Jos, history, identity: A rejoinder to claims of Hausa-Fulani indigeneity

CHOLLOM GYANG LOGWONG

I read Sani Ibn Salihu’s piece titled, ‘Citizenship, Indigeneity, and Democratic Inclusivity: Historical Evidence for the Integration of the Hausa-Fulani in Plateau State,’ on social media with deep and sincere sympathy for the writer’s shallow, constricted and troubling understanding of the subject matter he undertook to address.

In his futile attempt to deconstruct and rewrite the history of the Jos Plateau region, the writer ended up assembling conflicting colonial records with contradictory themes and displayed a comprehensive inability to interpret those records in support of his argument.

In the long run, his conclusion strengthened the very facts he set out to dismantle, reinforcing the saying that when one has nothing meaningful to say, one should remain silent.

According to Sani Ibn Salihu’s limited and faulty conclusion, the history of Jos began with tin mining and the migration of his great-grandparents into the mining region. To him, perhaps nothing existed before the tin mining era.

For him, the space known as the Jos Plateau may never have existed at all. The arrival of Engr. Henry W. Laws, the first European on the Jos Plateau, was perhaps the beginning, just as some erroneously claim that Mungo Park ‘founded’ the River Niger.

Salihu appears deeply enthused by the notion that Jos emerged only with the arrival of forced labour conscripts into the Jos mining fields. His illusion, therefore, is that because his forefathers were among the earliest suppliers of cheap labour to the mines, they may have been the founders of the city of Jos.

What a travesty of logic and history.

Interestingly, Sani Salihu’s background knowledge of the subject matter appears to derive largely from bits of folklore gathered during his sojourn with NTA Jos from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Alongside his brother, Auwalu Salihu, the duo embarked on what may be described as a controversial career of historical revisionism through a Hausa programme called Mazan Jiya.

In the programme, they assembled elderly Hausa-Fulani participants whose recollections were often weak and unreliable and guided them into constructing a distorted history of the Jos Plateau sub-region by claiming that they founded many of the then-existing Berom and other indigenous villages within the mining areas.

Years later, Sani Ibn Salihu, remains trapped within the confines of this misleading assumption and false perception.

Question of historical accuracy

Most times, Hausa-Fulani settlers in Jos deliberately avoid facts in their narratives, just as they display an aversion to truth in favour of falsehood. Their frontline commentators, analysts, preachers, traditional rulers and other storytellers appear united in sustaining hearsay and make-believe narratives.

The underlying philosophy seems to be the continuous repetition of falsehood until it is eventually accepted as truth. Social media platforms are awash with such voices laying untenable claims to the indigeneity of Jos in particular and Plateau State in general.

We intend to briefly point out a few historical realities that expose the futility of the Hausa-Fulani settler community’s claims to indigeneity in Plateau State. It is surprising that Salihu has reverted to the already discredited ethnic hybrid description of ‘Hausa-Fulani’ as one community.

I have attended several meetings in recent times where Fulani leaders vehemently resisted Hausa community leaders speaking on their behalf. They insisted that the two groups are not one and the same.

It appears the Fulani employ the term only when it suits their strategic interests, often at the expense of the Hausa community.

Immediately after Henry Laws, later known as Colonel Laws, arrived in Jos in 1902, he initiated a brutal colonial conquest against the indigenous tribes of the Jos Plateau to pave the way for tin mining. The people he fought against and subdued were the Berom, Irigwe, Bache, Buji, Amo, Jarawa, Jere and other indigenous ethnic nationalities of the then Jos Division, now separated into Bassa, Jos North, Jos East, Jos South, Riyom and Barkin Ladi local government areas.

These were the people defending their ancestral lands and heritage. This forms the basis of indigeneity.

The forced labourers and subsequent migrants into the Jos mining fields do not qualify as indigenes of the region. Prior to their arrival, the issue of ownership and indigeneity of the Jos Plateau had already been historically established.

Indeed, the first set of non-indigenous immigrants into the Jos Plateau were not Hausa-Fulani but Yoruba, Urhobo, Itsekiri and other nationalities from the Niger Delta. Colonel Laws arrived with a detachment of Yoruba soldiers of the West African Frontier Force and domestic staff largely drawn from Niger Delta communities.

Labourers from the northern emirates arrived later after the Berom overwhelmingly rejected wage labour in the mines. This left the colonial administration with little choice but to rely on northern Fulani emirs for cheap labour, leading to the forced labour conscription system known as ‘diban gwamnati’ in the early 1930s.

Indigeneity, ancestry, judicial pronouncements

The issue of indigeneity is intrinsically linked to ancestry, history, land ownership and conquest. None of these factors historically connects the Hausa-Fulani with Jos.

More recently, three Judicial Commissions of Inquiry into urban conflicts in Jos — the Fibersima Commission (1994), the Niki Tobi Commission (2001) and the Bola Ajibola Commission (2008) — examined these issues extensively.

According to their findings and conclusions, indigeneity is neither a product of nor compensation for the loss of ancestral memory, ignorance of ancestral origins or prolonged residence in another community’s territory. Being uncertain about one’s ancestral roots or having lived in a place for a long period does not automatically confer indigeneity.

The history of Jos is also incomplete without acknowledging the role played by northern prostitutes in the growth of the town and the mining sub-region, particularly in servicing mining camps and contributing to the emergence of a mining labour force. This phenomenon created a unique social environment in the camps.

It also produced a category of people derogatorily referred to as yayan karuwai (children of prostitutes). It is important to note that this category does not belong to the recognised autochthonous ethnic groups and therefore cannot be classified as indigenous to the area.

There is also the issue of the manipulation or deliberate obscuring of ancestral backgrounds among some Hausa-Fulani settlers in Jos as part of efforts to strengthen claims to indigeneity. The late Alhaji Sale Hassan, for instance, played a prominent role during the 1970s and 1980s in mobilising Hausa-Fulani youths to demand land rights and indigeneity status in Jos. He consistently argued that Jos was their homeland and that they had nowhere else to go.

However, when he sought elective office during the 1979 elections, he did not contest from Jos. Instead, he travelled to Bauchi North Senatorial District, now in Gombe State, where he identified with his Terah ethnic roots. While in Jos he was Hausa; back home he was Terah. Very curious indeed.

The Naraguta Battle, historical identity

It is curious that Jos-based Fulani activists often avoid mentioning an important historical event that helped define the indigeneity structure of Jos — the historic Battle of Naraguta of 1873. This event effectively foreclosed any attempt, whether deliberate or accidental, to place the Hausa-Fulani among the indigenous peoples of Jos.

The question of who is and who is not an indigene of Jos should, by all historical standards, be a settled matter. The indigenous peoples of the Jos Plateau who fought against the invading Fulani jihadists during the Battle of Naraguta did so in defence of their ancestral land. They were defending territory to which they were autochthonous.

How can a group that waged war against a territory in 1873 later claim indigeneity to that same territory? If they were indeed indigenes, why were they fighting against their own homeland?

Let me help Salihu out of what appears to be a self-imposed delusion regarding the indigeneity of Jos. All the gazetteers he enthusiastically assembled amount to little more than an academic exercise. As lawyers often say, one cannot build something on nothing.

The gazetteers merely establish that Hausa people were present in Jos at a certain point in history. Nobody disputes that fact. They were counted among mining labourers and taxpayers in colonial records.

However, nowhere do those documents confer indigeneity upon them. Furthermore, the same census records acknowledged the presence of numerous other Nigerian ethnic nationalities within the mining camps.

Constitutional rights, indigeneity

In conclusion, it should be noted that nowhere in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), is it stated that residing in a place for 100 years automatically confers indigeneity, as some Hausa-Fulani settlers in Jos claim.

All citizens and residents of Jos are entitled to the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Nigerian Constitution. These rights are enjoyed equally by all Nigerians irrespective of their origin.

However, such rights do not negate the distinct privileges associated with indigeneity, which remain applicable to all autochthonous nationalities in their respective ancestral homelands across the country.

Logwong, Secretary-General of the Berom Educational and Cultural Organisation, BECO, writes via gyangcho2008@gmail.com