By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Titled "Diasporan Nigerian Scholars Fault US Report on Corruption, Insecurity," the report quoted Gwamna and Agbese as describing the US State Department’s 2018 human rights report on Nigeria, which every sober Nigerian knows to be factual and accurate, as "legitimizing the criminal activities of terrorists and extremists in Nigeria," among other utterly ridiculous and indefensibly pedestrian, not to mention willfully mendacious, farrago of nonsense passed up as a press statement.
Twitter:
@farooqkperogi
Two important issues competed for my attention this week:
Obasanjo’s uncharacteristically explosive public statement on Boko Haram and
Fulani herders and the dissimulation of two US-based pro-regime apologists who
are misleading the Nigerian public into believing that they are representatives
of “Nigerian scholars in the diaspora.”
The news media reported former president Olusegun Obasanjo
to have said that Boko Haram’s enduring homicidal fury was a manifestation of “West
African Fulanization” and that the relentlessly broadening menace of murderous
Fulani herders all over the country was being done in the service of “African
Islamization.”
When people called my attention to these statements, I immediately
dismissed them as improbable claims Obasanjo would make. Whatever you may say about
Obasanjo, I said, you can’t deny that he is probably Nigeria’s most academically
inquisitive former president who is also not given to flippancy. So how could
he equate Boko Haram with “Fulanization” when, in fact, Boko Haram and “Fulanization”
are almost mutually exclusive?
Boko Haram is a predominantly Kanuri phenomenon. Anyone who
has even a faint familiarity with northern Nigerian history would know that
Kanuri and Fulani people are historical adversaries, although the passage of
time, colonial and post-colonial northernization policy, and semi-ritualized “joking
relationship” (Kanuri and Fulani people now playfully make fun of each other,
such as calling each other “slaves”) have eased the historical tensile stress
between the two groups.
Many scholars place the incipience of the historical
animosity between the Kanuri and the Fulani to the time of Usman Dan Fodiyo’s
jihad. The Kanuri, who have been Muslims since at least the 9th
century (making them probably the first ethnic group to embrace Islam in West
Africa), froze off Dan Fodiyo’s jihad, whose goal was to “reform” Islam where
it already existed and to replace traditional power structures with Dan Fodiyo’s
protégés who were invariably Fulani.
Although Dan Fodiyo failed in his bid to take over Kanuri
land, his version of Islam and the political structure he established predominate
in contemporary northern Nigeria, as exemplified, for example, by the fact that
the Sultan of Sokoto, a descendant of Dan Fodio, is higher in rank in the
hierarchy of northern Nigerian traditional rulers than the Shehu of Borno. So,
if anything, Boko Haram would actually love to “de-Fulanize” Nigeria and West
Africa.
It is also problematic to say that the activities of
nihilistic Fulani predators all over Nigeria are inspired by a “West African
Islamization” agenda. Perhaps the greatest challenge to that narrative is the
fact that Muslims are also victims of the wildly murderous rage of these anarchic
brutes. In fact, at the moment, northern Muslims are disproportionate victims
of their sanguinary brutalities. It doesn’t make sense to advance an
Islamization agenda by killing other Muslims.
Obasanjo, more than any past president or head of state,
should know this. Fortunately, it has turned out that the news media
mischaracterized what Obasanjo actually said.
This was the statement that instigated the misleading headlines: “It is no longer an
issue of lack of education and lack of employment for our youths in Nigeria
which it began as; it is now West African Fulanization, African Islamization
and global organized crimes of human trafficking, money laundering, drug
trafficking, gun trafficking, illegal mining and regime change.”
In this quote, Obasanjo didn’t equate Boko Haram with
Fulanization and murderous herders with Islamization. After reading the entire
speech, it became clear that he only said Boko Haram’s ultimate goal was the
Islamization of West Africa, which is accurate especially because the group has
transmogrified from a ragtag of Kanuri holy terrors to the “West African”
branch of ISIS with territorial expansionist ambitions.
It is also difficult to sustain a logical defense against
the charge that the Fulani nihilists who are on a murdering spree all over the
nation aren’t on a “Fulanization” agenda because they are dispossessing people
of their lands and reterritorializing places that are uninhabited as a result
of their pogroms. This is as true in Benue as it is in Zamfara.
But it isn’t the fact that Obasanjo is right that should
trouble us; it is the fact that, of all people, it is Obasanjo who is saying
this. As a retired northern Nigerian military general told me on the phone a
few days ago when we discussed this, that Obasanjo, a defiantly pan-Nigerian
enthusiast who had never been publicly associated with sub-nationalist
proclivities, would talk of “Fulanization” and “Islamization” in any context is
the biggest indication of how much Buhari has destroyed faith in the
desirability of Nigeria’s continuity as a country.
From proclaiming IPOB a “terrorist” organization and
instructing the mass slaughters of its unarmed members while overprotecting
murderous Fulani brigands who have been called “the fourth deadliest known
terrorist group” in the world by the Global Terrorism Index, to appointing a
security council that is almost exclusively Muslim and northern, to his
unprecedented levels of nepotism and small-mindedness, etc. Buhari has shown
that he doesn’t care if Nigeria collapses under the weight of his thoughtlessness,
toxic sub-nationalism, and incompetence.
Diasporan
Intellectual Imposters
Several people on Twitter called my attention to the
existence of a politically partisan, pro-government association that calls
itself the “Association of Nigerian Scholars in Diaspora [sic]." People
wanted to know if I was a member of the association—or if I had any familiarity
with its existence and work.
People reached out to me because the association issued a tendentious press statement on May 20 commending the reappointment of CBN governor
Godwin Emefiele and urging Buhari to retain his incompetent service chiefs even
in the face of the escalating loss of lives and the deepening and widening of
the theater of insecurity throughout Nigeria.
I had never heard of the association and have never met
anyone who has, although the Vanguard described
it as the “umbrella organisation of Nigerian scholars in the Diaspora.” It
turned out that the statement was signed by Professor Bitrus Gwamna, whom I met
last year in Columbia, Missouri, during the annual convention of the Zumunta
Association, USA Inc., an association of northern Nigerians in the US.
A search of “Association of Nigerian Scholars in Diaspora” on
Google yielded another disgracefully pro-regime propaganda signed by Professor
Gwamna and Professor Pita Agbese (famous journalist Dan Agebese’s younger
brother, whom I also met in Missouri) on behalf of the "Association of
Nigerian Scholars in Diaspora [sic]."
![]() |
Pita Agbese |
Titled "Diasporan Nigerian Scholars Fault US Report on Corruption, Insecurity," the report quoted Gwamna and Agbese as describing the US State Department’s 2018 human rights report on Nigeria, which every sober Nigerian knows to be factual and accurate, as "legitimizing the criminal activities of terrorists and extremists in Nigeria," among other utterly ridiculous and indefensibly pedestrian, not to mention willfully mendacious, farrago of nonsense passed up as a press statement.
I initially thought the names of these gentlemen, for whom I
had a lot of regard, were fraudulently used without their knowledge or
permission by pro-regime propagandists in Nigeria. But my preliminary findings
show that Professor Agbese, who lives in the same city with Professor Gwamna,
has a record of pro-regime propaganda, particularly in support of the military.
For instance, in September 2018, six months after his
vituperative press statement against the US State Department and in defense of
the military’s horrendous human rights abuses against innocent civilians, he
organized a “conference” in Minnesota where he invited Nigerian military
generals to come “educate” Americans on the military’s “successes” in fighting
terrorism and other forms of insecurity.
His public participation in Facebook forums, particularly
Idoma-themed Facebook groups, also shows that he is an unabashed apologist for
the Buhari regime—and for the Nigerian military. I have no idea what Professor Agbese’s
connection is to the Buhari regime and to the military in particular, nor do I
care.
Nevertheless, I want to alert the Nigerian public to the
fact that the "Association of Nigerian Scholars in Diaspora" does not
represent all Nigerian scholars who live abroad. It is a two-man association
that isn’t even formally registered in the US—or anywhere in the world.
Many of us who have a heightened moral conscience, whose
intellect isn't for sale, who cherish decency, who aren’t two-bit mercenary
intellectuals, and who are intensely aware of the avoidable abyss Buhari is obstinately
leading Nigeria to won’t ever be part of such an association.