Falae’s unfortunate and unacceptable kidnap

                               

I HAVE made several efforts this week to speak with Chief Olu Falae, to extend my sympathy over his unfortunate kidnap as well as to express happiness that he was able to return home safely. Chief Olu Falae is without doubt one of the genuine elder statesmen in our country, and while many charlatans have been so described, there’s no gainsaying the fact that the chief is so deserving of the appellation. I met Chief Olu Falae for the first time in the lead to the 2014 National Conference, when the Okunronmu Committee on a National Conference held an experts’ meeting at the International Conference Center in Abuja.

I had been invited as discussant of a paper presented by the venerable chief and I said things that he obviously didn’t like about his analysis. He angrily expressed his objection but after the presentation he was very accommodating in his response to me when I went to greet him. He pointed out that I looked like Alhaji Aliyu Kola Belgore, who he worked with in his banking days. I replied that we were cousins. Much later, we were both delegates to the 2014 National Conference and on many occasions he expressed admiration for views I expressed at the Conference, saying that with younger people like me, our country had a secure future.

Defender of Yoruba’s interest
Falae

Falae

Chief Olu Falae is a very passionate defender of the interests of the Yoruba people and he expresses his views without ambiguity. Yet, in my view, he is also a passionate Nigerian patriot and he belongs to that generation of Nigerians who were given tremendous opportunities by our country in those truly remarkable years of independence. In turn, people like Chief  Olu Falae worked with genuine commitment to build the new country. It is part of the contradictions of Nigerian development, that Chief Olu Falae continues to be engaged with Nigeria this time from a much more narrowly ethnic platform at a time when the problems of nation building have become much strongly class-based; and when there is a far more serious youth bulge than at any point in our history. A country with the median age of 17.1 years must be truly difficult to understand from the standpoint of someone in his seventies, because the problems which young people are wrestling with across the country are very similar and cannot be properly appreciated or apprehended from the standpoint of ethnicity. I respect Chief Olu Falae’s sincere commitments, but I am more circumspect about the reductionism associated with the platform of ethnicity as being the primary contradiction that we face in our country.

The unacceptable kidnap of the highly respect Chief Olu Falae, has unfortunately been turned into ammunition by ethnic entrepreneurs, to ratchet up inter-ethnic heat, as the people who kidnapped the chief were said to be nomadic Fulani herdsmen. Even the normally cool-headed Chief Olu Falae, threatened ‘self-help’, if problems with nomadic Fulani were not stemmed by the Nigerian government. He stated that: “it is an insult to OUR RACE (the Yoruba) that a man like me could be abducted by a BUNCH OF HOODLUMS (my emphasis)”. There were more extremist statements by Yinka Odumakin and Femi Fani-Kayode. Fani-Kayode in his obviously crowded imagination saw the herdsmen, described as ‘a bunch of hoodlums’ by Chief Falae as: “…the vanguard and covet armed wing of the Fulani ruling class…” and “…sleeper cells of a much bigger army…(and) if a major conflict were to arise would those sleeper cells be activated and would they commence the wholesale slaughter of the indigenous population in their host states?” Such morbid imaginations of “major conflict” and “wholesale slaughter” can only issue forth from Femi Fani-Kayode!

Trenches of ethnic warfare: The kidnap became an opportunity to return to the trenches of ethnic warfare and Fulbe people returned as straw men. Even the highly respected General Alani Akinrinade also weighed in, describing Chief Olu Falae’s abduction “as an insult to the entire Yoruba nation”. Although he eventually added that the abduction “was the height of insult…also (to) the nation as a whole”. And that indeed was a fact! What I disagree with is the “ethnicizing” of what Chief Falae had initially called a crime by  “a bunch of hoodlums”. This does not remove from the fact that the kidnappers were probably Fulbe and as had been reported, were having problems with the chief’s farmland.

Last week, I had written about problems associated with population growth and the influence that is having on changes of climate patterns and the southwards migrations of nomadic Fulbe and their animals. I follow these problems very carefully as a Fulani and a Nigerian patriot looking for solutions to problems confronting all the peoples of our country. These migrations have resulted in increasing clashes with sedentary farming communities in several parts of Nigeria. Even nomads are not immune from the crimes associated with globalised capitalism and in recent years there have been several reported cases of nomadic young men, robbing on highways and even raping! As Chief Olu Falae reported, those who abducted him were “between the ages of 25 and 35”! That is not surprising for those conversant with the demographic patterns to crimes in Nigeria. Most of those committing crimes today in our country are young people and this is without prejudice to their ethnic origins or the regions of Nigeria that they come from.

Socio-economic problems

Of course, the state and communities of farmers and nomads must find ways of resolving conflicts especially because socio-economic problems have often been interpreted and fought out as ethnic or ethno-regional and religious. I think the abduction of Chief Olu Falae fell into that pattern and is being exploited as an orchestrated attack on the Yoruba ethnic group or ‘race’. Once we walk along that route, reason becomes vacated and emotions are let lose and what becomes endangered is the peaceful cohabitation of all our peoples. We should not allow that to happen.

Lessons to draw: On the contrary, Nigeria should draw lessons and work very urgently in the spirit of this period in our national journey to find solutions. We must thank God that Chief Olu Falae was able to return home peacefully because any other outcome would have had dire consequences, especially for inter-ethnic relationships. Never mind the fact that the criminals who carried out the abduction were not doing so on behalf of Fulbe people, but those baying for inter-ethnic crisis would certainly have found their excuse! The problems confronting our country are far more complex than ethnic entrepreneurs seem to understand.
By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu