Northern leaders seem to have taken possession of the insecurity by trying to handle the perpetrators as some of their own, and by so doing, the region has become a net-distributor of bandits to other parts of Nigeria and, in fact, Africa.
The failure of leadership between the Hausa and Fulani elites has progressed to banditry and kidnapping in North-West and North-East Nigeria. Violence has had a far-reaching humanitarian and economic impact on the region and created a domino effect of security problems. Over the last 15 years, thousands of people have been killed—mainly in North-West and North-East states—with millions of internally displaced and thousands fleeing into the Niger Republic. Livestock and crops have been decimated, further depressing human livelihood indices that were already the country’s lowest. The violence is aggravating other security challenges: it has forced more herders southward into the country’s Middle Belt, thus increasing herder-farmer tension in that region and beyond.
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In May 2024, the Northern Elders wrote a letter to President Tinubu not to allow foreign military bases in the north in order to cover up the leadership failure among the Northern Elites. I am worried that northern elites have hidden agendas that foreign military bases would have exposed. A foreign military base can help part of northern Nigeria stabilise and stop further bandit attacks. A foreign military base would have stopped both ethnic groups, Fulani and Hausa, from importing mercenaries from Chad, Niger, Mali, and Southern Sudan to prosecute what in itself has assumed a life of its own and may spread to other parts of Nigeria with grievous consequences on peace and stability in Nigeria. Northern Elders would have written to President Tinubu on how to restore peace and order to the north, but instead they wrote about foreign military bases as if they were working with the military governments in the Niger Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
As security has deteriorated, the regions have steadily come under the renewed influence of jihadist groups, which have sometimes attacked security forces. The spike in jihadist activity in the North West has raised fears that the region could soon become a land bridge connecting Islamic insurgencies in the central Sahel with the decade-old insurgency in the Lake Chad region of north-eastern Nigeria. Security sources point to a resurgence of the long-dormant Boko Haram splinter group, Jama’atu Ansarul Muslimina Fi Biladis Sudan (Group of Partisans for Muslims in Black Africa), better known as Ansaru, which was active in north-western Nigeria between 2011 and 2014. Elements of other Boko Haram offshoots, notably the Islamic State in West Africa Province, are arriving in the area. A poorly secured international boundary, meanwhile, enables the influx of arms and facilitates the movement of jihadists to and from the Sahel, where the Islamic State has been expanding its influence.
“The violence is aggravating other security challenges: it has forced more herders southward into the country’s Middle Belt, thus increasing herder-farmer tension in that region and beyond.”
Over the years, the northern political elite not only used the common Islamic heritage of the Hausa and the Fulani people as an instrument to construct and cement the notion of an undivided and indivisible Hausa-Fulani identity, they also encouraged other parts of the country to see them as one, undifferentiated people. In response to the rural and urban banditry by mostly Fulani brigands against Hausa people, Hausa people have formed vigilante groups called yan sakai or yan banga for self-defence, but Fulani people say the yan banga self-defence groups often indiscriminately murder innocent Fulani people who are not even remotely connected with abductions and murders.
This has provoked an endless cycle of recriminations and retaliatory violence between Hausa and Fulani people and is threatening the age-old, Islam-inspired ethnic fusion between them.
A bizarre event took place in Sokoto State recently. The Emir of Gobir, Isa Bawa, was kidnapped. His abductors demanded N60m. The relatives were about to raise the funds after making contacts with influential figures, including the Governor of Sokoto State, Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto, our source claimed. The date for the payment of the ransom was near: Alas, the kidnappers murdered the Emir in cold blood. Not done; the kidnappers insisted on being paid before they released the body of the Emir of Gobir. The media, as usual, glossed over the issue, undermining the deep-seated impact on the social-political crisis in Northern Nigeria and the almost imminent prospect of its consuming the country.
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Unknown to many observers, the murder of the Emir of Gobir was the height of the smouldering intra-ethnic clashes between the Fulani and the Hausa, which observers claim has taken thousands of human lives in the past decade even as the ruling class of both ethnic groups tries to subvert and gloss over the issue. The Hausa and Fulani are distinct ethnic groups, but in Nigeria they found a common political destiny in being referred to as Hausa-Fulani. In the past three decades, the years of misrule, poverty, hunger, exclusion, and deprivation by the ruling class in the North have exposed the internal contradictions, which for decades have been veiled under the cover of Islam. The kidnapping and killing of the Emir of Gobir is nothing but a brutal continuation of the bitter, bloody conflict.
The killing of the Emir of Gobir, Irohonoodua can authoritatively say, will fuel further revenge killings unless the Hausa and Fulani leaders rise up to the occasion and stop pretending. The crisis is already spreading to other parts of Northern Nigeria. The so-called “bandits” are essentially Hausa indigenous revolts.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must call the Fulani and Hausa leaders together, identify the major grievances, and work out short-term, middle-term, and long-term solutions that would be both social, economic, and political. The National Assembly must also realise that the National Question in Nigeria is real and has to be resolved before it is too late.
Inwalomhe Donald writes via [email protected]
