‘Ada Aleru’: A specimen! -By Ismail Misbahu

It says ‘when the kitten leads the hole, rats would no longer have a place’!

Hope not be so with the ‘non-aligned’ Fulani families whose tolerance and diplomatic simplicity is a direct opposition to the hostile attitudes of the notorious bandits, more like it will. Hope not be so with the immediate Hausa farming communities, more like it will.

This specimen, like  the previous ‘license’ on guns, cannot work. The decision that favours its practical test has lacked quality judgement—no wisdom at all—not even a single fact suggests there’s. It’s dimwitted, barren of tactical security expertise and superficially ignorant of the currently challenging realities of insecurity in this part of Nigeria.

It’s a dangerous blunder to unwisely seat a notorious bandit, to lead a very delicate structure that neither lead the severely wrangling Fulani groups to anywhere, nor their host farming communities.

It tastes sweet that Rufai’s pointer on the Emirs double-standard and the mismatch of traditional rulers, in making bloody, existing and more known and unknown red spots, cannot be misled. He radiates:

“Substantial parts of the first class Emirs in Zamfara State are allegedly deeply involved in banditry.”

How could you mischievously assume peace to reign by soliciting with maleficus to lead your family? He’s not only a philocrate but a ‘drudner’ that devours not only when he’s in hungry, but more so by overriding and  permanent wickedness! He’s no family neither does he has any kinsmen—he knows nobody. 

How could a Nigerian, more not less a Zamfara Indogene—a profiled vizier of a Muslim Emirate indeed, not realisefor all reasons,  the obviously simple fact that even among the Fulani, there are factions, more often in conflicts and competitions than there are among other groups. 

Does this decision remedies the murder of Alh. Isshe who was allegedly killed by the hitherto notorious Vigilante gangs a decade ago?

While this had been conflicted in various opinions, notorious bandit like Ada Aleru could never fit the decency  of Isshe whose conquering charisma snatched the eyes of both the Pulo and his Kado neighbours in Dansadau, for all due respect. 

Aleru can’t be a matchless of his peers: Buharin Daji, Dogo Gide, Fari Danjuma, Shehu Rakep and Bello Turji. Unlike some of them, Aleru could hardly be located from any descent point. He’s not, by  human transmutation, a zombie for this regard. He’s been so like that and needs not be a human any longer. He’s been on armed rustling, robbery, cattle theft, rape and violence against women and children long before their noise pollude loudly. Communities along Kano-Katsina-Zamfara-Sokoto borders would tell you the same. 

The desire to establish jungle empires by these bandits should not be seen as only the consequence of decades old land alienation of the Fulani pasturalists, or for that matter the confiscation of grazing routes, their rent and landed properties—all can’t be unamounted for, however. One must be wondering from which diversions their Ardos led in digressions, that,  even G-map could not locate their whereabout. How could the leadership of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association (MACBAN) easily gets missing? Why must Aleru? Why must there exist gang leaders in our forest zones staying tune with government officials, security personnel and brave journalists and academics and not MACBAN? Are all the bandits preying our communities a MACBAN’s project? ‘No’? So why the resounding silence?

The brazen exhibition of notoriously criminal bandits on the scene of the elated celebrity has indeed sold out the dignity, solidarity and the internal sovereignty of this nation. Imagine, cannibals like Dogo Gide now preying on-and-off the Kwantagora forest (Niger state), Fari Ɗan Juma, Bello Turji and his Fakai boys: Duna da Doso, Shehu Rakep of Sububu forest, Ali Ɗan Oga and Lawali Dodo, of Gundumi forest, Ila mai Makami from Rugu forest, all were brazenly present. What has their presence suggested for the new ‘Sarki’? Obedience? No! It must be a different art. To them, it may be a Crime Scene Investigation (CSI)! 

Daily Nigerian can’t miss reporting the blank remark on this gruesomely unjustifiable decision:

“the decision to make the terrorist leader a traditional title holder was aimed at finding a lasting peace in the area, following devastating attacks by the Alero gang.”

If peace must only reign by reigning a bandit to lead a more fiercely competing and reigning gangs, then we likely can’t afford the life-coast of this peace for all it assumes. If by all implications, the leadership of MACBAN has not been recognised and accepted by the bandits leadership, the leadership of a bandit gang too, has not been recognised and accepted by another, how could this ‘Sarkin Fulani’ muster their rivalring factions and subdue them under a ‘recognised Hausa authority’? Has this decision been decided out of ignorance, that even the bandit leadership is not only non-inclusive of the Fulani but also not all-bandits-uniting?

So long the state could not reclaim its responsibility towards addressing the root causes of insecurity in this country, chances are that colouring such as this will do more harm than is currently the case. What has so far been said about the question of pastural and agricultural land cannot, at present, be also sectionalised since the presumably two ‘distinct’ ethnic groups are bridging barriers both in blood and occupations. Herding is no longer a ‘Fulani occupation’ only (though unalienable to their identity)—ditto farming to the ‘Hausa identity'(?). 

Any proposal that may assume a distinct Fulbe nationality and erroneously suggest a separate Fulani leadership within, or outside a state, would not only become victim of its wretched reality but also a parmanent target to its savage reality! 

Peace reigns with Nigeria, amen.