…Says, “It’s not political invention.”
by Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
The President of the Middle-Belt Forum (MBF), Dr. Pogu Bitrus, has rejected claims that the Middle-Belt is a recent “political invention” aimed at destabilizing the North, describing such assertions as historically inaccurate and aimed at undermining the Middle-Belt’s growing political consciousness.
In a detailed response to a widely circulated article, titled, ‘The Manufactured Middle Belt: The Untold History, Foreign Backing and the Agenda to Fracture Northern Nigeria,’ authored under the pseudonym Safyan Umar Yahaya, Dr. Bitrus said the narrative is a misrepresentation of both history and colonial records.
According to him, the Middle-Belt refers to indigenous ethnic nationalities of Northern Nigeria that existed outside the authority of the Sokoto Caliphate and the Kanem-Borno Empire prior to British colonisation. These groups, he noted, now span 14 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory.
“The Middle-Belt consists of autochthonous peoples who were never conquered or ruled by Islamic caliphates of Sokoto and Borno before colonial rule,” Bitrus said, stressing that this is supported by historical scholarship rather than political sentiment.
He cited pre-colonial polities such as the Kwararafa Confederacy and the Jukun States; the Igala Kingdom, Borgu Kingdom, the Nupe Kingdom, Zuru (Lelna) Kingdom in today’s Southern Kebbi, as well as Tiv, Idoma, Gbagyi, Birom, Angas and Eggon societies, among others, which he said possessed distinct political systems and resisted slave raids and forced Islamisation.
Bitrus argued that British colonial conquest further created the Middle-Belt political consciousness. He noted that colonial administrators documented prolonged resistance to by Middle-Belt communities to colonialism, compared to the relatively swift subjugation of emirate enclaves.
“Because of this resistance, the British imposed Indirect Rule by force, subordinating Middle-Belt groups to emirate authorities that vast majority of people of the Middle-Belt had resisted,” he said.
He added that, “This forced arrangement, rather than any foreign conspiracy, laid the foundation for later agitation.”
He also dismissed arguments that the Middle-Belt lacked recognition before the 1940s, describing reliance on colonial political maps as “intellectually-indefensible.”
Bitrus pointed out that colonial correspondence referenced the Middle-Belt as early as the first decade of the 20th century, though, British authorities resisted creating a Middle-Belt Region to so as to preserve the political dominance of Hausa, Fulani and Kanuri oligarchs.
On the United Middle-Belt Congress (UMBC), led by the late Joseph Sarwuan Tarka, Bitrus said the movement articulated long-standing grievances, including land dispossession, political exclusion and cultural suppression.
He rejected claims of missionary or foreign manipulation in the formation of the UMBC, noting that Middle-Belt leaders were among the most educated Nigerians of their era who directly experienced suppression, oppression and exploitations of the labour and resources of their people, and were educated enough to form an alliance to fight the injustice.
Addressing contemporary politics, Bitrus said the Middle-Belt Movement is not separatist but seeks recognition, equity and freedom from what he described as an imposed “Arewa identity.”
He further dismissed attempts to portray the Middle-Belt as a ‘religious project,’ noting that the region remains religiously plural, with Muslims, Christians and adherents of traditional religions represented within the MBF’s leadership.
Bitrus also argued that the long-assumed Hausa-Fulani political bloc is increasingly fracturing, citing growing dissent among Hausa intellectuals and Fulani-manufactured violence affecting rural Hausa communities.
Dr. Bitrus, who hails from Chibok in southern Borno State, said that the current development reflects not a conspiracy against the North, but what he described as the “collapse of an artificial political arrangement sustained by history and power, rather than consent.”