Christianity and Western culture, has mobilised and motivated Muslims in West Africa, where they have started to think of reviving Islam and its original status."

SUPPORT KADUNA RELIEF EFFORTS

Click this link to donate to relief efforts bit.ly/2TYtToD. 

Or PayPal http://hhands.org/donate.html

In Nigeria use this link: bit.ly/2FuSjfU

Share---

The Hausa Fulani are still in charge in Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari is a Fulani man and this has emboldened the herdsmen to take and seize any land that they set their eyes on.

The Nigerian government must make real efforts to address 

• Climatic changes (frequent droughts and desertification); 
• Population growth (loss of northern grazing lands to the expansion of human settlements); 
• Technological and economic changes (new livestock and farming practices); 
• Crime (rural banditry and cattle rustling); 
• Political and ethnic strife (intensified by the spread of illicit firearms); and 
• Cultural changes (the collapse of traditional conflict management mechanisms). 

A dysfunctional legal regime that allows crime to go unpunished has encouraged both farmers and pastoralists to take matters into their own hands."

In an article titled Herders Against Farmers, the authors proffered these solutions.

• Strengthen security arrangements for herders and farming communities especially in the north-central zone: this will require that governments and security agencies sustain campaigns against cattle rustling and rural banditry; improve early-warning systems; maintain operational readiness of rural-based police and other security units; encourage communication and collaboration with local authorities; and tighten control of production, circulation and possession of illicit firearms and ammunition, especially automatic rifles, including by strengthening cross-border cooperation with neighbouring countries’ security forces;

• Establish or strengthen conflict mediation, resolution, reconciliation and peacebuilding mechanisms: this should be done at state and local government levels, and also within rural communities particularly in areas that have been most affected by conflict;

• Establish grazing reserves in consenting states and improve livestock production and management in order to minimise contacts and friction between herders and farmers: this will entail developing grazing reserves in the ten northern states where governments have already earmarked lands for this purpose; formulating and implementing the ten-year National Ranch Development Plan proposed by a stakeholders forum facilitated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in April 2017; and encouraging livestock producers’ buy-in through easier access to credit from financial institutions.

I am burdened that Nigeria is fast becoming a killing field. This has to stop!
Helping those in distress is one sure way to be your brother's keeper.

Join hands with us to get food, clothing medical care and schools supplies to the resilient people of Nandu in Sanga LGA of Kaduna State.

Click this link to donate to relief efforts bit.ly/2TYtToD. 

Or PayPal http://hhands.org/donate.html

In Nigeria use this link: bit.ly/2FuSjfU
Share---

Source: https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2017/09/there-will-never-be-peace-for-nigerias-middle-belt-unless-theres-equality-and-justice/

https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/nigeria/252-herders-against-farmers-nigerias-expanding-deadly-conflict