By Joseph Danlami Bagobiri
(continued from yesterday)
The governor has described the Fulani as vindictive and un-forgiven people. This may simply be the projection of the governor’s own mindset to an entire people.
Our experience living with Fulani for decades does not prove this. The indigenous communities of Southern Kaduna have been living peacefully with the Fulani herdsmen who came to join them as neighbors until the architects of the view that the average Fulani man is vindictive and un-forgiving came into power.
The mayhem and killing with impunity in Southern Kaduna and the Middle Belt region and beyond by the Fulani herdsmen, using sophisticated weapons is a recent development fueled by this kind of philosophy. To present any person or group of persons as genetically revengeful and to go ahead to support and sponsor a praxis of retaliation as we are witnessing in Kaduna State today, is not only a detestable behavior but an evil mentality that will not engender social cohesion and harmonious coexistence in a plural and heterogeneous setting such as ours.
The natives and herdsmen of Southern Kaduna have always had their differences as is common in herdsmen and farmers relationship everywhere in the world. These differences sometime end up in clashes and skirmishes resulting from invasion of each other’s spaces, but such differences have assumed an unprecedented height under the current government with the use of very sophisticated weapons of destruction.
What we are witnessing in Kaduna state is not the so called un-forgiving spirit of the Fulani people towards others, but the transfer of a hate mentality from a handful of people in leadership within the state to an entire ethnic group, with disastrous consequences.
God created all humans with rationality and the milk of human kindness in their hearts. This often shows itself in love expressed in mercy, compassion and forgiveness. No rational human person is created without the disposition to overlook some offenses committed against him or her. Only those with dead consciences are indisposed to show compassion and forgiveness. A world that does not forgive is doomed to fail. An eye for an eye philosophy renders the whole world blind it is said.
Describing an entire people as un-forgiven is not a plus but a minus for such people. If the Fulani stop the aggression in Southern Kaduna today, there will be peace in the environment and the entire State. The non-retaliation of Christians to great abuses and violations of their human rights is termed as weakness, which is not correct. God has put the feeling of mercy and compassion in each of us regardless of our ethnicity and religious affiliations.
If Southern Kaduna had been trouble shooting people, they too would have established militia groups and go on rampage in domains other than theirs. But alas this is not what is happening. They are being attacked in their sleep and places of worship right in the land that divine providence has given as their own. And even at that, they are told not to defend themselves in the face of aggression.
The earlier we rediscover this truth of conscience (that all rational beings are imbued with a spirit of mercy and compassion) and begin to live this truth to the full, the better for our society.
Therefore the promotion of the philosophy that any offense committed is like a debt that must be avenged for either now or in the future is not only false and un-wholesome but it is the figment and projection of the personal idiosyncrasies of a few but powerful people. This mindset if not checked and corrected has the potential to erode the fabric of any social organization.
Government Should Stop Impunity In Southern Kaduna
The killings with impunity in Southern Kaduna must not be allowed to continue. And government in the state has a special and irreplaceable role in bringing this scourge to an end. The current government in the state must follow the example of past governments by initiating measures that would unify rather than divide the people of the state on ethnic and religious lines as this government has been doing since its inception. We have had our challenges on harmonious coexistence in the past. But past governments demonstrated statesmanship in governance by bringing stakeholders across board to parley on how to resolve our indifference.
The current administration in the state seems to dread this kind of interface, which had proven to be effective in the past. Government must change its attitude from alignment with people of one ethno-religious group in the state, she must resist the temptation of acting as the mouthpiece of one group against others and begin to display true statesmanship in seeing and treating the entire state as its constituency. The current government got it all wrong right from the beginning when it openly stated that she will treat the citizens of the state not on the merits of their being Kaduna state indigenes but on the basis of who voted and who did not vote for the party that won the election.
This is a wrong premise to operate under a democracy such as ours, which promotes and respects diversity particularly on political matters. We cannot all become members of one party in Kaduna state. It is unfortunate that this kind of segregation mindset seems to be guiding government’s policies, utterances, appointments, and the distribution of infrastructure for development and social initiatives.
This government has taken discrimination on religious and ethnic lines to a height that has never been witnessed in the history of Kaduna state.
Today we are left with a situation where there is much concentration of development in the North and Central Senatorial districts to the utter neglect of the Southern Senatorial District, which is predominantly Christian. The Northern part of the State monopolizes the Executive, the legislature, the Judiciary and occupies all slots of federal appointments such as the ministerial and those of parastatals. The lopsidedness in political appointments, locations of infrastructural facilities, and worst still the delineations of political constituencies and polling units show this disgusting mentality of premeditated discrimination and marginalization, which institutionalizes rigging at source.
While the Hausa/Fulani dominated areas in Kaduna State have cornered over 48 Federal Institutions to their domain, southern Kaduna can hardly boast of one of such institutions in her domain. Instead of the current government to work towards redressing this disturbing, inhuman and unjust imbalance, she is rather shamelessly contemplating the removal of the Kaduna State University (KASU) Campus and the College of Education (COE) from Southern Kaduna to his Fulani dominated space. What a shame and a slap to justice, fairness and objectivity in dealing with people.
Government must watch her utterances and actions especially on the following areas:
Her handling of the indigene ship question which deprives the citizens of the state rights to occupy some offices within the state, because these have been given to non-state indigenes and yet the governor makes no effort in finding placements for Southern Kaduna people in places like Katsina and Sokoto states for instance, to justify his negation of the Constitutional principle of indigene ship;
the concentration of key political appointments in the hands of people of one religion; the use of provocative and denigrating language on the issue of the population of Christians and Muslims in Kaduna State;
the deliberate attempt to silence any voice of reason that is at variance with that of government; the abuse of the instruments of governance in the wrongful detention and imprisonment of people government feels un-comfortable with;
the arrogance of showing “we know it all” which disallows wide consultation before embarking on major policy decisions like the feeding program in primary Schools (a misplacement of priority), which has become an avenue for corruption and siphoning of public funds;
and several un-guarded utterances on thorny issues affecting the lives of millions in the state, which are a clear manifestation of the governor’s insensitivity to concerns and plights of many in the state
Bagobiri is the Catholic Bishop of Kafanchan Diocese and Chairman, Southern Kaduna Christian Leader’s Council
* This piece does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Thisage and its owners.
