Nupe the Fourth Force The issue of the inconsiderate division of Nigeria into three major ethnic hegemonies in line with the dissection of the Nigerian landmass into three by the Niger-Benue rivers is an issue that has not go down well with the rest of the over three hundred major and minor ethnicities in Nigeria. The division of Nigeria into a tripartite geopolitical entity with an indiscriminately selected major tribe to dominate each of the three geopolitical zones is actually a callous invention of the colonial masters who were always employing their inglorious divide and rule tactics to foment internecine rivalries. This callous division of Nigeria along ethnic lines have, incidentally enough, become quite useful to the successive Nigerian administrators who have consequently done little to stem the tide of this undue tripartition of Nigeria. All these are just by the way. The main discussion I engaged in inside this book that centred on the question of whether the so-called three major tribes are really majority tribes in Nigeria. Are the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Ibo the three most populous tribes in Nigeria? This book is a scholarly and irrefutable answer of a definite, an exclamatory and a capital ‘NO!’ to the question above. A careful and detailed analysis of the question of demographic majorities in Nigeria easily refutes and explodes the oft- repeated claim that the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Ibo are the most populous people in Nigeria. In fact this book is this careful and detailed analytical refutation of the claim that there are only three major tribes in Nigeria and over three hundred minor tribes in Nigeria. For instance it is a common knowledge among even the lay man on the street that the Hausa people do not constitute a majority ethnic group in Nigeria the moment they are separated from the Fulani and so many other Northern Nigerian peoples who because they spoke the Hausa language as a lingua franca identify themselves as the Hausa people. In fact that it has become a unwritten common practice to always refer to the Hausa people as the Hausa-Fulani instead of simply as the Hausa. Without the Fulani combination the Hausa people have not the demographic might or the population numbers to constitute a majority ethnic group in Nigeria. I discussed in this book that the point is that the archetypic Hausa man does not even exist. Professor J.E.G. Sutton, and many other formidable authorities, have repeatedly demonstrated the fact that Hausa is more or less a language and not a people. The Hausa people do not exist in the anthropological sense of the word. What exists for real is a Hausa language which is a West Africa-wide lingua franca. Who are the Hausa people?... The answers is definitely not the Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara or Kaduna people. All these Northwestern people are not Hausa peoples. But neither are the Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe or Borno peoples Hausa. These Northwestern peoples of Nigeria also not Hausa peoples. It is only the remaining small group of the Northern states of Katsina, Kano and Jigawa can be referred to as Hausa peoples. But in this book I proved that the Katsina, Kano and Jigawa people are not Hausa peoples. When all is said and done we are left with the harrowing thought that the archetype Hausa man does not actually exists! This same manner of the discussion I had on the Hausa people I applied also to the Yoruba and Ibo peoples who are the two other ethnic groups claiming to be majority tribes in Nigeria. Due to circumstantial and historical incidences during the colonial era the Ibos were unwittingly identified as the majority ethnic group in Eastern Nigeria. The greater part of this book is actually centred on my subject matter: the fact that the Nupe people are the majority ethnicity in Nigeria. I did not waste my time challenging the majority statuses wrongly claimed by the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo hegemonists. I simply focussed my attention on demonstrating the fact that the population of the Nupe people is actually greater than that of the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo people. I began this particular discussion by pointing out the fact that the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo people are not the only major ethnic groups in Nigeria. I pointed out the fact that in the East the population of the Ijaw people is more than that of the Ibo people; that in the West the population of the X people is more than that of the Yoruba people; and that in the north the population of the Tiv people is more than that of the Hausa people. It is really startling, and it strongly smacks of a deliberate conspiracy, that few people, if any body, has ever notice the obvious fact that the Ijaw are more populous than the Ibo; that the X are more populous than the Yoruba and that the Tiv are more populous than the Hausa. And this is just the beginning. There are some other similar major Nigerian ethnicities, apart from the ones mentioned above, who have been deliberately relegated to the position of ‘minority tribes’ by some mischievous power blocs. I listed and discussed all of these ‘marginalised majority’ peoples in this book. I pointed out that the Nupe people are more populous than any other ethnic group in Nigeria. Yet the Nupe people have consistently been referred to as a minority people by tribalist propagandists. The heinous practice of portraying the Nupe people is not the invention of modern Nigerian authorities. It was the colonialists, headed by Sir Frederick Lugard ‘The Anti- Nupe’ and Sir George T. Goldie ‘The Devil’, who initiated this virulent campaign of demographic genocide against the Nupe people. I actually dedicated a detailed chapter to the anti-Nupe crimes against humanity committed by the trio of Sir Frederick Lugard, George Goldie and the Royal Niger Company. Nupe is a nation of various sub-tribes including the Dibo, Kakanda, Gupa, Kupa, Basa Nge, and many other peoples. But mischievous census authorities always have a way of carving these Nupe peoples out of the overall Nupe population and thereby demographically reducing the Nupe people to just the speakers of the Bini dialect of that are found mainly in the Zone A section of Niger State. My complaint is that while the different Nupe sub-tribes are been consciously separated and disunited one from the other, the reverse process is what is being carried out among the so-called three major ethnic groups of Nigeria. In this context I used the Yoruba people as a case study. Yoruba is heterogeneous collection of different ethnicities and tribes that historically have no ethnic or tribal affiliations whatsoever. Until the imperial conquests of Obalokun at the height of the glory of the Oyo empire, the Ekiti, Ijesha, Ondo, and many other non-Yoruba peoples who are claiming to be Yoruba today had no any ethnic or tribal affiliations with Yoruba whatsoever. Only the Oyo people are truly a Yoruba people. But then all these historical and sociocultural facts are deftly overlooked by Yoruba propagandists in their mischievous efforts to claim that everybody in Western Nigeria is a Yoruba man. I pointed out that there is nothing wrong with claiming that the Ekiti, the Ijesha and many others are Yoruba as long as they themselves don’t object to the practise of effacing their heritages and true historical identities in favour of a fictitious Yoruba super race. But then my complaint is: if this can be vigorously pursued for the sake of boosting the image of the Yoruba people why is the reverse of the this practice being imposed on the various Nupe peoples who are actually and really affiliated ethnically and tribally to one another? Why are the Kakanda, the Dibo, the Gupa, the Basange and many other Nupe being deliberately separated from the Nupe nation? I pointed out, in some details, that in the hands of the Nupe people lies a potential population power that will transform the Nupe Nation into the First Force in Nigeria. Apart from the extensive discussions on the demographic and population potentials of the Nupe people I also discussed, in equally comprehensive details, the latent and potential powers that lay on the finger tips of the Nupe Nation and that can readily be channelled and harnessed by the Nupe people to transform the Nupe nation into the most powerful phenomenon in the whole of Nigeria. The other powers of the Nupe Nation that I discussed in exhaustive details include the Nupe people’s political, religious, historical, sociocultural, literacy rate, and otherwise powers. The political history of Nigeria is, surprisingly enough, dominated by the shadowy powers of eminent Nupe politicians. From the era of Alhaji Aliyu Makama and Abubakar Dzukogi through the regimes of the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abdulsalam Abubakar to the times of Professor Jerry Gana and Mrs Sarah Jibrin, I discussed the untold political impact that Nigerian national leaders who are Nupe have exercised on the course of the political development of Nigeria. I parenthetically digressed to point out the fact that two of Nigeria’s heads of state, namely General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and General Abubakar Abdulsalam, are Nupe men. KinNupe is the home of the most religious people in Nigeria; I demonstrated the fact that the most zealous Muslims, the most passionate Christians and the most committed traditional religionists in Nigeria are to this very day be found only in KinNupe. Enter supporting content here
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 13:24:57 +0000