(34): Notes in Transition; Musings on Hausa-Fulani Brouhaha And The Possibility of Ethnic Coinage.

 MA Iliasu.

A sequel to my earlier essay on 20th-century economic thought is the most unexpected turn persuaded by the debates on the legitimacy of Hausa-Fulani as recognized ethnic coinage. The two essays are related not in the similarity of content but in context, from the way both are written with immense respect for upward possibilities of events and ideas.

I get amused when a discourse relevant to the evolution of social organization is forcefully made to resist the possibilities of change. For change, not necessarily as Marx thought it but as we learned from what we've managed to witness in the warranted evolution of our societies, is inevitable. And if history doesn't repeat itself, the validity of accurate patterns remains undoubted. Denying that, willfully or not, is in my opinion, tantamount to unwarranted rigidity.

To be candid, the decades-old debate on whether there's any group of people or an identity, ethnically or culturally fit to be called Hausa-fulani, through observation, will expose any curious mind to two positions; one occupied by what I call the intellectuals of the old order and the one occupied by the new core of northern progressives.

The former group nails its position down on the argument that history has no record of anything called Hausa-Fulani, which I agree with. After all, facts are called facts for a reason. While the latter group, with more apologetic tunes than any analytical penetration, is fixated on present albeit undocumented evidence to convey the significance of their belief in multi-ethnic identity in northern Nigeria. Sadly both have become parties to a very avoidable historical revisionism focused mainly on the Sokoto Jihad rather than identifying and understanding the fluidity of our sociocultural forces.

In the former group yet again, I admire reasonable resistance and command of history, even though it's in plain sight how incapable they come across in persuading themselves to appreciate what they've not thought through. It's worth mentioning to those intellectuals of the old order that admitting the absence of documented evidence signifying the presence of a phenomenon in the past doesn't deny its existence in the present nor the possibility of its further development in the future. How it comes into being lies in the endless upward possibilities of our social organization which we hardly pay any attention to but are relevant nonetheless. To deny that, in my opinion, will confess one thing, that age remains valid and decline is inevitable, that the once dynamic intellectuals have now become slaves to the once static order they passionately fought as aggrieved progressives. That it's time they move aside and allow the new blood who carry the spirit of the new order to take over or lose the war with their intellectual honor not intact. That the spirit of the new order comes with the belief of the new, emerging core of progressives who sternly refuse to settle for one ethnic identity by believing in a multi-ethnic identity that they aren't ready to let go by right and blood. Most specifically the children who are the product of intra-ethnic marriages between the Hausa and the Fulani.

It's a grave weakness, I argue, to be fixated on a belief that grants zero chance or possibility for multi-ethnic identity. Logically, that'll serve as a misunderstanding or betrayal of the pattern of ethnic and cultural evolution. To theorize a little, we learned as a people of faith that when God created the earth, He firstly put two people upon it; Adam & Eve. None of them was Hausa or Fulani. But today there's Hausa and Fulani. How those two distinct ethnic groups come into being is the working of the evolutionary forces of human society, premised on which, further evolutions can neither be stopped nor denied. I understand how rude it appears when guidance stroke a lie into converting to a truth, when a fallacy is told so often it becomes cogent, and God wishes for what didn't exist in the past to exist now or in the future. So can be said that unwarranted thinking of ethnic coinage in the 18th and 19th centuries converts and becomes warranted in the 2Oth and 21st centuries. It's called fluidity of sociocultural forces!

In the next address arrive the radicals of the new intellectual order, in whom I admire passion and dynamism, but in whose stand I detect weakness in the knowledge of history and penetration in orchestrating relevant opinion. This group of people, with whom I share more characteristics, must understand that nothing ever becomes invalid because you want it to be. Therefore just because history records a shred of evidence that displeases your agenda, it's gullible to deny, rewrite or attempt any lazy revisionism. What's there in admitting that the coinage of Hausa and Fulani concurrently as ethnic identities is alien or even false in the past? Maybe it's hard to admit it because of the fear that it may hinder the relevance of the coinage agenda. And that too is a disrespect to the upward possibilities of social organization.

It's timely to preach that the new order always appreciates passion and resilience, not in cognitive dissonance but appreciation of warranted innovations. That it always appreciates flexibility for the very fact that it's what differentiates it from its rigid, preceding old order.

What's so hard, I ask, in seeing how with time, the stranger becomes a commoner and the exception becomes the rule. Before our very eyes, many Bastards have become heirs from the way yesterday's radicals have become today's conservatives just as any sociocultural order starts as new but one day becomes old. Would admitting that not save us from keening as the noticeable portion of a generation of men and women from both Hausa and Fulani grew up to believe they're neither Hausa nor Fulani, but Hausa-Fulani thanks to decades of cultural assimilation?

The interesting part is that these new generations will pass down to their children and grandchildren the same belief which they've thought to be true, regardless of who considers them false. Most relevantly in our current space and time, when stopping whatever negates neither religion nor realism, isn't only hard but wishful. Especially this phenomenon of how survival in a heterogeneous society comes with some degree of sociological ingredients for the owners of more than one ethnic identity. Such was no alien pattern in political and economic history. And those ingredients are enough motive for a resurgence.

Therefore it may provide some relief when we begin to acknowledge that our sociocultural and ethnic forces have conceived and are conceiving outlanders. And in return, they're giving birth to the residents we can neither disown nor deny. That'll be better than the revisions which do nothing but expose our cover as ethnic entrepreneurs. Thinking, I observe, is among others, of different types; old thinking and new thinking. Old thinkers would hardly admit their thinking is old due to the underlying negative inclinations that may bear. While new thinkers are most likely to admit their thinking is new because of the subtle positives that may bear. Each side may get confused for one, but they all can be uncovered by how they approach the upward possibilities of warranted change.

Loyal to their evidence, old thinkers would fight even the most warranted if it doesn't agree with their evidence. While committed to their warranted adventure, new thinkers would deny even the most relevant evidence to satisfy their agenda. Thankfully both get humbled by the forces of time.

As the tragic philosopher, Thomas Paine has it, time makes more converts than reason. History is rich with aliens that become commoners, ranging from ideas, ideologies, individuals, and organizations. Why is ours expected to be different? We may be distanced on several boundaries, but it'll take a small tipping point before the new order coins another two different ethnic groups into one. Hausa-Fulani had its own and might become the tipping point that'll shape the emergence of others.

Sometime in the future, I predict, we may have Hausa-Nupe, Fulani-Igala, Hausa-Yoruba, Kanuri-Fulani, Hausa-Kanuri, and Hausa-Igbira ethnic coinage. And there's hardly anything we can do about it. Do we, after all this voluminous revision of history, think that we'll live together for centuries and remain culturally stagnant? What would then be the pattern of the actions of our ancestors if they had no consequences? What could be surprising in a society that accommodates individuals so well as to enable them to create an identity when it enables them another chance to reconstruct it?

The coinage of Hausa-Fulani identity isn't about history in my opinion, because as we've it now it has no past. It's about a pattern, a very relevant one. Thus, to say it exists in the past, we'll be lying to ourselves, likewise if we say it doesn't exist now or it doesn't have a future - loyal to that very pattern. Its history, as occurred by the history of anything that exists in time, starts now. It's in the future that our children and grandchildren will look back and say it has a past, just like we do to the unique adventures of our forefathers. And there's hardly anything we can do about it.

Muhada102@gmail.com.