FEATURE ARTICLE

Chigachi EkeWednesday, July 18, 2012
[email protected]
Port Harcourt, Nigeria

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BEROM MAN, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN!

05.27pm Sunday 8th July, I got a call from Francis Jamang. Jamang is the President of Berom Youth Association, BYA. Minority Berom, Anaguta and Afizere are the autochthones of Jos Plateau. In the past two decades Beroms are massacred by majority Hausa/Fulani settlers.


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amang told me that the worst had happened. That on Saturday 7th July Fulani terrorists killed his people in Riyom. It was a cold blooded murder carried out with the connivance of highly placed Hausas/Fulanis. That as Beroms gathered 8th July to bury the victims of 7th July the funeral procession came under heavy attack by the same Fulanis. In this second attack Senator Gyang Dalyop Dantong, Chairman, Senate Committee for Health and Gyang Fulani, the Berom majority leader in the plateau State House of Assembly were killed. That he was still counting his dead but decided to call and hand me the verdict of the association he leads.

The verdict he spelt out was that (1) President Goodluck Jonathan had betrayed the Berom by appointing Colonel Sambo Dasuki, a Fulani, as the new National Security Adviser, NSA. Experience shows no Hausa/Fulani officer serving or retired can truly be neutral in a territorial dispute involving the Hausa/Fulani and Berom. Dasuki's appointment gave impetus to Fulanis to escalate their attacks and, (2) the attack that killed Dantong marks the beginning of the disintegration of Nigeria. The Berom who were the first in the North to openly declare their support for Jonathan's presidency, at a time when the very Hausa/Fulani Jonathan now favours were opposing him, would now be the first to also rebel against him.

Two months to Dantong's murder Honourable Bitrus B. Kaze who represents Jos South and Jos East in the Nigerian House of Representatives also talked to me. He was vocal asking Jonathan to stop posting Hausa/Fulani officers as commanders of Jos military Special Task Force, STF, as contained in his 30th May publication in The Nation newspaper. Backing his stand with provable facts Kaze conclusively established the link between Hausa/Fulani commanders and the escalation of violence against Beroms, rather than mitigating it. For peace to return to Beromland the government of the day must do more in protecting Beroms including seeing the Jos crisis for what it really was: Ethnic cleansing directed against indigenous Beroms by Fulanis. In otherwords, Jamang and Kaze are agreed that Fulani terrorists have the massive support of Hausa/Fulani military officers.

Before addressing the BYA verdict on Jonathan I must make three observations on Jamang and the Berom Nation.

One, the Fulani hit-and-run stratagem exposes a noticeable flaw in the way and manner Beroms handle serious matter as their every day security. What is BYA not doing that makes it easy for a handful of Fulanis to overrun Berom towns and villages at will? Beroms are pro-active after an attack than in preventing it. This must be reversed.

Two, the fact that majority of those killed in every attack were woman and children (at one time over 200 Berom women and children were murdered in one night) begs the humiliating question about the whereabouts of the men during such attack. We have seen a disturbing pattern over the years-each time Fulanis strike Berom men and youths are nowhere to be found and so the women and children are massacred.

The Arab who put the Koran in the black man's hands to make him a donkey blatantly refused to caution him: Believe in Allah but first tie your camel. So, I say to Jamang and BYA: Believe in One Nigeria but first protect your mothers and children "by any means necessary" because what we are seeing is a war of extermination.

My third observation is on misrepresentation, which if not urgently addressed could cast wronged Berom as the aggressor. Jamang and BYA must take stock of the incalculable harm done Beroms by the activities of the Hausa/Fulani-owned Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF. This becomes an issue as ACF claims to speak for the "monolithic North." If Jonathan and the international community continue to listen to ACF rather than BYA the truth of what is happening will never come to light. Beroms must speak for themselves as years of ACF misrepresentation have grossly undermined the Berom man's culture, identity and self-determination.

I now address the BYA verdict.

As of 8th July when senator Dantong was killed the STF commander on ground in Jos was not a Hausa/Fulani officer for sure. He was Major General Henry Ayoola, obviously a Yoruba. This means that Jonathan and COAS Lt Gen AO Ihejirika were sensitive to Kaze's demand, mainly, that Hausa/Fulani officers must never command the Jos STF. If Jonathan respects the feeling of Beroms on security why then did he appoint the Fulani-born Dasuki as his new NSA?

It looks more like in picking Dasuki, Jonathan was thinking of lasting peace in Beromland and the larger North. That northern Muslims/Hausa/Fulani cum Boko Haram seeing their own crown prince at the helm would sheath their sword and embrace dialogue. If such thinking influenced Dasuki's appointment then the Riyom/Barakin Ladi incidents indicate that Dasuki's emergence is a miscalculation only; certainly not a betrayal of Beroms by Jonathan. But Jonathan must understand the angst in Beromland. Dantong was killed between Dasuki's appointment and the confirmation of Mohammed Abubakar, another Fulani, as Nigerian Inspector-General of Police.

At some point, here I address the issue of Berom rebellion against Jonathan, an oppressed people are expected to do something about their condition, if and when they can. In bare terms they must fight their oppressor. The Berom are so massacred that their very survival is now a matter of speculation. It logically follows that some form of reaction is expected of them. But a Berom rebellion, caveat, could fall within the Hausa/Fulani scheme of things leading to a state of emergency. If that happens the majority of soldiers going to restore order won't be Beroms but Hausas/Fulanis and anything can happen. Hon. Simon D. Mwadkwon who survived the 8th July attack revealed that STF soldiers aided the attackers in addition to blocking Dantong's escape route. A rebellion will not be in Beroms' best interest as it is a manipulated response, rather than a self-standing decision, timed to reinvigorate a dying old order.

What is necessary is for Jamang to take charge of his own internal security. I define internal security to include constituting a BYA security committee to manage vigilante groups in every Berom hamlet and village. Jamang must deplore highly mobile units to repulse attacks and balance strength. Fighting Jonathan can only cost Beroms the friendship of the number one pressure group in black Africa-the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, who from all indications is sympathetic to BYA. The survival of minority Berom is closest to Jonathan's heart; meaning that Jamang must closely work with him.

A Berom National Congress, BNC, must now come into existence. While Jamang involves himself with security it would be the burden of BNC to build alliances with northern Christians/minorities. The fear, though, is that ACF has already checkmated Beroms in this direction by hiring willing generals from the same northern Christians/Minorities to do their dirty works. The Angas-born Yakubu Gowon fronts as Chairman of ACF while Jeremiah Useni from Langtang also fronts as Chairman, Board of Trustees of ACF. Now, ask yourself why these two? Your investigation will reveal that Gowon and Useni have attributes not seen in intrepid generals like Zamani Lekwot of the famed Zango Kataf crisis. This is what I mean:

With the massive backing of the Langtang Mafia an intelligent Useni would have seized power when Gen Sani Abacha died and carved out his dream Langtang State. He never did that even though he was under the same roof with Abacha when the latter died, till Abdulsallami Abubakar knocked him off and assumed power. Strangely enough the same Hausa/Fulani who saw Useni as unfit to rule Nigeria in 1998 are now praising his intelligence in 2012. Since his appointment Useni has been saying what his masters want to hear, castigating hapless Beroms for fomenting all the trouble in Jos despite the overwhelming historical evidence suggesting the contrary. Would Useni admit he's a great disappointment to Langtang people?

But the poaching of northern Christians/minorities by ACF weakens Beroms on two grounds as (a) it destroys their traditional power base. With Useni's appointment, for instance, it is doubtful if the Tarko Youth Association, TYA, of Langtang people will be in a hurry to support Beroms and, (b) what we are seeing is the systematic isolation of Beroms to make them public enemy number one. In Nigeria an enemy of the Hausa/Fulani is supposed to be your enemy also. Once Beroms are so tainted their mass murder could be justified.

Lt. Col James Pam was killed by Igbos and the Hausa/Fulani welded together all the tribes and nations of Nigeria to avenge his death, or so they claimed. Senator Gyang Dalyop Dantong was murdered by the same Hausa/Fulani and every tribe and nation in Nigeria is unconcerned. This is possible only because Beroms allowed Hausas/Fulanis to play the ambiguous role of a defender and destroyer in their national life. The general attitude to the mass murder of Berom women and children by the Hausa/Fulani, regrettably, is that it is a private dispute between a master and his vassal, so none must interfere. Jamang is a lonely voice today because Beroms subscribed to the myth of monolithic North. They never refuted it, at least.

Chigachi Eke is an Igbo Rights Activist.

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