Stop these herders’ killings

DOOCHIMA was only ten when her entire family was killed in a brutal attack by suspected Fulani herdsmen in a Tiv village of Benue State. She lived with her mother, father and brothers and sisters. It was not an easy living once the herders’ insurgency began and she knew people who have been killed in the incessant attacks her first cousin was one. There was a lot of fear around. Then things got so bad that villagers could not even play in their backyard. One day she got home after a visit to her aunt in the neighbourhood and found that her house had been trashed, turned upside down with clothes lying around everywhere. Her parents, brothers and sisters had been slain in their home. She did not know what had happened at first, but she later got the gist of it from people who escaped the gruesome killings. Her aunt took her and her own two year-old son to Markudi through bush path.

The journey to get there was too hard to even think about moving again. “We walked through the bushes all day, and went trekking for the next three days trying to find the right passage,” said Doochima, her mind slipping back to what had befallen her family members, shaking with rage thinking of how marauding Fulani wandered from village to village to hack down human lives with AK47. “We rumbled on through the bushes in sunshine, rain, hot and cold…We could not move. After a while, we were hungry. My aunt’s 2-year-old boy had a fever, and we could not treat him because we could not provide drug for him. We did not have food to eat. He died. We had to dispose of his body in one of the pits available. We could not carry his body along because he would smell. It was the worst day of my life. “Then, we arrived in Markudi. We spent the night in an inn, and the next day we received help from a Good Samaritan who harbored us. We have not lived anywhere else since.” Tiv, many of whom survived journeys like Doochima’s, have been coming to Markudi and its immediate environs, settled there after the horrible occurrence in their villages. Many of the tribe now lives in communal apartments, much like the one they fled, but, at the same time, as different as the dark side of the moon. Every Nigerian has a right to life.

The right to life is guaranteed under section 33 of Chapter IV of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The government in power has the primary responsibility to ensure safety of Nigerian citizens as provided under section 14 (2) (b) of Chapter II of the 1999 constitution of FRN, amended.   The current state of insecurity in the country should be decried by all and sundry.Bloody massacres of civilians across the country are signs that the incumbent had failed. The herders’ inhuman killings are feelings akin to genocide and pointer of failing governance. There are claims in different quarters that government is actually given short shrift to the central part of its responsibility in protecting lives and property of citizens at all times and in all parts of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani man and former herder, had respondedin a newspaper publication of Wednesday, June 27, 2018 that “the Benue subsistence farmer knows that the Nigerian cattle herder that he knows does not carry nothing more than a stick, occasionally sometimes something to cut grass to feed his cattle. “But the present herder, I am told, carries AK47 and people are even blaming me for not talking to them because maybe they say I look like one of them.”

Above all else, President Buhari should live up to his responsibility of ensuring the safety of common man on the streets of Nigeria. We are living in a time of diminished expectations and any government that cannot protect its people does not deserve to remain in office. President Buhari has also issued a categorical statement about the need to allocate lands for Fulani nomads as a measure for stopping an errant killing across the nation. This is the reason why he has been advocating that state governments should provide lands to create N70bn livestock ranches for Fulani herdsmen as a prerequisite for stopping genocidal attacks on innocent citizens.  Succumbing to this advocacy may probably amount to a serial colonisation of other nationalities in the country by the Fulani stock and this will add up to a rebirth of Fulani expansionist programme that ended in Ilorin sometimes in the19th century with the installation of an Emir as ruler over Yoruba group occupying the area. This probability supports recent frowning of Fulani Nationality Movement (FUNAM) at what they referred to as “conscious attempts to demonise the Fulani nation by the media and their collaborators”.

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An excerpt of statement issued by FUNAM leadership on the above occasion categorically claimed that Nigeria is the only inheritance that the Fulani people have in Africa and anywhere in the world. They reiterated in affirmation: “this land belongs to us, from Sokoto to the banks of the Atlantic Ocean…this was the destiny bestowed on Uthman Dan Fodio, which would have been fulfilled since 1816 if not for the obstruction of this great assignment by the British”.  The organised crime of killing innocent souls across the country is a very worrisome situation. The passivity of the federal government headed by a President of Fulani descent and zero response time of our ‘penny loving security agents’ are indicative of complicit in the cover-up of bloodshed that have left much of the country in ruins; all in the process of pushing the Fulani agenda. The sporadic shooting and gangland executions of innocent citizens in the Middle Belt is a lesson to the Yoruba and other nationalities in the country. An adage says that “when a frog in the front falls into the pit others will take caution”.Few weeks ago people caught sight of a Fulani herder at Lagun village in Oyo State on the road to Iwo town in Osun state carrying AK47 with gusto. There have been several sightings of herders moving off the border roads of Oyo State in recent times.

This strange movement is probably occasioned by the claim that 12 herdsmen were killed by suspected farmers at Okere in Iseyin Local Council of Oyo state who were concerned about destructive behaviour of their farmland and source of livelihood and the movement might be a port of embarkation to justify the Fulani heritage that “any attack on a single Fulani is an attack on all. Any of such attacks must be countered with triple measure”. This quoted phrase presupposes a threatened reprisal against a tragic mishap in Okere and a pointer to a very serious problem. Myriads of SOS notifications of the incoming in batches of Fulani herdsmen in areas like Podo/Ijebu-Ode road, Ido Local Government/Eruwa road, Ibadan/Iwo town road and Ibadan/Abeokuta road alone should suffice to show possibility of a looming conflict.The incoming of herders in batches had been witnessed during a stakeout of these roads. Also, there are reports that the Fulani are surrounding Oyo State territory, and putting the residents in the middle.The government is not seeing this now. Then, do we have to go to sleep with our rooftop on fire?

If Yoruba political leaders are not responsive and proactive enough, the onus is on the Yoruba vigilante teams to provide a safe haven for their people. They must not sleep with their two eyes closed. The bloodshed must be stopped. We do not pray for a hostage crisis. The stakeholders in Yoruba affairs must rise up to save a bad situation. A stitch in time saves nine. It is time we put paid to tight security in this region to stop these herders’ killings.

• Elebute is Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Cultural Studies at Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State