Re: Fulani came to Plateau before Berom, Mwaghavul, others – MACBAN.
The Berom Educational and Cultural Organisation (BECO), is once more rudely interrupted by the incomprehensible outbursts of one Nura Mohammed of the MACBAN, in an interview he granted to the Tribune online newspaper, of Saturday July 15, 2023. Ordinarily we are very reluctant in wasting precious time responding to the inanities of a weird and polluted mindset. However, to put the records straight for the sake of posterity and, in order to prevent a situation where genuinely ignorant members of the public, are misled and misinformed, we find it expedient to briefly touch on the substantial intellectual miscarriage of Nura Mohammed’s attempt at deconstructing history.
- In response to a question, the MACBAN ideologue said, inter alia, ” …There are areas mentioned in the history of West Africa where Fulani first settled, Kilimanjaro Highland, Futa jallon island and Mambila Plateau. For the past 2000 years the Fulani have been roaming about in Plateau state from one location to the other “. From the above quotation alone, the MACBAN frontline spokesperson has, irredeemably done a colossal damage to whatever claim his ‘roaming’ killer herdsmen had desperately aimed at making. Firstly, Kilimanjaro Highland is not in West Africa and couldn’t have been mentioned in the history of the sub region, as wrongly posited by Nura. Next, is the fact that the Fulani first settled in aforementioned areas does not imply they were the first to so settle there. These two issues are not one and the same. This makes any other demands or argument arising from the said faulty foundation above, highly untenable and ultimately unsubstantiated. Again, Plateau state was not mentioned as one of the areas Nura’s fore father’s settled, except he (Nura) confuses Mambila Plateau with Plateau state.
Secondly, roaming around a place does not confer ownership of such a place to the roaming gang, neither does the claim to ancestry emerge out of tireless roaming around a place. By the way, why must an ‘ancestral’ group choose , to roam around instead of settling down to lay claim to ownership? As it were, Nura equally failed woefully, to inform his readers when his people will end their roaming expedition and, very importantly too, at what part of the state they may decide to finally lay claim to after the roaming. - It’s worth noting that Nura in his senile rambling owned up to the fact that his roaming killer herdsmen are among the ‘largest’ groups on the Plateau (though this is false). This assertion admits the fact that other groups of people have since settled in their ancestral lands. This strengthens the fact that not all are engaged in the roaming business. That is where the Berom, Mwaghavul and the others, Nura mentioned belong. For sure, like other States of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Plateau has its indigenes and residents. This is constitutionally defined and administratively determined. The Fulani are NOT and have never been an indigenous ethnic group to Plateau state.
- For the avoidance of doubt and the need to ensure clarity of argument, we make haste to state categorically, that the autochthonous communities of Plateau have existed in their present places of abode since time immemorial, spanning through pre-historic age to historic period, through pre-colonial times. Renowned archaeologists like Thurston Shaw, R C Soper and Bernard Fagg, have linked indigenous ethnic groups of Plateau to the Nok Culture which thrived between 200BC to 1000 AD. To now begin to reconstruct a new version of the history of the peopling of the Plateau, hinging it on the theory of roaming about, is a joke taken quite too far, for reality. Certainly, Nura’s brain is devoid of the intellectual sophistry to painstakingly accommodate the heroic 1873 battle of Naraguta, which was one, and the last, in the series of attempted incursions, by his great grand parents, into the Plateau. This is needless educating him in particular and his terrorist outfit in general, that the Naraguta battle between the indigenous peoples of Jos Division and Danfodio’s roaming adventurers was the very last, because of its disastrous outing, for the invaders. After this major setback for the Fulani, no further attempt was made by them to come near the Plateau until long after the coming of the British tin miners. For a group making any claim on a space it does not own, there must be a convincing argument, even if buttressed by no concrete proof. At least there should be a similitude of native intelligence in the presentation. This one falls in the throes of the usual lazy rantings of an ant. Nura is used to talking in the defence of the indefensible. He does it with a straight face reflecting the true man inside the facade of the ‘boldness’ he pretends to the public. Of course a man who would willingly defend the gruesome act of genocide , lying is the least of his life worries.
Chollom Gyang. Secretary General.
July 15, 2023