Fulani herdsmen and victims’ lukewarm attitude

Those who find the time to read about the Fulani Jihad and its politically motivated grazing in West Africa, Sudan, Morocco, Ethiopia and many African countries in the early centuries could relate the present bloody grazing in Nigeria, (particularly in the South) to the violence and conquest characteristics of the jihadists of yesteryears, and today’s Boko Haram.

History shows that the colonialists introduced western civilisation and Christianity to the South. Similarly, the Fulani Jihadists conquered the North and introduced Arab civilisation and Islam to it. So, the 1914 amalgamation was the offspring of divergent sources of civilisation. In the process, the complications of dualism disharmonised the elements of the conurbation of both civilisations. Owing to the lack of cognition of the divergent sources of civilisation, many southerners did not quickly take note of the Arab-oriented political and intellectual sophistication of the Fulani race.

In her book, A Tropical Dependency, Lady Lugard notes that throughout the history of the Sudan, the Fulani are found in ruling and important positions and that in every civilisation, there were Fulani judges, advisers to kings, and wives to persons in high positions. In Morocco at the time of the Mooriah Conquest, Mulley Hamed, Sultan of Morocco, had a favourite wife named Lella Aouada, who was a Fulani woman.From all ramifications, Fulani conquest movement is formidable. It is on record that nearly all the attacks launched by Fulani were on their hosts, and were successful too. Although the Shehu of Bornu recorded a decisive victory over the Jihadists in 1808, history is not too explicit on the affinity between an ancient Fulani city in the central Sudan called “Borno” and the Borno in Northern Nigeria.

In addition, history feebly linked the Fulani ancestors to the Biblical Abraham; but historians have not been able to trace the original root of this powerful and politically focused wandering race.

Judging from the antecedent of the Jihad movers, the present trail of bloody grazing by Fulani herdsmen in the southern parts of Nigeria looks like a part of the long-time grand design to complete the jihad project of Uthman Danfodio.