The same applies to the rest of the West African sub-region, the northeast quadrant of Africa and the rest of Africa, south of the Great Sahara. I have already noted the example of Senegal. In Mali, Muslims constitute 90% of the population, and like the majority of Muslims in Northern Nigeria, Muslims in Mali are mostly of the Sunni sect; yet, there has not been communal violence directed against non-Muslims or inter-sectarian violence amongst Muslims in Mali. The Tuareg insurgency in Mali (as well as in northern Niger Republic), is about regional autonomy than about religious intolerance or bigotry. Niger Republic – which shares its southern border with Northern Nigeria – and, in fact, boasts a significant Hausa-Fulani ethnic population, along with being 94% Muslim, has not had a history of ethno-religious violence. Gambia is made up of 95% Muslims; Guinea – 85% Muslim; Sierra Leone – 71% Muslim; and Burkina Faso – 60.5% Muslim. In Ghana, Muslims constitute approximately 45%, yet there has never been any communal violence directed against fellow Muslims or non-Muslims; and Cote d’Ivoire, with 38.6% Muslim population, which approximates the comparative percentages between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria; has equally no history of ethno-religious violence. And one can hardly use the argument of poverty and unemployment to explain the Northern Nigerian outlier. For while such socioeconomic factors are well-documented variables in the dynamics of crime rate, recidivism, demoralization, social dysfunction, etc., they are not dramatically worse in Northern Nigeria than in other parts of West Africa. So, what other factor(s), besides the historical legacy of revolutionary jihad and the socioeconomic variables of poverty and unemployment, help explain the Northern Nigerian anomaly?
One other ethnographic observation is in order with respect to the Hausa-Fulani in comparison to the rest of the West African sub-region, before I get into the explanation I offer for the peculiarity of the Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria. It is most interesting that in the Wet African sub-region, countries with significant numbers of Muslims or Muslim majority countries, but have neither Hausa nor Fulani populations, or have Hausa but no Fulani populations or vice versa, have always had peace and tranquility amongst their Muslim populations as well as between their Muslim and Christian populations.
For example, although there is a significant number of Muslims in Ghana, there are neither Hausas nor Fulanis in Ghana, and Ghana has been in a state of religious tranquility since its independence in 1957.
In Senegal, like in Guinea, they have Fulanis but no Hausas. In Gambia, although the majority of its population is Muslim, they have neither Fulanis nor Hausas; they are primarily made up of two ethnic groups: Wolof and Mandinka. Sierra Leone has a few Fulanis, but no aboriginal Hausa population, except, perhaps, itinerant traders. Mali has some Fulanis but no Hausas. Ivory Coast, like Ghana, has no Hausas or Fulanis. The only exception to the foregoing pattern is: Niger Republic, which shares its southern border with Northern Nigeria. With its majority Muslim population, Niger has a good number of Hausas and Fulanis; yet, it has remained in a state of religious tranquility. The hypothesis I proffer towards the end of this piece, will help explain the seeming anomaly of Niger Republic.
In answer to the foregoing posers, I hazard a fine point as explanation: the psychosocial conundrum of identity crisis for Northern Nigerian Hausa-Fulanis. And I do not make a pathological case of that phenomenon. I merely proffer a perspective, which to me, goes a long way in explaining the irrational destructiveness of ethno-religious violence that periodically occurs and reoccurs in Northern Nigeria. But how can this be so, you ask? Do the Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria not have their own language, history, culture and ancestral land? Let me suggest that in the history of the African’s encounter with non-Africans: Arabs and Western Europeans have had the greatest impact on the contemporary identity of Africans. Of the two—Arabs and Western Europeans—Arabs have had a much longer and more profound impact on the identity of the Africans they encountered, than Western Europeans.
There are two principal mechanisms through which Arabs finagled that greater impact on the identity of the Africans they encountered. The first was through the exchange of genes—inter-breeding. Although that inter-breeding tended to be one-sided: conquering or superordinate Arab males taking African women as wives or concubines; they produced, what, for want of a better term, can be called: “Afro-Arabs.” Such “mulatto” Africans, of which a good number of Fulanis and a few others can be categorized as; were then, used by the colonizing or superordinate Arabs as a buffer class between their ruling aristocracy and the full-blooded majority of their colonized or subordinated African populations. That hybridization, depending on the nature of the socialization of its offspring, can create an internal social and political alienation between such hybridized elements and their full-blooded counterparts; especially if and when the scaffold of a different religious belief system, differential access to formal education—especially the ability to read and write in the Arabic script—and thus, higher social status are thrown into the mix.
Modern examples of the foregoing phenomena include, but are not limited to the preoccupations of English, Spanish and Portuguese slave plantation owners in the Americas; the Anglo-Dutch slave plantations in the Caribbean; the French in colonial Haiti; and, of course, the Anglo-Dutch enterprise in Apartheid South Africa, which consciously and deliberately, artificially constituted a so-called “mix-race” population, which they proceeded to geospatially sequester as a separate “race” which they called: “Coloreds.”
A second mechanism Arabs used in that historical trajectory was: religion. Arabs made effective use of Islam in the colonization, socialization and homogenization of the African peoples they encountered either in the course of commerce, conquest or both. For until a person loses that which constitutes their separate identity from their conqueror or their captor; such a person is still free, through such self-knowledge, despite being physically manacled. The moment they lose their unique cultural identity—language, traditions, customs, music, cuisine, and especially, their belief systems—the eschatological construct that gives their existential being its unique sense of selfhood, meaning and purpose—such a person becomes truly the “slave” of their conqueror or their captor. At that point, there is no longer any need for physical shackles; their mental conditioning is complete and thorough. Pavlovian conditioning has firmly set in. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007) put it in the course of her mental emancipation:
We Muslims have been taught to define life on earth as a passage, a test that precedes real life in the Hereafter. In that test, everyone should ideally live in a manner resembling, as closely as possible, the followers of the Prophet. Didn’t this inhibit investment in improving daily life? Was innovation therefore forbidden to Muslims? Were human rights, progress, women’s rights all foreign to Islam? By declaring our Prophet infallible and not permitting ourselves to question him, we Muslims had set up a static tyranny. By adhering to his rules of what is permitted and what is forbidden, we Muslims suppressed the freedom to think for ourselves and to act as we chose. We froze the moral outlook of billions of people into the mind-set of the Arab desert in the seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves. (pp. 271-272)
Consider, for example, the requirement in Islam that a Muslim only pray and worship Allah in Arabic. That means that in the name of Islam, Arabs managed to get non-Arab Muslims all over the world, to read and write, or, at any rate, to memorize and recite prayers and Koranic verses only in the Arabic tongue. And this is in spite of the fact that there are far many more non-Arab Muslims than there are Arab Muslims; in addition to the fact that not all Arabs are Muslims. The ostensible reason given for that dubious requirement being that translating the word of God as articulated by the Prophet Mohammed, might distort the purity of its original meaning. Therefore, the Koran cannot be translated into the mother tongues of the multilingual multitude of Muslims around the world.
Clearly, Prophet Mohammed was an Arab by nationality and culture. Also, his received wisdom and spiritual insights from Allah were penned by his scribes in the Arabic language. It necessarily had to be so: both Prophet Mohammed, his scribes and his Bedouin audience were Arabs, and therefore, Arabic speakers, except for one: Bilal, who was of Ethiopian origin, though clearly well-versed in spoken and written Arabic. That much is clear and understandable. But surely, one cannot then make the argument that Allah Himself only comprehends the Arabic language; and therefore, would be incapable of understanding what non-Arab Muslims offer up to Him in praise or supplication in their various mother tongues? Consequently, even if it were necessary for non-Arabic Muslims to understand what Prophet Mohammed set down in the Koran in Arabic, they would not need Arabic to communicate directly with Allah in praise or supplication. And no matter what nuances or details may be lost in translation—from the original Arabic into the languages of the multilingual multitude of Muslims—the vast majority of Islamic prayers, supplications, Koranic verses, injunctions and proscriptions, can be effectively translated into and communicated in those international languages with no difficulty whatsoever.
After all, the effective translation of the Christian Bible into the hundreds of languages spoken worldwide by Western Europeans as well as non-Western Christians is proof positive that such a project is infinitely doable. Also, among contemporary African Christians, the liturgy is celebrated—from beginning to end—in the mother tongues of the various African peoples. However, historically, like Arabs in relation to Islam, Western Europeans in relation to Christianity, tried to avoid or to delay—for as long as possible—the linguistic translation of the Bible and the liturgy into the multinational languages of the non-Western peoples of the world.
The political citadel of Catholicism—Vatican—insisted on retaining imperial control of the Christian faith by means of the Latin Bible—the Vulgate. Eventually, especially following the Protestant Reformation, Roman Catholicism conceded that other European languages, such as: French, Spanish, Italian, German and English; could be legitimate vehicles for conveying the sacred messages of and supplications to the Christian God. It is an interesting coincidence that the European languages that were eventually accepted as legitimate vehicles for communication with the Christian God, ended up also being the same European countries that became colonial powers in Africa and elsewhere; and who, in turn, tried to proscribe the translation of the Bible and other sacred Christian texts, into the various languages of their colonial subjects! I, therefore, assert that the Arab Muslim requirement that their language constitute the only legitimate vehicle for Islamic liturgy, Koranic theology as well as supplication to Allah, was and is an act of political and cultural imperialism. It had and has nothing to do with translational exactitude or religious piety.
What does all this have to do with Islam and Hausa-Fulani history and culture; and even more so, with the recidivism of ethno-religious violence in Northern Nigeria? Well, here is the rub. In societies in which Islam took root in Africa, the tendency was wholesale destruction of everything that preceded the coming of Islam. Traditional shrines, practices, faiths, given names in the people’s mother tongues, etc., were swept aside or marginalized in the name of Islamic conversion, faithfulness and piety. Today, most Hausa or Fulani Muslims in Northern Nigeria have become so estranged from their pre-Islamic cultures and traditions, that the only prism through which they see themselves, others and the world, is Islam.
In other words, the cultural identity of the Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria, has become so conflated with the Islamic faith, that neither they nor others can tell where one ends and the other begins or vice versa. I have found the same phenomena among Somalis. Most Somalis do not have Somali first or last names any longer. And many no longer even know what “Somali names” are apart from so-called “Islamic names.” Yet, technically, there is no such thing as an “Islamic name.” What passes for “Islamic names” are, in actuality, Bedouin Arab names passed off as “Islamic names.” For Islam as a religious belief system is deeply, if not completely embedded in Arabic culture: language, history, theocratic tradition and imperial political system.
It is equally true that with the coming of Western European Christianizing mission in Africa, they tried to make it appear as though Christianity was part and parcel of acculturation into so-called “Judeo-Christian” culture or civilization. Many Africans, upon their conversion to Christianity, took so-called “Biblical names” such as: Peter, Paul, Joseph, Mary, Magdalene, Isaiah, Jacob, etc. But like so-called “Islamic names,” so-called “Christian names” are embedded in the history and culture of the Hebrew/Jewish people of the Middle East, which later mixed in elements of Western European culture: Greco-Roman culture and civilization. Still, the question lurked beneath the surface of the subterfuge: if Latin, English, French, Spanish, Italian and German are good enough to teach about and supplicate to the Christian God, why not Yoruba, Igbo, Zulu, Swahili, Lingala, etc.?
After all, Jesus the Christ and his mother Mary were not Europeans. They were Middle-Eastern Jews. Western Europeans were using the cultural imperialism implicit in Judeo-Greco-Roman-Christianity, into which they were converting Africans, to subvert the traditional cultures of the African peoples they were encountering and colonizing, and hence, their identities. The reason? Just like the Arabs before them, Western European also had an imperial agenda lurking behind or beneath the façade of a purely religious mission. After a generation or two, Christianized Africans began to wake up to the ruse and began to demand the Africanization of the Western Christianity Europeans brought as part and parcel of their colonial mission in Africa. By the time of the anti-colonial movement in the mid-to-late 1900s, that demand had gathered enough momentum that today, it has become a fait accompli.
In contrast, it is a challenging exercise for the average Somali to disentangle what being Somali is—culturally—from what being a Muslim is. Consequently, anything perceived as threatening the efficacy of Islam, is perceived as threatening their cultural identity; and anything perceived as threatening their cultural identity, is perceived as threatening Islam. They no longer have a separate cultural identity from their Islamic faith. And the main reason is that Islam destroyed their pre-Islamic culture and replaced it with the cultural and theocratic absolutism of Arabized imperial Islam. Virtually the only things left of Hausa-Fulani and Somali cultures, to stick with those three examples, are their languages: Hausa, Fulbe and Somali.
And even their languages have not been spared the cultural imperialism of the Arabs. For example, about one-fourth of the Hausa language is made up of loanwords from Arabic. Likewise, a lot of loanwords in Fulbe are Arabic loanwords or words with Arabic roots. In the case of Somali, there are over 300 hundred Arabic loanwords. It might surprise some people to learn that to the extent the Yoruba became partly Islamized, as a result of the efforts of Usman Dan Fodio’s jihadists pressing south; the Yoruba language has about 30 to 40 loanwords from Arabic. A book titled: On Arabic Loans in Yoruba, written by an Italian academic by the name: Sergio Baldi, documented that information in 1995.
This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a unique or bad thing. After all, Greek borrowed a lot of loanwords from Egyptian, and English borrowed a great deal of loanwords from Latin, a bit from French, some from German, and even some from Arabic! The words: zero, algebra, algorithm, zenith, sheriff, Sahel, Sahara and savannah, to name a few, are all Arabic in origin. The point I am trying to make, however, is to indicate the direction of cultural influence, in the cases of the Hausa, the Fulani, the Somalis, and partly, the Yoruba; as a result of their contact with and conversion to Arabized imperial Islam. For example, according to Hausa origin myth, Bayajidda, “the mythical ancestor of the Hausa, migrated from Baghdad in the ninth or tenth century AD. After stopping at the kingdom of Bornu, he fled west and helped the king of Daura slay a dangerous snake. As a reward, he was given the Queen of Daura in marriage. Bayajidda’s son, Bawo, founded the city of Biram. He had six sons who became the rulers of other Hausa city-states. Collectively, these are known as the Hausa bakwai (Hausa seven).” In fact, a great deal of Hausa civil law, literature, science and warfare, have been drawn from Arabic/Islamic sources. And the Hausa language has been written with an adopted version of the Arabic script, called ájámi, since the early part of the 17th century.
It is hardly surprising that under British colonial rule in Nigeria, when a system of modern jurisprudence was instituted by British colonial authorities; basing it as they did, on English Common Law; a distinction was made between civil and criminal laws—that fell under the British Common Law system and “Customary Law,” which fell under the purview of traditional African jurisprudence. Invariably, while the “Customary Laws” of Southern Nigerian peoples were based on their traditional African customs and traditions, those of the Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria, were based on Islamic law and jurisprudence—Sharia. Although Fulani origin myth, unlike those of the Hausa and the Somali, does not allude to the Arab world, but instead is a short form morality-play; the Fulani wrongly trace their genealogy to the Middle East/Arabia as well. The said Fulani creation or origin myth reads thus:
At the beginning there was a huge drop of milk.
Then Doondari (God) came and he created the stone.
Then the stone created iron;
And iron created fire;
And fire created water;
And water created air.
Then Doondari descended a second time. And he took the
five elements
And he shaped them into man.
But man was proud.
Then Doondari created blindness and blindness defeated
man.
But when blindness became too proud,
Doondari created sleep, and sleep defeated blindness;
But when sleep became too proud,
Doondari created worry, and worry defeated sleep;
But when worry became too proud,
Doondari created death, and death defeated worry.
But when death became too proud,
Doondari descended for the third time,
And he came as Gueno, the eternal one
And Gueno defeated death.
However, although, it is factually not the case, the Fulani traditionally believe they are originally from North Africa and the Middle East; and that when they migrated into the West African sub-region, they intermingled with the local West African ethnic groups. This is not the place to get into the empirical history disproving that genealogical mythology among the Fulani. Suffice to say that the reverse was historically what actually occurred. The Fulani are indigenous to West Africa, however, a number of waves of migrations of Semitic peoples—first Jews and later Arabs—came into the Senegambia area of the Futa Toro and Futa Jalon mountains—the original homeland of the Fulani; interbred with many Fulani, hence the features we find today among a good number of them. Clearly, for the run-of-the-mill Fulani, a combination of pseudo-Caucasoid facial features and Arabized Islam, must seem like prima facie “evidence” of their origins outside West Africa.
Similarly, the Somali have a traditional origin myth that “their ancestors emigrated from the Arabian province of Hadramaut to Med, on the African coast; from which place their descendants gradually spread over the country they now occupy, having driven out the original Galla inhabitants.” It is as though the three African peoples—the Hausa, the Fulani and the Somali—created origins myths and genealogies that denied their Africanness in the course of the complex dynamics of their genetic and religious encounter as well as interaction with Arabized imperial Islam. There was status, legitimation and validation attached to their association with the Arabs and Islam. Unlike the Hausa, however, when Somalia finally decided on a script with which to write their language, many centuries after the Hausa had been writing their language in ájámi, they chose a modified version of the so-called Roman alphabet.
Now, contrast the foregoing origin myths of the Hausa, the wrong belief of the Fulani in their genealogical origins from Arabia and the Middle East as well as that of the Somali; with the origin myths of the Yoruba and the Igbo, to continue with those two emblematic examples of Southern Nigerian ethnic groups. Yoruba origin myth, for example, begins, like the Judeo-Christian origin myth of humanity; from a creational tabula rasa: “In the beginning, there was only the sky above, water and marshland below. The chief god Olorun ruled the sky, and the goddess Olokun ruled what was below. Obatala, another god, reflected upon this situation, then went to Olorun for permission to create dry land for all kinds of living creatures to inhabit. He was given permission, so he sought advice from Orunmila, oldest son of Olorun and the god of prophecy. He was told he would need a gold chain long enough to reach below, a snail’s shell filled with sand, a white hen, a black cat, and a palm nut, all of which he was to carry in a bag . . .” It is a self-affirming origin-myth, beginning from its own human essence as its departure point.
Similarly, Igbo origin myth from the socio-historical crucible of Igbo roots—Nri—begins thus: “Chukwu was recognized as the creator of the world and everything in it, and at the beginning of time, Chukwu sent a man down on a rope and his name was Eri. Eri was said to have come down on an anthill because the ground was messed up and water logged. Eri did not like this and so he complained to Chukwu. Chukwu provided solution by summoning a blacksmith who helped in drying the land, so that Eri could walk on it. Eri ended up having kids and had to sacrifice his kids so that there will be food . . .” Like that of the Yoruba, it begins with a direct, self-affirming encounter with the Supreme Creator and the universe. It takes for granted the unqualified humanity of the Igbo people and does not associate them with any other people—near or far—as legitimization of their existence or self-worth.
Music is another measure of cultural integrity and fidelity among a people. Granted, music, like language, is a living, breathing phenomenon; encompassing within itself different styles and movements—sometimes internally invented or innovated, and at other times, externally stimulated—but always a dynamic phenomenon. Still, it is possible to discern established patterns of a people’s musical style, instrumentation, vocalization and dance movements, as defining of cultural conurbations in various parts of the world. Music and dance, may therefore, be said to be a reflection of the soul of a nation. When the overarching architecture of a people’s musical and dance forms radically changes, something fundamental happens to the psyche and spirit of such a people or nation. The percussive rhythm and power of traditional African music—south of the Great Sahara—unencumbered in its polyrhythmic syncopation, seems to be the soul of unsullied traditional African music. And everywhere Africans from sub-Sahara Africa set foot in the Diaspora of the Americas, they left a permanent mark of their music; of their soul.
Arabized imperial Islam, attempted to stamp out the traditional musical and dance architecture of African societies it encountered; the Hausa-Fulani and the Somali being important cases in point. But for reasons still unclear to this author, Guineans, Malians and Senegalese, to name a few prominent examples in West Africa; appear to have escaped that onslaught of Arabized imperial Islam on their traditional African music and dance forms, which is dominated by percussion—the African drum. To this very day, the Senegalese love their African drum—the jembe—especially when they abandon themselves—men and women alike—to the intoxicating rhythm and spirit of the Saba; Islam notwithstanding! The same can be said of Doundounba in Guinea. Still, the Senegalese Saba is originally a Wolof music and dance form, not Fulani; just as surely as the Guinean Doundounba, is originally Mandinka or Malinke, not Fulani.
I have also, often wondered why there has not been a great flourish of modern novelists and playwrights in English from among the Islamized Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria, as has been the case with Southern Nigerians—especially among the Igbo and the Yoruba? The remarkable font of postcolonial African written literature in English, has poured forth from the fountain pens of many African writers—great and small—yet, there has not been a comparable efflorescence among the Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria. Why? It could be argued by some that the Hausa-Fulani elite, literate since the late 17th century, using the adapted Arabic script, ájámi, to write the Hausa language; have a great store of scholarly and literary works in the Hausa language. And that may well be the case. But pray tell, what is stopping such great works from being translated into English for the reading pleasure and marvel of our contemporary world? And what has stopped that literary tradition, if it had such an illustrious pedigree, from expressing itself in the global lingua franca of English in our times?
Once again, the literary exceptions to the above query have been found primarily among Islamized Africans of Senegal, Guinea, and to a lesser extent, Mali; in the language of their colonial presage: French. And such contemporary authorship—whether scholarly or literary in nature—is found mostly among the Senegalese of Wolof stock. In Senegal, apart from the celebrated scientist and anthropologist, Cheikh anta Diop, who is Wolof; another example of a Senegalese writer of Wolof ethnic extraction, can be cited in the person of Mariama Ba, who wrote her “semi-autobiographical epistolary,” So Long a Letter (1979). In Guinea, the most celebrated contemporary writer in French was Camara Laye (1928 – 1980), who authored two award-winning novels: The African Child (L’ enfant noir), published in 1953 and The Radiance of the Kings, published in 1954. Still, it is noteworthy that Camara Laye was Mandinka not Fulani, who are sizeable in Guinea. And although both the Fulani and the Mandinka are Islamized, it is arguable that the cultural damage inflicted by Islam on the traditional African cultures of both groups, was far greater among the Fulani than among the Mandinka. It appears Arabized imperial Islam has eaten up the traditional African culture of the Fulani.
I am yet to read a novel, African in its inspiration, ethos and cultural élan, written by a Hausa or a Fulani of Northern Nigerian extraction, comparable to the likes of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and others. In fact, growing up as a young boy in Eastern Nigeria and attending secondary school in the same region; it was a great Igbo novelist, Cyprian Ekwensi, who happened to have been born in Northern Nigeria that provided the first coherent literary rendition of the life and culture of the Hausa-Fulani for the mind of a young Nigerian/Igbo boy, namely, my humble self. His two wonderful novels: The Passport of Mallam Ilia (1960) and Burning Grass (1962), spoke eloquently for the Hausa-Fulani. I am yet to see a son or daughter of the soil of Northern Nigeria, produce such exquisite literature in the global lingua franca of the English language. From where, after all, does a writer draw in the process of their literary creations? Two primary sources I venture: their cultural milieu and their creative imagination. The creative writer becomes the imaginative reflector as well as refractor of the society of which they are part; of course, mixed in with his or her own creative imagination.
Something else I have often wondered about is: why the Fulani who conquered the Hausa of Northern Nigeria and foisted themselves on them as the ruling aristocracy of the Caliphate they created; adopted the Hausa language and culture instead of the conquered Hausa adopting Fulani language and culture? One reason might have been political pragmatism: an intelligent compromise made by a minority ruling aristocracy, in order to placate its subjugated majority; for winning the war is one thing, but winning the peace another matter altogether. Or, it might have been that the Fulani, who had been Islamized earlier still than the Hausa—certainly before the majority of the Hausa masses—had already suffered the fatal blow Arabized imperial Islam dealt their culture? For one cannot give what one does not have!
In point of fact, the Fulani in Nigeria are a minority ethnic group. Their main claim to national relevance, never mind provisional national power, is by virtue of three associations: (1) their association with Islam; (2) their association with the Hausa; and (3) their association with the governance of the Nigerian state. Apart from these three associations, the Fulani in Nigeria are culturally irrelevant. Neither their language not their musical and/or material culture, features in any way in the Nigerian milieu, like those of the Igbo, the Yoruba and the Hausa. They do not feature prominently, if at all, in the popular culture of contemporary Nigeria: in the professions (law, medicine, engineering, teaching, etc.), in the literary arts, in the culinary arts, in the fashion industry, in science and technology or in the film industry—Nollywood.
In fact, I hazard the guess that most Nigerians cannot point to a single prominent Fulani they know outside a political position in the Nigerian government. Examples such as: Sir Ahmadu Bello—the Sarduana of Sokoto, Murtala Mohammed, Muhammadu Buhari, Sani Abacha, Shehu Shagari, and now, Muhammadu Buhari again, are the only one they can point to. The only two nationally prominent Fulani technocrats most Nigerians can readily recognize is the current Emir of Kano, Sanusi, formerly Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria; and Governor El Rufia, former Minister of the FCT. Yet, the Fulani occupy and animate far greater space in the imagination of most Nigerians, than anything warranted in the real world. The reason being that they have been quite adept at manipulating and leveraging the three associations I mentioned earlier on.
However, the actual major ethnic groups in Nigeria—the Igbo, the Yoruba and the Hausa—are slowly but surely emerging from the fog the Fulani cleverly used to becloud their vision since the fortuitous advent of Usman Dan Fodio’s Sokoto Caliphate. As Constitutional democracy slowly but surely delegitimizes and displaces traditional monarchism, Islamic theocracy, unquestioned and unquestionable religious conformity; as modern feminism cuts down to size traditional patriarchy; as individualism holds greater sway over “group think,” and as the Hausa become more aware that they have been hoodwinked by the Fulani; the ability of the Fulani in Nigeria to operate behind the three associations I mentioned earlier on, will greatly diminish, and eventually, disappear.
Many Nigerians, for example, mistake the fact that large numbers of the Hausa and the Fulani (as well as the Yoruba) in Nigeria wear agbada or baba riga as though that attire is an original creation of “Hausa-Fulani” and Yoruba culture and tradition. Nothing, of course, is further from the truth. The Hausa, the Fulani and the so-called “Hausa-Fulani” as well as the Yoruba did not invent the agbada or the baba riga. The so-called agbada or baba riga is worn throughout the West African sub-region (among such diverse peoples as in Niger Republic, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Gambia, etc., by Muslims and Christians alike. The Hausa, the Fulani, the “Hausa-Fulani” and the Yoruba simply adopted the attire and give it a regional spin in their respective designs of it.
For example, the Yoruba not only gave it their own name—agbada—but wear it with colorful, soft-cloth, chef-looking hats that imbues it with a unique ethno-regional patent. The “Hausa-Fulani” likewise gave it their own name—baba riga—and wear it with a standardized hand-woven hat, that similarly imbues it with a unique ethno-regional patent. Notwithstanding, both groups—the “Hausa-Fulani” and ther Yoruba—adopted and adapted that attire from the West African ecumenical civilization. Nothing stops the Igbo—another major Nigerian and West African ethnic group—from adopting that attire, which they already call konkosa in Igbo; and giving it their own ethno-regional patent by wearing it with their traditional red-cap. It will make them no less Igbo than the adoption of that attire has made the Yoruba, the Hausa and the Fulani. One may as well argue that by wearing the Western suit people as varied as the Chinese, the Japanese, Koreans, Africans, Indians, etc., have lost their ethnic and national identities on account of the fact that they don that originally Western European attire!
To return to the issue of the sociocultural and political dynamics of the Fulani in Nigeria, their historical experience with the Hausa is analogous to what happened between Genghis Khan’s Mongols and the Hun Chinese. Although the Mongols militarily conquered the Hun Chinese, like the Fulani militarily conquered the Hausa, the Mongols adopted the culture or civilization of the Hun Chinese, instead of the other way round. So, while the Mongols were great warriors and conquerors, the Hun Chinese had a superior culture or civilization than that of the Mongols.
Unlike the Mongols in relation to the Hun Chinese, however, the Fulani in relation to the Hausa, were armed with the cultural “nuclear bomb” of Arabized imperial Islam. Consequently, although the conquering Fulani adopted the Hausa language and a number of other aspects of Hausa culture, over time, the Arabized imperial Islam they came armed with and used as the legitimizing standard of their jihad; did to Hausa culture what it had already done to their own Fulani culture, except for the residue of language: destroyed and homogenized much of it into the superstructure of Arabized imperial Islam.
Many people mistakenly assume that because the Hausa language is spoken among a variety of peoples in West Africa, even as far away as parts of Sudan; it constitutes prima facie evidence of the cultural integrity, power and influence of Hausa culture. In fact, that assumption is more fanciful than real. For example, the fact that the Swahili language is spoken across a wide swart of East, Central and parts of Southern Africa; does not mean the Swahili people hold sway culturally or politically over the various African peoples that use their language as lingua franca.
In fact, the Swahili people, from which Swahili as a sub-regional lingua franca comes, are a small, politically, economically and culturally inconsequential ethnic group on the east coast of Kenya. In a sense, a lingua franca is, essentially, a language that has been adopted, or even, expropriated by non-native speakers for practical or pragmatic reasons; that does not necessarily have anything to do with buying into or being homogenized by the culture of the original native speakers of that lingua franca. In the case of the Hausa (like the coastal Swahili), Islam, as I argue in this piece, has done an almost irreparable wrecking job on their culture; and language was one, if not the only survivor of that cultural demolition job.
In converse relation to the foregoing, the absence of the same phenomena among the Yoruba, the Igbo and other Southern Nigerian ethnic groups that were not hammered by Islam, before the arrival of Western European Christianity and later colonization; accounts for a great deal of why they were and are able to retain their separate identities as Yorubas, Igbos, Urhobos, Edos, etc., apart from their Christian faith. It is true that Western Christianity did its share of damage to both the culture and psyche of the African peoples it encountered, coming as it did as part of an imperial colonizing mission. Still, due to the more superficial impact Western Christianity had on the African cultures it encountered and its much shorter duration in time in Africa south of the Sahara; the pre-Christian traditional cultures of such African groups remained largely intact. The pantheon of traditional Yoruba gods and goddesses, Igbo gods and goddesses, Edo gods and goddesses, Urhobo gods and goddesses, etc., are still readily accessible, even if the majority of those African peoples no longer practice their traditional belief systems.
Many traditional customs and practices of the Igbo and the Yoruba, remain alive and well. For example, iwa ji ofu—New Yam Festival, iwa orji (the ceremonial supplication over, breaking and sharing of the kola nut); the revered Ozo-title among the Igbo and many masquerade festivals, musical and dance traditions, are alive and well. And, in addition to their language, define Igbo identity quite apart from Western Christianity and/or colonization. The same applies to the Yoruba. For example, every Yoruba, regardless of their religious affiliation, cherishes and revels in the Egungun and the Eyo festivals.
It is true that there is the spectacular annual four-day Argungu Fishing Festival in Kebbi State, in the northwestern part of Northern Nigeria; however, that example does not compare favorably with the originality and antiquity of Yoruba and Igbo traditional customs and traditions, as it only began in 1934, to mark the end of centuries-old hostility between the Sokoto Caliphate and the Kebbi Kingdom. One could also site the example of the Grand Durbar, which has far longer antiquity than the Argungu Fishing Festival; in fact as far back as probably the 14th century. Still, there are attendant historical facts about that festival which remain problematic: it was a local import of a tradition from Persia and the Middle East. The very name—Durbar—is a Persian word. The equestrian tradition of the use of the horse as a draught animal and in cavalry, is an import from the Middle East into West Africa, from across the Sahara, as was the Islamic faith itself.
At any rate, the Grand Durbar has been tied directly to Islam since its inception in Hausa-Fulani society. It is “celebrated at the culmination of the two great Muslim festivals Eid al Fitr and Eid al Kabir (Eid al Adha).” Following the imperial conquest of Hausaland by the Fulani jihadists of Usman Dan Fodio, the Fulani ruling elite used the Durbar as a mechanism for rallying marshal support for their Caliphate, especially for purposes of mustering for war. Following Lord Lugard’s “pacification” of Northern Nigeria, he too, like the Fulani overlords of the Hausa, used the Durbar to demonstrate fealty of the Hausa-Fulani to the British Crown. Therefore, its Persian origin, its historical use to mark important Muslim festivals, its appropriation by the Sokoto Caliphate, and later still, by Lord Lugard’s colonial administration; disqualifies it as representative of an authentic, pre-existing traditional African culture that was not produced by or subsumed in Islamic culture and tradition.
Ask any Yoruba—Muslim, Christian or otherwise—about traditional Yoruba pantheon of gods or orishas and he or she will list, at least, the most prominent ones (for the Yoruba have over 400 gods), at the drop of a hat: Olorun or Olodumare – the Supreme Creator; Olokun – goddess of the Deep Dark Sea; Obatala – king of the white cloth – creator of man; Ogun – the god of iron, war or hunt, Shango – the god of Thunder and Lightning, etc. If you do the same with the Igbo you will get a list of: Chukwu – the Supreme Creator; Ani or Ala – the Earth goddess; Amadioha – the god of Thunder and Lightning; Ifejioku – the yam god; Agbala – the unisex spirit-possessing god; Osimili or Orimili – the Sea goddess, etc. All over Southern Nigeria, among midsize and small ethnic groups, the same thing can be found, despite their encounter with Western Christianity and colonialism.
What about the pre-Islamic traditional pantheon of gods and goddesses of the Hausa and the Fulani? What are they? Can the average Hausa or Fulani provide such information about their culture, without being a professional historian, anthropologist or a serious student of one and/or the other? And sure enough, if you peruse Internet search engines, you will only come up with scanty references to the pre-Islamic Hausa Bori religion and a Hausa-speaking sub-group known as the Maguzawa, who supposedly still adhere to their pre-Islamic traditional religious tenets and practices around the Kano and Katsina areas. There is also reference made that the pre-Islamic Hausa had a Supreme deity by the name: Ubangiji – “the Originator.” However, it is hard to be definitive about the accuracy of that attribution. The Hausa were also said to have worshipped the sun before the arrival of Islam.
What about the Fulani, the ones who carried out the 19th century jihad that corralled the Hausa into the Arab-Islamic imperial structure of their Sokoto Caliphate? Can one readily access their pre-Islamic traditional pantheon of gods and goddesses? The best I was able to find is that the pre-Islamic Fulani had a Supreme god by the name: Geno Dundari, but beyond that, I was unable to make any headway. It is possible that the Woodabe Fulani, found in modern-day Niger Republic, though Islamized themselves, still retain remnants of their pre-Islamic religion. But among the Fulani of Northern Nigeria, that part of their pre-Islamic traditional culture has paled beyond recognition.
Might it have been in recognition of the imperial danger Islam posed politically and culturally to his traditional African culture and identity, if not to the very sovereignty of his empire-state, that caused the King of Ancient Ghana Empire (300 – 1240 C.E.), Tunka Menin, to create two separate sections in his capital, Kumbi Saleh, “. . . one for the King or Tunka and Ghanaian people and the other for the Muslim traders?” In the end, perhaps as Tunka Menin might have feared, in 1076 A.D., Islamic religious reformers by the name Almoravids, led a Berber army that captured Ancient Ghana’s capital, Kumbi Saleh. Might the same matters of state have been what prompted Sultan Nafata, the Sultan of Gobir, between 1797 and 1798, to issue a historic proclamation forbidding anyone except Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio to preach; forbidding the conversion of sons from “the religion of their fathers as well as proscribing the use of turbans and veils?” In the end, as in the case of Ancient Ghana, it was Usman Dan Fodio’s jihadist forces that made war on and defeated the Hausa city-states, including, of course, Gobir.
Ironically, some African Christian zealots, while not violent in the expression of their zealotry, are sadly, slowly but surely, voluntarily destroying their traditional customs, artifacts and theosophical patrimony, in the name of being “good Christians.” In some parts of Igboland, for instance, the great performing arts of the masquerade tradition, are being shunned or discarded altogether in the name of Christian faithfulness and piety. Can anyone imagine contemporary Greeks reducing the Acropolis to a pile of rubble, because Ancient Greek senators and philosophers, such as Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Anaximander, etc.; who may have held forth polemically, philosophically or poetically within the portals of that iconic citadel, happen to have been pre-Christian pagans? Imagine the consequences of such action for present-day and future Greek history, culture and identity, not to speak of the Greek tourist industry!
Still, Western Christianity, prior to and in conjunction with Western colonialism, is of much more recent vintage compared to the length of time Islam has been in Africa, south of the Great Sahara. For example, the Yoruba of Nigeria, one of the earliest Nigerian ethnic groups to encounter Western Christianity, did so around the mid-19th century (around the 1840s – 1850s)—that is; a little over a century before Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960. Similarly, the Igbo first encountered Western Christianity perhaps a decade or so following the Yoruba – around the 1850s – 1860s. Hence, like the Yoruba, they made contact with Western Christianity, about a century before Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Now, compare the foregoing with when Islam took root in Hausaland: in the 14th century! In other words, whether Islam was practiced rigorously to the liking of Usman Dan Fodio or not, Islam was already in Hausaland four centuries before Dan Fodio’s jihad in the 19th century, and long before Christianity came to either Yorubaland or Igboland.
One last point buttresses my argument regarding the psychosocial nature of Islam among the Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria, compared to other parts of West Africa. The vast majority of West African countries were colonized by the French rather than by the English. In fact, except for Nigeria, Ghana, the Gambia and Sierra Leone; all other West African countries were colonized by the French, with the exception of Liberia. And here is the fine point of it. The French practiced a different kind of colonial administration, which they called: assimilation; whereas, the British practiced the administrative system they called: indirect rule. In Northern Nigeria, the British, under Lord Lugard, went above and beyond the call of duty, to insulate the Muslim North from the evangelizing efforts of Western European missionaries, as well as from so-called “Western Education;” so as to keep the ruling Hausa-Fulani aristocracy in client-state status for purposes of their colonial system of indirect rule. By so doing, it was as though Northern Nigerian Muslims were frozen in time, even as the modern world came rushing into the southern half of colonial Nigeria at a dizzying pace.
With the advent of British colonial rule in Hausaland—what became Northern Nigeria under British colonial rule—the Hausa-Fulani, formerly under the weight of Arabized imperial Islam, were now caught between the hammer of Arabized imperial Islam and the anvil of British colonial rule. The Fulani ruling aristocracy tried to parry one with the other. The Fulani ruling aristocracy entered into a Faustian bargain with the British, to maintain their aristocratic rule over the Hausa masses and others still, by means of the maintenance of their preexisting culture and tradition of Arabized imperial Islam. However, that bargain, while it might have saved the Fulani ruling elite of Hausaland well, by means of the ballast of their dated Arabized imperial Islam, virtually sealed-off Northern Nigeria from both Christianity and the positive effects of modernization, especially, modern education—in science and technology—as well as in the liberal arts and the humanities. Also, it largely insulated Northern Nigeria from the cosmopolitan ethos and élan of the modern world.
By trying to save their aristocratic rule by means of a monolithic and largely calcified Arabized imperial Islam, through warding-off Christianity and “Western education” (which, in actuality, was/is modern education); the Fulani ruling aristocracy in Northern Nigeria succeeded only in one respect: maintaining their largely ceremonial, but nevertheless, socioeconomically beneficial position as the ruling elite of Northern Nigeria. However, they achieved that objective at the expense of a subject population that was lacking in modern education and mindset. It was a self-serving decision that may have also been informed by an unconscious and thoroughly brainwashed devotion to the already acquired identity of Arabized imperial Islam.
French colonial policy of assimilation, on the other hand, forced a degree of occidental cosmopolitanism on their African subjects—Muslim or not; whereas British colonial policy of indirect rule created an artificial cultural cocoon for Northern Nigerian Muslims that preserved their dated Arabized Islamic identity, which, as explained earlier on, had already done irreparable damage to pre-Islamic traditional Hausa-Fulani culture; such that Hausa-Fulani identity had become inextricably bound up with Arabized imperial Islam. Here then, is the historical and sociocultural context as well as trajectory of Northern Nigerian Islamic zealotry and radicalism, especially its episodic violent manifestations; otherwise, how else to explain that social pattern of recurrent violence which is unique to Northern Nigerian and Somali Muslims?
Finally, it must be understood that what I have offered here is a diagnosis not a prognosis; a historiographical interpolation not a curative prescription. There are things that can and must be done, if the unfortunate pattern I have identified and tried to explain, is to be positively reversed or, at least, attenuated. But no progress can be made towards the resolution of a problem, without first understanding the nature of the problem. Hence, this diagnosis. I have argued elsewhere, that ultimately, Islam, whether in Northern Nigeria or elsewhere in the world, for that matter, has ultimately no quarrel with Judaism, Christianity or any other religious faith for that matter. Its ultimate point of confliction is with modernity itself: its technological, political, sociological and economic imperatives. Modernity’s impact on human, political, civil, civic, individual, group and women’s rights; its implications for global humanism; its impact on the efficacy of religious belief systems—Islam as well as others—and its unavoidable liberalization of human society. How Islam comes to terms with those imperatives and how the duly constituted governments of multiethnic and multicultural nation-states, manage the inescapable reconciliation between Islam, other religious faiths and modernity; will be the crux of the matter—for better or for worse.
It is hardly surprising that the moniker “Boko Haram” is said to mean: “Western education is evil or sinful.” If “Western education” is a metaphor for modernity, then, it is apropos that such a standoff would constitute the crux of the matter between Islamic orthodoxy, zealotry, absolutism and modernity. My guess is that in the long run, unfortunately, perhaps after a high casualty rate, modernity will triumph over religious orthodoxy, zealotry and absolutism—Islamic, Christian, Judaic or otherwise. The phenomenon of universal human rights has already taken root in the rich soil of human scientific and technological progress, the brute lessons of human history and value system. Modern science and technology is not about to go away, if anything, it is daily growing in power and influence.
It could be argued that the causal variable for the Northern Nigerian phenomena I describe and analyze in this piece, is not their alleged Arabized Islamic identity—which I assert has distorted if not destroyed their traditional Hausa-Fulani identity—but rather the absence of modern education; from colonial times to the present. A modern education capable of providing the masses of their people with critical skill sets in a variety of professions, of socially and culturally liberalizing their society as well as psyche; and of providing economic progress and prosperity. My repost to the foregoing would be, as I have tried to make clear in this article, that it is a combination of the two variables: distorted or destroyed identity and the absence of modern education for the masses. Still, I maintain that it is their distorted or destroyed traditional identity, as a consequence of Arabized imperial Islam, that produced the antipathy, antagonistic attitude as well as posture against modern education. For is one feels that the phenomena of modern education, threatens their conditioned as well as entrenched sense of self, epistemological construct, meaning and purpose, not to speak of their “eternal salvation;” the person is likely to resist, if not militate against such phenomena, hence, ‘Boko Haram;’ and hence, also, the episodic extremist zealotry and communal violence expressed in Northern Nigeria.
Ironically, Islam, in the context of Moorish Spain, was a great harbinger of scientific and technological propagation and progress, between the 9th and the 13th centuries; helping to pull Western Europe out of the doldrums of its “Dark Ages.” Democracy is not going to go away in favor of absolutist monarchism or authoritarian rule of various kinds, either. The genie of women’s liberation is already out of the bottle and cannot be put back. More and more people are getting and going to get educated—in the many and varied subjects, disciplines and faculties of modern education—regardless of how groups such as ‘Boko Haram’ characterize such modern education. National societies are going to get more liberal not less. People are going to insist on their individual and group freedoms and rights. And any belief system that pits itself against those “winds of change,” “whose time has come;” will eventually be faced with two options and two options only: adaptation or extinction by way of sociopolitical and sociocultural irrelevance.