August 21, 2024.
After kidnap and killing of Emir of Gobir, assailants demand 60m to release corpse
IROHINOODUA EDITORIAL
A bizarre event took place in Sokoto State on Tuesday. The Emir of Gobir Isa Bawa was kidnapped. His abductors demanded for N60m. The relatives were about raising the funds after making contacts with influential figures including the Governor of Sokoto State, Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto, our source claimed.
The date for the payment of the ransom was nigh: Alas, the kidnappers murdered the Emir in cold blood. Not done, the kidnappers insisted on being paid before they release the body of the Emir of Gobir.
The media, as usual, glossed over the issue, undermining the deep-seated impact on the social-political crisis in Northern Nigeria and the almost imminent prospect of its consuming the country.
Unknown to many observers, the murder of the Emir of Gobir was the height of the smoldering intra-ethnic clashes between the Fulani and the Hausa which observers claim has taken thousands of human lives in the past one decade even as the ruling class of both ethnic groups try to subvert and gloss over the issue. The Hausa and Fulani are distinct ethnic groups, but in Nigeria found a common political destiny in being referred to as Hausa-Fulani.In the past three decades, the years of misrule, poverty, hunger, exclusion and deprivation by the ruling class in the North, has exposed the internal contradictions which for decades have been veiled under the cover of Islam.
The policy of exclusivity and the taking over of Nigeria in 2015 by Fulani far right led by former President Mohammadu Buhari, has further deepened the dialectics of conflict and asymmetric war between the Fulani and the Hausa, which has now taken the shape of armed conflict even as successive governments underplay the peril.
The kidnap and killing of the Emir of Gobir is nothing but a brutal continuation of the bitter, bloody conflict.
Ghali Abdulazeez, a social commentator said a ‘terrible thing happened in Sokoto State. The Emir of Gobir, a respected leader, was kidnapped in his palace a few days ago. The kidnappers demanded for N60m and five motorcycles as ransom. Now, the kidnappers are refusing to release the Emirs’s body until they got the money and motorcycles.’
The murder of the Emir of Gobir, a Fulani man, we have been informed is linked to the current radical and often violent on-going agitation by the Hausa, who were the original owners of the land, before the 1804 Jihad which they appear to view as usurpation of their ancestral rights.
For many who may not understand the history of the feud, before 1804, Gobir was ruled by Hausa kings and their reign lasted for 700 years. The area flourished under Hausa rule in the 11th century. The head quarter of the dynasty was in Alkalawa in Northwestern Hausaland. In the 15th century, the Hausa King conquered many surrounding areas but the reign was broken briefly by the Tuaregs who had established the Sultanate in Agadez. Gobir regained its strength under Hausa rule and became fortified.
The Hausa King, Bawa, invited the Fulani scholar, Uthman |Dan Fodio to Gobir in 1774. Fodio, who came from Fouta Jallon Island settled at a small town of Degel, and began preaching Islam to faithful.
‘Dan Fodio was employed as a teacher and he was responsible for giving education to the royal family and later to Yunfa the King that came after Bawa. Fodio used the oppostunity to complain about the burden the Hausa rulers placed on the poor. This drew him large followershipeven among the poor Hausa. ‘Sarki Nafata (r. 1797–98) reversed Bawa’s tolerant policy, and feared the increase of arms amongst dan Fodio’s followers. The next two rulers vacillated between repressive and liberal measures.’
In 1803, Yunfa, the Hausa King assumed leadership. He ran into troubled waters with Uthman Dan Fodio who had planned to assassinate Yunfa. Uthman Dan Fodio was sent into exile.
He organised a small infantry, assembled mainly Fulani nomadic men, armed them and then launched the Jihad in the spring of 1804. In the battle of Tsuntua, the Hausa put up a fierce battle, but Fodio had sent for reinforcement. In October 1808, Fodio seized Gobir, killed Yunfa, which brought an end to the Hausa rule. He was to expand his conquest to most part of Northern Nigeria up to Ilorin where a similar act of treachery led to the killing of Afonja and the imposition of an Emir.
‘Resistance against the Jihadists in many part of today’s Middle Belt but blurred by the oppression of the poor by the same Hausa Kings, something that isolated them from their own people. Yet, some Hausa resisted the Jihad in the north-east led by Sarkin Ali dan Yakubu and Sarki Mayaki. The Hausa ruler of Katsina assisted the resistance, which led to the Hausa shifting their capital to Tibiri, 10 km north of Maradi, Niger State in 1836. Around that time, the Gobir Sultan also rose against Sokoto Caliphate but the resistance was brutally crushed by Sokoto Sultan Muhammed Bello in the Battle of Gawakuke.’ In Niger Republic the old dynasty of the Hausa rulers of Gobir remains with a rival group of the dynasty in Sabon Birni north of Sokoto State.
The Hausa have suddenly realised the need to take back their ancestral land seizes during the Jihad. They appear to say seek their own identity unlike before. They believe the concept of one Nigeria remains a means of deceit and a plot that constantly put the Hausa to disadvantage
But the demand won’t be easy. It would mean the Emirs have to abdicate their seats.
The killing of the Emir of Gobir, Irohonoodua can authoritatively say, will fuel further revenge killings unless the Hausa and Fulani leaders rise up to the occasion and stop pretending. The crisis is already spreading to other parts of Northern Nigeria. The so called “bandits” is essentially Hausa indigenous revolt.
The resolution of the conflict will not be easy. It will involve first accepting there is a major problem.
It will mean President Bola Ahmed Tinubu calling the Fulani and Hausa leaders together, identify the major grievances and work our short-term, middle term and long term solutions which would be bother social, economic and political.
For now, both ethnic groups are importing mercenaries from Chad, Niger, Mali and Southern Sudan to prosecute what in itself has assumed a life of its own and may spread to other parts of Nigeria with grievous consequences on peace and stability in Nigeria.
Source: Irohinodua
