Of Conspiracy Theories, Fulani Cause and Nigerian Army, by Hassan Gimba

The Arbiter

One of the conspiracy theories parroted by some people in Nigeria is that the Nigerian Army conscripts “repentant” Boko Haram fighters into its ranks. It even goes further to say that the conscripts are the ones transported to kill them and grab their lands! Their minders tell them that there is a purported jihad going on and the Fulani will kill all of them. In this century, with the world now a global village, they fall prey to the lies and manipulations of the wicked.
Of course, this is just one of many conspiracy theories propounded by haters who want an excuse to do what they love to do – hate. The other one is that the president is a clone. In their mischievous but infantile imagination, their president died a long time ago and one Jubril from Sudan is standing in for him.
It is laughable to see a supposedly educated man, who looks down on others as illiterate almajiri, worked up over such nonsense. He shouts that the illiterate and his other illiterate brothers have hatched a plot to annihilate him from the surface of the earth. I heard even one governor parroting this rabble-rousing balderdash.
Conspiracy theories are as old as man. A conspiracy theory is the attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as resulting from the actions of a small powerful group. The theorists reject accepted narratives surrounding those events; indeed, the official version of them is further proof of the conspiracy.
I belong to various WhatsApp groups some of which are dominated by those who love to wrap happenings in the country around conspiracy theories. Most of them cherish it. Their lives revolve around it. They sound intelligent, boasting of going through the four walls of a university. However, an encounter with them makes one believe they just went through the university without the university going through them.
They leave you with one of two thoughts. Either they like to be mischievous and are in a frenzy to see bloodshed or they are duller than the “almajiri” they look down on. Perhaps even both.
This attitude may even be because they had already lent their souls to the devil. They have become unquestioning and undiscerning servants of a murderous terrorist who pulls the strings of their hearts.
A joker who, at the best of times, can go for a charlatan hatched a laughable hypothesis, not even a theory, that President Muhammadu Buhari had died when he went to a hospital in London in 2017. He even went further to claim that the president’s corpse was flown to Saudi Arabia, where it was buried.
The demented terrorist told his demented followers that after the burial of the president, a small clique within the government contracted a man from Sudan named Jubril to replace him. Can anything beat that? Anyone who believes that is less intelligent than the cows Fulani herdsmen move about. Dulled by the love for conspiracy theories they are.
And all this happened under the noses of the security agencies of European countries, yet their leaders continue to hobnob with Jubril? But more pitiable are those that believe such a ludicrous story. They force most times one to harbour some sympathy for the sheepish followers who gobble up the nonsense spewed by someone who seems sick in the head.
Another bunkum parroted by this set of people – just because they must hate – is that a so-called Fulani, or North, want to “annihilate” them. This is another figment of the imagination of evil and mischievous minds. They speak of the north as if it is a monolithic behemoth that sits, decides, plans, and then executes. Some who claim to be “intellectuals” even equate the Fulani with ants or the honey bees, marvelous creatures of God.
Just as these marvelous creatures of God have leaders, workers, soldiers, etc., these pseudo-intellectuals segmented their imaginative Fulani that way. One stratified them into leaders, warriors, spies, and even town and bush dwellers with a common goal, and each segment doing its assigned work towards its achievement.
There was one that made me chuckle, written by one so-called knowledgeable man that Trump would happily call a s**thead. I read him pontificating on his gained “knowledge”. He wrote that the Fulani have various jihads that they use to “dominate” Nigeria. He named them “academic”, “administrative” “political”, etc.
On his so-called academic jihad, he claimed that “anyone who schooled in any of the universities in the North has heard classmates boasting that they had already got the minimal scores for pass marks by being Muslims or northerners.” According to him, the “political jihadists” have instructed northern universities to graduate at least one Fulani with a first-class degree every year.
The man is shameless, without the fear of God in his heart. Prodded by the need to lie his way into goading the gullible to carry arms against the state and innocent people, he described what he called “administrative jihad”. Hear him: “They admitted Igbos into Sandhurst Military Academy in the United Kingdom. But their northern classmates graduate after three months and are commissioned as officers of the Nigerian Army. Southern, Christian, and non-Muslim members of the Nigerian contingent will now remain behind for three years.
He went on and on and many in the group were clapping for him as a man who knows Nigeria in and out and worth learning from his fountain of knowledge! Many of the statements are worthy of being overlooked for their simplistic foolishness. But it is a season for conspiracy theorists. Hatred can push people to concoct lies against a people. And the love for bloodshed can blind one from acknowledging the truth.
The one that confirms that they are hare-brained and are rushing with eyes and ears open to swallow and regurgitate to other hate-filled minds what lies come out of their adopted leader’s hate-filled heart and blood-seeking brain is that the Nigerian Army has been recruiting Boko Haram into its fold.
Because they prefer to believe the phantoms rather than truth and are hurtling towards destruction, they never step back when asked to provide proof and they cannot find an atom. Faced with the truth, they trudge on cloaked in the garb of falsehood, laced with hate that they adorn.
It is such mischievous miscreants, in their bid to cause havoc, that author inciting documents and distributes them all over the land. A recent example is a purported ultimatum to a governor over open grazing. These are all the handiwork of such people who are bent on seeing the blood of the innocent shed. And because they love conspiring to perpetrate evil, they think others, too, indulge in conspiracies.
With such people, you do not waste your time because they are too far gone in self-deceit. They are just itching to see bloodshed and all lies that will make other fools believe them and get provoked into murderous orgy is all they crave for.
I once wrote on this page about people who hate a leader because they do not see him as one of them. Or love him because he is one of them. I will sign off with some excerpts from that write-up.
“A Muslim is, therefore, not expected to be a sheepish follower. It is even worse if such sheepishness is because of some primordial reasons, while the leader (ship) is not upright.
“However, being a wailer just because who you support has lost or because you just love to hate the leader (ship) is the zenith of hypocrisy. It is an affliction of an incurable and mortal disease.
“To hail because ‘the hailed’ shares something mundane with you, irrespective of his failings, is a gross disservice to the fatherland because you are helping neither him nor yourself. This is akin to a parent who spares the rod, or cringes at people’s corrections because his or her child must be protected from the attacks of ‘outsiders’. It is neither objective nor is it love.
“To hail because the leader (ship) is doing well is gratitude and encouragement while acknowledging the responsibilities incumbent upon the leader (ship).
“Hailing a leader (ship) for doing what you wail against when done by some other is no more patriotism and foolishness than wailing against a leader (ship) who is doing what you would hail when done by a different leader (ship). Patriotism is when your hailing and wailing are for Nigeria and her interests. Nothing more, nothing less.
“He who hails just because he and the leader are from the same area or share the same religion, and not because of performance, is just as patriotic and hypocritical as he who wails because he and the leader are not from the same area or do not belong to the same faith.
“When all’s said and done, both hailers and wailers could be patriotic. This is as long as they do their assumed ‘duties’ for the good of the country and not out of unadulterated love or hatred for the leader.”

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