About 2 years ago, I met with some black supremacist who argued that the solution to the problem facing Africa is for the white man to get off the surface of the Earth. I told them that as much as the white man might have contributed to the under development of Africa as a continent, we also may want to look at so many white people today who do not buy the idea of the Atlantic slave trade and who are actually good people when it comes to dealing with the black community.
There’s something about supremacist that I would love to call the “Suspension of Reason”. In the course of wanting to carry out their bigotry and acts of supremacy, they do not want to look at other factors or let us say, they ignore other facts, points and evidences that would contradict their aim or goal.
For about 2 weeks now, I have engaged people on and off the internet people who have tried desperately to make me understand why the Fulani people need to be chased out of Yoruba and however their argument do not add up. Some tried to bring in logic, some, religious arguments that even sometimes when the sinners are suffering, the righteous must suffer as well.
it is a very difficult thing for me to put myself in the midst of any form of profiling or stereotype. I have been to the length and breadth of Nigeria I have had my good times with people from different tribes and I have had the bad times well.
When I was in Sokoto, I was illegally arrested by some policemen and they wasted my day. However, I will still not make all Hausa/Fulani people responsible for what those policemen had done on that day. If I do that ,what will I say about Arc Mukhtar Dambatta who accommodated for the days when I was in Kano. How about Sheikh Hussain Mabera, Musa Aliyu, and so many others who came to the police station. What do I say about Mr. Ladan who showed me around when I was in Zaria, kaduna State and so many others. I have brothers in the South-East that I share a whole lot of things in common with.
On the other hand, my phone has been stolen in Lagos, I have been duped by mechanic in Benin I, have been duped by mechanic in Abuja I have been arrested illegally in sokoto, an Igbo man has scammed us in Lagos, an Ekiti man in Ibadan. So, how then do I start to now hold the tribes these people belong to responsible for the crimes or the wrong things that they have done.
You may hate me or curse me or give me names like ‘traitor’, ‘slaves to the Fulanis’, or whatever. I do not think there is any moral or logical ground to profile anyone regardless of their race, colour, religion, tribe or ethnic group. This is not how I want to live my life and I will not call anyone to live their life this way. I have always spoken against clothing crimes with the garment of religion or race or tribe or any form of profiling and stereotype. Good people are everywhere but bad people are everywhere as well.
We need to stop the culture of profiling and not just that, we also need to stop the tradition of politicians setting citizens against each other. We fight the war, we kill ourselves, while they, at the end of the day, smile after achieving their aims. Let us create a world of reason, of love, of tolerance, not of hate, not of political bloodshed, not of racial, tribal or ethno-religious bigotry.
Bashir Lucas Samson Lukman
English 
