Agogo: Following the trail of the armed Fulani nomad
One of the greatest internal security threats in recent times is playing out at Agogo to the puzzlement of many Ghanaians who are asking so many questions: Where are the Fulani herdsmen at the centre of the Agogo conflict from? How did they get into Ghana? How come Agogo is the only traditional area with such a huge concentration of Fulani herdsmen?
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How come, too, that repeated efforts by the national security establishment, the police and the law courts to evict the Fulani men have failed to date? What is there to say about the bizarre fact that the security situation at Agogo has deteriorated to a point where women in the agricultural town now go to their farms bearing loaded pump action guns?
Nomadic people
Many years ago, I attended a lecture on the lives of nomadic people by a visiting professor of anthropology at Cardiff University in the UK. It turned out to be an expanded extract of a research study the anthropologist had undertaken on the life of the Gypsies.
Since she lived in Gypsy communities in the course of the study, her report was a fascinating revelation of the life of one of the most curious human races in all of creation.
The Gypsies are non-Europeans so the mystery is how they have come to be so widely dispersed throughout Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. They are found in Greece, Germany, Italy, Hungary,Romania, France, Bulgaria, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, Spain, North and South America and Australia.
Perceived as mysterious wanderers, thieves and lazy people lacking in any form of social etiquette and manners, they are associated with prostitution, drug trafficking, disease and petty crime. If it helps matters, they are fantastic musicians as well!
It was initially claimed by scholars that the Gypsies, who are bitterly hated throughout Europe, originated from Egypt but it has now been established with evidence that they came from Northern India.
Substitute West Africa for Europe, the drought-stricken Sahel for Northern India and Fulani for Gypsies and you will appreciate why we Ghanaians need our anthropologists to help us understand a phenomenon that threatens security in our sub-region: The decades — old and unending influx of Fulani into Ghana with nomadic habits more dangerous and deadly than anyone could ever attribute to the Gypsies.
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That they have frequently been in the news for committing such crimes as cattle rustling, robbery, murder and rape and that their cattle keep rampaging across farmlands and forests destroying crops and vegetation have done little to endear them to the people of our republic.
Understanding our version of gypsies
The names for the Gypsies in Italian is “Zingaro” {plural, “Zingari}. Unlike the relatively more peaceful Zingari of Europe, the activities of our own version of the Zinagari, apart from threatening the security of West Africa, also have the potential to cause diplomatic friction between territorial neighbours in the region.
Before President John Mahama came to power, President John Mills and former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, during a meeting in Accra, acknowledged the gravity of the ever growing security threat from the activities of Fulani and the need for the enforcement of the laws regulating cross-border movement in the region.
To be able to contain the Fulani menace, it is necessary to first understand them from an anthropological perspective: Who are the Fulani? They are dispersed as far afield as Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Cameroun, the Gambia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad and Ghana, but where do they really originate from?
How come there is such a sharp and contradictory contrast in the perceived profile of the Fulani, one image of him being that of a shot-gun armed rural nomad trekking through the bush driving cattle, and the other that of a more sophisticated Fulani who wields sophisticated and deadly weapons such as AK 47 rifles and takes part in robberies in cities?
The Hausas lend us a clue: They make specific references to “Fulani biroro” {cattle- driving Fulani} and “Fulani gida” {urban Fulani}.
All people above 60 years who grew up in villages around Bawku in the Upper East Region will tell you that they became aware of the Fulani the moment they progressed from crawling around on fours to walking. Most of us, unfortunately, neglected to ask our parents now long gone, where the fair skinned and slender Fulani came from to settle in our village.
The Fulani’s lived close to cattle kraals on the outskirts of our village of Zawse. They raised their own cattle and the cattle of village farmers who, in turn, permitted them to keep all the milk from the cows. On “market days”, you would meet a long line of Fulani women carrying milk in huge gourds to Bawku town for sale.
It was a taboo for any native to marry or engage in any sexual relationship with a Fulani.
While the taboos of my village made it impossible for the Fulani to integrate culturally and socially into our community, the case appears to have been different with other communities, especially in Southern Ghana resulting in cases like the Agogo crisis.
The people of Agogo, where many Fulani have settled, with some claiming to be “Ghanaian Fulani” or whatever, have borne the brunt of the Fulani invasion the most and people of the town have armed themselves in readiness to attack the Fulanis. This can only mean the people have had more than enough.
From the point of view of social psychology it is only to be expected that where nomadic herdsmen compete with local farmers for grazing land and water, occasional conflicts will erupt. That the national security establishment has gathered evidence that the Fulani herdsmen have committed serious crimes such as rape, arson and theft, while their cattle have destroyed farm crops, means that the security situation at Agogo is far from a normal conflict over agricultural resources.
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