Herdsmen attacks: Police are the real problem in Benue —Traditional ruler

Traditional ruler, Abu Shuluwa, Tor Sankera of Benue State, speaks with JOHNSON BABAJIDE  on  the persistent attacks of killer herdsmen on communities in Sankera axis and the complicity of the police.  Excerpts: 

THERE is this belief that the communal or settlement structure of the Tiv people makes them vulnerable to attack. What is the reason for the ‘scattered settlements pattern’ in Tiv land?  

If we look at Benue State, particularly, the Tiv people, we are predominantly farmers; even the civil servants, most of them are farmers too, because they use earnings from farming to augment their salaries. The workers have dependants back home in the village who need their attention and the only way to meet these demands is farming. A Tiv man by nature looks for where he can find fertile ground and he is eager to get the fertile ground before his brothers and quickly move with his wife to occupy it and claim the ownership of the land. It is only in Tiv that people fight over land whereas in far north they do not care about that. Anywhere in the north, you can easily go and farm on a [portion] of the land but a Tiv man treasures land. That is why when they came to the Benue valley, they discovered that the land is very fertile and the few tribes that were here were driven away. That is the reason you hear Idoma and Igala claiming they were the first settlers..

Like in all African setting, the average Tiv man in those days was polygamous. So in such a situation you see the wives getting portions of land for their children. So in essence, what I’m saying is that the struggle for fertile ground caused the manner settlements are scattered  as you find in Tiv land. A Tiv man does not mind going as far as Otukpo where there is fertile ground, making sure that no one occupies it. He doesn’t mind migrating from one part of Tiv land to another to get fertile land and the reason for this is the type of farming we engage in like yam, soyabean and all sorts of crops, which requires fertile land. All these were the reasons for Tiv settlement pattern.

Every Tiv man knows what type of crops can be cultivated in a particular land. In those days, we were not farming rice. We were only concerned with yam, beniseed, soyabean, millet, corn and others. The fruits, and rice  you now find in Tiv land were newly introduced crops. Before, it was a uniform crop we cultivated; if it was beniseed, everywhere you went, it would be beniseed. And beniseed or millet is always cultivated after you must have harvested yam.

So what are you doing to ensure the safety of the people?

Now the question is what are we doing to change the pattern of settlement, especially in the face of security challenge? All traditional rulers are now preaching what we call  ‘Sorteme’ which means scattered settlement is no longer good, but to come together and they can now be going to their farms from the big villages. But, in those days, we used to have big villages which were very difficult to attack. But nowadays, a couple can decide to move away and find a settlement with no one around; the husband goes to the farm and the wife too and in a situation where the couple have a child, they keep the child busy with yam and sometimes the child will be outside the house without anyone [supervising or guarding][ him. Sometimes it may be the wife and the child that are alone and before you know it they have been killed. And,  at times, the husband alone will be coming from the farm and the attackers will kill him. So that is why we are now preaching that we should go back to the cluster settlements that we used to have.

But there is also a danger in this, because by the time we have the cluster settlements, there is always an empty land and when the Fulani see the fertile land empty they will want to go in. The Tiv land is very good  which attracts the Fulani. What usually attracts the Fulani to Tiv land are the grass and water and Fulani always look for areas where these are available. And they value their cows more than their wives, since they are nomad. When their wives are pregnant at times, they go leaving behind their wives and only leave traces of how they can be located when they give birth.

But in those days were the Fulani herdsmen killing people like the present time?

Fulani herdsmen were not attacking us before that time. Whenever they came, they would go to the chiefs and the chiefs would call the elders of the village and inform them. Fulani would come during the dry season and leave as rainy season set in because they don’t like muddy areas. And whenever they came and sought for where they would graze, the chiefs would show them where to settle and in those days there was no problem because anytime their cows strayed to people’s farms, such farmers would report to the chiefs and the chiefs would thereafter report to their leader and they would pay and vice versa and there was peace.

But what has come this time is a surprise to everyone and they have taken us unawares. The question is why are the Fulani killing the people? The normal Fulani we knew before would never kill people. The Fulani that come now are different from the old ones. These ones come here for conquest,  not for grazing. [They come] to conquer and settle. In Tiv land, there is no Fulani settlement; they [Fulani] only come and go. In Taraba, they have settlement and what they want to do now is to annexe part of the state for their settlement. But with the population now, a Tiv man will not allow that. The tradition in Tiv land is that  one has to apply for land before he can be given. For instance, if I need a land in Guma, I have to meet the village chief and elders and seek their consent. You cannot just go and be farming without following due process. There is nowhere in Tiv land you can just go and lay claim to land because every piece of  land in Tiv  belong to a family. So the Fulani who are killing us are sponsored. And the ideas is to conquer  us and claim our land.

ALSO READ: The unending Tiv/Fulani crisis

But people are attributing the frequent killings to anti-open grazing law…?

By now everyone in Nigeria should now know that the Fulani have agenda and the agenda is to conquer and not to graze. The law forbidden open grazing of livestock has been in existence a long time ago, even before Benue and Taraba. But it is unfortunate that the law was not being implemented.

They have an agenda. If you trace their history, you will see that what they are doing now is to revive the agenda. They started it in 1804 and conquered the North. And everywhere they conquered, they installed an emir and the emirs are of Fulani extraction, except in the Christian dominated areas which they want to conquer now.

They started the new plan of conquest in Tiv land in 2004, when they requested that they should be allowed to have Adoo in Tiv land and should also be allowed to sit in the Tiv Traditional Council. It was then they also  started asking for land to build mosques in Tiv land, but  they were resisted because we knew it was another tactical way of relaunching the 1804 Jihad which we stopped in Tiv land here.

The clashes have now become rampart in Tiv land and the recent one was in Konshisha, where three village heads were suspended…?

It is true, for the first time government would take such decision. If government continues like that it will help. Sometimes they are part of it and sometimes they are not. If a traditional ruler is found in an such act he should be suspended. To me, if a traditional ruler has gone to settle land dispute anywhere, he should be fair and do the right thing. He should not be biased because being biased angers the subjects. Though in some cases where a chief goes to settle land dispute and if anyone among the parties get stubborn, what the traditional ruler should do is to report to security agencies for trying to cause trouble.

Could the attack on Mbalom where two Catholic priests and some parishioners were killed be linked to communal clashes, since it was alleged that no herdsman has been cited in the area since 2004?

Let us look at it from this area. The question you should ask is whether the attackers moved to Mbalom with cows. The answer is no, they did not;  but only came there to attack. That is what I have been emphasising that those attacking us don’t move with cows. In most cases, they come  in a bus or on Bajaj motorcycles. If you have been noticing the turn of event in Makurdi, most of those Bajaj motorcycles do not have number plates. And I’ve also discovered that the owners of this Bajaj are not Tiv people. So what they do is that they study the environment and wait for the appropriate time to attack. They have informants who tell them  what the situation is like. So the question you should ask is why do they attack in the night or wee  hours of the day? All their attacks have been to get the people by surprise. That has been the same method of attack on Tiv land. So, people are just trying to change the narrative that indigenes of the area connived with Fulani to attack Mbalom.

Since you earlier said that the attack on the state is always  during the dry season when the herdsmen come to the state, are we sure we will not have a repeat of the attack  in the next dry season?

The Fulani don’t forget; they will still come back. But by that time, we will be ready for them. We have been here for hundreds of years and nobody will drive us from this land. Nobody, I repeat. It will be better we  all perish and no Tiv man remains in the Benue valley. So let us see how you want to drive an ethnic group of the population of over six million from their ancestral home. What they are doing is to see how they can conquer the Tiv and have access to extend their agenda to the eastern part of the country. So if the rest of Nigeria think that this fight is Tiv, I am sorry to say, they are mistaken. Let us assume that the Tiv allow them to settle here. Their next move is how to attack the eastern part of the country. Straight they will go to Ebonyi, Cross River and others. I have been saying this:  their agenda is to harness those areas [occupied by those] they consider as infidel and could not  conquer in the past. Unfortunately, some people are saying we should not turn this into a religion crisis. But the fact still remains that you cannot divorce the attack on Tiv from religion.What we are experiencing in Nigeria now has been happening in the Middle East and they have brought it here. It is their big men that sponsor them in Nigeria.

If you look at it carefully, Benue is strategically located and per adventure the state falls into their hands that is the end of the country.

It is also said that some youths now engage in various criminalities or that some of them are induced to give information to criminals. What do you think should be done to such youths?

There is another angle to this issue you raised. You know that politicians use the youth as thugs to win elections. These politicians empower these youths with weapons which they don’t recover after the elections. It is with these weapons that these thugs go and rob people. These youths are now taking control of the rural areas and engaging in  atrocities. Robbery and other vices have been taken to the rural communities and whenever traditional rulers raise this issue, they become the targets for attacks. Whereas the politicians that armed them are no longer within their reach; they are in Abuja. So they now vent their anger on innocent people in the community.

Your domain, that is Sankera axis,  has become notorious for these killings and the police claimed that there is a conspiracy of silence by the leaders and people which has made it extremely difficult for them to get these killer herdsmen…

But the real problem is the police. You give them information; they will leak the information to the criminals and the source of the information. And the following day, the person is killed. Are you aware of the people that have been killed in that axis? In fact, more than seven traditional rulers have been killed in my domain because they stood against criminality.

People who have information will not give to police again because the same police will leak such information and the informants would eventually get killed. That is why the police are now complaining about conspiracy of silence in my area.