Prof. Umar Labdo of Maitama Sule University, Kano, recently described the Fulani people as destined to rule Nigeria. According to Labdo, Fulani people have been saddled with the burden of leadership and they have to shoulder that responsibility because they are qualified for it.
But in an interview with Saturday Punch, Femi Fani Kayode the former minister of aviation picked holes in Labdo’s assertion and reminded him that the Yoruba, had people in the best universities in the world like Oxford and Cambridge as far back as the early 1800 when Usman Dan Fodio was still learning to ride a horse and planning his Jihad.
Excerpt from the interview…
Saturday PUNCH: Recently in an interview with Prof. Umar Labdo of the Maitama Sule University, Kano who described the Fulani people as destined to rule Nigeria. He said that Fulani people are saddled with the burden of leadership and that they have to shoulder that responsibility because they are qualified for it. What do you think about that assertion?
Qualified? How? As a matter of fact, some would argue that in terms of history, they are the least qualified and the least deserving to lead and rule. If it was simply about qualifications and not a brutal show of power and the force of arms, they would be nowhere because there are many nationalities in Nigeria that are far more qualified to take the lead than they were or are.
The Fulani are not amongst the most educated in Nigeria and if the truth be told, education came to them very late. They were so uneducated and unenlightened that they were terrified of Nigeria gaining independence from the British in 1953, when the first motion for Nigeria’s independence was moved because they knew that they could not compete with any of the southern ethnic nationalities in a newly independent Nigeria.
That is why they said 1953 was too early for our nation to have independence. Imagine someone saying it was too early to be free and to break the yoke of colonialism.
That is what the North, led by the Fulani, said in 1953. They walked out of Parliament when the motion was moved because they knew that they were not qualified or capable of leading and managing the affairs of a newly independent nation then and they made it clear that they did not want southern leadership or domination and that they would rather have British rule than southern rule. That is why the British loved them so much and favoured them. Because of their attitude and their aggression and hostility to the better educated and more qualified South and because of their morbid fear of southerners, southern rule and domination, they held up our independence for eight years.
And even then, the understanding and deal between them and the British was that the system would be rigged, the census figures would be doctored and the Armed Forces would be skewed, all in their favour so that an independent Nigeria would be led by them and not by the far more qualified and better educated South.
What the British did to us by giving them power and leadership and protecting and favouring them for all these years just to keep the South in bondage and to spite us was cruel and unprecedented and we have been paying the price and suffering the consequences of that cruel act ever since.
Labdo talks about education and I wonder what he and his people know about it. If not for Federal Character and the quota system, where would they, including Labdo, be today? Would he even be a professor? What was his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather in life? Were they educated or were they qualified in any way to lead? I doubt it very much and I don’t want to say the sort of things they may well have been doing. Compare that to the southern experience and their southern counterparts.
The Yoruba, for example, had people in the best universities in the world like Oxford and Cambridge as far back as the early 1800 when Usman Dan Fodio was still learning to ride a horse and planning his Jihad. The Igbo also had many educated and enlightened people then. Do you know how many southern Nigerians were at the great Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, which was part of Durham University in the late 1800? What do people like Labdo and his progenitors and forefathers know about that? Do you know how many people in the South who were educated by the great Christian missionaries and the Anglican Church, including my great grandfather, Rev. Emmanuel Adebiyi Kayode, who was one of those that first brought Christianity to Ile-Ife (in Osun State) after finishing at Durham University.
Do you know that his son, my grandfather, Justice Adedapo Kayode, was at Cambridge just as his son, my father, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, was? Where were their forefathers that were so qualified to lead educated and what was the nature of that education?
Does he know of places like CMS Grammar School and the great King’s College of old?
Does he know of great educated men in our history like Bishop Ajayi Crowther, Herbert Macaulay, Sir Adeyemo Alakija, Justice Coker, Justice Ademola, Justice Fatayi-Williams, Chief Frederick Rotimi Williams, Chief Bode Thomas, Chief Sobo Sowemimo, and countless others, who went to Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, London and many other great universities all over the world?
What about Wole Soyinka, the Ransom-Kutis, the Chinua Achebes, the Christopher Okigbos and so many others that came in the later generation of great minds and that went to the top Nigerian universities, when they were amongst the best in Africa?
How many of such people do the Fulani have? Not one. They knew nothing about western education till many years later. The first northern lawyer was called to the bar in 1955, which was over 100 years after the first Yoruba lawyer, Sapara Williams, was called to the bar.
And even that northerner was a northerner of Yoruba extraction by the name of Alhaji Abdul- Rasaq from Ilorin. Where were the Fulani throughout these years in terms of education? Even the Hausa, who they conquered, the Kanuri and much of the North, were far ahead of them.
The earliest and most educated family in the North were the Attas and they were Ibira and not Fulani. The earliest and best educated family in the core North were the Walis of Kano, but even they were well behind the Attas and the Abdul Rasaqs. Most of the northern tribes, like their southern counterparts, had thousands of years of rich history, empires and kingdoms in their present locations long before the Fulani came and when they were still plying the trade routes with their camels to North Africa from Futa Jallon in Guinea and herding cattle. The Fulani did not even appear in northern Nigeria until 1797 and the jihad was launched in 1804. They met us all here. They came from elsewhere and they came with the sword. What they got in northern Nigeria, they got by the power of the sword and through violence, bloodshed and conquest, and not as a consequence of any qualification or education, which they never had.
They conquered parts of the North, toppled old dynasties, destroyed ancient empires and imposed their Emirs by force on their new-found slaves and vassals. It was by force and not by qualification or superior knowledge and education as Labdo would have us believe. And when they talk about education and you point these facts out, they will say “oh, we are talking about Islamic education and not western education”. But yet again, they are wrong there because even in that, they were very far behind most others. I say this because Islam came to the Yoruba tribes primarily through the Turkish traders 400 years before Usman Dan Fodio put his foot in northern Nigeria and attacked the Hausa Habe Kingdom and King Yunfa of Gobir.
The Hausa had already accepted Islam as their faith then just as the Kanuri had done too. However, in the whole of Nigeria, no tribe knew Islam or was better educated in Islamic literature, the Koran and the hadith, than the Yoruba Muslims. So when Labdo talks about the Fulani being better qualified or better educated than anyone else, it is simply a manifestation of his ignorance, his delusion and his arrogance of power.
The professor said that the Fulani people were educated before others in Nigeria and had manuscripts dating as far back as 300 to 500 years. What do you think about that?
The truth is that the opposite is the case. They are the ones that knew nothing whilst others were far ahead of them and well advanced in matters of civilisation and governance. He is wrong and we must set the record straight so that the younger generations are not misled. The Caliphate has only existed for about 220 years and before then, the Fulani were barely educated, they were nothing and they knew nothing.
In terms of qualifications and education, they are very far down the line when compared to the numerous ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria. As painful as it may be, this is the bitter truth…
Read full interview in Saturday Punch