Opinion: Jibrin’s hubris – By MINABERE IBELEMA
Last Tuesday, there was this intriguing headline in The Punch: “PDP BOT Chairman declares support for RUGA.” My initial reaction was a sinking feeling. At a time when the polity is in dire need of calming overtures, such a declaration can only stoke the fire.
Still, I was eager to hear out Senator Walid Jibrin. Perhaps he would offer Solomonic justifications that would do the opposite. Perhaps, he would correspondingly declare assurances that what opponents fear are not to be. But there was none of that.
To his credit still, Jibrin, a Fulani, sounded high-minded and statesmanlike. But one doesn’t have to read too closely between the lines to be reminded of the fable about a big, bad wolf and three little pigs. Like an innocuous visitor, the wolf went knocking at the door of each pig’s cottage and calmly requesting, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”
To this came the response, “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.” And the wolf threatened: “Then, I will huff and I will puff and I will blow your house down.”
Like the wolf, Jibrin coyly appealed to Southerners to let in RUGA. Unlike the wolf, he didn’t overtly threaten to blow the house down. Yet in linking the project and peace, the implication is unmistakable. Remarkably, such linkage is recurrent.
“I am calling on the Southerners, the Igbo, the Yoruba, among others, to embrace it, even though the project is not compulsory,” Jibrin is quoted as saying.
“I am not in APC, I am a PDP chieftain. But when we talk of development and security, we should leave anything about politics, religion and tribe.
“Whoever is ruling in Nigeria, if he brings any programme that will do away with insecurity, killings and will take care of the welfare of the people, I will go by that.… That is why I am and we Fulani commend the Federal Government for introducing the RUGA project in the country.”
This all sounds remarkably high-minded and patriotic, except that the devil is in the detail. To begin with, the fact that Fulani herders have been responsible for a vast majority of the mass killings makes the linkage between RUGA and peace subtly bellicose.
And then there is the disingenuous appeal to opponents to eschew “politics, religion and tribe” in considering RUGA. But haven’t opponents made the case that RUGA has a parochial agenda for the advancement of one ethnic group and religion?
Jibrin himself makes this case, apparently unwittingly. “I and our tribe have embraced the programme,” he is quoted as saying. “RUGA project includes the provision of hospitals, schools, water supply and electricity, among other facilities, which will have a direct bearing on the lives of the herders.”
It just happens that herders are almost all Muslim and predominantly Fulani. Yet, somehow Jibrin doesn’t see how their support for RUGA has anything to do with politics, religion or ethnicity.
The one benefit to non-herders is that RUGA will “boost food security in the country,” Jibrin said, almost as an afterthought. But those who reject RUGA on their lands have heard this before and still say “not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.”
At this point in the discussion then, it is rather patronising to keep making this a selling point. That is, in addition to stopping herder violence.
Perhaps, the basis for the rejection needs to be stated equally repeatedly — and bluntly. Those who don’t want RUGA on their lands are not daft. They are well aware of the economic benefits, and, in fact, that is the secondary reason for the rejection. The economic benefits will go primarily to one ethnic group, the Fulani.
More than that, the concern is that RUGA will make the Fulani the only ethnic group in the country to have large territories of land in every state to call their own. In effect, they will become indigenes in every state. That is what is meant by the ethnic agenda, the Fulanisation of Nigeria.
By not addressing this concern, Jibrin is either thumbing his nose at it or claiming a lack of awareness. Given that he otherwise sounded so statesmanlike, one has to discount the first possibility. And that leaves the even less plausible explanation that he didn’t know. In that case, I am hoping he reads this column. Else someone who reads it and has access to him should please draw his attention to it.
Thereafter, Jibrin might want to give another interview in which he disabuses RUGA opponents of this concern. That will do a lot more good in promoting the peace and development that he seems so passionate about.
In any case, he said that 12 states in the North — including Nasarawa in the Middle Belt — are already implementing RUGA. That’s exactly one-third of the states in Nigeria, and these are the states in the direst need of economic development. So, given the visceral opposition to the project in the South and much of the Middle Belt, wouldn’t it be best to let things be?
Why stoke the political fire? Why call on “the Southerners, the Igbo, the Yoruba, among others, to embrace it,” albeit voluntarily? They have all spoken separately, collectively, loudly and angrily against having RUGA on their lands. By still urging them to embrace it, Jibrin is posturing to know better what is good for them. And that is hubris.
Back to RUGA as a means of stemming violence, that is largely a ruse. Sure, it will remove a major element of friction between herders and farmers. But villainy resides in the hearts of men, and it will find expression whatever the context. Establishing RUGA beyond its natural zones is likely to open many more fronts for ethno-religious violence. Punch
