Foremost historian and a Second Republic senator, Professor Banji Akintoye, speaks with BOLA BADMUS on the security situation in the country, the controversial Ruga programme, the fragile unity of the country, among other salient national issues. Excerpts:
The state of the nation has generated concerns with individuals and groups calling on the Federal Government to take urgent action. How does the condition of the country sit with you?
There is a lot of noise concerning what is happening, what the Fulani are bringing to the South West now. We must not give the impression that it is focused only on us; they are against all the peoples who are not Fulani in Nigeria and they have made their statement. They don’t hide their intentions. They say that their objective is to drive people from their lands and take them; that they would kill, maim, destroy and take the land of these people. As far as they are concerned, it is a war and some of their leaders are already saying that if there is a war, the Yoruba are the ones that would first run and things like that. It means they are already fighting a war and some of their leaders have been saying it.
I remember that some of their intellectuals said as back as 2013 and 2014 that the North was ready for war and the South was not and that we should be careful about what we did and what we said. We are seeing the manifestation of all of that now. It is a war going on. It is no longer politics and the objective of the war obviously is what the Fulani themselves are saying.
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I was in Benue State on January 5, 2018. I was part of a delegation sent from the South West to join a delegation from the South East, a delegation from the South South and one from the Middle-Belt to go and commiserate with the governor and people of that state over the large number of Benue people killed on January 1, 2018. It was a large gathering. The governor had gathered leaders of his state to come and receive us. After our leaders had expressed their commiseration, the governor stood up and said, ‘Thank you. I need to let you know that what has happened to us is big; many villages have been destroyed, many people have been killed, but the people who did it are now saying that they are coming back’. Governor Samuel Ortom brought out a letter they wrote which he said he got from the same people in December 2017, when they said they were coming because the state made a law to control open grazing. They came on January 1 and now they had written another letter to say they were coming back.
The letter says, ‘Mr Governor, people of Benue State, we see that you are mourning, doing mass burial and so on, but what is happening to you now is a little thing compared to the bigger ones that are coming, and the problem your people have with us in Benue State is that all those Tivs and so on people believe that the land they have lived for thousands of years is their land, it is not their land, it belongs to us Fulani. And we are not talking of Benue State alone, we are talking of all the peoples of Nigeria and we will take the land, no matter what they do. We have accumulated weapons and monies for the war, we have asked the Fulani living in the rest of West Africa to come and join us to take our land from the people of Nigeria and we are ready to fight this war for years and years to come and if you think your federal government can help you, you are deceiving yourselves’.
So, that is what is happening. It is not we who are putting war into their mouth. Some people say we should not talk like that; that we are stigmatising the Fulani. We are not stigmatising, we are just repeating what we heard from them.
As a historian of note, does the Nigeria land and territory belong to the Fulani?
The Nigeria land belongs to the hundreds of the peoples who live in it. The Yoruba have been here since the beginning of time, as far as we know. We don’t know of any other place where the Yoruba came from; ditto the Igbo, the Ijaw, Edo, Nupe… It is our land.
Why are the Fulani now laying claim to it?
It is a statement of intention, not of fact. They are saying, ‘it is our land and we are going to take it from you’. It is a declaration of intent, not a statement of fact. The land is not theirs, but they are into an old-time tribal conquest mentality where a tribe would launch an attack on a neighbouring tribe and try to conquer them and all that. Mankind has reached a point at which that type of primitive war is not what people do anymore. Our Fulani people think they can do it, but they obviously cannot do it.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has written an open letter on the matter, so also has the Alaafin. The Ooni of Ife paid a visit to the Villa in Abuja to express his concern. What do you take away from all this?
Yes, those are the leaders of our nation. You mentioned the Ooni, the Alaafin and former President Olusegun Obasanjo. How much higher than that do you want to get in Yorubaland? Those are the highest-ranked people in our land and they are saying that these things that are happening threaten the unity of our country; they portend chaos and dissolution of our country. If you have any consciousness for the common goal and desire that the common goal be served, it would be difficult for you to disagree with the Alaafin, the Ooni and General Obasanjo on this matter.
General Obasanjo is a little different from the other two. He has been in politics. He has been president. He has done things that you can count against him. There are people who are saying that he has no right and so on and so forth, but they are talking nonsense. If at any given point in time, there is a threat to the society, every citizen has a duty to speak up. He has spoken up and we thank him for it. He could keep quiet and watch people suffer and keep getting brutalised and killed on a daily basis and he could watch crowds of people accumulate in refugee camps, but he chose not to keep quiet. He chose to warn the people who are ruling us about the danger ahead. He chose to point out that this could affect the very existence of the country. I think he did a right thing.
What do you make of the attitude of the presidency to the former president’s letter?
Of course, we know they wouldn’t respond positively. [President Muhammadu] Buhari is not capable of responding to anybody; he has an agenda of his own, deep inside his heart and mind. He doesn’t even talk to the people around him. He doesn’t listen to anybody. He doesn’t argue with anybody. He doesn’t explain anything to anybody. He is just one strange bundle of unknown motives.
Former President Obasanjo suggested a summit to arrest the situation. Is a summit the solution, given that there had been similar parleys called confab in the past without any result?
Yes, he just looked around to see what we could do now and he came up with the idea of another confab, but most Nigerians would ask what we need another confab for. What we need seriously now is to create a situation in which the people of Nigeria can face one another across the negotiating table – not a conference – so that we can negotiate the future together. What do we want? Do we want Nigeria? If we want Nigeria, what are the conditions? So, the Igbo can say okay, we would be glad to stay in Nigeria if the following conditions are met. The Yoruba people could say the same. The Hausa and the Fulani could say the same and we can negotiate and bargain and come to an agreement. We had a conference as good as we possibly could in 2014 but nothing has come out of it. When people negotiate with the international community assisting the negotiation, nobody can throw away whatever we came up with.
The Federal Government tried to justify the establishment of Ruga settlements. What do you say to that?
That they should allow Fulani to come and Ruga? It is the Fulani that Ruga; Yoruba people don’t Ruga. Igbo people don’t Ruga.
Don’t you see any benefit in the initiative?
No, no. let Fulani come and take your land and establish a rearing area. Ruga is Rural Grazing Area so that you would cut out some part of Yoruba land, some enclaves in Yoruba land and declare them areas where Fulani can rear their cattle. Yoruba people don’t rear cattle. When you talk of cattle rearing, it is only the Fulani that rear cattle. They are the only people in Nigeria who rear cattle. The Hausa don’t rear cattle. The Hausa are the nearest to them; they don’t rear cattle. You are saying we are going to cut out certain enclaves in your region and we are going to give such enclaves to the Fulani to rear their cattle in there, what insolence is that? Does it mean that simply because we are in the same country, you have the right to treat us the way you like?
I may not be able to talk for other people in Nigeria but I can talk for Yoruba people. We are a people who have been living in a very heavily urbanised homeland for more than a thousand years. Somebody is now saying they would cut out certain enclaves which they would give to the Fulani to rear cattle. You are asking that the Yoruba people should step back on their civilisation so as to make room for cattle rearing. That is what is being suggested.
If the Federal Government is so sure that they want to improve cattle production in Nigeria, they should do what Argentina did. Individuals who have the resources to start, they should encourage them. What Argentina did at the beginning was to encourage such people; retired civil servants, retired politicians, retired generals, retired academicians. They encourage them to go and take land and the government would help in some way.
The government can now say any Yoruba man who wants to establish a ranch, we will provide the following help. We will expose you to what ranching is, maybe send you to Argentina for a week or two to go and see what it is like. People who like to own ranches will go there and study and come back. If you want to acquire a land, the state government would help and so on. There would be no problem actually. If you want 100 or 200 acres, you can buy from your own people, from your own family and start a ranch. The government would provide security so that your ranch would be safe. That is what a ranch is. The ranch contains a small house in which the rancher lives with his family; a beautiful surrounding, where he can also create a little farm to plant crops. The rest is open to grazing the cattle, but it is enclosed: your cattle don’t run away; nobody comes into the ranch; you provide water for the cattle and you make money.
Ranching is a very profitable business. In a few years, you could become a very rich person. Argentina became the largest meat exporter in the world by consciously encouraging their citizens – those who are well-off among them – to take to ranching. We can encourage Yoruba people to take to ranching and I know that many groups are now asking the governments of the South West to consider that very seriously so that people can go into ranching. I know that that is happening already. You can start a ranch and become very rich in five or six years because cow meat is a very profitable business.
But all this rearing of cattle anywhere and creating enclaves where the Fulani will be able to establish kingdoms of their own and intimidate their neighbours in the villages around, where they will drive people away, what they are doing now is what they would do: killing, destruction and kidnapping. That is what they would do if they have their own enclaves that the Federal Government wants. Those enclaves would become centres for intimidating, killing, brutalising our people, we don’t want it. We are too old a civilisation to be compelled to accept that. This is not arrogance, it is a fact that we have been living in towns and cities for more than a thousand years before the first white man came to the coast of West Africa in the 15th Century. We were already a very heavily urbanised nation. Nobody can, at this point, come and tell us to move back, that enclaves be carved out of your country for people who have no skill other than to roam around with cattle. No.
By the way, the Fulani are the largest single nomadic people on earth today and our duty to them is to tell them no, you cannot continue this thing. We need to modernise meat production in our land, encourage the men who have the means to start ranches in their own parts of the country, not bring people from outside.
Some people are suggesting that the reason why Federal Government was pushing for Ruga settlements was because the owners of the cows are the rich and those in the power equations in the country.
That is why they are using federal power and resources to help them.
Do you also agree?
That is what is happening. The owners of the cattle are not the people rearing the cattle. The cattle rearer has been paid with cows. He may have a few among those he rears. But if you see a herder with 100 cows, he probably has four or five among them; the rest belongs to big men.
These big men can acquire land in their area and start modern ranches. They don’t have to come and push it on us. They are using the resources of our government to push it upon us, to allow for land in our area for people who want to rear cattle in the primitive way, for some big men in their own part of the North, what is the logic behind that? How do you rule a country like that? How do you handle the affairs of a country in that kind of insensitive way? If you want your cattle to be ranched, create the ranches in the part of your country. We don’t have as much grassland as you do.
Now, the governor of Kano State said let all the cow herders come to Kano State and that he would give them land there. He said it last year. They are using cow as the arrowhead of a programme of conquest of land for the Fulani. That is what they are using it for.
What do you advise Buhari to do to avoid war in the country?
I don’t know what to advise Buhari because Buhari doesn’t listen to advice.
If the situation continues, will it not result in war?
We must pray it doesn’t, but it could and the outcome of a war cannot be predicted. Those who think they are ready for war today may be the persons who will regret it in the end.
Why do you say so?
[Adolf] Hitler was ready for war. He regretted it in the end. His people regretted it in the end. He destroyed his country in the end. The others were not ready for war. Britain was not ready for war. France was not ready for war. France was easily overrun within a few weeks, but in the end, who won? Britain and France. That is it. So, you never can tell what the outcome of war will be. Don’t talk of war because you don’t know what will come out as a result of it in the end. We don’t talk about war. We know what war is. We fought wars in the 19th century for 100 years. We know what war is and we don’t talk about it easily the way some northern leaders talk about it. We know what war is and we want to preserve civilisation at all costs. If you want to preserve civilisation, you cannot be talking of war.
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