Your Excellency Sir,
I know that you descend from a line of Fulani Aristocrats who played a crucial role in the capture of Zaria from the original Habe/Hausa rulers who retreated to Suleja area in December 1808. The defeated Habe rulers lived in the territories of the Koros and the Gbagyis … perhaps hoping to recapture Zaria their ancestral land sometime- it is not difficult to trace your ancestry from the colonial records sir- at least you should be related to the Yero who features in the records kept by the Brits. Now what is my point here?
Your Excellency, my point is simply that you of all people should know that the establishment and sustenance of ‘Jamaa Emirate’ as a first class ‘Traditional Institution’ in the territories of ethnic nations that do not share the ideals of the ‘Emirate Identity’, is as good as setting-up an offensive military outpost for imperial purposes- it is a recipe for recurrent and perpetuated conflict, whose endpoint is disaster if sustained.
ESSENTIALLY, the Jemaa Emirate concept represents an ideology that has been phased-out by advancement in human rights and equality of all peoples.
If you truly wish to build peace, then you must be ready to confront the conservatives and extremists among your own people like the heroic Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi did. He told them that in the contemporary world, the idea of imposing your identity and culture over those considered ‘different’ is criminalised and out-lawed in many laws and declarations, most of which Nigeria is either signatory to, or obliged to observe any way, such as UN Declarations.
You may not know your Excellency, but I am pleased to inform you that the British saw you and your people (or shall I say us) as an inferior race as they indeed saw all non-Europeans, all of us inclusive. They saw the world and constructed it by their firepower, primarily through those faulty lenses of ‘Racial Categories from the European perspective’. They were strongly guided by the belief in the now utterly discredited ‘Science of the Races’. This science of the races was the ideological tool for the most extensive mass atrocities and genocides recorded and unrecorded in human history. They built Nigeria and our African society on those principles, and because those principles are fundamentally contrary to the intrinsic dignity of all peoples, they have been successively cut to shape because they only foster a bloody history and paint the hands of administrators (including yourself) in blood sir. They sowed the seeds of Rwanda, Sudan, Darfur, DRC and many more places in blood, and it keeps reaping blood.
Permit me to give you a quote sir, from one of the ‘scholarly’ presentations that talked about ‘us’ as non-Europeans, and how we should be treated in world affairs. This comes from a public lecture in London by Dr. James Hunt, President of the London Anthropological Society in 1863, just when the Europeans were beginning to plot the colonisation of Africa, two decades before they parcelled Africa in Berlin 1884/85. The lecture was appropriately titled: ‘The Negro’s Place in Nature’. He started:
‘I propose in this communication to discuss the physical and mental characteristics of the Negro, with a view of determining not only his position in animated nature, but also the station he should occupy in the genus Homo’
‘Dr’. Hunt like most other ‘researchers’ and ‘experts’ of the time, proceeded to conclude that the ‘Negro’ never advances mentally beyond the capacity of the 7 year old child, that the Negro’s brain approaches that of the Ape with that of the Negress being almost the same as that of the Ape! (Page 10)
How does this affect you your Excellency? You were born into a world and a socio-political system and society constructed on ideals that draw from just these faulty ‘racialised’ and exclusionary ideological foundations. The British transferred their racial ‘scientific’ thinking to Africa, and went about proclaiming some ethnic nations as being superior to others, and designating ‘rulers’ and ‘followers’ on those bases. They basically set our dear Continent on the war path of the future- they came at a time when the continent was already blood-soaked from the Jihads and other ethnic wars. But those faulty ideas are increasingly retreating everywhere. Mankind has become wise to the reality that every identity, however different, provided it is human, is deserving of equal dignity, recognition and respect. In this regard the ‘Civilised West’ finds it difficult catching up with this truth which cannot be denied …. any longer. As for you and I, your Excellency, we are left with a legacy of a socio-political order and institutions founded on these gravely discredited and faulty ideas, and like Fanon said, we must out of relative obscurity, discover our destiny- and we must either fulfil, or betray. What shall you do about such faulty institutions Your Excellency?
I am sure of one thing: Socio-political equality and respect for all human identity will be attained, but I am not sure of a number of things including:
1. When it will be achieved;
2. How it will be achieved- whether peacefully or by violence;
3. Whether like Makarfi, you will be on the side of emancipation, or like Bush, on the side of imperialism
As to number three (3), the choice is yours- and you can see the consequences, i.e., that if you lean towards equality, your own people of a particular version of the ‘Arewa’ ideology who believe they are superior to ‘others’ will turn against you. These ‘opponents’ will be many, but not all of them of course, because very many now acknowledge the futility of the quest for unjust domination, and the benefits of genuine equality in rhetoric and in practice. On the other hand, if you lean towards the trend of sustaining the imposition of one or some identity over others, and thereby refuse equality and systematically foster bloodshed, you shall go down in history as one of the guys who had the chance to do some lasting good, but like many others, elected to reject the principle of essential human equality.
The Hausa-Fulani man in Kafanchan would be a lot better-off without having to be at arms all the time, bound to a fate they never negotiated, which is one of having to sustain a false ‘superior’ status by imposing upon their hosts: if they truly want peace that is. Why would anyone impose such an impossible task on the Hausa-Fulani Muslims in Kafanchan? How do you sustain an imperialistic institutional concept and design in an age of human rights and equality? This is conceptually similar (even if not exactly the same) as creating an Igbo ‘Kingdom’ in Sabon Gari Kano with a first class chief equal or superior in status to HRH Mallam Ado Bayero! Or perhaps a Bajju Chiefdom in Wusasa or Sabon-Gari Zaria, with a chief equal or superior in status to HRH Shehu Idris! The underlying concept is the institutionalisation of particular groups and identities as superior to others. The idea was to destroy the peculiar identities of the indigenous peoples by subjecting them to a Hausa-Fulani Emir in Jemaa. You might recall, your Excellency, that the 1999 ‘Staff of Office’ Kafanchan Crisis (As the commission of Inquiry called it) dealt with deep questions along this line.
Your Ministry of Justice can refer you to the White Paper on that report, particularly the recommendations relating to self-determination which amounted to a denial of equality- a recommendation which Makarfi had the courage to reject in creating the Kaningkon and Fantsuam Chiefdoms. That was the rejection of a conceptually imperialistic and oppressive institutional design. The reality is that the colonial ‘racial’ idea behind the imposition of Jemaa, which is to subjugate ‘inferior races’ is unsustainable in a democratic society affected by ideas of essential human equality. The Jemaa Emirate as a colonial construct representing the racist thinking of Europe in its foreign (White versus non-white) and ‘localised’ (Hausa-Fulani/Muslim versus non Hausa-Fulani/non-Muslim) forms, needs to be abolished, and the Emir made a District Head presiding over his people, but subject to one of the indigenous traditional institutions whose ancestral lands Kafanchan is in any case. Crazy right? I know this very well your Excellency. The truth can be crazy when we live in deception for very long, but it always whispers in the depths of our hearts, and we shall face it, in this life or the next.
TAKE A LOOK AT ALHAJI AHMED MOHAMMED MAKARFI …
Why would a Hausa-Fulani Muslim dismantle the power-structure of imposing his own people over others as rulers? Why would Makarfi derail from the idea of subjecting ‘non-Hausa-Fulanis’ to Hausa-Fulani Muslim rule? What kind of insane Muslim would do that your Excellency? Till date, the more I read colonial history and the British construction of ‘Northern Identity’ on utterly imperial and often genocidal ideals, the more I see the outstanding nature of the stride taken by Makarfi in freeing over 30 distinct ethno-national identities from Hausa-Fulani, and in many cases, Muslim domination. Was he any less a Muslim by so doing? Or perhaps more of a peacebuilding Muslim? He saw the risks, exercised ijtihad (independent reasoning), and took his shot against all the odds, and his name goes down IN GOLD as the first to demonstrate that not all Hausa-Fulani Muslims are bent on wiping out other identities or imposing theirs!
But Makarfi could only do so much, and he had his limitations, despite his strides, giant and golden nonetheless … What have you to offer from where he stopped in the quest for equality your Excellency, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero?
Talking about the Muslim attitude to ‘others’, I would draw your kind attention your Excellency, to the developments in the Islamic world, developments which do not essentially deviate from the trajectory of Islam in peacebuilding, from the Medina Charter made between the Jews and the Muslim Believers by Prophet Mohammed (SAW) in 622 AD, to the discourse of scholars like Abdullahi An Naim and Fethullah Gullen, who postulate the need for greater respect for ‘otherness’ by Muslims. You will be impressed to see Muslims championing the cause of human equality as a path to peacebuilding- a perspective that is sadly rare in some tropical climes your Excellency.
In fact your Excellency, a Muslim Based organisation is hosting an International Syposium next month in Washington DC on Peacebuiding. The theme is ‘Peacebuilding and the Hizmet Movement: Global Cases’, and I have been invited to present a paper. I intend to talk about approaches to pluralism: what shall I say about you Your Excellency?
I started by making reference to your roots as an individual- the aim was simply to show that it should not be difficult for you to understand why the recent Kafanchan Crisis is a trend that cannot have effective resolution by sustaining the faulty status-quo. Do not take this as some negative phenomena, but as a factor that should motivate you to effect more innovative strategies and strategic decisions for effective peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The huge investments into the traditional peacebuilding measures which include Security Measures (as you rightly observed a few days ago, it will not build peace), and Judicial Measures (commissions of inquiry), have proved expensive with little or nothing strategic, intelligent or lasting to show.
Yes, you have to make political decisions, and sometimes ‘humanity’ is essentially ‘down the ladder’ on a Politician’s ‘strategic list’. So I will understand whatever measures you take in building peace. We do our part … the sun rises and falls again and again through the ages … and posterity shall tell the tale … but it seems that the human nature in its dignity, is essentially incapable of perpetual subjugation. I often think about those words of Jefferson- even though he was himself wanting in many respects:
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’- Thomas Jefferson, July 04 1776, US Declaration of Independence.
Yours in Human Equality
Kajit John Paul
Researcher on Peacebuilding and Constitutionalism in Multi-identity postcolonial societies
University of Edinburgh
