By Yakubu Aliyu
A huge global empire machination is afoot to put a wedge among major Nigerian nationalities, the Hausa and Fulani, to weaken the social and cultural fabric of the North and the Muslim Ummah, for eventual onslaught to take over the mineral deposits under our soil, now that oil and gas are no longer paying off as they historically used to.
Again, this kind of discussion that is promoted by tech giants like Twitter is deliberately orchestrated to lay the basis for putting Nigeria in a perpetual low intensity conflict, and warfare, meaning ba gaba, ba baya, and become incapable of confronting and dealing with the asymmetric war now being waged against the North, in the form of insurgency, via Boko Haram terrorism and armed banditry, by the global empire.
The objective is to distract the Nigerian state and pave the way for the continuous looting of our wealth and resources without invading us like Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
Now simple words like kaɗo and haɓe that have been used from time immemorial without disrupting the social harmony between the two nationalities are deliberately being given new meanings, misinterpreted, and weaponized. Firstly, for politics, and secondly to serve the purposes of the global agenda.
Fulbe and Hausa people have coexisted even before Hausa became the umbrella identity of the communities that existed right from Songhai Empire to the pre-existing Hausa states.
That process has been on-going even before the Jihad that brought about the Hausanisation of the Fulbe and the Fulanisation of the Hausa across the expanse of Northern Nigeria.
There are many dimensions to this process such that many have lost their previous identity and have taken on a new one. This transformation is about to be halted and replaced with internecine animosity, instigation, and reminders of distant unpalatable historical engagement.
The unity that has been seamlessly sealed and enabled by Islam is being shattered by flippant debates and enthroning ethnic identity over a more all-encompassing universal identity.
We are now regressing back to Assabiyya, the stage Ibn Khaldoun associates with primitivism, a stage we passed through well before the enlightenment brought to us by Islam and the exposure to local and international communities brought by trade and migration that have positively impacted our outlooks. All on the alter of the quest for political power.
The dimension this unnecessary nay abhorent online schism is taking has similitude with how some hatchet historians, some years ago tried to bifurcate the aspirations of the Kanuri from that of the Fulani through historical revisionism of the exchanges that took place between Usman bin Fodiye and Elkanemi of Borno at the beginning of the Jihad.
The Northerners of Hausa and Fulani stock who are also Muslims should be careful of the machinations of these merchants of carnage. We have not yet addressed our sectarian religious differences, and if we are not careful enough, we will be adding the altercations over who is Fulbe or Haɓe to the mix.
Okay, goodluck to us all.
Aliyu Yakubu writes in from Abuja and he can be contacted via his email address aliyakubus@gmail.com
I have written countlessly cautioning us about this hatchet job undertaken by gullible among us. I wonder what harm the coexistence between Hausa and Fulani does to these people. They keep bringing this issue time in time out. I began to believe they must have a hidden ulterior motive as insinuated by the writer above. Thank you Yakub PHD for this well thought write up.
This is we written article but which failed to unearth the real cause of schism between Hausa and fulani.
Banditry by fulanin daji which is hushed up by fulanin zaure is one of the reasons this division crops up.
Don’t put more conspiracy of the external factors to overshadow the reality on ground.