The Roots of Banditry: A Fulani Perspective (III)

The first and second parts of this essay discussed some salient issues around banditry and its implications on the northern nay Nigerian society. While it should be clear to an objective mind that banditry cannot be in any way associated with the Fulani as an ethnic group, one honest question has to be answered. Why […]

The first and second parts of this essay discussed some salient issues around banditry and its implications on the northern nay Nigerian society. While it should be clear to an objective mind that banditry cannot be in any way associated with the Fulani as an ethnic group, one honest question has to be answered. Why is it possible to successfully attribute banditry to the Fulani and no other ethnic groups?

The answer is prominence. If you send a boy to steal money, there will be two beneficiaries, i.e. two thieves. If the mission fails and the boy gets caught, there is likely going to be one boy out there to be hanged as the thief. This is the scenario in banditry between foot soldiers and their enablers.

The kingpins and tycoons, who run the show in kidnapping and banditry, know their onions. They understand that while they can provide the lethal weapons, feeding and logistics to fund their criminal business, they need a certain category of people with certain attributes and qualities to do the physical aspects of the dirty job.

The herders – majority of who are Fulani – have all the prerequisites to be used as foot soldiers in the lucrative business that is banditry in Nigeria. Secondly, more than anyone else, they have been put in a dangerous, hopeless socioeconomic situation that makes them susceptible to recruitment into these criminalities.

From Sokoto, Kaduna, Zamfara, Kogi to Niger and other states that suffer endemic banditry, the worst hit areas are those closer to the forests and bushes that are used as dens by the terrorists. Similarly, most dangerous locations on the highways are usually along deep forests that allow bandits close access to their settlements and discourage manhunts.

Now, forests and bushes are to herders what cities are to urban people. With or without banditry, the forest is home and bush a resource for not only nomads, but all practicing herders. You own the city, they own the forest. It is no brainer, therefore, that a business in the forest can best be handled by its owners.

Herders’ unlimited knowledge, experience and natural domestication of these forests make them the most qualified and unfortunately, available manpower to operate this dreadful terrorism. Furthermore, herding communities around the world are known for abundance of physical, physiological, psychological and emotional skills required for combat and rugged life.

This is partly because unlike sedentary life, a nomadic lifestyle is very rudimentary, flexible and less possessive. A nomad, for instance, has barely much to lose other than his life and cattle. He has no address, property or investments, nor does he have affiliations to the typical desires of the modern world to protect or miss.

Furthermore, unlike sedentary life, nomadism exposes the body to a rugged physical experience. Walking from Sokoto to Adamawa and back in months transforms and militarizes the body. For the nomads and herders, the rain that makes you shiver, the sun that makes you sweat, the hunger that shakes your intestines, the thirst that burns your heart, those sorrowful lions and tigers are all a normal thing of the day, just as the Hausa adage says jiki ya saba ‘the body is used to it’. For comparison, it is this kind of stamina that makes soldiers superhuman compared to civilians.

However, this sociocultural lifestyle alone does not make herders more prone to violent crimes without being accompanied by the economic dislocation of herding communities in the country, especially in the North West. For one, it is an undeniable fact that herding is as old as human history itself, and that herders – of various ethnic groups – have been part of this country for as long as history remembers.

The fact that we did not have these problems involving herders in the past centuries of our existence should tell us that the systematic involvement of this category of our population in this specific crime has its roots in socioeconomic imbalances and injustices that have turned these people into the monster that they are today. It is the same as other social crises confronting Nigeria.

In summary, the numerical prevalence of herders among bandits is due to their social lifestyle and a severe socioeconomic dislocation over the time. Their prevalence as the executioners and foot soldiers has led to their prominence in these despicable acts, and this has been mischievously used as the basis for stereotyping and demonising a whole ethnic group that the majority of the herding population belongs to.

Thus, the prominence of Fulani herders in banditry is not a matter of their ethnic identity, but a social crises occasioned by their readily accustomed way of life that suites the prerequisites for this evil activities, as well as the socioeconomic dislocations occasioned by natural factors and wrong-headed policies that have made these populations standby armies for criminalities. Whoever finds himself in these conditions is likely to end in a similar way.

As always, the solutions to these crises are simple to enumerate, but extremely difficult to undertake. It involves two different approaches. One of these is to crush the terrorists and their sponsors who are holding arms against the state. The most important solution, however, is to solve the underlying conditions that cost these citizens their decency and honour.

But, wait; are these not the same prescriptions proffered for all social crises in Nigeria, ala Boko Haram, IPOB, Niger Delta militants, etc? Yes. Have these crises been resolved? No. Why? Failure of the leadership. If that is the case, then the first and indeed the only solution to this and certainly other myriad of problems is good leadership. I would then prescribe thus: fix the leadership and the leadership fixes the nation.

Ahmadu Shehu, Ph.D wrote from Kaduna via [email protected]