Yochuku Ofoka Yobolisa, Editor in Chief
Right from the early 1800s, the Fulani pastoralists had attempted to overthrow the entire Nigerian nation and run it solely for their own benefits; to subjugate the original settlers and impose leaders over them. They arrived in droves from the west of the country overthrowing nations and cultures as they moved eastwards with vastly superior cavalry and unmatched military cohesion. They successfully overthrew the long-established Hausa kingdoms and culture and subjugated them in what they called a holy war because of what they perceived to be deterioration in the Islamic faith. That single act of bringing the Hausa nation under subjugation was, no doubt, possible because Nigeria and, in fact, the rest of Africa were going through scrambles and partitioning – nations were conquering nations even though in undignified, disorderly struggles for territorial control.
In the modern time, when human life has blossomed and Nigeria, like other nations of the civilized world, has complex social and political organizations, should any group still itch to overrun the other? Should a group attempt to suppress another using the stranglehold of a set of dogmas and political beliefs? Yet, bandits and the Fulani pastoralists have been blamed for rampant invasions of rural settlements, abductions in schools and the ivory towers for young children, and widespread unprovoked killings in the Nigerian society. Just recently, a well-known politician and Islamic leader in Ilorin the Kwara State capital narrated a chilling tale of how, in 2015, they had brought in a horde of alien Fulani into the country and armed them to assist certain northern politicians in winning the general elections. He was of the opinion that the government did not settle the political mercenaries after the elections hence the foreign Fulani did not go back to where they came from.
To corroborate the politician’s assertion, a repentant Fulani Herdsman said that the weapons they slung over their shoulders are supplies from the authorities. He said, “Government gives us AK-47. Our cows do not give birth to guns; politicians give them to us, I swear to almighty God.”
Sometimes, there is a palpable need to allow past events to remain in the past and never to be mentioned. Otherwise, it is instructive to note that the Civil War was fought because some people in authority fueled it. Perhaps, the government wants incidents that led to that feckless war effectively covered. This may explain why the study of history in schools and colleges in Nigeria has been outlawed and supplanted with government studies. But while the masses think nothing of the official restriction order to ban the study of history in high schools, education stakeholders and social relations experts in the country think that events in the country should be properly recorded and analyzed as they play out not just for posterity to see but also to learn from the past in order to chart a new advance.
To most Nigerians today, the widespread killings, abductions and violent crimes had played out before when certain people began to embark on grudge assaults and unprovoked killings. But there is always an extent to which anyone can take bashing and mugging just to let peace reign. Bulus Bala, a classroom teacher in a secondary school in Garki, Abuja told TheNespaperman.com.ng that he goes to school every day in great fear that abductors might come one day and whisk some of his students away.
He said, “I think there is a serious attack on the union, especially on education in this country, and in the north in particular. Since, that Kagara school abduction in Niger State, schoolteachers in the Federal Capital Territory are really apprehensive. We are apprehensive because Niger State is closest to Abuja. I think there is an aggressive campaign to scuttle the progress we’ve made through Western education in the north. This is spreading quickly to the south, and new generation Nigerians are taking it lightly because they are not in tune with events in history.”
The Nigerian Governors’ Forum rose in a meeting a few days following the Kagara schoolboys’ abduction, describing it as unfortunate and totally unacceptable. Its chairman, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State called it an act emanating from poverty, ignorance, inequality, illiteracy and general loss of hope among the people. He promised that the body of governors would take deliberate steps to arrest the situation.
A ministry official in the ministry of education headquarters, Mrs Rose Ejeh, said that if the kidnapping of schoolchildren continues much longer parents in the north would relapse into keeping their children and wards at home, not bothering to send them to school again.”
In the words of a soldier at the Nigerian Army Headquarters who wished to keep his name, “Comments in the public space is unsavoury. And it is tilting to a dangerous direction. People have never been heated up this way before. I just hope things will begin to turn outright. As a soldier, I will move when they tell me to move.”
By and large, going by the activities of bandits, kidnappers, and syndicate gangs, what we are witnessing is the obvious emergence of a gangland regime; one that would brazenly kill and maim and remind everyone of the holy war that was fought over 200 years ago to overrun the people and their cultures, supplanting them, however, with skewed dogmas and ideologies for selfish ends. But subjugating the people this time around may not be easy because the country is no longer in the childhood of its existence.
