How Nigeria’s Mineral Wealth Is Being Handed to China

Nigeria’s Minister for Mines, Dele Henry Alake, prides himself on his re-election as Chairman of the newly formed Africa Minerals Strategy Group. He congratulates himself on the cover of magazines. As a former journalist Minister Alake is good with scripting media stories. He doesn’t have any background in mining or related industries. During President Tinubu’s two terms as Governor of Lagos State it was Alake who managed the Governor’s media as the Commissioner for Information and Strategy.

Since bagging the Ministry for Sold Minerals Development Minister Alake’s primary focus has been on securing large-scale investments and fostering partnerships for local mineral processing. This has led to the development of several lithium processing plants in Nigeria, primarily backed by Chinese investment.

Minister Alake’s emphasis on moving beyond raw material extraction to local processing is a good decision that will support Nigeria’s industrialization and economic diversification. However, favouring Chinese companies and punishing local Nigerian miners is a cruel blow to Nigerians and a step too far in surrendering Nigeria’s natural assets to a foreign power.

Under Minister Alake’s tenure, major Chinese companies such as Canmax Technology, Jiuling Lithium, Avatar New Energy, and Asba have pledged lithium processing facilities in Nigeria.

Since late 2025, Canmax has aggressively secured raw spodumene (lithium ore) to feed its expanding processing faciliies. Canmax Technologies is primarily owned and controlled by its founder and chairman, Mr Pei Zhenhua, alongside his wife, Rong Jianfen. Alake claims Canmax is investing US$200M to develop lithium mining operations in Nigeria, in line with Chinese aggressive moves to control African mineral resources and infrastructure such as ports and railways necessary to exploit the mineral reserves.

In late 2025, Chinese megafirm CATL announced plans to increase its stake in Canmax’s lithium subsidiaries. CATL holds approximately 40 percent of the global EV battery market and almost 70 percent of the NCM (Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese) battery market in China. China as a whole processes approximately 65 percent to 80 percent of the world’s lithium. As the dominant player in China, CATL effectively directs a majority of the lithium hydroxide refined within the country toward its own Gigafactories.

While UK company Jupiter Lithium Ltd’s massive lithium project in Kaduna State reels under the onslaught from armed illegal miners, Alake’s ministry deployed a specialized security unit known as Mining Marshals to safeguard nearby Canmax and Avatar sites from illegal mining activities. No amount of requests from Jupiter for assistance from Minister Alake elicited any support. Rather, Minister Alake revoked key lithium deposits discovered by Jupiter and allowed Chinese mining companies, escorted by Federal Government security, to enter Jupiter’s leases and commence mining and removing the ore mined and stockpiled by Jupiter.

Minister Alake has prioritised diplomatic engagement with Chinese officials to discuss strengthening bilateral relations and find ways to diminish the public attention to China’s involvement in illegal mining in Nigeria.

The mines minister has become a strong and frequent advocate for China’s involvement in Nigeria’s minerals and infrastructure development which has been a hallmark of his many trips to China.

Nigeria has fallen into line with China’s strategy for accessing and controlling Africa’s minerals resources and delivering more markets for Chinese technology and products.

China’s first stage of embedding itself in another nation is the offer to develop a country’s infrastructure; ports, roads, airports and railways. This essential infrastructure often facilitates the development of mineral projects China has chosen.

The second stage is introducing Chinese technology through the project development, especially surveillance technology. China replaces the US-based Global Positioning System (GPS) with China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system and blocks access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite. In so doing China is able to offer its support for the national government while penetrating Nigeria’s national security. Chinese technology can deliver facial recognition throughout entire cities, even at night.

In Iran several of China’s communications companies including Huawei, facial recognition and ethnicity tracking company Tiandy Technologies and ZTE, often operating through Iranian front companies, have worked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to provide 360 degrees 24/7 surveillance of Iran’s population. Iran and China have signed a 25-year co-operation agreement that will facilitate the transfer of a range of surveillance and monitoring technologies under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Surveillance of a nation’s populations is now an integral part of China’s program of building a nation’s infrastructure through roads, airports and mines. This provides an unprecedented tool for national governments to retain power and be manipulated by China.

…Steven Kefas is a conflict reporter with keen interest in mining and solid minerals.

Ladduga: How a Controversial Settlement Became a Symbol of Southern Kaduna’s Security Crisis

By Mike Agwam

Ladduga is a land where the government acquired for the purpose of animal husbandry, covering 73, hectares of land which was forcefully taken away from the indigenous people of southern Kaduna to give Fulanis.

For those who may not be knowledgeable about the place, let me vividly give a description of the place, If you are traveling to southern Kaduna before reaching kachia there is railway crossing just some few meters before the rail line, there’s a feeder road that connects with the high way by the left hand side, it is this road that will lead you to Laduga.

No sooner government acquired this land it became a settlement area for the Fulanis, Fulani of all race came and settled in this place, the disturbing phenomenon is that little do southern Kaduna people knew that this town will metamorphosed to be the den of criminals and a safe haven for Fulani terrorists.

During Patrick Yakowa reign there was a time the military had an intelligent report about the activities of these criminals, they were all rounded up in the night in a stink operation by the military, where amongst those arrested was the leader of the community. He was found complicit.

Laduga is known for being a notorious place for harbouring Fulani terrorists, they moved in the night go to neighbouring town attack people in their sleep, massacre, burn their houses and disappear in thin and back to base, which is Laduga. There was a time the men doing this evil act went out and never returned and their women came out protesting asking where there husbands were.

It was in this condition that Elrufai came to power, having every security report about the place, instead of taking measures to end the horrendous activities of his people, he continue to fan their ego by elevating the local community leader to a District head. He did not stop at that, he acquired more land and added to Laduga community, I was informed that the vast portion of land he grabbed belongs to the Ikulu people. Their ancestral land.

Elrufai did everything humanly possible to defend the Fulani even telling lies that 150 Fulanis were killed by Adara youths and buried in a shallow grave, when investigated by the military it turnout it was a lie from the pit of hell.
Some of his people still praise him for dealing decisively with southern Kaduna people. “Ya ji wa arna”, meaning he has dealt with the infidel.

Kaduna’s Broken Compass: Why Zoning Must Travel Beyond Abuja

By Steven Kefas

There is a quiet hypocrisy at the heart of Nigerian democracy, one that the political class has mastered the art of ignoring. We speak grandly of federal character, of inclusion, of ensuring that no region feels permanently shut out of power. We build this principle into party constitutions, into presidential tickets, into the unwritten codes that govern who gets to lead. And yet, when the lens shifts from the national stage to the states, the principle dissolves. Nowhere is this contradiction more glaring than in Kaduna State.

Since the return to civilian rule in 1999, Kaduna State has been governed almost exclusively by political figures from its predominantly Muslim north. This is not an accident of electoral mathematics. It is the product of deliberate choices made within the corridors of the Peoples Democratic Party and, later, the All Progressives Congress, choices that have consistently elevated northern Kaduna at the expense of the state’s Christian-majority south. In a state where the population is almost evenly divided between north and south, between Muslim and Christian, this pattern is not merely a political inconvenience. It is a wound that festers quietly beneath the surface of every election cycle.

The lone, luminous exception came not through the foresight of party leaders, but through the intervention of fate. When President Goodluck Jonathan appointed Governor Namadi Sambo as his Vice President in 2010, the governorship fell almost by accident to Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, a Christian from southern Kaduna who was then deputy governor to Sambo. Yakowa proved that the fears used to justify exclusion were unfounded. He governed with competence and dignity, won election in his own right in 2011, and built a coalition that crossed religious and regional lines. His victory was historic. The violence that greeted it in parts of the north was a sobering reminder of how deeply the politics of exclusion had poisoned the well.

Then, in December 2012, Yakowa perished in a helicopter crash. Power returned, as if by gravitational pull, to the northern part of the state. The brief window had closed. And in the decade-plus since, neither the PDP nor the APC has shown the political will to revisit what that window revealed: that Kaduna’s south is ready, capable, and deserving of a turn at the helm.

This context matters enormously as Nigeria’s political class turns its attention to the emerging Nigeria Democratic Congress. The NDC has already made a statement of intent by zoning its presidential candidacy to the south, with former Anambra Governor Peter Obi widely tipped as the consensus candidate. It is a credible, principled gesture, one that signals the party understands the logic of inclusion that has undergirded national politics since 1999. But a party that champions inclusion at the top while tolerating exclusion at the state level is not a party of principle. It is a party of convenience.

The question analysts are beginning to ask and that the NDC’s leadership must answer directly is whether the party’s commitment to fairness will cascade downward into the states. Will the NDC, as it builds its structures in Kaduna, demonstrate the courage that the PDP and APC have consistently lacked? Will it zone its governorship ticket to the south of the state, to a zone that has held the position for only a fleeting, grief-cut tenure in over twenty-five years of democracy?

The case for doing so is not merely sentimental. It is strategic. Southern Kaduna carries deep reservoirs of political grievance, grievances born not of imagination but of lived experience. Communities that have endured cycles of violence, displacement, and political marginalisation do not need more promises. They need the concrete, visible proof that democracy means something for them too. A party that offers that proof in Kaduna will not simply win votes. It will build loyalty of a different and more durable kind.

There are those who will argue that zoning is a blunt instrument, that merit should prevail over geography. It is a reasonable objection, and in a mature democracy with a level political field, it would carry great weight. But Nigeria’s political field is not level. It has been tilted, in state after state, by the accumulated weight of incumbent advantage, party gatekeeping, and the quiet veto of those who benefit from the status quo. In such conditions, zoning is not an abandonment of merit. It is the scaffolding that gives merit the chance to be seen.

Nigeria’s democracy turns twenty-seven this year. It has produced much to be proud of: peaceful transfers of power, a vibrant press, citizens increasingly willing to hold leaders accountable. But it has also produced stubborn patterns of exclusion that no amount of constitutional rhetoric has dislodged. If the NDC is to represent something genuinely new and not merely a reshuffling of old political elites under a fresh banner it must be willing to do in the states what it is doing at the centre.

Patrick Yakowa did not govern Kaduna as a southern Christian. He governed it as a Kaduna man, and the state was better for it. His story is both an argument and an invitation, an argument that inclusion works, and an invitation to every political party with the courage to take it seriously. The NDC now stands at that threshold. What it decides about Kaduna and about states like it across the federation will tell us whether it has truly read the lesson that Nigeria’s history has been trying, with such patience, to teach.

Beyond its own electoral fortunes, the NDC has an opportunity that few parties in Nigeria’s history have been handed: to become a model. The PDP governed for sixteen years and entrenched the very imbalances it once promised to dismantle especialli at state levels. The APC rode to power on the language of change and proceeded, in state after state, to replicate the exclusions it had condemned. If the NDC is serious about being different, let it demonstrate that seriousness not only in its presidential ticket but in every senatorial zone, and governorship race it contests. Let it be the party that other parties are embarrassed to ignore, the standard against which Nigerian voters begin to measure political seriousness. Equity and fairness should not be the NDC’s campaign slogan. They should be its operating system.

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The Unfortunate Price of “Second-Term” Politics: Middle Belt Nigeria

By Zariy Yusuf

It does seem the primarily focus of some politicians has moved away from impactful governance – if at all they swore their oath of office with sincerity – to scheming how to remain in power, come 2027. Protection of lives and property must no longer be seen as strictly a Federal government responsibility; state governors and elected representatives must be held accountable as well.

Kaduna and Plateau states have seen a lot of bloodshed within these past days with a kind of response I can best describe as either weak or cowardly from the state governors. There is an energy that forces one to think that even the response of these “chief security officers” must be such that does not displease the centre.

Kaduna is notorious for suppression of the facts about the activities of these militant Islamists, who are more conveniently described as mere “bandits”, thanks to the immediate past governor, Nasir Elrufa’i.

The Adara nation has suffered untold raids from these extremists with little or no media or government attention. Mrs Haske Solomon was abducted in a raid in the early hours of March 17th, 2026 in addition to three others that were taken on the 10th of March, 2026. The terrorists are demanding a ransom of 20 million naira.

The recent massacres of Christians in these states (Kagarko in Kaduna and Unguwar Rukuba in Plateau) should be a call on the political leaders of these states and the entirety of the Middle Belt to focus on their primary assignment and not betray their people in the pursuit of their political ambition.

The visit of the president to the Plateau betrayed how much the leadership in the Middle Belt is lacking. At least, someone would have insisted the president stayed back in Abuja and make a call to the victims or proceed on his trip to Ogun, instead of dragging mourners to the airport to meet him. Something reminiscent to his visit to another Middle Beltan state, Benue, over the Yelewata massacre.

Simply put, the massive decamping of the politicians of the Middle Belt to the APC seems to have no bargain for their people other than the very hope of those politicians to clinch a second term or benefit their ambitions, as the case may be. At least in terms of the massacre of Middle Beltans, the mass decamping of the political leaders of the region to the ruling party has been of no consequence whatsoever.

It is my sincere belief that if the government has failed in protecting the lives of the peoples of the Middle Belt or eliminating these Islamists who kill with impunity and always get away freely, then it must allow for the people to arm and organize at community levels to protect what seems to be the only thing they have left – their lives and those of their loved ones.

Gov. Uba Sani of Kaduna must suspend all antics about and against the 2027 elections, account for the security of his state and immediately attend to Kagarko, where over 13 people were killed, 10 wounded and 28 abducted. Silence about the security mess Kaduna state is in does not change the reality on ground.

The report from Kagarko is heartbreaking:

Killed:

1. Douglas John

2. Ado Yakubu

3. Mai Kano Aribi

4. John Dan Asabe

5. Williams Luka

6. Bako Danjuma

7. Joseph Yakubu

8. Victor Peter

9. Peter Williams

10. Dogara Markus

11. Francis Amadu

12. Zephaniah Alhaji

13. Name yet to be known.

Wounded:

1. Micah Tanko.

2. Fidelis Awuh

3. Samson Alhaji

4. Habila Bulus

5. Colonius Dauda

6. Lina samaila

7. Bello Alkali

8. Felix Erick

9. Francis Tanko

10. Doctor Solomon

Kidnapped:

1. Tanko Makeri

2. Jummai Victor

3. Tanko Madaki

4. Beauty Marshal

5. Mariya Dominic

6. Awede Tanko

7. Patience Bitrus

8. Thadious Augustine

9. Salome Danladi

10. Ephraim Monday

11. Kande Monday

12. Lucky Monday

13. Lidiya Benjamin

14. Gambo Benjamin

15. Najirgi Yakubu

16. Danladi Kagarko

17. Daniel Shehu

18. Talatu Ibrahim

19. Dauda Markus

20. Peace Waziri

21. Tanko Waziri

22. Promise Waziri

23. Asami Dauda

24. Awuh Adams

25. Bulus Sunday

26. Chibi Emmanuel

27. Peace Luka

28. Name not yet known

Enough of the bloodshed!

Credit for list of victims: David Dokuma

China’s Increasing Control of Africa’s Mineral Resources

By Biliyaminu Suraj

biliyasuraj247@yahoo.com

Nigeria’s Minister for Mines prides himself on his recent re-election as Chairman of the newly formed Africa Minerals Strategy Group, established by African Ministers of Minerals and Mining to foster cooperation among African nations in the development of critical minerals. Minister Alake is a former journalist and close friend of President Tinubu. During Tinubu’s two terms as Governor of Lagos State it was Alake who managed Tinubu’s media as the Governor’s Commissioner for Information and Strategy.

It is this African Minerals Strategy Group that is leading the push for the introduction of the Madini Protocol, a blockchain platform which will be the Trojan Horse for Chinese control of the African minerals sector.

Since becoming Minister for Sold Minerals Development Alake’s primary focus has been on securing large-scale investments and fostering partnerships for local mineral processing. This has led to the development of several lithium processing plants in Nigeria, primarily backed by Chinese investment. Major Chinese companies such as Canmax Technology, Jiuling Lithium, Avatar New Energy, and Asba have announced investment in lithium processing facilities in Nigeria.

Since late 2025, Canmax has aggressively secured lithium ore to feed its expanding processing faciliies. Canmax Technologies is primarily owned and controlled by its founder and chairman, Mr Pei Zhenhua, alongside his wife, Rong Jianfen. Alake claims Canmax is investing US$200M to develop lithium mining operations in Nigeria, in line with Chinese aggressive moves to control African mineral resources and infrastructure such as ports and railways necessary to exploit the mineral reserves.

Chinese megafirm CATL announced plans to increase its stake in Canmax’s lithium subsidiaries. CATL holds approximately 40 percent of the global EV battery market and almost 70 percent of the NCM (Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese) battery market in China. China as a whole processes approximately 65 percent to 80 percent of the world’s lithium. As the dominant player in China, CATL effectively directs a majority of the lithium hydroxide refined within the country toward its own Gigafactories.

Minister Alake has become a frequent and strong advocate for China’s involvement in Nigeria’s minerals and infrastructure development which has been a hallmark of his many trips to China.

As Chairman of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, Minister Alake has introduced the Madini Protocol, a Chinese backed blockchain-based platform for trading and digital financing. This hi-tech system is not only designed for tracking minerals from extraction to market but also tracking every person involved in the supply chain including local villagers who may be employed at the mine. The system converts unmined mineral reserves into tradable digital tokens.

In other central Asian countries China state-controlled tech companies are rolling out platforms that turn natural resources including water into digital tokens tradable on blockchain-based platforms and for digital financing. The Chinese companies rolling out deals with governments say there is no limit to what they can tokenize and make tradable on their platforms.

The Madini Protocol, made possible through a collaboration between David Chen (Founder of BLCP Capital, now Chairman of GTIF) and Chris Wong (CEO of LifeSite). LifeSite Inc., is fronted as the technology company behind the TokenX platform and the Madini Protocol. The background of Wong’s co-founders in this hi-tech digital software is interesting. Crystal Lee, a co-founder of LifeSite, was Miss California 2013 and runner-up in the Miss America 2014 pageant. YoonJin Chang, also a co-founder of LifeSite was a former Miss Korea runner-up in 2010.

Wong’s long term business associate is David Chen who founded and led Deloitte’s Chinese Services Group in Mexico. Chen’s experience is primarily with food, health, entertainment and real estate industries before moving into global esports and entertainment through FaZe Clan which achieved a valuation of $725 million via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger in 2022 only to plunge to a 2026 estimate of $13 million.

Wong and Chen’s Madini Protocol is touted as a vehicle allowing African nations to raise capital via the Africa Mineral Token (AMT). In fact, it is a route for China to capture control of Africa’s mineral resources initially targeting Lithium and Gold. It is promoted by Minister Alake as a means of financing through the digital tokenisation to provide a way for Chinese funding for projects via smart contracts on the blockchain.

The Africa Minerals Strategy Group led by Minister Alake is China’s Trojan Horse to capture control of Africa’s mineral resources through mining infrastructure investment using the Madini Protocol to fund Chinese built and operated ore processing plants. All the while Nigerian officials turn a blind eye to the Chinese sourcing of lithium ore for their Nigerian processing plants from illegal miners, paying protection money to heavily armed militants, bandits and ISIS connected groups controlling increasingly larger areas of Nigeria’s North and Central regions. The extreme insecurity of these areas is a perfect cover for Chinese companies illegally mining who pay terrorists protection money rather than state royalties.

In the Year of the Horse Mines Ministers across Africa, like the people of ancient Troy, may welcome the gift brought to their gates by Minister Alake and his Chinese backed partners only to find it is a Trojan Horse which, once inside the gates, is uncontrollable.

Soldiers Not Protecting Middle Belters But Protecting Cows

By Mike Odeh James

A recent Punch report celebrated Nigerian soldiers for foiling a cattle-rustling attempt in Agatu Local Government Area of Benue State, complete with photographs of arrested men proudly displayed like trophies. The comments section was having none of it.

“This is the only thing the Nigerian Army knows how to do — guide Fulani terrorists to kill Benue citizens, then arrest innocent Benue youths and parade them as cattle rustlers to justify the killings,” one reader wrote.

That is not an exaggeration. That is a pattern.

The men arrested are not criminals by disposition — they are indigenes of a land soaked in the blood of their own people; survivors of years of Fulani terrorist massacres who have buried neighbours, fled burning homesteads, and watched their farmlands annexed by armed herders. The military knows this. It does not care.

These same soldiers — fully aware that Benue State has a legally operational anti-open grazing law — have deliberately looked the other way as Fulani herders brazenly violate that law, driving cattle across cultivated farmlands, destroying harvests and livelihoods, without a single arrest, a single query, or a single apology.

The selectivity is not incompetence. It is policy.

In Amadu, Taraba, soldiers ignored repeated community distress calls about Fulani attacks — then swooped in to arrest local men the moment Fulani complainants pointed fingers. In Abaji Kpav, troops deployed ostensibly against militants instead turned their boots on the very villagers they were sent to protect, beating elders and humiliating residents.

The Nigerian Army owes the Middle Belt an explanation. Who exactly are these soldiers serving — the Nigerian constitution, or the herdsmen’s cattle?

ONLY THE FULANI JIHADIST–IMPERIAL AGENDA FEARS A UNITED MIDDLE BELT

Barr. John Apollos Maton
9th February 2026

A REBUTTAL TO A SAD JOKE MASQUERADING AS POLITICAL ANALYSIS

I don’t know who the recent Fulani stooge Cham Faliya Sharon is, but his/her writeup “IS THE CONFUSION OF THE MIDDLE BELT COMING FULL CIRCLE TO BITE THE MIDDLE BELT” is such a ridiculous piece I was ashamed for the writer when it opened with a quote from Thomas Paine. I mean, it takes a special pompous type of clown to not only go through writing this but even have it reshared on public platforms by the Fulani Immigrants Nigeria should be sending packing.

The joke of an article under review is not analysis but performance—an exercise in ideological ventriloquism by a writer who mistakes obedience for insight. It reads like a brief written to order, not a position arrived at through honest inquiry. Like Judas Iscariot, the author appears to have concluded that selling one’s intellectual integrity for proximity to power is a rational transaction. History, however, records such bargains not as cleverness but as cowardice.

We are told, with great theatrical confidence, that the Middle Belt is a confusion: a geographical impossibility, a political contradiction, a manufactured identity sustained by ignorance and manipulation. Yet what is truly confused is an argument that elevates imposed constitutions to divine scripture while dismissing lived history as irrelevant; that treats maps as sacred while treating people as disposable; and that assumes identity must first be approved by dominant blocs before it can exist. This is not reason—it is authoritarian logic wrapped in the language of common sense.

Let us nonetheless grant the author every imaginable concession. Let us ignore, for the moment, the extensive scholarly work of Dr. Bitrus Pogo and numerous historians, sociologists, and political scientists who have rigorously documented the Middle Belt as a historical and political reality. Let us assume—without conceding—that they are wrong. Let us even accept the childish claim that because the phrase “Middle Belt” does not appear verbatim in the 1999 Constitution, the identity itself must therefore be fraudulent. Even under these generous assumptions, the argument collapses completely.

For even if the Middle Belt were nothing more than a political consciousness emerging from shared experiences of marginalization, violence, and exclusion, that alone would make it real. Peoples are not born fully mapped and notarized; they are forged through history, memory, and struggle. And it is precisely this process—now ripening into collective clarity—that terrifies the imperial imagination animating the essay.

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION AND SELF-DETERMINATION ARE NOT GIFTS FROM ANY HEGEMON

At the most elementary level, the argument fails because it assumes identity is something granted rather than asserted. Under Nigeria’s own Constitution, this assumption is indefensible. Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution explicitly guarantees every citizen the right to assemble freely and associate with others for the protection of their interests. Section 39 guarantees freedom of expression, including the right to receive and impart ideas. These provisions are not decorative—they are foundational.

Beyond domestic law, Nigeria is a signatory to binding international instruments that go even further. Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights affirms the unequivocal right of all peoples to self-determination and to freely pursue their political, economic, and social development. Article 22 reinforces this by recognizing the collective right to development. These are not abstract ideals; they are enforceable norms incorporated into Nigerian law by domestication of the Charter.

At the global level, the principle is even clearer. Common Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) states plainly that all peoples have the right to self-determination and to freely determine their political status. Nowhere in international law is there a requirement that a people must first satisfy the cartographic preferences of their detractors before asserting this right.

The demand that the Middle Belt must “draw a perfect map” before it may exist is therefore not legal reasoning; it is imperial obstruction. Colonial borders across Africa were drawn arbitrarily, yet no one questions their legitimacy on the grounds of incoherence. To suddenly demand mathematical neatness only when marginalized peoples organize themselves is not intellectual rigor—it is selective skepticism deployed as a weapon.

THE MIDDLE BELT POSSESSES ANCESTRAL LAND, HISTORY, AND MEMORY—IT IS NOT A FICTION

While totally excusing the Fulani Immigrants who have made the lives of true natives and real Indigenes of Nigeria a living hell, one of the most dishonest maneuvers in the essay is its deliberate avoidance of ancestry. We are invited to obsess over lines on a map while ignoring the more uncomfortable question of who has lived where, for how long, and under what conditions. The communities commonly described as Middle Belt peoples are not recent arrivals, nor are they abstract categories invented in conference halls. They are indigenous populations rooted in specific territories long before colonial intrusion.

Unlike the Fulani Immigrants who don’t belong in Nigeria, these communities possess traceable genealogies, distinct languages, religious traditions, and systems of governance that predate both British colonial rule and the later Nigerian state. Historical records—from colonial archives to oral histories—document repeated episodes of subjugation, forced incorporation, and indirect rule imposed upon them. To pretend that these histories dissolve simply because a constitution failed to name them explicitly is not ignorance; it is historical vandalism.

International law has long rejected the notion that identity disappears because it is inconvenient to power. The United Nations’ recognition of indigenous peoples worldwide—culminating in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007—affirmed that historical continuity with pre-colonial societies is a valid basis for collective rights, regardless of later political rearrangements. Identity survives conquest; memory survives subjugation.

What unsettles the Fulani and their stooge — the essay’s author is that this memory is now politically articulate. The Middle Belt is not asking to be invented; it is insisting on being recognized on its own terms, not as an appendix to someone else’s empire. And once ancestry and land are acknowledged, violence can no longer be dismissed as “misunderstanding,” nor dispossession reframed as inevitability.

POLITICAL DIVERSITY DOES NOT NEGATE COLLECTIVE EXISTENCE

Perhaps the most intellectually hollow claim advanced is that internal political diversity invalidates Middle Belt identity. By this logic, Nigeria itself—fractured by ethnic, religious, and ideological divisions—should not exist. The argument collapses the moment it is applied consistently.

Political disagreement is not evidence of non-existence; it is evidence of political life. Only caricatures are uniform. Real peoples debate leadership, disagree on strategy, and pursue competing interests while still recognizing shared historical experiences and structural threats. To demand absolute unanimity as the price of recognition is to demand silence, not coherence.
International practice confirms this reality. From Catalonia to Kurdistan, from Quebec to Scotland, political plurality has never been treated as proof that a people does not exist. On the contrary, it is often cited as evidence of democratic maturity. The insistence that the Middle Belt must be perfectly homogeneous before it can claim identity is therefore not a standard—it is a pretext.

What truly disturbs the essay’s author is not contradiction but consolidation. As long as Middle Belt communities were forced to negotiate individually, they could be managed and ignored. A shared political vocabulary changes that balance. Patterns can be named, responsibilities assigned, and demands articulated collectively. That shift, not geography, is the real provocation.

IDENTITY ERASURE AS A CLASSIC IMPERIAL STRATEGY

The structure of the essay follows a script as old as the attempted Immigrant Fulani empire in Nigeria itself. First, deny that the people exist. Next, ridicule their attempts at self-definition. Then, frame their resistance as manipulation by outsiders. Finally, present continued domination as common sense and stability. This pattern has been documented across colonial history, from the Americas to Africa to Asia.

International law evolved precisely to dismantle this logic. The post-World War II order—reflected in the UN Charter’s emphasis on self-determination—was a direct response to the catastrophic consequences of identity denial and imperial domination. The decolonization movements of the twentieth century did not succeed because empires suddenly became benevolent; they succeeded because peoples insisted on naming themselves.

By portraying Middle Belt consciousness as a southern plot or a geographical error, the essay avoids confronting the structural realities of exclusion and violence. Identity erasure here is not accidental; it is instrumental. If a people do not exist, then nothing done to them can be legally or morally framed as injustice.
What the Fulani and author fears, ultimately, is accountability. A people who know who they are can trace how they arrived at their present condition. They can distinguish accident from policy, conflict from campaign. Once that distinction is made, the old excuses collapse, and the Immigrants who have long overstayed their welcome will be evicted.

CONCLUSION: MIDDLE BELT UNITY IS THE THREAT TO FULANI IMPERIALISM, NOT CONFUSION

Strip away the sarcasm, selective geography, and performative concern, and one truth remains unmistakable: a united Middle Belt disrupts long-standing arrangements of Fulani immigrant domination. It replaces silence with memory and fragmentation with demand for what we as a native people are due. It transforms suffering and genocide under the Fulani Islamic Terrorist Jihadists agenda into political clarity, self determination and intolerance for foreign terrorist influence.

The Middle Belt does not require validation from those Fulani invested in its marginalization and destruction. It does not need permission to associate, to name itself, or to pursue its collective interests. Even the fake Nigerian constitutional law made to further Fulani agenda in Nigeria protects this right. African human-rights law affirms it. International law enshrines it.

The joke of an article I was sent and repeatedly asked to consider is therefore not a warning to the Middle Belt but a confession from Fulani and their stooges. It reveals anxiety, not authority—fear, not confidence.

Like with the Fualni’s who through the Genocide of Christians and Indigenes of Nigeria hope to continue the Fodio Caliphate agenda, empires are never threatened by confusion. They are threatened by clarity.

And clarity is precisely what is emerging.

THE MIDDLE BELT QUESTION: HISTORY, POWER, AND THE CURRENT REALITY

By: Dr. Pogu Bitrus

It has become imperative to respond decisively to a mischievous and intellectually dishonest article circulating under the headline “The Manufactured Middle Belt: The Untold History, Foreign Backing and the Agenda to Fracture Northern Nigeria,” authored under the pseudonym Safyan Umar Yahaya. Far from being a work of history and of social concern, the piece is an alarmist pamphlet—animated by fear and bigotry not facts, all aimed at delegitimizing the rising social and political

consciousness of the Middle Belt.

The anxiety beneath the essay is unmistakable. For over a century, certain ruling blocs have exploited the Middle Belt economically, subordinated it politically, and tried to diminish it culturally. Today, as the people of the region reclaims its history, pride and asserts its unity, anger and blackmail is the response of the losers.

The central claim—that the Middle Belt is a recent political fabrication without historical roots—is not merely false; it is a deliberate distortion built on colonial convenience and selective amnesia.

WHAT THE MIDDLE BELT ACTUALLY IS

The Middle Belt refers to the vast geographical and cultural zone inhabited by indigenous ethnic nationalities of the former Northern Region—now spanning 19 Northern states and the Federal Capital Territory—who were never conquered or where never largely ruled by the Sokoto Caliphate or the Kanem-Borno Empire prior to British colonisation.

Put plainly: the Middle Belt consists of the autochthonous peoples of Northern Nigeria who are neither Hausa, Fulani, nor Kanuri, and who historically existed outside the authority of Islamic caliphates, notwithstanding some pockets of Emirate enclaves among it. This is not opinion; it is an established historical fact.

Long before colonial rule, the Middle Belt was home to sovereign empires, kingdoms, chiefdoms, and complex stateless societies whose political systems predated the 19th-century jihads by centuries. Among the most prominent was the Kwararafa Confederacy, centred in the Gongola – Benue Valley. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, Kwararafa repeatedly defeated and humiliated Hausa city-states such as Kano and Zaria and even challenged Kanem-Borno—long before Usman dan Fodio’s jihad of 1804.

Other well-documented polities include the Igala Kingdom, Jukun states, Nupe Kingdom, and countless Tiv, Idoma, Gbagyi, Birom, Angas, Lelna, Bwatye, Eggon, and Goemai societies among hundreds of others — each with distinct political traditions, land tenure systems, and military histories. They had a common solidarity hinged on wading off Islamisation and genocidal slave raids.

COLONIAL CONQUEST AND FORCED SUBORDINATION

The author inadvertently exposes his argument’s weakness when he ignores a crucial colonial reality: the British conquered the Muslim emirates with relative ease, largely by co-opting existing centralized hierarchies. In contrast, Middle Belt societies resisted British conquest fiercely.

British colonial records—by administrators such as Frederick Lugard and C.L. Temple—document prolonged military campaigns, punitive expeditions, and scorched-earth tactics used against Middle Belt communities from the early 1900s to the 1920s. This resistance is precisely why the British imposed Indirect Rule by force, subordinating Middle Belt peoples to Fulani and Kanuri emirs they had never known, accepted, or recognized.

That imposition,nnot foreign conspiracy, is the historical root of Middle Belt political consciousness.

THE COLONIAL FALLACY OF “NON-EXISTENCE”

The article’s reliance on colonial maps and constitutions to argue that the Middle Belt did not exist before the 1940s is intellectually indefensible. Colonial documents recognized what served imperial administration, not indigenous reality. By that logic, countless African nations and identities would vanish simply because Europeans failed—or refused—to acknowledge them.

Even then, the claim is factually weak. The term “Middle Belt” appears descriptively in colonial correspondence as early as the first decade of the 20th century, used by administrators and missionaries to describe the non-emirate central zone of Northern Nigeria. The British deliberately refused to create a Middle Belt Region, not because it lacked coherence, but because doing so would weaken the numerical and political dominance of the Hausa-Fulani-Kanuri oligarchy that sustained Indirect Rule.

The agitation for recognition therefore predates independence; it merely became organized in the 1950s.

THE UMBC AND THE MYTH OF FOREIGN MANIPULATION

The United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC) under Joseph Sarwuan Tarka did not invent the Middle Belt identity. It articulated long-standing grievances: land dispossession, political exclusion, cultural suppression, force labour, and religious discrimination.

To dismiss the UMBC as a tool of missionaries or foreign interests is not only false but insulting. Middle Belt people and leaders were among the most educated and politically sophisticated Nigerians of their generation, many trained in Britain and elite Nigerian institutions well before independence. They required no NGO or missionary to understand injustice they lived daily.

The historical record—petitions against Native Authority abuses, resistance to emirate taxation, land struggles, and demands for self-rule—is open to anyone willing to read honestly.

THE CONTEMPORARY MOMENT

Today’s Middle Belt movement is neither separatist nor violent. It is a demand for recognition, equity, and freedom from an imposed Arewa identity that neither reflects its history nor aligns with its values. The Middle Belt does not deny the existence of Northern Nigeria; it rejects the falsehood that Northern Nigeria is synonymous with the Middle Belt.

What has long been marketed as “Northern unity” has, in truth, been a forced political marriage, sustained by coercion rather than consent.

Increasingly, the Middle Belt is stating what history has always known: this union was never voluntary!

If language must be blunt, then so be it—this relationship has often resembled political rape, and the survivors have finally found their voice.

2027 AND THE PANIC OF DECLINING HEGEMONY

The fear driving this revisionist essay is understandable. The once-boasted “monolithic Northern voting bloc” is fracturing. Demographics, political awareness, and historical truth are converging.

For the first time, Nigeria’s political establishment is confronting an uncomfortable reality: the Middle Belt is the decisive factor in national politics.

THE MIDDLE BELT, RELIGION, AND THE COLLAPSE OF OLD MYTHS

A recurring propaganda tactic is to label the Middle Belt a “Bible Belt,” as though its political awakening is a sectarian religious project. This claim is demonstrably false. The Middle Belt has always been religiously plural, home to Christians, Muslims, and adherents of African traditional religions for centuries. Even institutionally, the Middle Belt Forum (MBF) disproves this caricature: its Board of Trustees and National Working Committee include Muslims, reflecting the region’s inclusive ethos. While it is true that the Middle Belt today is predominantly Christian—largely due to historical resistance to jihadist conquest and the voluntary embrace of Christianity—majority faith does not translate into religious extremism. The Middle Belt struggle is not about imposing religion; it is about ending political subjugation, cultural erasure, and systemic inequality. Reducing this legitimate quest to sectarianism is not analysis but propaganda.

Demise of the Hausa/Fulani Amalgam.

Equally misleading is the continued use of the term “Hausa-Fulani” as though it remains a coherent political or cultural bloc. Increasingly, Hausa intellectuals and opinion leaders reject this forced amalgam, insisting that there is Hausa land and there is the Middle Belt, but no natural or “Arewa” identity. The very terms “Northern Nigeria” and “Arewa” now irritate many enlightened Hausa voices who recognize them as tools historically used to sustain Fulani political dominance and economic exploitation. Recent events have further exposed this fracture: widespread violence by Fulani bandits against Hausa rural communities has shattered the illusion of a shared destiny. For decades, the Hausa masses were mobilized as demographic instruments against Middle Belt minorities; today, they are confronting the reality that they too have borne the costs of an unjust hierarchy. What is unfolding is not a Middle Belt conspiracy, but the collapse of an artificial political fiction. History, not agitation, has caught up with it.

Dr: Pogu Bitrus is the President of the Middle Belt Forum (MBF) and hails from Chibok, Southern Borno.

Sheikh Gumi, Usman Yusuf, and the Dangerous Politics of Sympathizing With Terror in Nigeria

By Nasiru I. M. Jagaba

21 December 2025

jagabanasiru@gmail.com

For over a decade, Nigeria has endured an unrelenting wave of terrorism and large-scale banditry that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions, and devastated entire regions. From the abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok to mass killings in the Middle Belt and the bombing of the

Abuja-Kaduna passenger train, the victims have overwhelmingly been ordinary, unarmed citizens.

Nigeria’s tragedy is not rooted in a lack of military capability. The country possesses trained forces, intelligence assets, and international partnerships. What has consistently failed is political resolve, compounded by the role of influential voices who have normalized, justified, or indirectly shielded terrorists under the language of dialogue, ethnicity, or religious fraternity.

At the heart of this troubling pattern are Sheikh Ahmad Gumi and Professor Usman Yusuf, two public figures whose words, actions, and associations demand scrutiny rather than reverence.

Documented Presence With Terrorists in Their Havens

Before any discussion of motives or rhetoric, one foundational fact must be stated plainly: Sheikh Ahmad Gumi and Professor Usman Yusuf have, on multiple occasions, been seen in photographs and video footage holding court with armed terrorists inside their forest havens across several Nigerian states. These were not accidental encounters or second-hand claims; they were direct, documented meetings conducted deep within territories controlled by bandit and terrorist groups.

Such repeated access establishes an unavoidable reality: anyone who can consistently meet terrorists in their strongholds knows who they are, where they are located, and how to reach them. In a country where security agencies often cite intelligence gaps as a constraint, this level of familiarity raises grave questions. If these individuals possess such access and knowledge, Nigerians are entitled to ask why this proximity has not translated into the exposure, disruption, or dismantling of terror networks, but instead has coincided with public advocacy that appears to soften, excuse, or rationalize their violence.

From Mediation to Legitimization: The Gumi Question

Beginning around 2020, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi publicly ventured into bandit-controlled forests across Zamfara and neighboring states, presenting himself as a mediator. These visits were not clandestine; they were widely broadcast and documented by BBC Hausa (June 2021), Channels Television (July 2021), and Daily Trust (2021).

Crucially, these encounters produced photographs and video footage showing Gumi sitting openly with armed bandit leaders in their forest enclaves. These images carry unavoidable implications: anyone who repeatedly meets terrorists in their strongholds knows who they are, where they operate, and how to reach them.

Yet rather than use this access to expose terror networks, Gumi consistently positioned himself as their public interpreter, often describing them in collective, possessive language such as “our boys” or “our warriors” (mayakanmu) in televised interviews.

In any counter-terrorism doctrine, such language blurs the line between mediation and moral endorsement. It raises a fundamental question Nigerians deserve answered:

If these men know the terrorists so well, why has the nation never been told, clearly and unequivocally, why these groups attack villages, massacre civilians, and wage war on the Nigerian state?

Negotiating for Killers, Silence for Victims

Despite repeated “peace engagements,” violence did not decline; it escalated. Kidnappings expanded from remote villages to highways, schools, and rail infrastructure, culminating in the Abuja–Kaduna train attack of 28 March 2022.

Instead of disarmament, terrorists gained:

Public visibility

A sympathetic national voice

Political and ideological cover

If negotiations are conducted with murderers, a basic moral question arises: Who accounts for the blood already spilled?

When Sheikh Gumi and his allies speak of bandits using inclusive Hausa pronouns, “we” and “us”, they unintentionally frame mass atrocities as collective grievances rather than criminal acts.

Such framing risks converting terror into an ethnic or communal cause, rather than what it is: organized violent crime and war against civilians.

Associations That Deepen Concern

Public concern intensified with the arrest of Tukur Mamu, a close associate of Gumi and a self-described negotiator. On 7 September 2022, Mamu was arrested in Cairo, deported to Nigeria, and detained by security agencies. Authorities stated he was found with items allegedly linked to terrorist logistics (Premium Times, September 2022; Channels TV, September 2022).

Mamu had repeatedly appeared beside Gumi during “peace meetings” with bandits. Yet kidnappings continued unabated throughout this period. This inevitably raises a disturbing question:

Were these engagements aimed at ending terrorism, or managing it?

Earlier, Sheikh Gumi himself had drawn international attention. In 2010, Saudi authorities detained him following intelligence concerns linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian involved in the failed Christmas Day airline bombing (The New York Times, January 2010). More recently, in May 2025, Saudi Arabia reportedly denied him entry for Hajj.

Such actions by foreign governments may be disputed, but taken together they form a pattern that merits investigation, not dismissal.

Usman Yusuf and the Ethnicization of Terror

Professor Usman Yusuf, former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), has emerged as a vocal critic of military operations against armed terrorist groups.

In opposing decisive action, Yusuf has framed counter-terror efforts as an attack on “Fulani people.” This argument is not merely flawed; it is dangerous.

Northern traditional rulers, security briefings, and multiple media investigations have repeatedly acknowledged that a significant proportion of bandit groups identify as Fulani, without suggesting that Fulani identity itself is criminal.

Terrorism is not an ethnicity; it is a crime.

By Yusuf’s logic, opposing military action against armed militias because of their ethnic identity implies that such groups possess an implicit right to raid villages, displace other ethnic communities, and commit mass killings without resistance. This is a moral and legal absurdity.

Selective Compassion, Selective Justice

Professor Yusuf’s public record also invites scrutiny. During his tenure at NHIS, he faced allegations of financial mismanagement reported by Premium Times (October 2018) and The Punch (December 2018). While he denies wrongdoing and no final conviction has been recorded, these unresolved issues remain part of the public record.

It is therefore legitimate to ask: Why does a former public official, facing unresolved accountability questions, now position himself as a defender of armed groups, while civilians continue to die?

When Terror Becomes a Political Asset

Media investigations by Daily Trust (June 2020) and Premium Times (February 2021) documented state-level arrangements where bandit leaders were paid or settled in exchange for temporary ceasefires. Security analysts cited by The Guardian (August 2021) and the International Crisis Group (2020–2023) warned that such deals often preserved terror networks as political leverage, especially during election cycles. If armed groups are maintained as bargaining tools, terrorism ceases to be merely a security failure and becomes a political strategy, a profound betrayal of the Nigerian people.

Tinubu’s Moment of Truth

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu faces a defining test. Ending insecurity requires placing national survival above political calculations, resisting elite pressure from those threatened by peace, and supporting professional military leadership without equivocation.

The Defence leadership under General Christopher Musa emphasizes coordination, discipline, and results. Such efforts cannot succeed while influential voices undermine operations through ethnic or religious narratives.

A Call for Investigation and Accountability

Criticism alone is no longer sufficient. Investigation is imperative.

Nigeria’s security and justice institutions must examine:

Public advocacy that appears to normalize or defend armed groups

Financial and logistical networks sustaining terrorism

The role of intermediaries who claim peace while violence persists.

International partners should also review credible evidence under frameworks such as the Global Magnitsky Act and Leahy Laws, where terror facilitation is established.

Holy robes must not become shields for unholy alliances.

Conclusion:

Stop Bargaining With Violence

The victims of Nigeria’s terror war, schoolchildren, farmers, commuters, worshippers, were not combatants. They were citizens. This war will not be won by ethnicizing crime, romanticizing killers, or negotiating from moral weakness. It will be won by truth, accountability, and political courage.

Nigeria must stop bargaining with terror, and start defeating it.

An Open Letter to His Excellency, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, Executive Governor of Borno State.

By Suleman Ayuba

Your Excellency,

I write with profound respect and genuine gratitude for your latest act of leadership and compassion: the decision to give every family returning from Cameroon the sum of Five Hundred Thousand Naira (₦500,000) as repatriation support. This is not just money; it is a loud declaration that the people of Ngoshe, Kirawa, Attagara, Agapalawa, Ashigashiya, Warabe, Gwoza hills, Pulka, and every other mountain and valley community are still sons and daughters of Borno, not forgotten refugees. For this, Sir, accept my deepest thanks and the thanks of every family now preparing to cross the border back home.

But Your Excellency, gratitude must walk hand-in-hand with truth.

The same communities they are returning to Ngoshe, Kirawa, Attagara, Agapalawa, and so many others still lie in ruins. Houses are burnt shells. Schools are without roofs or teachers. Health posts are empty. Farmlands are overgrown or mined. At night, fear still rules because insurgents have not been completely pushed out of the surrounding hills. Five hundred thousand naira is a powerful seed, but it cannot grow where the soil has not been prepared.

I have spoken to returnees who are already back in Ngoshe and Kirawa. They tell me the money helps them buy food and a few zinc sheets, but after that, they sleep in church buildings or under trees because there is no coordinated reconstruction. Children in Attagara and Agapalawa are eager to resume school, yet the classrooms remain destroyed. Mothers in Warabe and Ashigashiya are afraid to farm far from the town because there is no guarantee of safety.

Your Excellency, you have rebuilt thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals across the state. We have seen the miracle in Kawuri, in Bama, in Konduga. Now the people of the Mandara Mountain axis Ngoshe, Kirawa, Attagara, Agapalawa, and beyond—need that same miracle. Without it, the ₦500,000 risks becoming not the beginning of a new life, but the end of hope.

Our returning brothers and sisters deserve more than transport fare and cash. They deserve: Reconstructed homes in Ngoshe, Kirawa, Attagara, Agapalawa, and every affected ward, with government-supplied blocks and roofing materials so that the ₦500,000 becomes a contribution, not the entire burden. Immediate rehabilitation of schools in these communities and free enrolment plus feeding for returnee children who have lost over ten years of education. Permanent security posts and regular patrols so families can sleep without one eye open. Seeds, fertilisers, and farming tools distributed before the next planting season, so the money can be invested in land instead of consumed in hunger. Mobile clinics and trauma counsellors deployed to these mountain communities, because the wounds of war are not only physical.

Your Excellency, the world is watching Borno’s repatriation effort. Let us make it a complete success not just bringing people back from Cameroon, but bringing life back to Ngoshe, Kirawa, Attagara, Agapalawa, and every village that once echoed with children’s laughter.

Thank you again for the ₦500,000 per family. Now let us match that generosity with the roofs, classrooms, and security that will turn repatriation into true restoration.

With highest regards and unwavering hope,

SULEMAN AYUBA

Concerned citizen,victim of the circumstances.