‘Fulanis are foreign terrorists’: the social construction of a suspect community in the Sahel

ABSTRACT

Whilst the triggers of the peasant-pastoralist conflicts in the Sahel region have been explained through factors such as climate change, environmental scarcity, population pressures, urbanisation, political ecology, and the failure of traditional negotiation mechanisms, less scholarly attention has been given to the narratives that draw on history to categorise the Fulani as a potentially dangerous ethnoreligious group and how such narratives make peaceful coexistence nearly impossible. This article draws on the theoretical framework of “suspect community” originally coined by Paddy Hillyard to demonstrate how the social construction of the Fulani ethnic group by the media and political actors in Nigeria as foreigners, uncivilised savages, terrorists, rapists, and armed bandits with a hidden agenda to Islamise non-Christian Nigerians has led to the failure of well-intentioned policy initiatives to minimise conflicts between peasants and pastoralists. The article contends that such narratives do not dissolve longstanding peasant-pastoralist confrontations but instead alienate and marginalise the Fulani through punitive security measures thereby preventing the possibility of peaceful politics. The article thus argues that peaceful coexistence requires the rejection of demonising discourses which, in turn, will mean the mutual acceptance of policies aimed at stemming the skirmishes between peasants and pastoralists.

KEYWORDS:

• Suspect community
• terrorism
• farmer-herder conflicts
• fulani
• sahel
• Nigeria

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Promise Frank Ejiofor

Promise Frank Ejiofor is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Central European University (CEU), Vienna, Austria. He holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His research interests lie at the intersection of nationalism, citizenship, ethnic politics, and international security.