-Pres. Weah’s Religious Advisor Leads Fulani Calls for Distinctive Tribal Alignment

IPNEWS: This week, both Houses of the Legislature of Liberia, passed into law the ‘dual citizens bill’, after four decades of hard pushes, including many tireless advocacies, negotiations, and maneuverings by Liberians living in the diaspora lobbying for their legislators to enact a bill recognizing dual citizenship.

Both Houses concurred on Tuesday, July 19, 2022, passing into law a bill granting the wishes of their compatriots— Diaspora Liberians.

During the voting process during the Senate’s 39^th Day Sitting, 23 of the 25 senators present, voted “yes” in favor of the passage. Two abstained while the rest of the five senators, who make up the total of 30 senators in the Liberian Senate, were absent from the Session. The journey to get to the voting process on Tuesday began many years ago in the mid-1950s.

Title 3 of the Liberian Code of Laws of 1956, known as the Aliens and Nationality Law, was amended/repealed through the Fourth Regular Session of the Forty-Fifth Legislature, enacted in lieu thereof as the new Aliens and Nationality Law, to be Title 4 of the Liberian Code of Laws Revised. This was approved on May 15, 1973, and amendments were approved on May 9, 1974. It was this amendment that sessions 22.1 and 22.2 prohibit dual citizenship in Liberia.

Now, a group of Fulani living in Liberia is calling for distinctive tribal alignment contrary to the constitution of Liberia.

1986, Liberia constitution Chapter V, ARTICLE 28 states: “Any person, at least one of whose parents was a citizen of Liberia at the time of the Person’s birth, shall be a citizen of Liberia; provided that any such person shall upon reaching maturity renounce any other citizenship acquired by virtue of one parent being a citizen of another country. No citizen of the Republic shall be deprived of citizenship or nationality except as provided by law, and no person shall be denied the right to change citizenship or nationality.”

Prior to coming in of the constitutional amendments in 1986, the original constitution of the first republic preamble upon which the foundation of the unitary state (Liberia) was built, including the Aliens and Nationality Law incorporates a ‘Negro clause’ that states ‘only people Negro descent can be citizens—Lebanese nationals are not eligible to be citizens of Liberia’.

The Webster dictionary for the first time pushed the definition of the word ‘Negro’, defined it as: ‘Negro denotes “black” in Spanish and Portuguese, derived from the Latin word niger, meaning black, which itself is probably from a Proto-Indo-European root *nek^w-, “to be dark”, akin to *nok^w-, “night”.

America’s 36^th President Lyndon B. Johnson publicly referred to free black American slaves as ‘Negroes’.

Currently, there are sixteen ethnic groups that makeup Liberia’s indigenous population including Kpelle, Bassa, Gio, Kru, Grebo, Mandingo, Mano, Krahn, Gola, Gbandi, Loma, Kissi, Vai, and Bella), Americo-Liberians 2.5% (descendants of immigrants from the U.S.)

The week in a rather strange stage, Fulani Community in Liberia called for ‘National Recognition’, through Legislating as an Official Ethnic Group in Liberia.

Speaking on behalf of the group Fula Community of Liberia, during the launch of a book titled: “From Babylon to Fuuta Jalloh” a [self-proclaimed] Fulani Historian Alhaji Surmoroe said any refusal to grant the Fula Community the right of being a tribal group in the country [Liberia] would be a clear violation of their fundamental rights.

“With comparative analysis to other West African nations, we Fula see it as a clear violation of our fundamental right to be a tribal group; whereas others are recognized while we are not,” Surmoroe said.

The Fulanis under the banner “Falanis Group of Liberia” have therefore submitted a bill to the Legislature to push that agenda.

According to the group, due to their prolonged stay in Liberia, they have been involved with many development initiatives in the country.

Speaking earlier, the Advisor to President Weah on Islamic Affairs Usemane T Jalloh said they will in the soonest possible time petition the national legislature to make their recognition come to reality.

“We will very soon petition the Legislature on this matter so as to inform them that we want to be given full status as an ethics group in this country,” Usemane T Jalloh said.

He wondered why others will continue to label Fulanis residing and doing businesses in Liberia as foreigners, even though they continue to make immense contributions towards the growth and development of the country’s economy and remain supportive of other sectors or areas.

The call has awakened a renewed debate on the recklessness of Liberia’s open-door policy.

Political pundits in Monrovia see the call as serious and undermines Liberia’s stability and the very foundation upon which the founding fathers of Liberia so sought to protect.

“First, the Fula Community’s request makes no sense.  Second, from all magnitudes, this is one of the most outlandish immigrant-friendly open-door policy violations epitomized by an immigrant community in Liberia.  Primarily, this is an unsuitable request and Liberians need to scrutinize the psych of any Liberian lawmaker who gives audience to these measures and declarations. Tribal ties and localization to any country are not based on the mere fact that citizens from other countries are permitted to naturalize there. Tribal ties to a country are rooted in pre-existing geographical location mechanisms. By naturalization, a Fula and anyone from any part of Sub-Sahara Africa may choose to become a Liberian citizen, and Liberians are welcoming of immigrants.”

“Immigrants disrespect Liberia and Liberians because of the reckless way we govern ourselves.  The Liberian legislature must, with immediate effect, toss out the bizarre request from the Fula Community because of its political and long-term structural consequences. In addition, if this is allowed, we should expect to give national recognition to the Fantis from Ghana, and the Igbos and Yorubas from Nigeria as national ethnic groups in Liberia. These groups have had treasured impacts on Liberia, too including President Edwin James Roye, an Igbo man of Nigerian origin who served as the fifth President of Liberia (February 3, 1815 – February 11, 1872). It is time for Liberians to say enough is enough to the disrespect shown by its immigrant community”. A UL Political Science Instructor told IPNEWS.

Fulani descended from nomads from both North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. They came from the Middle East and North Africa and settled in Central and West Africa from the Senegal region they created the Tekruur Empire which was contemporary to the Ghana Empire.

Generally, the Fulani are a large and widely dispersed group of both nomadic herders and sedentary farmers living in the African Sahel/Savannah belt. Currently, they reside mostly in the western part of Africa, but some groups are dispersed up to the Blue Nile area of Sudan in the east. Although some historians postulated an origin of the Fulani in ancient Egypt or the Upper Nile valley, written records suggest that the Fulani spread from West Africa (currently Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania) around 1000 years ago, reaching the Lake Chad Basin 500 years later. They founded several theocratic states such as Massina, Sokoto, or Takrur, and many Fulani abandoned the nomadic lifeway and settled down, including in large urban centers. This expansion was accompanied by a process of group absorption of sedentary peoples called Fulanisation, which led to shifts in the ethnic identity of some sedentary peoples, as has been described in North Cameroon.

However, several Fulani groups retained their very mobile lifestyle relying on the transhumance of their livestock and cattle milking. These fully nomadic or at least semi-nomadic groups are still present in several Sahelian locations, especially in Mali, Niger, the Central African Republic, and Burkina Faso. All Fulani speak the fulfulde Niger-Congo west-Atlantic language (a language continuum of various dialects), consistent with their postulated Western African ancestry.

Liberian historian Robtel Pailey, in a publication, stated that Liberia’s Negro clause is not racist; it is protectionary.

Pailey stated that the Negro clause was instituted at a time when Liberia was trying to protect itself from foreign domination. But the threat to national sovereignty did not disappear just because the 19^th-century “Scramble for Africa” by European powers ended in the 20th.

“The Negro clause may be discriminatory, but it is not racist. Besides, most nationality laws throughout the world are discriminatory, clearly separating those who belong from those who must fight to belong.”

“At the moment, the Negro clause is the only way of protecting the vast majority of Liberians from oblivion, especially since the civil war left them with virtually nothing, except their citizenship. By maintaining and enforcing our current nationality laws—and warding off foreigners—native Liberians stand a better chance at achieving political reforms, economic prosperity, and social cohesion on their own terms.” Pailey stated.