From Southern Kaduna with tears: Political history of an unending crisis

As the Kaduna State government and the Federal Government struggle to curtail the latest round of violence in the Southern Kaduna. MOSES ALAO takes a look at the political history of the crisis in the zone, concluding that the last is yet to be heard.

If the deep-seated distrust and resentment, which have permeated the southern part of Kaduna State for decades now, are anything to go by, then the crisis in the region will not go away anytime soon, informed analysts have stated.

The crisis, which has reached the inglorious point of being regarded as a battle of attrition between the Fulani and other tribes in Southern Kaduna, has continued to be the underbelly of whatever peace or progress recorded by successive governments in Kaduna State over the years.

With each outbreak of violence resulting in the deaths of people and destruction of properties, the Southern Kaduna menace has remained intractable and destructive for a long time and each outbreak had always been underpinned by the inability to decisively solve the last one. For instance, as stories doing the rounds had it, the latest round of violence were reportedly as a result of the post-2011 presidential election mayhem in Kaduna State, in which some people felt the other group had the upper hand. On a regular basis, Southern Kaduna, like no other area in the North-Western part of the country, witness fresh spree of violence in reprisals that leave deep wounds on the psyche of the people, wounds that would fester and become the very foundation for the next round of violence at a future time.

Comprising eight local governments namely; Kauru, Kachia, Zango-Kataf, Kaura, Kagarko, Jaba, Jema’a, Sanga, Southern Kaduna, according to Southern Kaduna World, a website showcasing the zone, had about 60 ethnic communities, with the major ones being Bajju, Ham, Oegworok, Atyap, Gbagyi, Gwong, Ninzom, Akulu, Takad, Sholio, Adara and Numana. The Hausa/Fulani ethnic group is, however, also spread across the zone, a development which, according to different versions of history, has been largely responsible for the unending crisis in the area.

Unequally divided into two camps including the ethnic communities, who are mostly Christians, on one side and the predominantly-Muslim Hausa/Fulani minority, on the other, with the two camps always going for each other’s jugular at the slightest provocation, Southern Kaduna , informed observers noted, had never been at ease. While there have been different positions on the underlying reason for the incessant crisis in Southern Kaduna, with many people always citing religious differences, informed observers of developments in the area have maintained that religion might be secondary or tertiary in the crisis that always brought sorrow, tears and blood to that part of Kaduna anytime there was an outbreak of violence. They noted that ethnic hostility, more than religion, had always been responsible for the crisis.

Renowned scholar of Northern extraction, Professor A.D. Yahaya, in one of his books, identified that the area, once known as Southern Zaria in the pre-independence days, was backward economically, noting that different sources put this down to the sparse population of these areas, and their lack of viable internal sources of revenue. But another renowned scholar and now United States-based professor of political science, Rotimi Suberu, in a treatise entitled “Ethnic Minorities and Political Turbulence in Kaduna State,” published in one of the journals of IFRA-Nigeria, noted that Southern Kaduna indigenes believed that their area had been deliberately underdeveloped and neglected by the emirate officials before the creation of local governments. For those who claim to know, the latter position underlined hostility in Southern Kaduna, the latest of which has reportedly claimed hundreds of lives since it resurfaced a few weeks ago, as the ethnic communities who are believed to be in the majority still see themselves being reportedly oppressed by the minority Hausa/Fulani in the area while the latter reportedly always become aggressive in also protecting its rights.