Why is the Hausa Zallah Movement angry at religious and traditional institutions, but not the political elite?

by Mohammed Bello Doka 

14 July, 2026. 

The answer is simple and uncomfortable: because they are cowards. The Hausa Zallah Movement claims to champion the cause of the Hausa people, to fight injustice, and to challenge the structures that have held Northern Nigeria back for decades. Yet they consistently direct their anger at traditional rulers and religious leaders who have no real power to punish anyone, while conveniently ignoring the political elite who control budgets, security, and policies that determine the daily survival of millions. This is not activism. This is cowardice in disguise.

Let us be categorically clear. The security of every Nigerian, whether Hausa, Fulani, Nupe, Jukun, or any other ethnic group, is the constitutional responsibility of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the Federal Government. Your livelihood, your roads, your schools, your hospitals, and your access to justice are not in the hands of the Sultan of Sokoto or some scholar who died two hundred years ago. They are controlled by the President, the Governors, the Senators, the Local Government Chairmen—people with real power who can jail you for insulting them. If the Hausa Zallah Movement directed even half the venom they spew at traditional rulers toward the political elite, most of them would be in detention by now. That is precisely why they do not. It is easier to attack the defenseless.

The political class is the real problem, and everyone knows it. Some people often ask me why I do not respond to or engage with the Hausa Zallah Movement. Here is why: it would be a complete waste of time. If you replaced every traditional ruler in Northern Nigeria today and every religious leader, absolutely nothing would change in the lives of the common man. The Emirs would be replaced, the clerics would be replaced, but the Almajiri would still roam the streets, the farmers would still lack fertilizer, the hospitals would still be empty, and the roads would still be death traps. But replace the President, replace the Governors, replace the Senators—that is where lives would transform. That is where budgets shift, where education funding appears, where security deployments happen. The difference is night and day. I do not have time to waste with cowards who refuse to face the powers that be.

Let us examine the logic, or rather the lack of it, behind this movement. You are angry about the killings in rural communities? Then form vigilantes and go face the bandits, who are armed criminals, not unarmed civilians who are also victims of the same violence. You do not like the version of Islam preached by certain Fulani scholars? Then go to the mosques and preach your version. There is nothing stopping you. You choose to be pagans or traditional worshippers? Then practice your faith freely. Nigeria is a democracy that guarantees freedom of religion. The Constitution does not prohibit any of this. What it does not permit is the ethnic cleansing you seem to be advocating, which is both unconstitutional and impossible.

When you talk about sending Fulanis out of Hausaland, what exactly are you talking about? Does Hausaland exist as a political entity today? The answer is no. Nigeria is a federation, a democracy with constitutional guarantees of human rights. Every inch of land in this country belongs to the Federal Government. We are all renting. No ethnic group has a deed of ownership over any territory. And when you claim to speak for the Hausa, what about the minorities? What about the Nupe, the Jukun, the Igala, the Tiv, the Kanuri, the hundreds of communities who have lived in the North for centuries and are neither Hausa nor Fulani? Do they have no place in your Hausaland fantasy? This is not just misplaced priorities; it is a dangerous delusion dressed as activism.

The Hausa Zallah Movement is nothing but a plan to destroy Islam in Northern Nigeria, and they will fail. Islam has existed in this region for over a thousand years, long before the 1804 Jihad. It was practiced by Hausa kings and commoners alike. It is not the property of any ethnic group. By trying to reduce Islam to a tool of ethnic grievance, you are poisoning the faith itself. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said there is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab except by piety. Your ethnic maximalism is not Islamic; it is ignorance wrapped in religious language. And the people of the North, who have lived side by side for generations, will reject it.

The irony is that the traditional and religious institutions you attack are not the architects of your suffering. They are symbols, yes, but they are symbols without swords. The Emirs cannot deploy soldiers. The clerics cannot sign budgets. The Sultan cannot declare a state of emergency. The political elite can do all of these things, and they have done them poorly for decades. Yet you refuse to confront them because confrontation with power comes with consequences. You would rather bark at shadows than wrestle with the real monster.

So why is the Hausa Zallah Movement angry at religious and traditional institutions but not the political elite? Because it is safer. Because it is easier. Because attacking the powerless requires no courage. Because the political elite, with their police, their courts, and their security agencies, are too dangerous to challenge directly. This is not a movement for justice. This is a movement of convenience, a distraction from the real work of holding power to account.

I do not waste my time on them. I chase real challenges, not imaginary tales spun by people too scared to face the real monster. The real monster sits in government houses, in the National Assembly, in the State Houses where budgets are allocated and misallocated. The real monster controls the police, the military, and the courts. The real monster decides who eats and who starves. If you want change, confront that monster. Otherwise, you are just disruptors hiding behind screens, distracting the masses while the elite continues to loot the treasury and destroy the future. That is the tragedy of the Hausa Zallah Movement—not courage, but cowardice. Not liberation, but self-destruction. And that is why I will not join them in their fantasy. I am too busy fighting for real change, and I suggest they do the same.

Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected] 

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