This movement, referred to as “Hausa Zalla” (Purely Hausa), aspires to divest one of the most famous identity constructs in Nigeria from one of its key components—the Hausa component. Over the years, the increasing rate of clashes between Fulani herders and Hausa farmers in northern villages has resulted in the mass killings of, and the displacement of, hundreds of thousands of farmers. The rise of banditry, championed mostly by Fulani men, whose victims are basically all comers, has centred this conflict.

Bandit leaders like Bello Turji, a Fulani man, have claimed the loss of their cattle and grazing grounds, and the interventions of mostly Hausa vigilantes or ‘yan sa kai, as some of their main motives. These clashes, the increasing bloodletting, and widespread criminality have caused deeper introspection of the relationship between the two ethnic identities with a shared history. However, the growing challenge, or even rejection, of the Hausa-Fulani label reflects a deeper crisis of political representation in northern Nigeria, where some Hausa voices now believe the old alliance obscures their interests, dilutes their identity, and fails to contextualise the present insecurity in the country and how it is being addressed—or not addressed at all.

This has raised the fundamental question: when does a shared identity stop describing reality and start hiding power relations? Pre- or post-colonialism, the hyphenated Hausa-Fulani identity construct has always been motivated by politics. The nomadic Fulani populations settled in the northern regions of what is today Nigeria long before the Dan Fodio Jihad of 1804-1808, which resulted in the conquest of Hausa lands by the Fulani.

Prior to that conquest, the Fulani were both nomadic and settled features in the region. Dan Fodio, the leader of the Jihad, himself was born in Maratta in Gobir (circa 1754), where his family was settled. He grew up to become a prominent scholar in the city and was the teacher of the young Prince Muhammadu Yunfa, who would later ascend the throne of Gobir and whose clashes with Dan Fodio would trigger the conquest.

Prior to that Jihad, the Fulani and the Hausa people coexisted as two distinct identities and practised the same Islamic faith. While religion is often cited as a trigger for the Jihad, colonial anthropologists like Major J. A.

Burdon, writing in “The Fulani Emirate of Northern Nigeria” in 1904, described the Jihad as being triggered by racial differences between the Caucasoid Fulani and the Negroid Hausa natives. This is a questionable assumption, of course. What is not questionable is that the Fulani used religion and the repressive regimes of the Hausa rulers to galvanise disgruntled Hausa men to join its infantry that helped conquer Hausaland.

Ironically, the British colonial regime would also recruit Hausa infantry men in their conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate a century later. Hausa resistance to Fulani dominance is not a new trend, as documented by the British missionary Hugh Clapperton, who in 1824, two decades after the Fulani conquest, visited the caliphate and documented continued Hausa resistance, which was prominent in Gobir and Kebbi. The conquest and the establishment of the caliphate gave the Fulani tribe the motivation to adopt the Hausa language to govern over its conquered Hausa states.

This also resulted in intermarriages that created the hyphenated identity and generations of Fulani rulers of Hausaland who speak more Hausa than Fulani. For decades, the fusion of ethnic and religious authority provided an elite unity and a common political language that served the ruling class by providing a social and cultural justification for their rule. But it also inadvertently favoured the British indirect system that capitalised on a block identity to govern the region while counting on galvanising the scattered minority tribes of the middle belt against the caliphate in the event of an unlikely resistance to colonial rule, as Burdon outlined.

In the pre-independence politics, these identity constructs continued to serve the purpose of power relations. They presented a ruling coalition that appeared united from the outside. It was a useful coalition, even if unequal. Within years, it became clear that the new Fulani oligarchs were, or even more oppressive than, the Hausa Habe rulers they ousted