Last week in Jos, as ‘sons of the soil’ marauded around Gangare and Dilimi downtown on a murderous rampage, they were communicating with each other in Hausa, the language of their victims, the ‘settlers’. Again, listening to the rulers of Plateau State, speaking in almost fluent Hausa on the media, the massive irony of it all is lost only on the most naïve. Here are ‘sons of the soil’, out to ethnically-cleanse a ‘settler’ community, yet borrowing the victim’s own tongue. Yet again, when these ‘sons of the soil’ appear in public, they are more often than not regaled in what could pass for Hausa clothing, the attire of their hated ‘settler’ compatriots.
Yes, the British colonial masters may have made Hausa lingua franca to bring order among the wonderful array of the Babel of Voices the Good Lord has blessed the so-called Middle Belt with. Yes, necessity of identity may have made Hausa attire dressing franca for many a minority northern people. But would it not have made more sense that, if one people so hates another as intensely as the ‘sons of Plateau soil’ hate the ‘Hausa settlers’, they would also distance themselves from their language, dress, food and other symptoms of their culture? How else could you show your independence from the Hausa if you scream to your partner in ethnic-cleansing that: Ga shi nan! Tare shi! Kashe shi? What irony to murder someone chanting the victim’s own language?
The Plateau State House of Assembly has, since the Second Republic, made Hausa the language of communication in its hallowed chambers, alongside English. Hausa; not Berom, Afizere, Anaguta, Ngas, Tarok or any other ‘aboriginal’ language. Hausa, the language of the hated ‘settlers’. The Honourables would also invariably appear attired in colourful Hausa dress, the clothing of the hated ‘settlers’. But for Hausa, that Honourable House could be a cacophony of voices and, because of Hausa, today the people of Plateau State have a common language. The state, an amalgam of federated fifty-odd exclusively different peoples, uses Hausa as state lingua franca.
So the Hausa ‘settlers’ can ‘donate’ their language, their dress, their food, their culture for adoption. But one thing the ‘settlers’ cannot aspire to become is a miserable chairman of a local government. For that audacity of hope to become a local government chairman, they would be exterminated, using all means necessary including the historically-biased security agencies.
It did not start today. It had happened earlier in 1994 when a certain Hausa person was appointed a caretaker chairman of the Jos North Local Government by a military government. Hundreds perished for that miserable office. It again happened in September 2001 when another ‘settler’ had the audacity to be appointed head of a Federal Government (yes, Federal Government) poverty alleviation agency. Who was he to offer himself to serve in a position the ‘sons if the soil’ felt should be reserved for them? For a week, all hell broke loose on the ‘settlers’. The world did not get to know the extent of the mayhem early enough, for it coincided with the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Then again in 2004, it happened. The orgy of violence, now remembered as the Yelwa Massacre, was so unprecedented that the Federal Government had to declare a state of emergency and sack the governor for some time. Yet the same scenario was allowed to happen again!
What happened last week in Jos is beyond belief and beyond coincidence. The Federal and State Governments as well as the security agencies have no excuse to have allowed this to happen. They are all culpable. Of homicide. Punishable by death. The same death visited on the ‘settlers’. All talk of rule of law has been reduced to naught, zilch, balderdash. Again, as in 2001 with its 9/11, last week’s murderers had a field day for a couple of days as the world’s media attention was glued to the Mumbai attacks in India.
The Plateau State website http://www.plateaustategov.org/visit/jos.html mentions that “Jos was established in 1915 as a tin transportation camp and its early history was closely linked to the prosperity of the mining industry. In 1967, it became the capital of the defunct Benue-Plateau State and was transformed into the capital city of Plateau State in 1975, thus becoming an important administrative and commercial centre, therefore you find people of different backgrounds (race, tribe and religion) leaving [sic] together. With a population of about 1,000,000, Jos remains one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Nigeria. It is adjudged the ‘home of peace’ or as the safest city to live in Nigeria.”
Indeed.
A certain Mr. C.A. Ames, a colonial administrator, had long ago noted that “the people of this Plateau are not aboriginal inhabitants of the province, though they have all been living in their present lands for a very long time. For example, some of them claim to have come from Borno area to Bauchi and later migrated to their present place in Jos division of the Plateau. Others claim their ancestral home to have been the old Gobir Empire around Madawa (now between Sokoto and Niger Republic).”
Ames further observed that “...the Hausa/Fulani inhabited what is presently known as Jos before the coming of the colonialists, and before the Hausas Jos was an unoccupied virgin land. The Hausas have been there since the beginning of the century. No Birom had a house in the heartland of Jos. As close as 1950, there were only 10,207 people in Jos town, of which 10,000 were Hausas.”
Settlers are not occupiers. The Hausa are magnanimous settlers. The British settled in Australia, and Aboriginals have never been the same. Today, Australia is a White Man’s country through and through. The same British settled New Zealand and the original Maoris rue the day Captain Cook reached their shores. The same White settlers went west and settled today’s Americas. The indigenous ‘sons of the soil’ have never been the same: they in fact even lost their identities for a derisive, pejorative term: Red Indians. They were shot and killed, and those who refused to die were infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, commodities in great abundance among the Whites. The same Israel Christian Middle Belters always look up to as bulwark against Muslim hegemony is also a settler community which has usurped the lands and resources of Palestinians, Muslim and Christian. The Hausa have indeed been magnanimous settlers.
What the ‘sons of the soil’ should now advocate is a constitutional amendment to say that democracy should no longer be a game of numbers, and certain positions, especially Chairman of Jos North Local Government, should be reserved exclusively for ‘indigenes’. They would do well to study the Malaysian constitution for international best practices. And then all those Plateau indigenes working in the factories of Kano, the heart of Hausaland, would pack their luggage and return home, having won the great battle against the Hausa. Then harmony and tranquility would reign supreme in the home of peace and hospitality.
Or they should study Jos’s parallel city here in Africa; Doaula in Cameroun. Doaula, the commercial capital of Cameroun, has also been always in the grips of indigene-settler crisis. The ‘sons of the soil’, called Sawa, are a minority in the city they claim to be theirs. ‘Settlers’ such as the Bamileke, the Fulani and the Hausa (those Hausas again!) took residence long before the natives left their fastnesses. In the July 2003 legislative and municipal elections in Cameroon, the ‘settlers’ won Douala. Out of five municipal councils, four were won by ‘settlers’ and one by an ‘indigene’. Of the four ‘settlers’, three were Bamileke and one was Hausa (the Hausa again!). The Sawa have not (yet) taken up the cudgels to murder the Bamileke and Hausa (perhaps until they are coached by Plateau’s ‘sons of the soil’).
What the Sawa did was simple: noting that the winners of Doaula elections belonged mainly to the opposition party, they cosied up to the ruling party at the centre. Now all ‘Federal’ appointments come to the Sawa, including poverty alleviation. They leave the miserable municipal positions (actually Local Government chairmanship) to the ‘settlers’ until the next election.
The way we are going, if we allow these ‘sons of the soil’ to redesign Nigeria, by the time everyone is unravelled, this writer would have to re-trace four hundred years of nomadic wanderlust and relocate to Futa Toro or Futa Jallon or similar exotic places west where the Fulani emanated. And then the Guineans and the Gambians and the Senegalese would say we are ‘settlers’, again!
Let us end with this really revealing indigene-settler exchange which is said to have taken place recently. It was the United Nations, and the Palestinian Representative rose to speak: “Before beginning my talk,” he said, “I want to tell you something about Moses. When he struck the rock and it brought forth water, he thought, ‘What a good opportunity to have a bath!’ He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. An Israeli had stolen them.”
The Israeli Representative jumped up furiously and shouted, “What are you talking about? The Israelis weren’t even there by then.”
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