Terrorist, herdsmen or unknown gunmen?

February 16, 2018

I get frustrated when Nigerians refer to “unknown gunmen” waging violence in North-Central Nigeria. Why should gunmen be unknown for years? They kill innocent people and destroy their means of livelihood and yet they are unknown: we have security agents mandated to ensure the safety of all citizens and within all military and paramilitary agencies, we have intelligent units and yet these killers remain unknown. Why are Nigeria’s cattle herders turning to jihad? Like most gunmen in so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, which operates along the sand-swept borderlands where Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and others. The transition of herdsmen from vigilantes protecting their cows to jihadists capable of carrying out complex attacks is a story Africans and Western powers would do well to heed, as their pursuit of violent extremism in West Africa becomes ever more enmeshed in long-standing ethnic and clan conflicts.

What is happening in Benue, Taraba, Nassarawa and other middle-belt

States is more than a strive between herdsmen and local farmers; it has gotten to the level of terrorism. African Islamic militants trained in Syria and Iraq now walk freely in North-Central Nigeria. Terrorists attacked the camp of Mobile policemen, Mopol 13 in Benue, killing two officers by slitting their throats. Do you call people who could invade the camp of mobile policemen in a guerilla manner and overpower armed Mopol mere herdsmen? They are terrorists not herdsmen; they are elements of ISIS fighters.

Between 3,000 and 6,000 so-called ‘foreign fighters’ – African citizens trained in Islamic state terror camps – have returned to Africa and pose a “completely new challenge and Nigerians are calling them herdsmen. Nigeria is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than in a decade. There are concrete indications that terrorists are systematically using the stream of herdsmen to come into Nigeria undetected. We can expect [ISIS] or other religious terror groups to stage an attack in Nigeria with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population and that the risk of attacks by individuals has also not diminished.

There is a link with the unprecedented increase in the terror threat with the ongoing violence in Nigeria. These worries are substantiated and confirmed in February after several killings in Benue, Nassarawa, Taraba, Edo, Delta and others.

Terrorism is one of the biggest crimes against humanity. Every such crime deserves to be named appropriately, and nations experiencing such owe it to their citizens to act swiftly and decisively against terrorists. What we have experienced so far with the “Fulani Herdsmen” is nothing short of terrorism and it is high time government handled it with the seriousness required for such a grave situation not only to protect the lives and properties of her innocent citizens, but also to preserve the tribal identity of the many real Fulani Herdsmen who are simply looking to make honest and legitimate livelihoods.