By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
A few weeks ago, the Senior Special Assistant to the Kano State Governor on Fulfulde Affairs, Rukayya Umar Gadon Kaya, triggered a storm when she was caught on camera using derogatory slurs to describe the Hausa people. Her position was supposed to facilitate inclusivity for the nomadic Fulani groups in the social structure of the majority-Hausa Kano State, which just happens to have a Fulani Governor, a Fulani Emir, and a Special Adviser exclusively for the Fulani.
The shocked and angry reactions to her ill-advised comments fed into a burgeoning groundswell of tensions that is challenging the Hausa-Fulani identity construct. This movement, referred to as “Hausa Zalla” (Purely Hausa), aspires to divest one of the most famous identity constructs in Nigeria from one of its key components—the Hausa component.
Over the years, the increasing rate of clashes between Fulani herders and Hausa farmers in Northern villages has resulted in the mass killings of, and the displacement of, hundreds of thousands of farmers. The rise of banditry, championed mostly by Fulani men, whose victims are basically all comers, has centred this conflict. Bandit leaders like Bello Turji, a Fulani man, have claimed the loss of their cattle and grazing grounds, and the interventions of mostly Hausa vigilantes or ‘yan sa kai, as some of their main motives. These clashes, the increasing bloodletting, and widespread criminality have caused deeper introspection of the relationship between the two ethnic identities with a shared history.
However, the growing challenge, or even rejection, of the Hausa-Fulani label reflects a deeper crisis of political representation in Northern Nigeria, where some Hausa voices now believe the old alliance obscures their interests, dilutes their identity, and fails to contextualise the present insecurity in the country and how it is being addressed—or not addressed at all. This has raised the fundamental question: when does a shared identity stop describing reality and start hiding power relations?
Pre- or post-colonialism, the hyphenated Hausa-Fulani identity construct has always been motivated by politics. The nomadic Fulani populations settled in the Northern regions of what is today Nigeria long before the Dan Fodio Jihad of 1804-1808, which resulted in the conquest of Hausa lands by the Fulani. Prior to that conquest, the Fulani were both nomadic and settled features in the region.
Dan Fodio, the leader of the Jihad, himself was born in Maratta in Gobir (circa 1754), where his family was settled. He grew up to become a prominent scholar in the city and was the teacher of the young Prince Muhammadu Yunfa, who would later ascend the throne of Gobir and whose clashes with Dan Fodio would trigger the conquest.
Prior to that Jihad, the Fulani and the Hausa people coexisted as two distinct identities and practised the same Islamic faith. While religion is often cited as a trigger for the Jihad, colonial anthropologists like Major J. A. Burdon, writing in “The Fulani Emirate of Northern Nigeria” in 1904, described the Jihad as being triggered by racial differences between the Caucasoid Fulani and the Negroid Hausa natives. This is a questionable assumption, of course. What is not questionable is that the Fulani used religion and the repressive regimes of the Hausa rulers to galvanise disgruntled Hausa men to join its infantry that helped conquer Hausaland. Ironically, the British colonial regime would also recruit Hausa infantry men in their conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate a century later.
Hausa resistance to Fulani dominance is not a new trend, as documented by the British missionary Hugh Clapperton, who in 1824, two decades after the Fulani conquest, visited the caliphate and documented continued Hausa resistance, which was prominent in Gobir and Kebbi. The conquest and the establishment of the caliphate gave the Fulani tribe the motivation to adopt the Hausa language to govern over its conquered Hausa states. This also resulted in intermarriages that created the hyphenated identity and generations of Fulani rulers of Hausaland who speak more Hausa than Fulani.
For decades, the fusion of ethnic and religious authority provided an elite unity and a common political language that served the ruling class by providing a social and cultural justification for their rule. But it also inadvertently favoured the British indirect system that capitalised on a block identity to govern the region while counting on galvanising the scattered minority tribes of the Middle Belt against the caliphate in the event of an unlikely resistance to colonial rule, as Burdon outlined.
In the pre-independence politics, these identity constructs continued to serve the purpose of power relations. They presented a ruling coalition that appeared united from the outside. It was a useful coalition, even if unequal. Within years, it became clear that the new Fulani oligarchs were, or even more oppressive than, the Hausa Habe rulers they ousted.
The renewed challenge to this identity is not accidental. It is a product of the perception that Hausa communities bear the burden while Fulani elites retain political advantage. The rising insecurity and rural violence that have clear ethnic identities at the centre have caused a schism. The persistent raids on rural Hausa communities by bandits who mostly happen to be Fulani, and the poor responses by the Fulani leadership—both traditional and political—have renewed questions about whether this identity construct reinforces the marginalisation of the Hausa populace.
The dangers in the agitations, though, are many. The integration of the Hausa and Fulani identity, even when both groups have retained clear distinctions in certain instances, is so pervasive that there cannot be a clean cut. Generations of intermarriages have produced persons who officially may claim one tribe as theirs but socially cannot extricate themselves from the other. Even the most prominent Fulanis, for example, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, who socially and phenotypically is Fulani and was proud of his ethnic identity, could not, by some accounts, speak Fulfulde, and had parents who were both Hausa and Fulani.
Also, Hausa and Fulani communities are not monolithic. A shared religious and regional identity has produced a mash-up that is still shaping itself two centuries on since one of the most significant events in the region.
There is nothing strange about this. The 1066 Norman conquest of England replaced the ruling Anglo-Saxon elites and created the identity that is today known as English. Of course, the difference is that the Norman conquest was more external, and the Fulani one was more internal contestation.
So, while the Hausa Zalla movement is a product of social strife among the two mashed-up identities, the agitation aspires to oversimplify the conversation where it is more complex and needs a certain level of nuance.
The broader implication of this contestation for the region can be significant in terms of Northern politics, election coalitions, and the language of representation. It could possibly also mean a shift from elite fusion towards more explicitly ethnic bargaining.
Therefore, its success can be measured by its ability to galvanise the Fulani elites to be more cognisant of their inherent failure to address the violent excesses of their herdsmen, whose ethnic agitations have now transitioned into the pervasive criminality we are witnessing today – not only on the Hausa populations but across the country.
This agitation could aspire to properly document and reclaim the erasure of Hausa Habe history. In most places, there are no written records of the pre-Jihad dynasty, as these have been deliberately obfuscated and are often ignored by the post-caliphate historians.
Crucially, this agitation should serve as a wakeup call for the Fulani elites that the continued deterioration of the situation in the North and in the country at large, in which the Fulani are prominently involved, must be addressed immediately. They could take a leaf from the English monarchy, who, at the rise of Nazism in 1930s Europe, quickly pivoted, shirked off their German identity in favour of a more English one. While that extreme step is not necessary at this point in this case, the agitations call for a more strategic approach to negotiating insecurity and ethnic identity in the region.
Historically, identities have changed when politics change. As small as these voices may be at present, set against the backdrop of those bandits’ gunshots, they are signalling something that needs to be addressed. If they are wise, the ruling elites would rally to address them before the clamour grows louder.
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim can be reached through abubakaradam@dailytrust.com Twitter: @Abbakar_himself Whatsapp: 08020621270