By Abdallah Golkos
The perennial crises on the Plateau have led to various misinterpretations, with many describing them and concluding that the nature and motive are ethno-religious.
But the crises can only be understood if historical factors are taken into consideration.
Plateau state, and albeit many of the states within the Middle Belt, were never part of the Sokoto Caliphate nor has the Caliphate ever made any serious effort to subdue them –for various reasons.
It should be understood that the Caliphate never had a standing professional military as we know it today, structured into divisions , brigades, and battalions complete with a Chief of Staff and General Officers Commanding (GOC).
Nor was the Caliphate established solely on military force. No.
The Caliphate depended on Muslim volunteer residents in a particular state or locality. It’s these volunteers who constituted the core of the Caliphate’s military.
A close observation will indicate that anywhere the jihadists succeeded, it must have definitely had a sizeable proportion of Muslims.
The lack of any sizeable number of Muslims around the Jos axis and indeed many places on the Plateau down to Benue precluded the emergence of any jihad.
The propaganda of heroic resistance against jihadists is simply a latter-day myth created for propaganda purposes.
Secondly , the jihadists depended on cavalry, which was more effective in the savannah as against the hostile rocky terrains of the Plateau.
Even during their SouthWest-ward expansion into the former Oyo Empire, they were slowed and were easily checkmated by the rain forest and could not go beyond Ilorin, which is the only symbol of the impact of the jihad in its Southwest expansion.
Even then, it should be noted that Islam and Muslims have been in Yoruba-land long before the Dan Fodio-led jihad.
Islamic presence in the SouthWest was attributed to trade with defunct Songhai Empire through the River Niger and the activities of Nupe itinerant preachers rather than Fulani jihadists.
Definitely, there must have been a small village, settlement, or hamlet where the present Jos, or Gwosh as it was known,is. It might have been one of the series of small settlements occupied most likely by the Afizere, Anaguta or Berom, for there was no record to indicate otherwise.
This then legitimately confers the traditional and historical rights of ownership of the land where Jos North now stands on the indigenes.
The indigenes, who are today at the centre of the crises, lived mostly in settlements based on clans with decentralised leadership, especially the Beroms before the colonial period.
They were predominantly farmers and commercial activities were so low as to preclude the emergence of commercial towns or urban centres which, in turn, could have facilitated wider social interaction with outsiders leading to the emergence of a centralised authority for administration, security purposes and development.
With the imposition of colonialism on Nigeria by imperial Britain as a result of the need for sources of raw materials, including agricultural produce and extractive minerals for the industries of England, a process of integration was started based purely on commercial interest as against any other consideration.
Towns and settlements developed at agricultural and extractive minerals-producing centres. Local settlements emerged around the mineral and agricultural-producing areas, transforming into urban centres with high commercial potentials, while the Railways played a serious role in facilitating these developments as they were purposely linked to the producing centres.
The discovery of tin on the Plateau came with challenges of labour for the mines. The Plateau then, especially where the tin was discovered, were domiciled by a peasant population fully engaged in agriculture and without an existing strong central authority to compel it to forcefully provide recruits for the mines as labourers, the mining firms.
Therefore, the colonial authorities were compelled to look further afield. With Bauchi being the nearest emirate, it fell on it to do so.
The first sets of labourers forcefully recruited were from the Bauchi Native Authority which was headed by the Emir, as was the tradition everywhere in the North under British Indirect Rule governance policy.
Thus, the first set of miners were predominantly ethnic groups from the North-East rather than Hausas. They were neither religious scholars nor jihadists concerned with the prosetilisation of Islam.
They are what the Americans usually refer to as ordinary folks. To even remotely associate them with jihad is to display total ignorance of history.
This group of people were later on joined by others, including my father, many of my uncles, cousins and others from other areas either as job seekers in the mines or as service providers.
Before then, the possibility that some groups from the Bauchi emirate might have been periodically raiding the boundary areas with Plateau before the advent of colonialism, for slaves for personal reasons could not be ruled out. But, the institution of slavery not only predated the Dan Fodio jihad, but its root goes far deeper in history.
The foremost story was that of Joseph, who was the great great grandson of Abraham; Joseph was outrightly sold as a slave in Egypt.
Back home in what turned out to be Nigeria, the Trans-Saharan trade as well as the Trans- Atlantic trade that both predated colonialism, included slaves.
It was a business in which many communities, both north and south of the Niger, especially around the coastal areas, participated. It was a business involving selling of prisoners of inter-tribal wars, hunted victims as well as kinsmen. It was a business which the Aro people of Arochukwu in Igboland became notorious for. Likewise in Yorubaland and many coastal communities of the Niger-Delta.
The labourers recriuted to work in the Jos tin mines found themselves isolated in a community with not only a different culture and ways of life, but where even commercial activities were still low and mostly restricted to purely agricultural products.
Therefore, the labourers having found themselves in a community with a predominantly rural population where settlements were arranged on clan basis, with no history of serious interaction with outsiders apart from neighbours who were at the same stage of development, with hospitality industry non-existent, with no idea of investing in properties by indigenes to rent out as accommodation or for commercial purposes to strangers, entirely unknown, now found their destinies linked to that of the mining companies.
With time, settlements started to spring up around the mining camps, distinct from the indigenous settlements, with many of the former bearing Hausa names reflecting the identity and background of the labourers. That’s how areas like Barkin Ladi, Sabon Gidan Dan Yaya, Kuru Karama and Kuru Babba, Mai Adiko, Sabon Gidan Kanar, Dogo Na Hauwa, Gindin Akwati and Bukur (which was a corruption of Bukar) and many others that bear Hausa names today, came about.
But one thing was certain: these settlements were all existing in the vicinity of indigenous settlements, further affirming the historical and traditional ownership of the land where the mines were operating.
The emergence of these mining camps brought in its wake different groups of service providers which usually began with the food sellers ( mai tuwo ) whose serving maids usually comprised of women and girls of different shades and and taste followed by the trader ( mai tebur) selling the usual provisions which include beverages and cigarettes.
Between them, they provided the labourers with credit, mostly in kind rather than in cash. In most cases, the bearers of these loans/credit easily defaulted, blocking the chances of future loans and were easily blacklisted with serious consequences, food-wise.
They learnt the hard way that fulfilling your undertakings to the two was the beginning of wisdom.
At the same time, these settlements gradually evolved into permanent settlements beside the indigenous ones.
The restriction of the labourers to the mining camps in the predominantly indigenous community led to the emergence of two communities existing side by side, but neither deliberately planned by either, but by circumstances, and whose interactions came to be broadly dictated more by economic than either social or political considerations.
Economic Boom
The introduction of the railways was to further bring an influx of other groups of settlers, which comprised of railway staff and other service providers from the South to join the earlier miners who were predominantly from the North.
With railway headquarters in Jos at the same time serving as the administrative headquarters of colonial Plateau District, the population started to grow and lands were genuinely purchased from the indigenes by the settlers to build houses and commercial outlets.
The term ‘genuinely purchased’ is used for the land transactions because there were no history or record of forceful appropriation of land by either the colonial authorities or by the settlers for farming, construction of houses or for commercial purposes.
The land acquired for mining was by the foreign firms rather than the settlers who were nothing but labourers enjoying no privileges nor preferential treatment.
So, it is rightly assumed that the lands acquired by the settlers were through legal transactions with indigenes.
Without a central authority to administer the affairs of the emerging urban community of miners, the service providers and the new group of public servants like the railway staff, and saddled with a traditional leadership whose authority was weak even over the indigenes, a harmonised administrative system based on the Jos Township Authority administered by a District Officer (DO), evolved.
The settlers whose population had now grown and were actively involved in commerce and also dominant in the professional sectors as artisans as against subsistence farming by the indigenes, were gradually dominating the economic space and had accumulated enough capital to start investing in property.
With the status of Jos as a commercial and administrative centre whose population had now been buoyed by continued influx of people from other areas in search of work or as seasonal migrants, the need for leadership became necessary.
This led to the emergence of “Sarakunan Hausawa.” They were not Emirs as were obtained in other emirates of the caliphate.
The positions were not hereditary and neither did their authorities extend to the indigenes. They were colonial creations of convenience to maintain law and order and to collect taxes. They lacked the spiritual claim of the rulers of the emirates while they enjoyed no historical nor traditional rights of the indigenes, but they served a purpose: they were warrant chiefs appointed by the DO (Kantoma) whose appointments were heavily influenced by the Department of Mines, the major facilitator in the transformation of Jos.
This influence was later reflected in the emergence of influential families like that of Sale Hassan, Sale Bima, and Saleh Jambo, whose parents were heavily associated with the mining industry.
The evolution of Jos as a commercial centre based on mining was subsequently to attract financial institutions. Banks established their branches there to facilitate trade while supermarkets like the Kingsway and Chellarams stores opened their branches which were well stocked with foreign goods, beverages and imported whisky to service the large expatriate community employed by the mining firms.
They were later on joined by the Lebanese community who introduced the cinema culture to provide entertainment.
Within a short time, Jos became the most cosmopolitan city after Lagos, patterned on European provincial settlements complete with parks and numbered streets.
But beside the evolution of Jos into a cosmopolitan centre facilitated by tin mining, bringing indigenes and settlers to coexist side by side peacefully and bound together more by economic rather than any social or political interest, was another third group -the Fulani.
The ruga-based Fulanis, unlike the nomadic or the urban-based Fulani, are different. They mostly lived in isolated communities outside the urban centres with their livestock in the rugas.
While they share religious, ethnic and social affinity with their urban kinsmen, they enjoy close relationships with their hosts, the indigenes, sometimes even learning to speak the local dialect.
These tripartite relationships involving the indigenes, the settlers, and the ruga-based Fulanis, was based on a live and let live relationship.
This cordial relationship was maintained by the various groups on the Plateau, with each group recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Meanwhile, with most of the educational institutions within the metropolis mostly missionary-owned, the settlers, who were mostly Muslims and were not comfortable with them, preferred to send their wards back home to be educated in public schools at home from where, in most cases, the latter stayed back.
The attempt to rectify that was what led to the establishment of the first Islamiyya primary school in the present Jos North along Bauchi road in 1952, which was to combine both Islamic and secular syllabi.
The inability by the predominantly settler community in Jos to send their children to Western schools resulted in its low or almost non-representation in the public service today, especially in high administrative positions even after the creation of Benue-Plateau State in 1967.
By 1947, when Bitrus Rwang Pam was appointed as the Gbong Gwom Jos, it was not only in recognition of the historical and traditional ownership of the land by the indigenes, but it was also an affirmation.
While the historical and traditional ownership and rights to the land by the indigenes was widely recognised and accepted, it never altered the Constitutional provisions of the rights of others to live anywhere in the country.
Moreover, with indigenes who were mostly involved in agriculture, the settlers in the mines, the public service providing employment and others involved in different aspects of commerce as traders and artisans, the economy was booming and there was general contentment.
Neither indigene nor settler, neither Muslim nor Christian, Southerner nor Northerner, all were equal before the law and social interactions were based on mutual respect among all.
Role Of Rwang Pam In Sowing Crises Seed
When Bitrus Rwang Pam was made the Gbong Gwom, either due to oversight or inexperience, he failed to accommodate the Hausawa symbolically by formally according them recognition through appointments at a subordinate level in the palace. This act or inaction was to have serious unforeseen implications for the community.
This non-intentional action was to unfortunately leave the settlers who were already indispensable parts of the community on the Plateau without adequate representation in the community –an act interpreted to be the beginning of the policy and politics of exclusion by the indigenes against the settlers.
While the population increased, the land contracted, thus leading to the need for more land for residential purposes and farmlands to feed the growing populace.
A new wave of demands for land for farming, housing as well as commercial activities commenced. This led to further shrinking of the hitherto available space formally adequately managed by both indigenes, settlers, and the Fulani herdsmen who had become neighbours and sometimes enjoyed stable relationships with the indigenes.
But like in most cases, the materialist dispensation wherein the indigenes restricted themselves to farming as a result of the historical and traditional ownership of the land, compared to commerce in which the settler was compelled by circumstances and started as service provider, was to become the major occupation of the various settler groups on the Plateau.
Having no access to land for the above reasons, commerce and the professions became the only option open to the settlers.
The capital accumulated through it was reinvested, entrenching their domination of the economic space with implications of social disparity between the indigenes and the settlers.
The disparity was later to be crudely construed as “economic domination,” forgetting the fact that the settler owned no land, nor was he represented in the traditional nor public sector.
This perceived domination was to become a source of friction between the two.
The consistent burning of the Jos Market which victims were sometimes mostly Igbos, which to the indigenes was a symbol of the economic prosperity of the settlers, and a symbol of his (indigene) economic
marginalisation, was always a reminder of the economic root of the crisis –which is neither ethnic nor religion as had been promoted.
Religion and ethnicity were only used as a mobilising factor by both the indigenes and settlers.
In the midst of the allegations of domination, the social dispositions of the indigenes as predominantly Christians and the settlers as predominantly Hausa and Muslims, was to forcefully give the purely economic disparity an ethno-religious colouration.
From then on, the term Hausa/ Muslim and settler became inter-changeable. Nothing matters. No matter your ethnic background, if you happen to be a Muslim or a settler, rich or poor, you have been Hausanised and have been tactically drawn into a battle in which you have no inheritance, while as a Christian and minority, you stand absolved of any historical roles you might have played in creating that situation.
How National Economic Downturn Triggered Land Hunger; The Fundamentalist Wahabi Injection
The national economic crises which started in the early 80s worsened with time, affecting the few industries on the Plateau as well as the public sector, resulting into serious unemployment, especially among the indigenes who were the major beneficiaries of employment in the public sector.
This forced many of them to go back to the rural areas as farmers on lands which could no longer accommodate them as a result of contraction due to urban expansion, population explosion complicated by climate change.
The contraction of the land led to the shrinking of the space available for farming and grazing, setting the stage for the struggle for space which pitched the indigenes’ historical and traditional rights of ownership against the herders’ constitutional rights as citizens.
By that singular action, a purely economic issue was turned into an ethno-religious issue. Its economic and ecological genesis
were subsumed to politics.
Deprived of representation traditionally and politically, and with the contradiction between the indigenes and the settlers taking an ethno-religious dimension, the leadership of the Wahabist Izalatul Bid’a Wa Iqmatus Sunnah (a Wahabist Islamic Movement) stepped into the vacuum as de facto leader of the settlers –leading to their gradual radicalization.
This was made easier as a reaction to the perceived collaboration between the state, the indigenes and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) in Plateau.
Unfortunately, the political class, having yielded the space to extremism and jingoism as against justice, appealed to ethno-religious sentiments which made them beholden to ideas that are either practically impossible or contradicted the provisions of the Constitution for electoral considerations.
Contesting on the platforms of political parties without ideology or manifesto, the political class resorted to ethnic bigotry and religious extremism which were substituted for ideology while politics of exclusion as against inclusion were promoted as patriotism.
With community having been polarised along ethno-religious / indegene and settler lines, especially in Jos North where the settlers are the majority, mutual suspicion reached the highest stage.
Bloody Confrontations, Sharia Agitation Et Al
Political consultations as well as concessions became impossible in the face of hardened positions. The agitation for Sharia by some Muslim-dominated states in the North complicated issues with provocative statements by both sides in support and against, fanning the embers of hatred on the Plateau as a result of ethno-religious interpretation of the alleged economic marginalisation.
The appointment of a Hausa man from Jos North as a Caretaker Local Government Chairman in 1994 was met with violent resistance by the indigenes.
The situation got worse by 2001 when Alhaji Mukhtar Mohammed was appointed as the Coordinator of the Federal Government-coordinated Poverty Alleviation Program. This was seen as an affront by the indigenes.
These crises set the stage and pattern for subsequent ones until they became a permanent feature of the struggle for political power by the contending indigenes and settlers with the former justifying his position on the historical and traditional rights of ownership of the land, while the latter justified his as a Constitutional right, being a citizen.
The frequent crises resulted in a stalemate with severe economic consequences and dislocation, compounding the economic woes of the people and forcing migration to the rural areas.
The Fulani herdsmen who were based in the rural areas, mostly in the vicinity of indigenous settlements, found themselves drawn into the conflict because of their social affinity to their urban kinsmen, the Hausa/Muslim. Despite his indifference to politics and land ownership, he became a victim.
His cattle were rustled and killed by the indigenes and himself sometimes killed while resisting, leading to some of them losing their entire herds.
Some of the Fulanis who lost their herds became rustlers, in turn becoming a danger to his Fulani kinsmen. Between the rustling and affront of the indigenes and his Fulani kinsman, they now sourced for arms, first for defence and later on for other ends.
Likewise the indigenes, first to protect his crop and later on … until when the battleline between offence and defence came to be blurred overtime.
The age-long crises between the farmer/herders, which were formerly subject to local conflict resolution, became politicised and factored into the ethno-religious crises.
Suddenly, neighbours became enemies. The resultant effect was the militarisation of the farmer/ herders’ conflict. The farmer, the Fulani herder, and the cattle rustler all armed themselves for defence as well as offence.
Within a short time, ethnic militias were encouraged and used as strike forces by all sides which later on became strong beyond the control of the facilitators and were undertaking independent actions.
The actions of these ethnic militias became a source of serious concern, complicating the hitherto volatile situation. An unauthorised act by any of them drew indiscriminate reprisals from the other, including on innocent travellers of a different faith who might have wrongly fallen into an ambush set by an opposing side.
For every reprisal by any of the groups involved, there was a counter-reprisal leading to another counter-reprisal until all stand guilty today.
The inability of the political class to divest themselves from the ethno-religious narrative and view the crisis from its original cause as purely economic, made them captives to an electorate that has already concluded that the problem is political and its solution must be political.
The insistence on political solutions to the crisis as against the economic disparity, which was the genesis, has defied successive elected governments despite their almost total control of the political machinery in the state at all levels including those appointed at the federal level.
This goes to prove that only a sustainable empowerment programme for the indigenes by the state government, balanced by an affirmative action to protect the rights of other Nigerians in the state, can stop the crisis.
Effective leadership includes the ability to take decisive action , which may likely not be appreciated by the indigenes because of the perceived domination, but will address the economic challenges.
With a political machinery and government dominated by indigenes, the allegations of domination by others cannot withstand the test of time.
Suggested Solution
What is needed on the Plateau is a serious development plan based on the establishment of agro-allied industries, which will process the agricultural products produced by the indigenes and probably distributed by the settlers.
This will go a long way in accommodating the grievances of the indigenes of the alleged marginalization alongside a massive empowerment programme for the indigenes and an affirmative action for the settlers.
That recipe may likely bring back peace on the Plateau.
In the case of the Fulanis, the age-long conflict resolution mechanism which had served in the past but has been overshadowed by ethno-religious sentiments, must be revived.
With total control of the government and state machinery by the indigenes to the total exclusion of settlers, it is befuddling that a solution is still beyond reach to the crises on the Plateau.
An allegation of domination recycled over many years will definitely not continue to hold. And when that time comes, the
indigenes may start to ask questions, and the falcon can not hear the falconer and …Things Will Fall Apart.
*Abdullah Golkos is the CEO, salasadiscourse@gmail.com
