RESPONSE TO FAROOQ KPEROGI: THE DUMMY’S CASE FOR NIGERIA’S BREAKUP – AFRICASTALLESTMAN, UAC

The Dummy’s Case For Nigeria’s Breakup – Africastallestman, UAC.

During one of my daily drives along the information superhighway, or Internet if you prefer, Africastallestman encountered an article by Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D., entitled, “The Intellectual Case Against Nigeriaʼs Break-up (I).”
http://www.farooqkperogi.com/2017/06/the-intellectual-case-against-nigerias.html?m=1
There were some many unintellectual facts in the write up that Africastallestman could not wait for part II. His choice of a title is curious because intellectual articles do not advertise their intellectuality. The reader makes that determination.

His greatest fallacy is the comparison of India and Nigeria vis-á-vis population, creation and religion. If India is demographically similar to Nigeria, why is Nigeria under constant strife? India is very dissimilar from Nigeria. The Fulani part of India (East and West Pakistan) was excised from India at independence. If that Fulani part is still part of India, the strife in Nigeria will be child’s play. Today, India and Pakistan are still fighting over Kashmir. The Fulani North should have been excised from Nigeria at independence. If that was accomplished, Africastallestman will not be writing this rebuttal.

You assert that nations may be “formed by conquests, expansionist wars, and forceful cooptation, not by consensus.” Why this may be true in some circumstances, the absence of a unifying factor such as religion, political ideology, and similar origins ensues that the nation shall know no peace. Hinduism unifies India. Nigeria has Islam (North) and Christianity (South) at war, feudalism (North) and republicanism (South) in conflict, begging (North) and self-reliance (South) at loggerheads. Christianity united America in its formative stages. China is united by Communism and Han Chinese.. What united Nigeria? Nothing but a map!

Hereunder are the facts:
1. Religion.
Let’s compare the demographics of India, Nigeria, and Lebanon. Why Lebanon?

Religious Population in India according to 2011 Population Census;
Religion,
Population in Numbers, and
Percentage of the Population

Religion: Hindu
Population in Numbers:
966,300,000
% of the population: 79.8%

Religion: Muslim
Population in Numbers:
172,200,000
% of the population: 14.2%

Religion: Christian
Population in Numbers:
27,800,000
% of the population: 2.3%

Religion: Sikh
Population in Numbers:
20,800,000
% of the population: 1.7%

Religion: Buddhist
Population in Numbers:
8,400,000
% of the population: 0.7%

Religion: Jain
Population in Numbers:
4,500,000
% of the population: 0.4%

Religion: Other Religions & Persuasions (ORP)
Population in Numbers:
7,900,000
0.7%

Religion: Religion not stated
Population in Numbers:
2,900,000
% of the population: 0.2%

http://www.indiaonlinepages.com/population/religious-population-in-india.html

Religious Population in Nigeria, according to 2014 Population Census:
<1% Buddhists
49.3% Christians
1.4%. Folk Religions
<1%. Hindus
<1%. Jews
48.8% Muslims
<1% Other Religions.
<1% Unaffiliated

Highcharts.com
Source: The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050
http://www.globalreligiousfutures.org/countries/nigeria#/?affiliations_religion_id=0&affiliations_year=2010&region_name=All%20Countries&restrictions_year=2014

Religious Population in Lebanon, according to 2012 Population Census:
2017 Population – 7 million less 2.4 million refugees
Religions
Muslim 54% (27% Sunni, 27% Shia), Christian 40.5% (includes 21% Maronite Catholic, 8% Greek Orthodox, 5% Greek Catholic, 6.5% other Christian)
Druze 5.6%
Very small numbers of Jews, Baha’is, Buddhists, Hindus, and Mormons
note: 18 religious sects recognized (2012 est.)

http://www.indexmundi.com/lebanon/demographics_profile.html

The curious reader may wonder why Lebanon is in the mix since Dr. Kperogi did not examine Lebanon. Lebanon has a similar Muslim-Christian mix as Nigeria. Nigeria and Lebanon have Sharia laws. India does not have Sharia in its legal code. Sharia in India is underground.

Despite its small size, Lebanon has not known peace. India has a dominant Hindu population and the Muslims are lying low waiting for their numbers to increase. When they have the numbers, the future portends trouble for India.

Islam is retrogressive. While Christians have discarded Latin and are adopting indigenous languages as the liturgical language, the Muslim Nigerian Minister of Education wants Arabic and Islamic studies made a compulsory subject in Nigerian schools. The same Arabs are still openly enslaving blacks in the Middle East.
The Muslim Fulani want to enslave Nigeria. If not, why the upsurge in Fulani slaughtering of Christians and farmers instead of cows and rams?
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-25/she-thought-she-was-going-be-teacher-kuwait-instead-she-was-trafficked

Indian Muslims are the cow herders and abattoir operators. Since the election of Narendra Modi of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), there has been an upsurge of lynching of Indian Muslims over the cow trade. The Muslims do not have the numbers to retaliate.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-05-01/as-hindu-nationalism-grows-in-india-cows-are-protected-more-than-minorities%3Fcontext%3Damp

In India, the Hindus are killing the Fulani (Indian Muslims) for being associated with the cow trade. In Nigeria, the Fulanis are killing Christians and farmers for protesting the destruction of their crops by cows. The death of one Fulani cow will result in the mass slaughter of 200 non-Fulani Christians or farmers. Maybe, peace will return to Nigeria if Christians and farmers start killing the Fulanis as in India. Africastallestman does not condone or promote violence in any form except in self-defense to protect one’s life.

If India was not partitioned, 1 in 3 Indian will be Muslim. The killings and mass displacements in 1947 that led to the creation of Pakistan will be child’s play compared to the Fulani (Muslim Indian) reaction to the killing of its members over the cow trade. The Fulanis, Indian Muslims, are outnumbered and are playing safe, because less than 2 in 10 Indians are Muslims currently. But for how long? The Indian Muslim population is increasing faster than that of the Hindus, Africastallestman sees disturbances becoming commonplace in the future.

India will have the world’s largest population of Muslims in 2050, and by 2274, Indian Muslims will outnumber Hindu. India should start bracing for violence. Boko Haram and Fulani Herdsmen will be saints compared to anticipated future violence in India.

The religious Sharia Law is being enforced surreptitiously in India below the government radar. By 2050, there will be open agitation by Indian Muslims (Fulanis) for inclusion of Sharia in the Indian Legal Code. The Hindus will object vehemently and the stage is set for internecine violence.

2. Trade is not unity

Your examples of Nigerians intermingling before 1914 do not mean that there is Nigerian unity. A Yoruba trader can have a second home in Kano for commercial purposes. When the Hausa-Fulani refuses to pay for Yoruba kola nuts, the relationship will sour. Currently in Nigeria, resources in the Niger Delta are given away to Northerners without any compensation to the Niger Deltans. Their compensation is pollution. This sets the stage for conflict. The North is taking crude oil from the Niger Delta without paying for it.

The Europeans were going to China and India during the days of the silk trade. Is Europe and China united in one country?

3. Zoning, Federal Character, and Quota System

India does not have zoning of political offices or a quota system. Both promote mediocrity, enthrone incompetence, and becomes an albatross that impedes national cohesion and development. A region that prefers Arabic education and cattle rearing to Western education and commerce may send a small engine mechanic under a zoning and quota system when the position calls for a postgraduate engineer.
The Federal Character provision in the Nigerian Constitution is a backhanded way of top loading our institutions with unqualified Northerners. This is akin to building a house from the roof down. The universally accepted method is to encourage Northerners to go to school and shun Islamic and Arabic education. Saudi Arabia just discarded the Arabic calendar for the western calendar and some Northern States want to enforce the Arabic calendar in a secular nation. “Haba!”

4. Census

Nigeria has never had an accurate census because the Hausa-Fulani numbers inflated by the British as a favor to the Northern aristocrats has become the basis for population projections. The Hausa-Fulani- dominated North vehemently opposes an accurate census. In the current scheme of things, they are using inflated numbers to have an undeserved portion of the national cake. Underage children are being registered as adult voters for an unfair advantage.

Nigeria is the only nation in the world with a coast that has more people living in the Sahel and desert interior than on the coast. All the big US states such as Texas, California, and New York are coastal. The other big states such as Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio border the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes is an inland ocean.

In Nigeria, the arid and bare Kano State is more populous than Lagos State. When will this injustice be remedied. Or will remedying it lead to a Hausa-Fulani slaughter of Lagosians?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/06/economist-explains-6

5. Education

According to estimates, the literacy rate in the North is 15 % in the North and 60% to 70% in the South. It is easy for the few educated Islamists to whip up religious and murderous sentiments in an illiterate population against strangers. People from the South are strangers in Northern Nigeria and are segregated in stranger quarters for easy elimination during riots or bombing by Boko Haram. Hordes of fatherless children roaming the streets of Northern Nigeria can be easily incited or induced with gifts into violence against non-believers. These fatherless babies are the product of old male–female child marriages. The old men die before the children are educated throwing the entire family into penury. The Yorubas and Northern Edo people, including Akoko-Edo, are usually spared during these violent Islamic upheavals because they have many Muslims in their population.

6. Sects

Muslims love to discriminate. A Sunni Muslim will kill a Shia Muslim before a Christian and vice versa. Within each sect, there are subsets battling for supremacy. Christian sects do not kill each other. In crisis situations, Muslims love Muslims. During the storming and massacre at the Westgate Shopping Mall, Nairobi, Kenya on Saturday 21 September 2013, by Al-Shabaab, persons who identified themselves as Muslims were spared. In a crisis, the Hausa-Fulani see the Yorubas and Akoko-Edos as allies. In normal times, they are regarded as fake, beer-drinking, and inferior sect of Muslims.

Somalia has a young illiterate population. The young are easily misled into fighting. Despite a common origin, each warlord wants to carve out an area of interest for selfish reasons. I see the fighting in Somalia as the equivalent of the gang wars in America and South America. Add Al-Shabaab, in the mix, and you have fanatical Muslims fighting moderate Muslims. This is similar to Al Qaeda killing moderate or westernized Sunnis. If Somalis have no opponent to fight, they engage in sea piracy or rekindle the wars with Ethiopia or Kenya. Muslims especially fanatical Islamists love fighting. Many have gone to Syria to fight on the side of DAESH or ISIS.

The Fulanis are recent Muslim immigrants to Nigeria, who are bent on dipping the Koran in the Atlantic Ocean. They are still trooping into Nigeria from Senegal and Mali according to the Northern Governors Forum without proper immigration checks under the guise of rearing cows. However, their real intent is to convert or murder Christians who refuse conversion.

Muslims can only coexist with other religions if they are in the driver’s seat. If Muslims are in the majority, Sharia is the law and Christians can be tried under Sharia Law. If the Muslims are in a balance with the other religions, the Muslims will make the country ungovernable until they get their way — Nigeria. If the Muslim population is small, they will employ terrorism, until they have their way — Philippines. If the Muslims are vastly outnumbered as in India, they will lick their wounds, reproduce at a faster rate than their oppressors do and live to fight in the future.

7. Conclusion

Farooq, it is obvious that you are a Muslim and Fulani sympathizer. You do not want real unity in Nigeria. If you did, you would have advocated some changes. The status quo suits you and your Fulani co-travelers. The status quo is untenable. It is either restructuring or unraveling of the gossamer woven by Britain without any consideration for culture and religion.

Africastallestman wants the world to know the true story.