by Mohammed Bello Doka
30 May, 2026.
There is a ghost that has haunted Nigerian political discourse for decades, and its name is the Fulani hegemony narrative. It is whispered in living rooms, shouted on social media, and solemnly repeated by otherwise intelligent people who should know better. The story goes that a cabal of Fulani overlords has systematically seized control of Nigeria, installing their kinsmen as presidents, governors, and emirs while the rest of the country grovels under their domination. It is a compelling tale, rich with the drama of conquest and conspiracy. It is also, by every factual measure, a breathtaking lie.
Let us begin with the most elementary question: Who has actually ruled Nigeria since independence in 1960? The answer, when stripped of emotion and examined in cold print, demolishes the entire edifice of the Fulani hegemony myth.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, who served as Governor-General from 1960 to 1963 and as ceremonial President from 1963 to 1966, was Igbo from Zungeru in present-day Niger State but of Eastern Nigerian origin. Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, who ruled for six chaotic months in 1966, was also Igbo. General Yakubu Gowon, who held power from 1966 to 1975, is not Fulani but Angas from Plateau State. General Murtala Muhammed, who ruled from 1975 to 1976, has been variously claimed, but historical records identify him as Hausa from Kano. General Olusegun Obasanjo, who first ruled from 1976 to 1979 and again as civilian president from 1999 to 2007, is Yoruba from Abeokuta. Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the first executive president who served from 1979 to 1983, was Fulani from Sokoto. This gives us our first Fulani leader, though some argue he was more accurately Hausa-Fulani. Major General Muhammadu Buhari, who took power in the 1983 coup and ruled until 1985, is Fulani from Daura, Katsina State. This is the second. General Ibrahim Babangida, who ruled from 1985 to 1993, is not Fulani but Gwari from Minna, Niger State. Chief Ernest Shonekan, who served as interim president for three months in 1993, was Yoruba from Ogun State. General Sani Abacha, who ruled from 1993 to 1998, was Kanuri from Borno State. General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who ruled from 1998 to 1999, is Nupe from Niger State. Olusegun Obasanjo returned as civilian president from 1999 to 2007, again Yoruba. Alhaji Umaru Musa YarAdua, who served from 2007 to 2010, is widely mistaken for Fulani, but his lineage is Tuareg from Katsina. Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who ruled from 2010 to 2015, is Ijaw from Bayelsa State, a minority from the Niger Delta. Muhammadu Buhari returned as civilian president from 2015 to 2023, making his third and final appearance as Fulani. Finally, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current president since 2023, is Yoruba from Lagos State.
Let us count carefully. From this list of sixteen distinct Nigerian heads of state since independence, exactly two are ethnically Fulani by any rigorous definition: Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari. Even if we generously include Murtala Muhammed as Hausa-Fulani, and even if we stretch credibility to include YarAdua who was Tuareg, we arrive at perhaps four. Four Fulani leaders out of sixteen. That is twenty-five percent at the absolute maximum. The supposed Fulani domination of the presidency is a statistical phantom.
Yet the narrative persists, and its persistence tells us something far more interesting about Nigerian politics than any actual Fulani conspiracy ever could. As Obi Nwakanma wrote in a masterful deconstruction of this myth in 2017, The talk of a hegemony is a lazy form of political analysis in Nigeria, as the facts of the contours and architecture of Nigerian society makes a Fulani hegemony in Nigeria impossible. He went further, identifying the psychological mechanism that sustains the delusion: Southern Nigerian intellectuals, politicians and propagandists have, far more than anybody else, certainly far more than the Fulani themselves, ascribed or assigned near-omnipotent political capacity to the Fulani, far beyond the capacity of the so-called Hausa-Fulani. Much of these stem from profound ignorance and the kind of deadly prejudice that creates hatreds and genocides.
This is the uncomfortable truth that the champions of the Fulani hegemony narrative refuse to confront: they have built a straw man and then declared war on it. The Fulani, as Nwakanma correctly observed, do not have the numbers, the financial wherewithal, the bureaucratic capacity, or the military power to dominate Nigeria. They are a minority even within the North. The Hausa-Fulani combined form about twenty-nine percent of Nigeria's population according to demographic estimates, but the Fulani alone are a much smaller fraction of that. How does a demographic minority establish a hegemony over a country of more than two hundred million people from over three hundred and seventy ethnic groups? The arithmetic alone defeats the proposition.
What is truly remarkable, and what exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of the narrative, is the comparison between Northern and Southern treatment of minorities. The North, which the narrative accuses of ethnic domination, has actually produced six minority leaders who governed Nigeria for a combined total of over thirty-two years. These include Gowon the Angas, Babangida the Gwari, Abacha the Kanuri, Abdulsalami the Nupe, Balewa the Gere, and YarAdua the Tuareg. The North, despite its Hausa-Fulani majority, has repeatedly placed men from its minority communities in the highest office in the land.
Now examine the South. Since independence, the South has produced exactly one minority president: Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw from Bayelsa. And even Jonathan came to power not through the will of Southern political elites but by accident, through the death of YarAdua. Every other Southern leader has been either Yoruba or Igbo. As one commentator noted, Jonathan himself admitted at a state banquet after losing the 2015 election that he had done little for his own Ijaw people. He said he thought Bayelsans would boo him for neglecting them but was amazed by the level of love shown instead. The South has never willingly placed a minority in power. The North has done so six times. Let that sink in.
The irony is exquisite. The very region that lectures the North about inclusivity and representation has the worst record on minority inclusion in the entire country. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed that the most dangerous political fictions are those that contain a grain of truth while fundamentally misrepresenting reality. The grain of truth here is that Nigeria has had several presidents from the North. The misrepresentation is that this constitutes Fulani domination when in fact the Northern presidents have come from multiple ethnic groups, with minorities actually outnumbering the Hausa-Fulani in the list.
The origins of this false narrative are not mysterious. As research by Dubawa, a fact-checking organization, has documented, the claim that no Hausa man has ever ruled Nigeria and that Fulani have dominated leadership has been circulating on social media, often amplified by separatist propaganda. One Facebook video making this claim had garnered over one million views as of 2025. The comment sections reveal the damage such disinformation causes: This is not news. I have known this for many years now via Biafra radio, wrote one user. Another declared with absolute certainty that the Fulani are not originally from Nigeria and that they used the Hausa people and their land to gain influence. This is not analysis. This is mythology weaponized.
Professor Abubakar Jiddere of Bayero University Kano explained the reality to Dubawa: There is nothing like Hausa and Fulani, it is Hausa-Fulani, because these people are hardly differentiated; they are one. Yes, most of the leaders from the North were Fulani, but that is not because of dominance or preference. Its not as if the Fulani deliberately separated themselves or planned to seek power to suppress the Hausa people. They are simply one people. He added that separating the two and attempting to create the illusion of a division is misleading. It suggests that some social media users might be trying to plant alien ideas that do not exist.
The colonial origins of this division are well documented. Before the Dan Fodio Jihad of 1804-1808, the Fulani and Hausa coexisted as two distinct identities. The conquest established Fulani rulers over Hausa states, but the British colonial regime, operating through Indirect Rule, codified and amplified this hierarchy. They needed a ruling class to govern cheaply, and the Fulani emirs served that purpose. The hyphenated Hausa-Fulani identity was, as one scholar put it, always motivated by politics. It was a colonial convenience that became a post-colonial curse.
What makes the Fulani hegemony narrative so dangerous is not just its falsity but its consequences. As the Media Diversity Institute reported in 2026, ethnic profiling in Nigeria has escalated dramatically, with social media accelerating its reach. In March 2025, sixteen Hausa hunters traveling to Kano were reportedly lynched by a mob that accused them of being kidnappers simply because they shared a language and region with actual criminals. The report noted that criminal acts committed by individuals are frequently framed as evidence of collective guilt. When cattle rustlers or bandits commit crimes, the entire Fulani ethnic group is blamed. When similar crimes occur in the South, the perpetrators are described as gunmen or unknown assailants without ethnic labels. This double standard is not lost on objective observers.
The philosopher Karl Popper warned of the paradox of tolerance: that unlimited tolerance of those who would destroy tolerance leads to the destruction of tolerance itself. Nigerian political discourse has become intolerably tolerant of ethnic disinformation. The Fulani hegemony narrative is not a harmless theory. It is a weapon that has already drawn blood and will draw more if responsible voices do not challenge it.
The South has much to learn from the North in the treatment of minorities. This is a difficult truth for many Southern intellectuals to accept because it contradicts their self-image as the progressive, inclusive, democratic counterweight to Northern authoritarianism. But the numbers do not lie. The North has elected or appointed six minority heads of state. The South has appointed one, and even that one came by accident. The North, despite its reputation for ethnic chauvinism, has actually demonstrated greater openness to minority leadership than the South ever has.
As Nwakanma concluded, being Igbo in Nigeria, it is imperative that one does not participate in this kind of myth-making frenzy that breeds a hatred of the other. Once, the Igbo themselves had suffered on account of what became circulated among other Nigerians as Igbo domination of Nigeria. The Igbo, others said, were plotting to dominate Nigeria, and this fear of Igbo domination led to the massacres of the Igbo. It is important that we do not associate an entire Fulani people with the kind of intrigue that would instigate Nigerians against them.
History has a cruel way of repeating itself when lessons go unlearned. The propaganda of Igbo domination in the 1960s led to pogroms and civil war. The propaganda of Fulani domination in the 2010s and 2020s leads to lynchings, collective suspicion, and the steady erosion of national unity. The targets change, but the mechanism remains the same: fear of the other, amplified by those who benefit from division.
It is time to retire the Fulani hegemony narrative. Not because the Fulani are above criticism. Not because Northern Nigeria has been a perfect model of democratic governance. But because the narrative is false, because it obscures the real problems facing Nigeria, and because it has already caused measurable harm. A lie repeated often enough becomes truth in the minds of those who wish to believe it. But facts are stubborn things. Only two Fulani have ever ruled Nigeria as heads of state. The rest is myth, manufactured grievance, and the politics of convenient hatred.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
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