FULANI JANJAWEED REBELS FEAR HEIGHTENS
BY ABDULMUMINI ADEKU.
PHOTO CREDIT:BUSINESS POST
PHOTO CREDIT:BUSINESS POST
A very ferocious militant Group built to fight the battles
of Fulani tribal hegemony and cultural
identity actually may still exist if our findings are anything to go by and it was time efforts are made to disarm
this group in the interest of national security in Nigeria
In an interview with The News office Desk of Paedia Express
Multimedia Group in Lagos,Nigeria ,recently an impeccable source had told this
reporter that the Fulani man was more
strategic person as far as the issue of leadership and politics was concerned.
He noted that due to their nature of been nomadic they had
gone all around the Sahara Desert n search of greener pastures in the past for
their cattles and to look for grazing fields and in the process contacted Islam
which soon became a socio-cultural brand identity which it tried to sell to every other
culture they encountered .
He explained recently a group of researchers had met some
Fulani's whom they asked questions about the constant killings of fellow
Nigerians by supposed herdsmen and they shocked their guests when they insisted
that they were innocent but quickly added that there was another group within
their tribal linings that was responsible dubbed the "Janjaweed"by
the analysts.
The source told this reporter that the Fulani's were
structured into such groups like Business ,militant and politics with the militant group been continually
sponsored by the business and the political group so much so that whenever
there was any form of crisis in
their systems the militant arm will strike to protect the other groups within their
communities.
The source affirmed that there was really no form of
difference between the doctrines of Uthman Dan Fodio and Mallam Abubakar Shekau
both in practice and operations .
According to him at the time of Dan Fodio the world's level
of civilization had not developed to a level where some actions against
humanity was branded as terrorism unlike what we all have as today.
He painted the picture of a Fulani man as a cold hearted
human being who finds it very difficult
to forgive his rivals as the former sees defeat in any form of contest as a slap to his dignity ,but analysts
believe that this is not a behavior that is typical of a particular tribe alone
as other humans from other cultural linings could also have this feature hence
a highly debatable issue.
He recalled an incident in 2016 in Oregun area of Lagos between 2 Fulani youths
who got into a heated argument about an issue he could not readily recall so
much so that tempers went hay wire.
He revealed that daggers
and sharp knives were soon drawn out and was freely used by both foes until the Sarki of the area was
called to help salvage the situation with this preventing a bloodbath.
He hinted that the Fulani Janjaweed rebel group is actually
the militant arm of the Fulani tribal group and not the struggling nomad known
to the people around the world and who go about their lawful business without
hurting any fly ..
He added that if any one wishes to find out who the
Janjaweeds were then he will have to trace them into the bushes, forests, grasslands
around the country sides where they were
most likely to be camping to train for their militant agenda.
He praised the Benue state and Ekiti state House of Assembly
for the anti-grazing Bill which they had put in place saying this will prevent
the actual plan ultimately of using force to push a spiritual agenda.
He recalled from the Bible that the Israelites also used
such tactics while they were building there nationhood.
A source also told this reporter that the Fulani Janjaweed
militia group can eb found all over West Africa up to as far as Sudan.
Much of the violence in Sudan, which
has created over 1 million refugees, has been attributed to militias known as
the Janjaweed. Who are the Janjaweed?
The word, an Arabic colloquialism,
means "a man with a gun on a horse." Janjaweed militiamen are
primarily members of nomadic "Arab" tribes who've long been at odds
with Darfur's settled "African" farmers, who are darker-skinned. (The
labels Arab and African are rather misleading, given the complexity of the
region's ethnic history. For simplicity's sake, Explainer will stick with these
inelegant terms.) Until 2003, the conflicts were mostly over Darfur's scarce
water and land resources—desertification has been a serious problem, so grazing
areas and wells are at a premium. In fact, the term "Janjaweed" has
for years been synonymous with bandit, as these horse- or camel-borne fighters
were known to swoop in on non-Arab farms to steal cattle.
The Janjaweed started to become much
more aggressive in 2003, after two non-Arab groups, the Sudan Liberation Army
and the Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms against the Sudanese
government, alleging mistreatment by the Arab regime in Khartoum. In response
to the uprising, the Janjaweed militias began pillaging towns and villages
inhabited by members of the African tribes from which the rebel armies draw
their strength—the Zaghawa, Masalit, and Fur tribes. (This conflict is entirely
separate from the 22-year-old civil war that has pitted the Muslim government
against Christian and animist rebels in the country's southern region. The
Janjaweed, who inhabit western Sudan, have nothing to do with that war.)
Both victims and international
observers allege that the Janjaweed are no longer the scrappy militias of yore,
but rather well-equipped fighting forces that enjoy the overt assistance of the
Sudanese government. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
in June 2004, a field researcher with Human Rights Watch stated that the Sudanese army was
openly recruiting horse-owning Arab men, promising them a gun and a monthly
salary of $116 in exchange for joining a Janjaweed cohort. The International
Crisis Group says that money that gets paid to the Janjaweed
"comes directly from booty captured in raids on villages," giving
them an additional incentive to act with extreme brutality.
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