Leadnaija
How can you say that other Nigerians should not use Evans the Kidnapper, Lawrence Anini, Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, AKA Hushpuppi, and Emmanuel Nwude, to stereotype your ethnicities, then you now proceed to use the activities of a handful of criminal elements to stereotype all Fulani and Hausa people?
It is this sort of mass hysteria that led to the brutal murder of the Uromi sixteen.
We Nigerians collectively protest when South Africans do it to us. We call it xenophobia. Yet, we are blind to our own Fulani phobia that is now triggering mob actions here and there.
And now, social media is awash with it.
Stop it! Stereotypes are unreliable because they do not work. That is why we complain when the police stop men with dreadlocks, women wearing trousers, or both genders with tattoos. Such profiling does not serve the purpose of preventing or detecting crime.
In fact, quite the opposite. It makes it even more difficult because of the time wasted on criminalising the innocent.
In terms of number of killings, boundary disputes occurring between indigenous Nigerians, like the Tiv versus Jukun combat, the Ezza-Ezilo conflict, Ife and Modakeke skirmishes, the Aguleri versus Umuleri land conflict, the Onitsha/ Obosi fight, Zango Kataf communal clashes, to mention a few, have collectively led to as many or even more deaths than almost any other crisis in Nigeria besides our uncivil Civil War.
But, we as a country do not label people from these communities as a result of those conflicts.
For every Hushpuppi, there are hundreds of thousands of honest and hardworking Lukumi Yoruba. For each Evans, the Kidnapper, a myriad of South-easterners are developing various states’ economies.
If we do not treat the issue of kidnapping and banditry, which even Lord Lugard had to face a century ago, as a criminal issue rather than an ethnic one, we will never bring this malaise to an end.
It has always been with us. It is just that social media has made news spread instantaneously, which makes the uninformed and unaware think these are new phenomena.
I have spent months alone with Fulani communities in Nguroje when Nigeria did not have GSM technology and the Internet was only a dream. This photo was taken in Gembu in 2000. It is a bit old and blotchy. I am not ashamed to say that I deeply love and have a strong affection for Fufulde folk based on how they treated me.
Indigenous Nigerian Fulani are not aggressive. It is foreign itinerant peoples, who may or may not be Fulbe, that are largely anti-social. If we can police our borders, we will reduce these incidents of insecurity.
Let us not make this a case of Fulani versus the rest of Nigeria. The difference between Nigerians is not Arewa versus Southerners. It is between good and bad people. And we should not overcome the many good people because of the few bad ones.
Rather, we should overwhelm the few bad ones by ensuring unity among the many good Nigerians.
Source: Reno Omokri
