“How was your trip?” Ibrahim your Fulani guide
asks, taking your right hand in both his hands, avoiding your eyes as he
welcomes you. He has waited for close to an hour under the bridge after the SDP
junction in Gwagwalada. There are no creases of impatience on his face when you
see him from afar. No complaints. Only gratitude that you are interested in his
story and an eagerness to guide you into the lives of pastoralists.
You steal a look at
your phone. You have tweeted about your visit to a model grazing reserve which
promotes sedentariness of pastoralists and teaches modern methods of livestock
breeding and dairy production. People tweet the questions they want answers to:
do the Fulani prefer a nomadic way of life to staying in one place? What is the
conflict between farmers and herders about? Do they have arms?
People tweet their
conclusions and prejudices: the Fulani are a murderous tribe. The Fulani are
bloodthirsty. The Fulani are evil. The Fulani should be driven out of our
lands. The Fulani should be killed.
Twitter
is the sum of all our fears.
Someone tweets at
you to be careful with the Fulani. You want to tweet back and say, you have
lived all your life around Fulani people and that not all Fulani are the same.
But you can see it is not a question. It is a statement, driven on the wheels
of its assuredness. Only facts can respond to this. Only stories of persons
suffering from the same tragedies that we blame them for can douse the wild
flames of propaganda and hate.
Twitter
is the sum of our self-assured ignorance.
You used to think
that herders had an attachment to a nomadic way of life, that it might be hard
to convince pastoralists to become sedentary. Aliyu Ghana, a herder who used to
live in Ghana travelled with his family to the model grazing reserve in
Paiko-Kore when he heard that the reserve had facilities that would keep his family
in one place: pasture, a nomadic school for his children, a vet clinic and
water.
‘I will bring my
father and his family here if everything goes ok,’ he tells you.
You can see in his
eyes that he is disappointed. In the lack of adequate pasture. In the lack of
facilities. But he is thankful there is at least a school he can send his
children to.
Herder after herder
demolishes your theory about the nomadic way of life. They move in search of
pasture and water, to escape conflict and to escape disease. Movement is not so
much cultural as it is borne out of necessity. All Aliyu wants is pasture for
his cattle and a school for his children. He himself has completed basic
Quranic education and attended the same primary school his children now attend.
Blessed
are those who tweet for they will be rewarded now-now.
‘They are just
terrorists,’ someone tweets at you as you explain why there are clashes between
farmers and pastoralists. You check to see which of your tweets he has
responded to direct him to the explanations you have just made. You see that he
was responding to your explanations and that a few people have favorite and
retweeted his tweet. Some have responded to register their agreement with him.
You imagine him, in Lagos with his iPad, far away from the area of conflict and
from reason, nodding as he counts his mentions. Soon he moves on to tweeting
about sports. He has spread the hate and he has forgotten.
Blessed
are those who hate in 140 characters or less.
A herder from Kaura
tells you, in response to the question about the Fulani arming themselves, that
a herder has implements for herding and occasional hunting- daggers, machetes,
perhaps a dane gun. The Fulani man is used to herding with these basic weapons
because of the nature of his existence, he tells you.
‘But if you see
someone with a pistol, an AK-47, or other bigger guns that is not herding. Such
a person has other motives.’
You tweet the
answers that you get, about the other sides of the conflict, the stories of
farmers encroaching and cultivating crops on known cattle grazing paths or
routes; about negligence of some herders that leads to destruction of farmland;
about the pastoralist children who get killed by cattle thieves; about the
proaction of many pastoralist communities in dealing with and settling conflict
with farming communities.
On your way back
after many hours conducting interviews, your guide tells you he can’t take you
all the way because he is receiving visitors. His brother, who lost wife and
child in an accident, is still in the hospital. You are sorry that you kept him
away from grieving. There is no problem, he says.
You take a bus back
into the city, thinking of prejudice and fallacies and half-truths in 140
characters or less.
'there are two sides to a story' has never rung truer in my head. Good read.
ReplyDeleteTwitter; telling single stories in 140 characters or less.....
ReplyDeleteElnathan, I always read your writings. I love the way you write. I don't know why I missed this very important one.
ReplyDeleteI am Tiv, from Benue state. I think your story about clashes between crop farmers and herdsmen would have been much more accurate if you interviewed victims on both sides. You seem to limit your story to cattle rustling, and inadequate grazing facilities. I feel you can do a better story.
You are clearly unaware that herdsmen rape women in their farms. I am a farmer, a victim of Fulani hostilities in Benue. I am not talking based on hear say. On several occasions they have been caught and handed over to the police, where they disappear almost immediately. And the case dies.
Severally they have attacked, and even killed people who challenge them for destroying their crops.
You also omitted to mention ecological problems that derive from overgrazing, like erosion, desertification, and contamination of natural water sources.
You seem to believe the narrative that it is due to inadequate grazing reserves, and encroachment on grazing routes by farmers that cause herdsmen to resort to hostilities.
As a lawyer I expect you to question the propriety of the the said grazing routes/reserves. Land everywhere belongs to individuals, and to the community in some instances. If the land belongs to the community, can someone who is not a member of that community lay claim on that land? How did every one come to believe that Fulani have rights over every land including those outside their ancestral homes?
As Nigerians, Fulani a free to live anywhere. But why is too difficult to preach that if a Fulani man wants to live, say in Benue, to do his business of rearing cattle, he should buy land there, fence it and keep his cattle therein? Instead you people find more appropriate to preach that government should create and equip grazing reserves for Fulani to breed their cattle. Fulani must be special. Is that how they would set aside land for me in Kano to cultivate my crops?
I invite you to Benue state to see for yourself the destruction Fulani have caused, and are still causing, to conquer territories for grazing. May be then you would rewrite your story.
Thanks.