As the year 2021 approach to its end, Nigeria had celebrated 61 years of Independence amidst a tumultuous journey of post colonial existence and a seeming futile attempt at nation building.
Since the election of the current Nigeria government administration in 2015 under the leadership of General Mohammadu Buhari, the country has been on the brink of failed statehood as terrorism, kidnapping, banditry, a drugged up and unemployed youth population have taken to all genres of vices. Under a political system I will define as a “#Fulatheid system”(#Peulatheid from the French word for the Fula people) A system I will described as a government run by the the Buhari Administration)
A system whereby Boko Haram terrorist groups dominated by the Kanuri and banditry alongside kidnapping mostly perpetrated by the Herdsmen of the Fulani ethnic, a menace which has become a booming and lucrative industry with a multimillion-dollar turnover.
Fulatheid as orchestrated in the six years of the Buhari Government of Nigeria features a political and social system in which there is dominant Fulani minority rule similar to the Apartheid system in South Africa. Further, I would summarize Fulatheid as an ethnic discrimination against non-Fulanis tribe in Nigeria.
Therefore, the word “Fulatheid” is a reference to the political alienation of other indigenous ethnic nationalities in Nigeria distinct from the Fulani. The Nigerian political terrain which had been plagued by unsavoury military misadventures has continued to sustain the characterization of its political parties and politicians as tribal corporations and ethnic entrepreneurs respectively.
This picturesque political emoji was used by the historian and reputed journalist to describe the political economy of Nigerian in the “Book States of Africa”. The Nigeria military infrastructure in all the chaos has taken stock of new Aircraft and hardware yet has been worn thin from fighting on one too many fronts especially with facing an asymmetrically deployed, insider driven and state sponsored insurgency against Bono Haram in the North East, ISWAP and other emerging Islamic fundamentalist Arms bearing groups and their splinters across the country’s North.
The new Chief of Army Staff and top brass of Nigerians security institutions have had a tough time containing the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra secessionist agitations, IPOB in the South East, Niger Delta Militants in the creeks of what is termed the South’ South. The latest intrigue to the crime scene in Nigeria is the “Unknown Gunmen” phenomenon, a euphemism coined by the media to accommodate the request of the Government of the day in its attempt to describe a new strain of armed Brigands who had only just a month ago murdered Dr. Akunyili, a respected medical professional. The Unknown Gunmen have founded fame across the country.
Hours after President Buhari gave his Independence speech with some of its highpoints mentioning some political elites in the category of Senators and top government personalities as those behind the funding terrorism. President Buhari also signalled an end to hostilities with Twitter and therefore, unbanned the use of the social media and microblogging site.
President Buhari in his wildly publicised message to Nigerians labelled as terrorists, the leaders of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu whom is still in the custody of the State Security, Sunday Igboho, the poster boy of Oduduwa struggle for freedom, also still held in Benin Republic prison.
In the past few months, Members of the House of Representatives joining the clamour of the Nigerians and the Senate to request President Buhari designate ” Bandits “ravaging Africa’s largest economy, commuting mass murder and undermining its national security as terrorists. Whilst President Buhari’s speech finds deconstruction in the minds of over 80 million poverty-stricken Nigerians as lacking vigor or solace, a twenty-two seconds video has emerged and gone viral showing Nigeria’s Minister of Defence bearing an AK-47 assault rifle as he enters a bulletproof Mercedes Benz SUV with his oderly saluting.
The defence minister got huge flack from Nigerians when he said in a live interview months ago that Nigerians should take up arms and defend themselves in face of daily invasions and a dysfunctional and collapsed security architecture, after an alleged Fulani herdsmen massacre of Nigeria’s Middle Belt farmers on their ancestral farm lands. Ravaging Banditry, kidnapping, assassinations and insurgency are reminiscent of a similar situation during the Qing dynastic era in China and the Chinese experience was one where after more than a century of Western humiliation and harassment, the Qing dynasty collapsed in the early 1900s.
The insecurity situation in Nigeria has come full circle from regular killing and displacement of the masses to IDP camps all through to instituting ample trepidation ubiquitously pervasive amongst the political elite who are being cut down violently as well and in more recent time.
The need for President Buhari’s to urgently revisit his policies, actions and inactions of Fulatheid governance, a perceived lack of a listening ear and an appetite for binge foreign borrowing are amongst many issues of immediate rationalisation for his Government, so as to save the country from collapse.
