Contribution short abstract:

With the emergence of Buhari as Nigerian president of Fulani ethnic background, critics across the country have held that Buhari has promoted and foisted an ethnic or a Fulanizing supremacist agenda over the rest of Nigerians.

Contribution long abstract:

With the emergence of Buhari as Nigerian president of Fulani ethnic background, critics across the country have held that Buhari has promoted and foisted an ethnic or a Fulanizing supremacist agenda over the rest of Nigerians. By foregrounding this concern, several Fulani have been demonised and implicated in Boko Haram’s war of terror as well as kidnapping and banditry. Why this scare over the figure of the Fulani? Why this excitement? Drawing from a four-year ethnographic study at the international Christian Centre, I show in this panel how (some) survivors disrupt a stereotypical understanding of the Fulani solely as agents of death. In doing so, I argue for the widening and tracing of the figure of the Fulani as agents of life and portraits of safety. In this sense, this panel engages with the literature on labelling in which social narratives mobilizes a single understanding of the Fulani.

Key Words: Fulani (Fulanizing), Boko Haram, International Christian Centre, Labelling