By Alex Ter Adum, PhD
It is a painful irony that it has taken a Fulani man, Hassan, to speak openly about the Fulani banditry ravaging our communities and expose what some Nigerian political elites, particularly our Tiv leaders, through their silence, timidity, equivocation and political calculations, appear determined to hide for political gain.
Hassan is not an outsider to the Fulani community. He is one of their own. And that is precisely what makes his testimony against Sen. Buba Umar and his shields from Aso Rock so powerful. He has demonstrated that ethnicity does not have to become a shield for criminality, and that loyalty to one’s tribe or ancestry should never require loyalty to the crimes committed in their name by renegade elements from the tribe.
This presents us with a fundamental question as we approach 2027:
If a Fulani man has the courage to condemn Fulani banditry, while some Tiv political elites are unwilling to confront it honestly, why should a Tiv voter choose the latter merely because he is Tiv?
If I am given a choice between an extant Tiv political leader who has failed to confront this raging inferno decisively and Atiku Abubakar, a Fulani man who has openly denounced these bandits as imported mercenaries bent on destroying Nigeria, I will vote for Atiku without hesitation.
And I will do so without apology.
I will not allow ethnicity to become a prison in which I am compelled to choose an incompetent or ineffective leader simply because he shares my ancestry.
My first obligation is to the survival, security and future of my people, not to the political career of an ethnic brother or any partisan interests.
What is the value of having “our son” in office, at any level, if our sons and daughters are being killed, our villages are being emptied, our farmers are being driven from their farms and our ancestral lands are being occupied?
A political leader cannot demand ethnic loyalty from people whose lives his leadership has failed to protect.
The Bible provides a remarkably profound analogy.
When the Israelites were bitten by poisonous serpents in the wilderness, God instructed Moses:
“Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.”
— Numbers 21:8
Think about the paradox.
The very symbol associated with the scourge became the instrument through which God provided healing.
The lesson is profound: sometimes the solution comes from the very direction from which we least expect it.
And that is the point I am making about our present political circumstances.
If the person who can help rescue our people happens to come from the same ethnic group as those accused of perpetrating the violence, that does not make the solution unacceptable.
If a Fulani man has the courage to condemn Fulani banditry and offers a credible programme for ending it, why should I reject him simply because he is Fulani?
Were, Shagari and Yar Adua not Fulani’s?
Did they treat us so badly like Buhari did?
Should we therefore profile every Fulani politician through the optics, we viewed Buhari?
My answer, is no.
Conversely, if a Tiv politician hides behind ethnic solidarity while failing to protect Tiv lives, why should I reward him simply because he is Tiv?
Ethnicity is not a qualification for leadership.
Competence is. Courage is. Integrity is. Results are.
And the Tinubu experience should have taught us this lesson conclusively.
We have a Yoruba President, yet the insecurity that has devastated our communities has not magically disappeared. If ethnic identity were the solution to insecurity, the problem should by now have substantially abated.
It has not.Rather, if anything, it has aggravated and heightened.
Therefore, I refuse to approach 2027 through the primitive arithmetic of:
“He is Tiv, or non Fulani so therefore vote for him.”
My question is:
Who has the courage, capacity and political will to stop the killing?
If that person is Tiv, I will vote for him.
If he is Yoruba, I will vote for him.
If he is Fulani, I will vote for him.
Because when the house is burning, you do not ask the firefighter which tribe he belongs to before allowing him to put out the fire.
You save the house first. Tiv kaa aie, azenda tsoo tsa ava too gundu kyegh.
And if the person holding the fire extinguisher happens to be from the same community from which some of the arsonists came, that makes his courage more, not less, remarkable.
Hassan has shown us something our political elites need to understand:
Condemning the criminality of one’s own people is not betrayal. It is courage.
And supporting the candidate who can protect your people, irrespective of his ethnicity, is not betrayal either.
It is enlightened self-interest.
The time has come to stop confusing ethnic brotherhood with political competence.
Our people are dying.
Our communities are being displaced.
Our farmers cannot safely return to their farms.
Our children are growing up under the shadow of violence.
We cannot afford to choose leaders by surname, tribe or place of birth.
In 2027, my loyalty will be to the living, the vulnerable and the future of our people.
If an ethnic brother can save them, I will support him.
If an ethnic brother cannot, I will look elsewhere.
If a southerner can them, I will support him.
If a southerner cannot as in the present, I will look elsewhere.
Because sometimes, as the biblical story teaches us, the instrument through which deliverance comes may emerge from the very place we have been conditioned to fear.
And when that happens, wisdom is not to reject the instrument because of where it comes from.
Wisdom is to recognise the cure, and use it.
Alex Ter Adum, PhD
Writes ✍️ from Mbabur, Gwer East Local Government, Benue State.
