Cliffhanger conversations

Unless something hardheaded and urgent is done to rein in the escalating ethnic sabre-rattling in the present content of Nigerian national conversation, this country is reaching over too strenuously from its already precarious perch on the precipice. And it may indeed be daringly staring down the proverbial road to Kigali. That is where an insane gush of primordial passions could, wittingly or otherwise, be inflamed in the grassroots populace as could result in unhinged fratricidal conflicts.

This looming danger needs to be harshly flagged because as political leaders and leaders of thought trade verbal jabs, in ethnocentric conversations that are obviously aimed at winning admiration and support from tribal groups for which they respectively hold brief, the bile of ethnic animosity is meanwhile being deeply seeded among ordinary – in some cases, naïve – citizens who do not even have any grasp of political brinkmanship and are driven in the main by what they hear the leaders say. And dreadfully, these would be the primary actors unleashed in the event of a flare-up of physical hostilities.

Such potentiality struck home with me last week when I took a walk along the busy Ikeja bridge underpass in Lagos. It was on the day when many newspaper publications led their cover page with a call the previous day by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and youths on the platform of the Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) on Fulani herdsmen to relocate from southern areas of the country and return to the north where their safety and that of their cows purportedly would be better guaranteed. As I walked by the many newspaper stands under the Ikeja flyover where free readers clustered in informal parliaments, I overheard animated chatter by those free readers – many of them barely literate in political nuances – that the relocation directive to herdsmen would not confer insurance against reprisals if such were ever warranted.

Fulani herdsmen had come under fresh national attention following the killing penultimate week of the daughter of nonagenarian Afenifere leader Pa Reuben Fasoranti, Funke Olakunri, for which some of their members were fingered. Against the backdrop of earlier incidents of random kidnappings for ransom and other security breaches in the southwest, just as in other areas of this country, Afenifere spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, and a member of the victim’s family categorically blamed the killing of Pa Fasoranti’s daughter on roving herdsmen. Tribal lords like the Aare Ona Kakanfo, Gani Adams, consequently warned ominously that the forebearance of the Yoruba over such attacks had reached its elastic limit.  The police and the Presidency, however, linked the Olakunri killing to armed bandits; while the umbrella organisation of Fulani herdsmen, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, absolved its members, saying the phenomenon of raging insecurity in the country shouldn’t be ethnicised. Other notable figures like former President Olusegun Obasanjo, among others, has since weighed in on the security debate.

‘The porous security situation we face in this country today is…a huge national challenge for which the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, being the government in power, is inevitably answerable’

The porous security situation we face in this country today is without doubt a huge national challenge for which the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, being the government in power, is inevitably answerable. Throwing back the blame to past administrations in whatever contortion of argument would not cut the dice because it is the constitutional responsibility of a sitting government to keep citizens under its dispensation safe. Whatever past administrations may have done or left undone in their time is quite irrelevant in the burden of responsibility for the current situation; hence, it is utterly the duty of the present leadership to stem the security scourge and ensure Nigerians’ safety.   

But it should be obvious as well that ethnic characterisation of the security challenge is far more dangerous and inimical to our collective well-being as a country. I quivered at the unguarded chatter of the free readers’ parliaments under the Ikeja bridge last week because those commentators were, without being aware of it, ready fuel for any ethnic conflagration that may be kindled by the verbal wrangling of leaders.

So far as the accounts in the public domain go, there are no incontrovertible indications of who the culprits of the Olakunri killing were; and so, the logic of categorically linking the dastardly act to Fulani herdsmen is spurious. On the other hand, it may be presumptuous to foreclose the involvement of any set of suspects as Miyetti Allah did, since it isn’t expected that rouge elements from any group of people would first secure clearance from the leadership of that group before striking out on their malfeasance. People are criminals by their sheer motives and actions, not by the ethnic groups to which they belong. Pending credible breakthrough in police investigation of the Olakunri killing, all we can be sure of is that some malefactors that need to be apprehended and brought to justice are out there on the loose. It totally helps to leave the issue of ethnicity, of which there is no reliable evidence, out of the narrative of the tragedy.

Meanwhile, it is as well rash in the extreme to burrow deep into ethnic trenches as the NEF did with its relocation call on Fulani herdsmen. Besides, it is curious that the cultural stabilising reserve of elders, at least as we know it in the African world, was so cheaply sacrificed to emotional abrasiveness of youths in the CNG. For instance, rather than seek to deescalate ethnic suspicion and dredge for mutual confidence and accommodation, NEF Chairman Professor Ango Abdullahi said the elders’ forum was pitching in to support the youths’ demand for Fulani herdsmen to relocate from the southern areas because their safety purportedly was being threatened. The fiercely polarising creed wasn’t disguised as he said: “We are worried about (the herdsmen’s) well-being. If it is true that their safety can no longer be guaranteed, we would rather have them back in areas where their safety is guaranteed. The bottom line is that their safety is far more important than their stay there (in the south). This is a country we all wish to keep together, but not at the expense of the other section.”

Foregoing are the kinds of conversations that feed grassroots passions across ethnic divides as could lead this country into a blowout. Political leaders and leaders of thought need to be mindful of this and assiduously rein in mutual suspicion and animosity from the grassroots.

It was helpful for the nationhood’s health that the Buhari presidency rushed in to countermand the NEF, saying all citizens were free to move and live in any part of the country they please, whether or not they are originally from there. “In line with our country’s constitution, the government of Nigeria and the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari will protect citizens of Nigeria wherever they find themselves. No one has the right to ask anyone or group to depart from any part of the country – whether north, south, east or west,” presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, added inter alia in a statement.

Only that this whole brouhaha is itself a function of the failure of the Buhari presidency hitherto to manage Nigeria’s ethno-cultural diversity in a manner that earns the trust of constituent groups. Other than the huge security challenge, which is real and must be addressed, the administration needs to reassure component tribes of the Nigerian nationhood that it is not indulging one group – in the present instance, the Fulani herdsmen – over others. That is one historical task the administration has on its plate.