Southern Kaduna community rejects chiefdom created by El-Rufai

Leaders of Adara Community in Southern Kaduna have rejected the chiefdom recently created by Governor Nasir el-Rufai, urging the inhabitants not to recognise the traditional entity.

Vowing to resist the governor’s attempt to foist Hausa-Fulani hegemony on Adara Community, they threatened to visit any native, who recognises the new chiefdom, with severe sanctions.

At a press briefing in Kaduna, yesterday, the National President of Adara Development Association (ADA), Awemi Dio Maisamari, and other leaders of the community said: “Adara nation is compelled to continue raising the alarm on the series of schemes we believe as being engineered by the administration of el-Rufai of Kaduna State to destabilise, subdue and dispossess our community.

“Since the government is no longer disguising his malice against Adara nation, the community has resolved to consistently resist and expose his evolving machinations. The opinion of our people is that it has a grand plan to undermine and supplant the ethnic identities, cultures and authority of indigenous communities in their ancestral lands to consolidate Hausa and Fulani Muslim domination and hegemony.”

According to Maisamari, “Some of the signs of the insidious plots targeting Adara in particular (just as in other areas of Southern Kaduna) include, the unconstitutional boundary adjustment in 2016, which transferred Ladugga from Ikulu Chiefdom of Zango Kataf Local Council to Adara Chiefdom of Kachia Local Council. It is intended to increase the Hausa and Fulani Muslim populations in Kachia and Adara.

“The unacceptable manipulation and alteration of the demography of the area are to form a basis for creating a Hausa-Fulani Muslim Chiefdom in Kachia. This is illegal because no state government has the constitutional power to adjust local council boundaries.”

According to the leaders, the government has already started implementing laws creating the chiefdom in Adara land, in the most arrogant and provocative manner.

“Our aggrieved community is being told loud and clear that their views, interests, rights, grievances, appeals for inclusion, engagement and justice mean nothing because they have no stake in El-Rufai’s ‘new Kaduna State’.

“The above machinations are being planned, developed, hatched and implemented in an atmosphere of insecurity and economic chaos,” they added.