The capability of the Fulani to fight a civil war in Nigeria is overwhelmingly exaggerated
People agitating for self-determination, which is their right in domestic and international law, are being warned that this could lead to a war that they were certain to lose as Biafra did 1967/70. Jihadist invincibility and alleged Fulani capture of Ilorin is the basis of the current perception of the Fulani fighting capability. It is fake, revisionist history. Hugh Clapperton’s account, the only independent eyewitness account of the jihad, was that the Yoruba roundly and totally defeated the Fulani invaders.
Clapperton wrote in 1826: ‘Here they found more resistance than anywhere else, as they (the people of Yourriba) could not be made to believe in his doctrine or prophecy, as they were confirmed Kaffers, who, on the invasion of the Fellatas, put all the Mahometans to death…’
The common Ilorin/Afonja story is contrived. Ilorin was a Yoruba trading post that the Royal Niger Company (RNC) desired but could not have. The Yoruba had seen off Fulani incursion. And the company could not get a treaty, so Goldie attacked Ilorin on the usual pretext of fighting slavery. To justify his adventure, Goldie lied to the British that Ilorin was a slave owning, slave raiding and slave trading empire, governed by people who would not agree to mend their ways. And to install ‘indirect rule’, Goldie after capturing Ilorin, installed the very first emir ever to rule over the town. Prior to Goldie’s intervention, Ilorin was not an emirate.
Romantics and deluded Fulani elites perpetrate the myth of the Osman Danfodio military conquests. The fact is that he and his jihadists were not good enough to make it south of the Niger and Benue rivers. There were no decisive battles in Othman Danfodio's conquest of Hausaland. There was no 'battle of Sokoto' or battle of anywhere for that matter. Just bullying. As a result, Danfodio's army was incompetent and ineffective when it encountered real resistance at Ilorin and at Bida.
President Buhari, believing the Danfodio myth, has turned the Nigeria army into the Fulani army. The only recent recruits into the Nigeria army are Fulani Bokoharam terrorists who swapped jungle life with the more comfortable life of army recruits. Their modus operandi remains exactly the same as before, however: kidnapping, orphaning children, raping women, and destroying livelihood. The Nigeria army and Fulani elites collaborate with Bokoharam from position of weakness, not strength. Failure to defeat Bokoharam in the north is evidence of the limit to Fulani military power. The Fulani military is powerful in the south only because they are mobilised to face unarmed people including women and children. That position is likely to change as people defend themselves and their properties.
Current trend of overestimating Fulani power is dangerous. We risk missing the opportunity and surrendering when we can defeat them. We have enough resources for the job, but we are persuading ourselves otherwise. Examples abound in history of defeat due to overestimating the enemy.
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