Dr. Junaid Mohammed and The Trouble with Fulanis

“All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” — Alexandre Dumas

I learned everything that I needed to learn about Nigeria within the first few weeks I started writing for Nigeriaworld. It was the early days of the Internet. At that time, a majority of those connected to the World Wide Web were the elite. Which meant that they read more than the headlines before they fired a barrage of abuses as their responses.

I was young and innocent, then. I did not know that “all generalizations are dangerous, even this one.” But those few weeks changed my perspective on Nigeria forever.

I started what accidentally became a series with “The Trouble with Igbos.” The bombardment of responses that came in my mailbox shocked me. While the Igbo attacked me from all corners of the globe, the rest of Nigeria, Yoruba, Hausa-Fulani(as we used to call them), Urhobo, Ijaw, and others declared that I was the best thing since kulikuli. One Igbo professor sent me three epistles in one day, where he lectured me on Nigeria and the place of the Igbo in it. He is a very good friend of mine today.

In subsequent weeks, I wrote “The Trouble with Yourbas.” Almost the same people who hailed me the weeks before landed on me with prime and premium abuses. Their central argument was that going to school in Yoruba land…