The Nation That Was Kaduna Four Years Ago -By Ismail Misbahu

Notwithstanding his brag to leadership capacity and his rush to policy implementation, Governor El-Rufa’i may appear as the primus inter pares among the northern governors. What was to Kaduna state four years ago is what the nation, especially its northwestern geo-political zone surviving for today. Worse was Kaduna in the last four years than any other state in the Northwest. However, even more worse are today’s Katsina and Zamfara than Kaduna state!

The weeks ahead of Christmas day, 2016, were an assortment of cheerfulness and melancholy in southern Kaduna. Death was greeting the day with grievous faces in Goska, Bakin Kogi and other villages in Kaura, Jema’a Zangon Kataf, Kafanchan, Lere etc. The day of 25th December, 2016 was a bleak Christmas. The governor of Kaduna state could have been embarrassed by the unpromised security situation in the country had he not been able to contain these areas. More than any other governor in the Northwest, El-Rufa’i has been able to tackle the security situations of the state. Yet the global pandemic and challenge of economic insecurity amidst the weak leadership from the center hardly proved his effort to meaning. Indeed the implication of the later is even more harmful to the improving security situation at the state level.

This assertion is indeed factual with the 2016 nostalgia that was given a disdainful outlook by the Federal Government. Silence to what the state was battling with while trumpeting the ‘victorious’ Nigerian Army over the defeat of BH members camped in Sambisa forest, has still been our living day real culprit. El-Rufa’i must have sensed this four years ago, and so his engagement discourse with stakeholders on the state security matters, traditional leaders and clerics, security agencies etcetera has never been a waste of time. He was not joking! And those who missed his mind and snatched his cheerful face were discomforted!

Certainly the Fulani herdsmen attack in southern Kaduna and elsewhere was a great sore point at that juncture and it reduced the BH victory to a mere beetle propaganda, more so when this victory had always been accompanied by terror explosions elsewhere. The Federal Government must not fail to amount to the people what this widely ungodly pogrom had to do with the nation four years ago. The question of insecurity has never been a state owned chitchat! It has an organic response, and under this present administration, this organic link is missing. This organic linkage that anchored the state/federal structure principle of responsibility has been jeopardized.

Turning a blind eye to what matters the nation has promoted an overlapping lawlessness and impunity across the states of the federation. We could see that with a blatant disregard of the emergency 24-hr curfew declared by Benue state government in areas of Goska and Agatu for example. We could recall how brazenly some armed men engaged in attacking innocent citizens in these areas. Yet these ungodly acts were not considered punitive, instead they are primordially framed on the fake notion of “HausaFulani” — or for that matter a “northern mayhem” or even a “Muslim pandemonium”.

As if this “HausaFulani” had a common historical ancestor — as if this “north” is entirely inhabited by HausaFulani — as if this Islam is belonged to only HausaFulani. It is an indisputable fact that the cattle owners are not only the “Muslim HausaFulani” but also Christians as well, and even some cattle-rich families of the Igbo in the East and Yoruba in the West, including the governor of Ekiti state and others in the middle Benue.

However, if this assertion was born out of the 2016 assumptions, nothing makes the “herdsmen” attack more categorical as the “Fulani’s” than the ethnic coloration which the ongoing banditry and kidnapping in the Northwest assumes.

Today this perception has largely been set at the front burner of southern media reportage deliberately promoting the years old politico-parochial projects that have largely contributed to the failure of addressing the country’s ill-fated ethnoreligious conflicts taking the course of history since the 80s. For southern Kaduna in particular, almost more than half a decade (2011-2016), this sterile assumption has still remained a jamming block that failed to register efforts into success. All attempts have been frightened by ill-perceived assumptions that the attack in this part of the state is “HausaFulani-Muslim’s” and all that, and so it bears retributions. Had this perception been avoided, decades old communal conflicts over territorial space as typified by the Zangon Kataf, Kafanchan, Kasuwan Magani, the Kaduna crises of 2002, the Shari’ah crises and so many others could not have been so confused and reoccurring.

Today too, reoccurrences of killings, armed robbing and kidnapping are assuming similar ethnic coloration in Katsina, Zamfara and Kaduna states. This was more pronounced in Kaduna four years ago than any other state in the Northwest. Those who called peace to reign with ethnicity are taking the sword onto their necks. They are searching, and sharing hate speeches all over. Sahara Reporters (of December, 26th 2016) reported how someone in the government allegedly accused El-Rufa’i of tweeting the following: “we will write this for all to read. Any one, soldier or not that kills the Fulani takes a loan repayable one day no matter how long it take”! A serious blunder this could have been with potent repercussions, such utterance are certainly not granted. This pronouncement though dated July 12, 2012, could still not escape the reinterpretations of southern Kaduna crises in 2016. However, nothing take this closer to hate speech than the grieved feeling which people in other states of the Northwest are now sharing. Kaduna could have become worse if it were Katsina or Zamfara today! Thank to this governor!

But then El-Rufa’i was not alone. If his rare utterances could not be taken lightly as mere ugly responses, those of ethnic bigots who sought to undermine national unity by fanning the embers of ethnic sentiments and animosity could be thrown to hell. Governors of Ekiti, Enugu, Anambra and other politically motivated groups i.e. MASSOB, Ohana-Eze, Afenifere, Ijaw Youth Council among several others had for every then and now, even more combatively uttered the same. These individuals, groups and their institutions have given prime importance to a baseless assertion that Fulani herdsmen are the “children of the president” and they are his “Jihad flag-bearers working on the “Islamization of Nigeria”!

If such utterances assume a mere ordinary speech from an ordinary (simple-minded) Yoruba, Igbo, Ijo and sundry, fine. But nothing makes it more serious and terrible than the elite misrepresentation of the security situation of the nation in this regard. On 8th May, 2016, the Sun Newspaper described the herdsmen attack in the agrarian community of Ukpabi Nimbo in the Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu state “as a spark of fire, but like a lion jolted from a delirious slumber…..” This is simply exaggerated. A newspaper shouldn’t be flowery of language on security reporting. More so was the fact that the same newspaper reported Femi Fani-Kayode saying that such attacks “are nothing but northerners attacking southerners”! That to him, “southerners might be forced to even the score of the killings of their kinsmen by the herdsmen…..”. He added with a very caustic tongue that, “this madness and endless attempts to rationalize and justify it has to stop”. Nigeria, he said, “is on the road to Kigali (Burundi).”! Of course Kayode was not alone. He and some other state governors had in their minds to avenge against the ” children of the president”. This attempt was clearly exemplified by the Enugu state government over the reactivation of the so called “dreaded Bakassi Boys” of the late 90s as a standing militia to counter the Fulani herdsmen.

If the government of Enugu state sought to train and drill a standing militia against the children of the president, Others sought to attack the children’s “cow-masters”, the animals rather than the herdsmen. The former Governor of Ekiti state, Mr. Ayo Fayose, ushered the use of chilly-hot pepper on the farmlands that cannot stand the smell of the grazing animals as practiced in Nekede and neighboring Ihiagwa in Imo state. He suggested the use of toxic drugs in the rivers that will kill the animals while relieving their thirst.

The Ayo’s was more of joke than real. He must have become victim of his horrific decision as one of the owners of cattle in the state! It was more of a valueless utterance of ethnic hatred. Here, a witness of a rat is also another rat!

Certainly all these allegations could not have been allowed to win against the peace of the nation. So what if silence has given approval to all the above facts-based assumptions? Is PMB really the father of these children? It says that madness does not govern a country but discussions does, and the voice of a strong leader is obeyed immediately. The loudest voice which PMB had to win the nation’s obedience is now missing! As madness is taking over the country, this silence is making him becoming more lonely and irresponsible.

It says that “he who thinks he is leading and has no one following him is only taking a walk.” The chicken who also cries to let the public know her condition not that her enemy will release her, is still crying.

Ismail Misbahu writes via
ismailmusbahu15@gmail.com.