Living with Fulani Folks

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I was born in Jos South, but I am native to Irigwe land in Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State. I attended primary school and the first three years of secondary school in Jos South. I spent the last two years of secondary school in Irigwe land.

During my time in Irigwe land, I met a classmate with whom I became close. He was Fulani by tribe and spoke Irigwe fluently—Fulani people have a talent for understanding languages with ease. Of course, he also spoke Fulani, Hausa, and English, which he learned in school; this is common among children born in that part of Nigeria.

My friend felt that our school lacked the resources to help him achieve his dream of becoming a medical doctor. It was ironic: I had left my previous school because I felt it lacked the resources to help me fulfil my ambition in the sciences. I tried all I could to persuade him to stay, especially since we had become inseparable. We were so close that he often took me to his ruga home, where we would spend weekends. Eventually, he left for Science School, Toro, in Bauchi State. I remained in Irigwe land in Plateau State, pursuing my dream of building a solid science foundation. I had no intention of becoming a medical doctor, preferring instead to acquire a solid science foundation before making a decision. I knew, however, that I would not study Medicine or Pharmacy—careers that teenagers were crazy about.

I achieved my dream of a solid foundation, just as he did. That was why we met again at the University of Jos. I was studying geology, while he was not in medicine. Instead, he had enrolled in one of the biological sciences, a field he disliked. He later moved to the University of Maiduguri to study Veterinary Medicine.

It was at the University of Jos that the bond of brotherhood became unmistakable between us. Each time we wanted to communicate in secret, we spoke in Irigwe. That was when I learned that if you grow up in the same locality, you become brothers in a foreign land. I felt this too when I was in Port Harcourt. Whenever I became homesick, I would go to the Presidential Hotel in Port Harcourt, meet the Hausa people selling their wares there, and spend some time talking about Jos. Though he was not Irigwe by blood, he felt that Irigwe land was home to him. And indeed, we never felt that Fulani people were strangers until the devil paid a visit and poisoned our minds.

After graduating from our respective universities, we met a few times and then lost contact. That was in the mid-nineties. When the security situation deteriorated on the Plateau and elsewhere across the country, I started thinking about him. He seemed to have vanished so completely that none of our schoolmates could say where he had last been seen or heard of. Thanks to social media, someone posted his phone number on a Whatsapp group for our former secondary school classmates. Posting his number on that group meant that his whereabouts were unknown not only to me but to many others. That was my interpretation of seeing his number alone on Whatsapp.

I quickly copied and saved the number. When I called for the first time, he did not answer. I tried again a couple of days later. This time, he answered. He told me he had been living in Kaduna and practicing his profession. I asked why he never visited. His answer was, in his own words, “the thing is that your land has become what it has become.” Then he asked which part of Jos I lived in. I told him. He then promised that whenever he was passing through, he would give me a call.

Since then, he has not called—probably because he has not visited, or because he has visited but his schedule made it impossible.

This is how things have become messy between native Plateau communities and settlers—so messy that the feeling of brotherhood has eroded. In its place, there is now only hatred and enmity

 

How Organ Harvest Overturns Kuru Community

Picture source: Family of victims

I walked into the street of Dankarang in Kuru, Jos South, cautious, almost tiptoeing –journalists have the oxymoronic personality of being hated and admired simultaneously. There is often the question of why you are requesting this information and whether or not you are an impersonator. Sometimes, they believe you are who you say you are but remember something another journalist wrote that worked against them in a way they find difficult to forgive, leading to the transfer of hostility.

I was in Dankarang to confirm the credibility of an alleged story of one Davou Boyi who set the community on fire by abducting toddlers, poisoning them and harvesting parts of their bodies.

The three kids had gone to St. Ambrose Kibuka Catholic Church, Dankarang on Sunday 20th April. Only one was found alive, two days after they had vanished. When the news spread, the parents were informed of a clairvoyant Fulani man. The Fulani man was contacted. He gave his conditions, after which he lived up to his promise by confirming the kids were still within the community and that the community should ensure no comes into the community or leaves while a house-to-house search is conducted. He promised that the culprit would turn himself in. Lo and behold, Mr Boyi approached neighbours, saying, “I have seen some kids in one of my cars and I am not aware of how they got in.”

According to my informant, three plates of meals were allegedly discovered after a search of Mr Boyi’s house. Two of the meals had been eaten while one was untouched, confirming that he was the culprit behind the horrendous incident –two of the three kids had died while one was still alive.  

The enraged community took laws into their hands, setting Boyi’s three-bedroom apartment ablaze and burning four cars that were parked on the terrace of the house. But the worst was the killing of his sister, Mrs. Laraba Gyang, who the villagers claimed was not only unmoved by the horrific act of her brother but arrogantly defended him. She was killed in front of Dankarang Police Station and burnt with a tire. 

The people of Dankarang never trusted Mr Boyi, a man who gallops as he walks because of his bad legs. It is alleged that there used to be a guy who washed his car. The guy is said to have suddenly vanished one day and was never seen again and a lot of people believe that Boyi has something to do with it. 

Despite the cloudy atmosphere around his reputation, Boyi is known to give loans to people and some of the cars that were burnt in front of his house were securities for loans he has given. It is alleged that, during the search of his house, there were about a dozen refrigerators he had also accepted as securities for loans he had issued.   

Dankarang is a Berom community. Mr. Boyi, a former teacher, is also a Berom man, albeit from another community. The incident, particularly the unaliving of his innocent sister, has strained matters among, not just between Dankarang and Vwang (the Berom ward from which Boyi comes) but the Berom tribe as a whole.

The inability of the Dankarang people to restrain their emotions has led to the killing of an innocent person in a manner that is more horrific than the crime that provoked them.  

From Farmers-Herders to Miners-Herders

Source: Seaarts

Towards the end of the third quarter of 2009, there was a problem in Wase Local Government Area of Plateau State. The administration of Jonah Jang, Governor of Plateau State at the time,   was evacuating some herdsmen who were immigrating to Plateau in large numbers.

In the previous couple of years, Plateau has recorded some of the most deadly conflicts that pitched native Plateau tribes on one hand and the settler Hausa-Fulani tribes on the other. The Jang administration, whose regime was marred by these conflicts, was afraid that immigration of these herdsmen, some of whom are said to have come from as far as Mali would only complicate matters.

Despite the effort of the Jang administration to move these herders back to where they came from, it did not work. The herders chose a strategy.  When they returned, it was deadly. Armed with some of the most deadly weapons, they would visit innocent native villages in the dark of nights and kill as much as they can. Whoever survives is compelled to move out, having no assurance that he will be protected in future. The climax was the death of two legislators, one a senator, the other a member of the Plateau State House of Assembly in 2012. This was the start of what was dubbed the Farmers-Herders Conflict.

The phrase wasn’t fair to the farmers. It suggested there was a conflict between the two sides, when actually the farmers were helpless and unarmed people who never knew where the herders were coming from let alone attempt to attack them in retaliation. It was a case of a lion and a gazelle, a case of a deadly bully and the weak.

The herders, seeing that nothing was done by the authorities to deter them, started casting their murderous nets to cover wider regions such that people who had argued in their support became their worst victims, as the killing fields broaden to include Benue, Kaduna, Zamfara  and Niger provinces.  In Plateau State alone, the attacks had displaced close to a hundred villages as at the year 2019.

They herders were initially interested in grazing lands. Now, they have become more daring and more ambitious, driving people away from villages that are rich in minerals, succour to the villagers who find themselves living arm and leg in contemporary Nigeria. In Zamfara and Niger States, the conflicts is said to be fuelled by gold deposits underneath the affected villages. In Plateau State, considered the nucleus of solid mineral mining in Nigeria, the story is the same. In Bokkos, Barkin Ladi, Wase, Kanam and Jos South, all of which are rich in a diversity of mineral deposits, the attackers wait until your mining shafts reach the depth of the targeted deposits before they launch attacks, displacing everyone and returning to scoop the deposits.

The attacks, rather than slowing down, are becoming more vigorous, accentuating the weaknesses or nonchalance of authorities. It has gone beyond just grazing farms to minerals and wealth at large. Everything gets messier.