I re-print here today a viewpoint expressed in my “Treasures” column in the New Telegraph newspaper last Wednesday because of its currency. Next week, we shall attempt a content analysis of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s damning letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, and the side swipes at the ruling All Progressives Congress, the dethroned Peoples Democratic Party as well as the clarion call for a Third Force, which is a sad reminder of ill-fated Lt. Col. Victor Banjo and the Third Force during the Nigerian Civil War. Nigerians are generally very imaginative or wicked, depending on which side of the divide you sit; imagine that OBJ’s letter to Buhari is already being described as epic battle between two godfathers – OBJ, godfather of farmers and Buhari, godfather of herdsmen! Very apt, isn’t it? Between food and meat, which should have the upper hand? Until then, enjoy this!
“You may have received text or Whatsapp messages asking you to boycott cow meat as a protest against ongoing herdsmen’s bestiality across the country and the federal government’s atrocious lackadaisical attitude towards it. Social and traditional media are awash with gory pictures and scary details of how Fulani herdsmen have turned Nigeria into killing fields akin to Rwanda’s, Burundi’s, and Kosovo’s while, like King Nero, Buhari fiddles. Worse than Nero, Buhari appears complicit in the criminality of the Fulani herdsmen both by his actions and inactions. His speeches and body language are decidedly in favour of the murderous herdsmen. The president is himself Fulani who owns heads of cattle; has openly and plainly spoken in favour of and taken actions that defend and fight for the cause of the Fulani herdsmen in times past; he is also said to be a Life Patron of the herdsmen’s pugnacious association, Miyeitti Allah Kautal. His statements since he became president have been sympathetic to the cause of the herdsmen. The composition of Buhari’s government, which is decidedly and brazenly in favour of the Muslim North, to put it mildly, and whose policies have, in like manner, and expectedly so, been to the advantage of his vested Muslim/Northern interests, has made matters worse. The entire security architecture of the country is in the hands of Muslims/Northerners to the chagrin and total exclusion of other ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic society; and these fellows have used their position to advance the parochial and sectional interests of their religion and ethnic stock. Their people have also wasted no time in leveraging on this undue advantage to ride roughshod over others and behave like Lords of the Manor. The more citizens are riled by the atrocities, bestiality, and barbarism of the Fulani herdsmen, the more those in authority have, in flagrant violation of their oath of office to defend the Constitution and be fair in their dealings with Nigerians across board, continued in their deceit, duplicity, complicity, criminal silence, and negligence. When they elect to speak, it is doublespeak, confusing issues more than they throw light on them.
It is this unsavoury situation that has now given rise to the campaign for the boycott of cow meat. This is economic sanction aimed at getting both the herdsmen and a complicit federal government to reconsider their opprobrious actions and toe the line of reason. All over the world, economic sanctions are effective tools of political action. Cow-rearing is a business and boycott aims to strike at the heart of this business – profit. If the product is boycotted and the owners of the business suffer unacceptable financial losses, they will be forced to reconsider their actions. Economic pressure or sanction has been applied by state as well as non-state actors to devastating effects. The UN Security Council is using it right now against North Korea and not long ago, Western powers employed it to force Iran to the negotiation table over its nuclear programme. If the boycott of cow meat is effectively organised and adequately keyed into by Nigerians opposed to the mayhem the herdsmen have unleashed on Nigerians and the Presidency’s kid-glove treatment of a group described as the fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world, it has the potentials of bringing the herdsmen and their protector FG on their knees. Whenever we mention boycott as political weapon, mention must be made of Rosa Parks, the Black seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus on December 1, 1955 and, by so doing, ignited a massive boycott of state buses and other Civil Rights actions by Blacks, led by Martin Luther King Jnr. Boycott organisers must, however, take a cue from Chairman Mao Tse-tung that it is not going to be a tea party but a very serious and hard task. Mao should know because he led the Chinese Revolution. The Civil Rights movement in the United States struggled for decades before they got segregation laws upturned; and King lost his life in the process. Even at that, the US today is far from being a race-free country. Boycotts were put to effective use in southern Africa by African freedom fighters to complement multi-pronged efforts targeted at ending racial colonialism and with the Presidency talking of bringing colonialism back to Nigeria through the back door and making the Fulani herdsmen – of all people! – our new colonial masters with the establishment of grazing colonies where they and their cows will ride roughshod and which, assuredly, they will use now and in future as launching pads for future conquests, like Uthman dan Fodio did to the Hausa, other tribes in the North, and the Yoruba in Ilorin, economic sanction can be put to devastating effect in Nigeria by citizens resentful of Fulani suzerainty.
Mercifully, boycotts are not alien to Nigeria. During the struggle for Independence, it was one weapon advocated by one of the brightest nationalists of the time – Mbonu Ojike aka “The Boycott King”. Ojike (author of “My Africa” published by Stevebond Press, Lagos) was an advocate of boycott as economic weapon (“boycott all boycottables”) to put pressure on the British colonialists to grant Independence to Nigeria while also protecting the Nigerian economy from becoming dumping ground for foreign goods. The atrocities of the Fulani herdsmen and the need to stop them apart, indiscriminate consumption of cow meat (red meat) is injurious to health in that it aids the growth of cancerous cells in the human body. The cow meat boycott campaign is thus an added impetus to strengthen the resolve of those mindful of the need to drastically cut down on, if not totally eliminate, red meat consumption. It is healthy and advantageous so to do. The message must be sent in clear and unambiguous terms to the Fulani herdsmen, the APC, and Buhari’s administration that conscionable Nigerians will fight back with all the weapons at their disposal. Boycott of cow meat is one of such weapons. Our vote is another.
and then